"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase popularly used to describe the British infantry of the First World War and to blame the generals who led them. The contention is that the brave soldiers (lions) were sent to their deaths by incompetent and indifferent leaders (donkeys). The phrase was the source of the title of one of the most scathing examinations of British First World War generals, The Donkeys—a study of Western Front offensives—by politician and writer of military histories Alan Clark. The book typified the mainstream First World War history of the 1960s, was vetted by Basil Liddell Hart and helped to form a popular view of the First World War (in the English-speaking world) in the decades that followed. The work's viewpoint of incompetent military leaders was never accepted by some mainstream historians like John Terraine and both the book and its viewpoint have been criticised. The phrase has been applied more broadly to the leaders on both sides, implying that the War was a pointless waste of life, regardless of the technical competence or otherwise of generals on either side. Conversely, critics of the phrase have argued that, from the British viewpoint, the war was "necessary and successful". Origin The origin of the phrase pre-dates the First World War. Plutarch attributed to Chabrias the saying that "an army of deer commanded by a lion is more to be feared than an army of lions commanded by a deer". An ancient Arabian proverb says "An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep". During the Crimean War, a letter was reportedly sent home by a British soldier quoting a Russian officer who had said that British soldiers were "lions commanded by donkeys". This was immediately after the failure to storm the fortress of Sevastopol which, if true, would take the saying back to 1854–55. The phrase is quoted in Anna Stoddart's 1906 book The Life of Isabella Bird in the scene where Isabella, en route for America in 1854, passes a troopship taking the Scot's Greys out to Balaclava. These and other Crimean War references were included in British Channel 4 television's The Crimean War series (1997) and the accompanying book (Michael Hargreave Mawson, expert reader). Karl Marx and Frederick Engels used the phrase on 27 September 1855, in an article published in Neue Oder-Zeitung, No. 457 (1 October