Major-General Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy CB DSO (18 August 1875 – 1 March 1942) was a British Army officer of Irish Catholic descent who served in both the Second Boer War and First World War.^[1] In 1905, he led a punitive expedition which resulted in the killings of 1,850 men, women and children of the Kipsigis tribe.

Pope-Hennessy was the eldest son of Sir John Pope-Hennessy MP, of Rostellan Castle, County Cork and Catherine Elizabeth Low. He was educated at Beaumont College.^[2]

Pope-Hennessy was commissioned into the Oxfordshire Light Infantry in 1895.^[2] He was deployed to South Africa and served with the West African Frontier Force during the Second Boer War.^[2]

In June 1905, in response to attacks on native Maasai people by the Kipsigis people in the East Africa Protectorate, Pope-Hennessy led an expedition to subdue the latter. During the expedition, Pope-Hennessy's men raided the town of Sotik, resulting in a massacre which involved the deaths of 1,850 men, women and children.^[3][4]

Following the success of the expedition, Pope-Hennessy was made commandant of the 4th Battalion, King's African Rifles in 1906 for which service was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order in 1908.^[2]

During the First World War he became commanding officer of the 1st Battalion the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in Mesopotamia in 1916 and then became a staff officer with the British Indian Army in 1917.^[2][5]

After the war he served as a staff officer at the War Office and then was Military Inter-Allied Commissioner of Control in Berlin. Subsequently he spent three years as military attaché in Washington D.C.^[6] He became General Officer Commanding 50th (Northumbrian) Division in 1931 before retiring in 1935.^[7]

Pope-Hennessy published a number of books an articles on military matters and in one of them he predicted the technique of the German Blitzkrieg.^[5]

He took particular interest in military matters and in issues affecting his native Ireland. In 1919 he had published 'The Irish Dominion: a Method of Approach to a Settlement'.^[2] He was Liberal candidate for the Tonbridge Division of Kent at the 1935 General Election. Tonbridge was a safe Conservative seat that they had won at every election since it was created in 1918. The Liberal Party had not fielded a candidate at the previous General election and he was not expected to win and finished a poor third.^[8]

He married, in 1910, Una Birch a writer, historian and biographer. They had two sons,^[2] both of whom were gay: James, who became a writer, and Sir John, an art historian.^[9]