The public dissatisfaction caused by the second failure of the English army to take the Redan fell heavily on the aged veteran, who had in the earlier part of his career done service to the State, and gained a high character for gallantry, skill, and ability. No doubt, with an English army only to lead, Sir James Simpson would have acted with vigour, but he was paralyzed by the action of the French. He was ignorant of their language, slow and cautious, and it is no wonder that, where Lord Raglan failed, General Simpson did not meet with success. The courage and activity General Codrington displayed at Alma, at Inkerman, and in command of the Light Division during the trying winter of 1854-5, seemed to have justified his rapid promotion, and although he was in actual charge of the operations of an army on the day of the 8th of September, he was regarded as an administrative rather than a judicial officer, and was rewarded as signally because he failed as he could have been had he succeeded. A French officer said to me, "If General Codrington had taken the Redan, what more could you have done for him than make him{425} General, and give him the command of the army? But he did not take it, and he is made General and Commander-in-Chief!" There was no opportunity of testing the ability of General Codrington as a commander during the subsequent part of the campaign, but he managed, by his despatches, to lower himself in the estimation of the public, although it is certain that a part of his success and elevation was due to his skill in private correspondence.
Sir W. Codrington came out from England on the 23rd of February, 1854, with the rank of Colonel in the Coldstream Guards. He entered the army as an Ensign and Lieutenant on the 22nd of February, 1821; became Lieutenant in April, 1823; Captain in July, 1826; Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel on the 9th of November, 1846; and Major-General on the 20th June, 1854. He commanded a Brigade of the Light Division throughout the early portion of the campaign, and succeeded to the command of that Division on the retirement of Sir George Brown. Possessed of a strong constitution, a spare vigorous frame, quiet in manner, energetic in action, vigilant, and painstaking, Sir William Codrington acquired a high reputation throughout the war, and was often spoken of as the coming man — the General, who was at last to arise out of the débris of old-fogeyism, red-tapery, staffery and Horse-Guardism, of the British army; but the Redan dammed the current which had set so long and so quietly in his favour, because it was supposed that he did not exhibit all the qualities attributed to him in an eminent degree by the army, and his failure produced all the backwater, eddies, and whirlpools usually formed on such occasions. Sir W. Codrington was possibly struggling with the internal conviction that the attack had become hopeless, and consequently felt some hesitation in sacrificing more soldiers when he perceived the failure of our assaults and the confusion of the regiments swarming on the face of the salient; in that supreme hour he did not display that extreme coolness, resource, self-possession and energy which every one had from his antecedents at Alma and Inkerman, and in the trenches, attributed to him. The revulsion of popular feeling either in a nation or an army, is often unjust in proportion to its violence, and there were very many who thought "it would be only fair to give Codrington another chance." Sir W. Codrington received the local rank of Lieutenant-General in Turkey on the 30th July, 1855. Sir Colin Campbell had been gazetted to the same rank on the 23rd January in the same year. The only officers with the army senior to Sir W. Codrington were Lord Rokeby and Lieutenant-General Barnard, Chief of the Staff. The others had all gone home, or were preparing to leave the field in possession of the new General.