18. The Founder of the Boy Scouts Was Not Above Trickery
During the Boer War (1899 – 1902), Colonel, later Lord and founder of the Boy Scouts, Robert Baden-Powell commanded the garrison of the besieged town of Mafeking in South Africa. He had initially seized the town by bluff during the runup to the outbreak of hostilities and held on to it with a steady diet of bluffs during the subsequent siege after the war began.
Baden-Powell, who had been ordered to raise two regiments of volunteers, began storing his supplies in Mafeking. However, he could not openly garrison the town before hostilities began, because that would have been impolitic and provocative. So he got around that by politely asking the townspeople for permission to send guards to protect his supplies. They consented, and Powell sent in his entire force of nearly 1500 men. When the townspeople protested, he responded that he had never specified the size of the guard.
