IMMEDIATELY after the failure of the assault, Sir George Brown, Generals Pennefather, Codrington, Buller, and Estcourt, were obliged to take to their beds, to seek change of air, or to sail for England. Lord Raglan was affected. It was observed by his staff that the failure had "affected his health;" and an officer, writing home to his friends, on the 23rd of June, remarked, "he (Lord Raglan) looks far from well, and has grown very much aged latterly."
General Estcourt, Adjutant-General of the Army, died on the morning of the 24th of June, after three days' illness.
On the 28th Lord Raglan published the following order: —
"The Field-Marshal has the satisfaction of publishing to the army the following extract from a telegraphic despatch from Lord Panmure, dated the 22nd of June.
"'I have Her Majesty's commands to express her grief that so much bravery should not have been rewarded with merited success, and to assure her brave troops that Her Majesty's confidence in them is entire.'"
Within a very few hours after the appearance of this order, the electric telegraph brought the startling intelligence to the head-quarters of the various divisions that the Field-Marshal was dead.{300}
On Tuesday evening, after his usual devotion to the desk, he was seized with symptoms of a choleraic character, and took to his bed, where he died on the night of the following Thursday. Lord Raglan possessed qualities which, if not those of a great general, were calculated to obtain for the English army more consideration than that to which it was entitled by its numerical strength. Although he was frequently obliged to give way to their councils, in opposition to his declared convictions, his calmness in the field — his dignity of manner — his imperturbable equanimity — exercised their legitimate influence over the generals of the French army.
That Lord Raglan was an accomplished gentleman, as brave a soldier as ever drew a sword, an amiable, honourable man, zealous for the public service, of the most unswerving truth, devoted to his duty and to his profession, cannot be denied; but he appears to me to have been a man of strong prejudices and of weak resolution, cold to those whom, like Omar Pasha, he considered "vulgar," coerced without difficulty by the influence of a stronger will, and apt to depend upon those around him where he should have used his own eyes. There was something of the old heroic type in his character, which would have compensated for even graver defects, if their results had not been, in many instances, so unfortunate for our arms; his death on a foreign soil whilst in command of an English army touched the hearts of his countrymen.
The following General Orders were issued next day: —
"Head-quarters before Sebastopol, June 29.
"No. 1. It becomes my most painful duty to announce to the army the death of its beloved commander, Field-Marshal Lord Raglan, G.C.B., which melancholy event took place last night about nine o'clock.
"No. 2. In the absence of Lieutenant-General Sir George Brown, the command of the troops devolves on me, as the next senior officer present, until further orders are received from England.
"No. 3. Generals of Divisions and heads of departments will be pleased to conduct their respective duties as heretofore.
"J. Simpson, Lieutenant-General."
General Simpson was destitute of those acquirements and personal characteristics which in Lord Raglan compensated for a certain apathy and marble calmness. He was a veteran who had seen a year's service in the Peninsula in 1812-13, and in the campaign of 1815, and who thirty years afterwards held the post of Quartermaster-General to Sir C. Napier, in his Indian war of 1845. Lord Raglan had, at all events, by the dignity of his personal character, secured a position for the troops he commanded to which they were not numerically entitled; but no one can say by what sacrifices that position was maintained till the battle of Inkerman forced us to abandon it. It was believed at the time, and it is now notorious, that General Simpson opposed his own appointment, and bore testimony to his own incapacity; but the Govern{301}ment — or Lord Hardinge and Lord Panmure — insisted, and General Simpson became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. Writing at the time respecting our future General I said: —