The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill

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       RAGLAN

       British Commander-in-Chief in the Crimea

      2 JULY 1855

      THE FOREBODINGS WHICH we expressed in the last number of our journal respecting the work of death in this exhausting war had been but too surely verified, even before we uttered them, by the removal of one of the chief actors on the scene, Lord Raglan is no more. He succumbed to a dysenteric attack, after a few days’ illness, on the evening of Thursday last; so that, at the very moment when more favourable reports were inducing a hope of his recovery, his days had closed, and the British Commander had been relieved from the duties and labours of his post by the fiat of an inexorable and all-subduing Power.

      The career which has thus been terminated, if not one of the very highest order has, at all events, been, both eventful and brilliant; protracted beyond the ordinary term, and signalized by no common distinctions. Lord Raglan had been a soldier for half-a-century. When he departed to assume the command of our army in the East, he was verging towards three score and ten – that limit of human endurance – at the time when he was directing operations of enormous magnitude under circumstances of unexampled pressure.

      Lord Fitzroy Somerset – to speak of him by the name which he bore through the chief part of his life – was a younger son of the fifth Duke of Beaufort, and the influence of this distinguished family of course facilitated his early promotion in the profession of arms to which he devoted himself. The first three or four years of his service brought him to a captaincy, and it was at this period of his career that an incident occurred which determined the course of his military life. Sir Arthur Wellesley – who was himself at the time but a sepoy-general – had been intrusted with a command in the expedition despatched against Copenhagen. In selecting the staff to attend him on this service he included among the objects of his choice Lord Fitzroy Somerset, and the young captain of infantry was thus transferred from regimental duties to a sphere which he scarcely ever afterwards quitted until he became a commander-in-chief himself. It says much for his abilities that a general like Wellington should have shown him such constant and unvarying preference. From 1807 to 1852 – from the Danish expedition to the death of the Duke of Wellington – Fitzroy Somerset was the secretary and companion of Arthur Wellesley whenever the latter exercised military command. Throughout all the campaigns in the Peninsula, through that of the Hundred Days, and through that pacific administration at the Horse Guards which ended but a year or two ago, the duties of Wellington’s Military Secretary were discharged by the soldier whose death is now announced. During all this period he was the Berthier of our Napoleon, nor can any more forcible testimony be given to the excellence of his qualifications than is contained in the practical acknowledgments of his sagacious chief.

      It is not to be presumed, however, that he was debarred by these special avocations from the chances of peril and glory which war affords. When we said that his military career had been both eventful and brilliant, we were using the language not of vague panegyric, but of literal truth. He was present in most of the great actions of the last great war, and, indeed, even if he had not been distinguished by the preference of our famous Commander, his services would have been conspicuous enough to deserve a record.

      He earned a cross and five clasps by his doings in the field. He was wounded at Busaco, he lost an arm at Waterloo, and, after the dreadful storm at Badajoz, it was to him, as he penetrated foremost into the place, that the intrepid Governor of the fortress surrendered his sword. Only the other day we drew a comparison, for the information of our readers, between the assault of that celebrated stronghold and the attack recently made upon the works of Sebastopol, and it is strange enough now to reflect that the very soldier who had taken so prominent a part in the one enterprise should be then, after more than 40 years’ interval, conducting the other.

      But though Lord Fitzroy Somerset, in common with others of Wellington’s officers, achieved the honours which personal daring and professional gallantry secure, it was in the military cabinet that his peculiar distinctions were won. For very many years he was the Chief Secretary at the Horse Guards; in fact, as we have already observed, wherever Wellington held military rule it was Lord Fitzroy’s pen which gave effect to his orders. In this capacity he became, as it were, personally identified with our military system, and was, perhaps, more conversant with its forms, more habituated to its technicalities, and better acquainted with its operation than any other man living. When the Great Duke died Lord Fitzroy Somerset was regarded, not unreasonably, as his nearest professional representative – as the officer who from long and intimate confidence must necessarily have become in some sense the depository of the great chief’s views. Nor can there be a doubt that these presumptions were correct. As far as the ideas of one man admit of transfer to another Fitzroy Somerset should surely have imbibed those of Arthur Wellesley, and if this process did not include СКАЧАТЬ