hope of engineering Kitchener's removal. By summer 1915 French's command was being increasingly criticised in London by Kitchener and other members of the government, and by Haig, Robertson and other senior generals in France. After the Battle of Loos, at which French's slow release of XI Corps from reserve was blamed for the failure to achieve a decisive breakthrough on the first day, H. H. Asquith, the British Prime Minister, demanded his resignation. He was replaced by Haig, who was formerly French's trusted subordinate and who had saved him from bankruptcy by lending him a large sum of money in 1899. French was then appointed Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces for 1916–1918. This period saw the country running increasingly short of manpower for the Army. While the Third Battle of Ypres was in progress, French, as part of Lloyd George's manoeuvres to reduce the power of Haig and Robertson, submitted a paper which was critical of Haig's command record and which recommended that there be no further major offensives until the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was present in strength. He then became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1918, a position he held throughout much of the Irish War of Independence (1919–1922), in which his own sister was involved on the republican side. During this time he published 1914, an inaccurate and much criticised volume of memoirs. Early life and career Family French's family was related to the French/De Freyne family which had gone to Wexford in the fourteenth century and had substantial estates at Frenchpark, Roscommon. French always regarded himself as "Irish", although his branch of the family had lived in England since the eighteenth century. His father was Commander John Tracey William French, RN, of Ripple Vale in Kent (born 1808, died 1854), who had fought at Navarino and under Napier in support of Dom Pedro in the Portuguese Civil War. His mother was Margaret Eccles, from Glasgow, who after suffering a breakdown following her husband's death was eventually institutionalised having been diagnosed as insane. She died in 1867 leaving French to be brought up by his sisters. He was educated at a Harrow preparatory school and Eastman's Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth before joining the Royal Navy in 1866. Royal Navy He joined the Royal Navy because it gave him a chance to leave home four or five years earlier than the Army. From August 1866 he trained on board