Lord Raglan
Field Marshal; Commander-in-Chief, British Army in the East
"Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front — follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns."
Biography
Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan, was born on September 30, 1788, into the aristocratic Somerset family, the youngest son of the 5th Duke of Beaufort. He entered the army as a young man and served as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington throughout the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, where he lost his right arm to a cannonball and reportedly said, after the amputation, 'Bring that arm back — there's a ring on the finger that I want.' He remained in the army for the next four decades, but in administrative rather than command roles. When Britain went to war with Russia in 1854, Raglan was sixty-five years old and had not commanded troops in the field since Waterloo, nearly four decades earlier. His appointment as commander of British forces in the East was a product of a system that rewarded aristocratic connection and administrative seniority over military competence. He was personally brave — his conduct at the Alma and Inkerman was irreproachable — and genuinely devoted to his duty. But he was also a man of the Napoleonic era dropped into a war whose logistics, communications, and scale differed fundamentally from anything he had experienced. His most catastrophic failure was the order he sent on October 25, 1854, at Balaclava — the order that Captain Louis Nolan delivered to Lord Lucan and that Lord Cardigan executed as the Charge of the Light Brigade. Raglan had intended to prevent the Russians from carrying away captured British naval guns from the Causeway Heights redoubts. From his elevated position he could see those guns; from the valley floor, Lucan and Cardigan could not, and interpreted the order as a command to charge the main Russian artillery position at the end of the North Valley. The result was one of the most celebrated disasters in British military history, with 673 horsemen riding into withering fire from three sides. Raglan spent the terrible winter of 1854–1855 trying to manage supply crises, trench conditions, and unceasing French pressure while London newspapers eviscerated his command. The strain was immense. He was genuinely affected by the suffering of his troops, far more than his aristocratic bearing suggested. His health deteriorated through the siege of Sevastopol; he contracted dysentery and died on June 28, 1855, in his headquarters near Sevastopol, weeks before the French assault that would end the siege. He died a broken man who had outlived his era.
Did you know?
The raglan sleeve — the style where the sleeve extends to the collar without a shoulder seam — was invented for him after losing his right arm, and bears his name to this day
Key Battles
Battle of the Alma
Allied Coalition (Britain, France, Ottoman, Sardinia) victorySeptember 20, 1854 · 8,000 total casualties
The Alma demonstrated Russian tactical weakness against the Allied combination of rifled weapons (which had longer range and greater accuracy than Russian smoothbore muskets) and aggressive infantry tactics. Menshikov's failure to construct field fortifications or properly deploy his artillery wasted every natural advantage the heights provided. The Allied victory opened the road to Sevastopol, though the failure to pursue aggressively allowed the Russian field army to escape intact.
Siege of Sevastopol
Allied Coalition (Britain, France, Ottoman, Sardinia) victoryOctober 17, 1854 · 200,000 total casualties
The siege demonstrated the inadequacy of both armies' logistical systems, the primacy of defensive earthwork fortifications over assault, and the devastating role of disease in Victorian-era warfare. Florence Nightingale's nursing reforms were triggered directly by the medical catastrophe at the siege's beginning. The fall of Sevastopol humiliated Russia and effectively ended the war.
Battle of Balaclava
Russian Empire victoryOctober 25, 1854 · 4,500 total casualties
The Charge of the Light Brigade, immortalized by Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, became the defining image of aristocratic military incompetence and the courage of ordinary soldiers. The battle was a tactical Russian success — they captured the Causeway Heights redoubts and held them — but they failed to take Balaclava itself. The charge destroyed the Light Brigade as an effective fighting force.
Charge of the Light Brigade
Russian Empire victoryOctober 25, 1854 · 473 total casualties
The charge was caused by a miscommunication between Lord Raglan, whose order referenced specific guns visible from his elevated position but not from the valley floor, and Lord Lucan, who could not see those guns and interpreted the order as a command to charge the main Russian battery. Captain Nolan's impatient gesture toward the North Valley sealed the misunderstanding. Tennyson's poem, published six weeks later, transformed the disaster into a symbol of military valor that obscured its fundamental absurdity — 'theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.'
Battle of Inkerman
Allied Coalition (Britain, France, Ottoman, Sardinia) victoryNovember 5, 1854 · 16,000 total casualties
Inkerman shattered Russian hopes of breaking the siege by offensive action. After three failed major attacks in less than three weeks — Balaclava, Little Inkerman, and Inkerman itself — Menshikov had no more reserves to squander on costly assaults. The battle also confirmed the superiority of the Allied Minié rifle over Russian smoothbore muskets in stand-up infantry fighting, even when the Russians had significant numerical advantages.
Life Journey
Timeline
September 30, 1788
🌅 Birth
Born in Badminton, Gloucestershire
1808
📚 Education
Enters service as ADC to Duke of Wellington
June 18, 1815
⚔️ Battle
Loses right arm at Battle of Waterloo
September 20, 1854
⚔️ Battle
Leads Allied forces at Battle of the Alma
October 25, 1854
⚔️ Battle
Issues fateful order triggering Charge of the Light Brigade
June 28, 1855
✝️ Death
Died at British HQ near Sevastopol