Raglan, First Baron

Raglan, First Baron

 

(Fitzroy James Henry Somerset). Born Sept. 30, 1788, in Badminton, Gloucestershire; died June 28, 1855, near Sevastopol’. British field marshal (1854).

Raglan joined the army in 1804. From 1808 he was aide-decamp and from 1810 secretary to the Duke of Wellington during the war against Napoleonic France. He lost an arm at Waterloo in 1815 but continued as Wellington’s secretary until the latter’s death. He became a baron in 1852. That same year Raglan was appointed master-general of the ordnance and in 1854 commander in chief of the British expeditionary forces during the Crimean War of 1853–56. He opposed the landing of British forces in the Crimea and the siege of Sevastopol’ but had to submit to his government’s orders. He died of a fever in a camp near Sevastopol’.