Details:

Field Marshal FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan autographed envelope panel.

Affixed to a slightly larger backing sheet. Light age and toning, else fine condition.

Field Marshal FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan, GCB, PC (30 September 1788 – 28 June 1855), known before 1852 as Lord FitzRoy Somerset, was a British Army officer. When a junior officer, he served in the Peninsular War and the Waterloo campaign, latterly as military secretary to the Duke of Wellington. He also took part in politics as Tory Member of Parliament for Truro, before becoming Master-General of the Ordnance.

He became commander of the British troops sent to the Crimea in 1854: his primary objective was to defend Constantinople, and he was also ordered to besiege the Russian port of Sevastopol. After an early success at the Battle of the Alma, a failure to deliver orders with sufficient clarity caused the fateful Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava. Despite further success at the Battle of Inkerman, a poorly coordinated allied assault on Sevastopol in June 1855 was a complete failure. Raglan died later that month, after having dysentery and depression.

Raglan became commander of the British troops sent to the Crimea with the temporary rank of full general on 21 February 1854 and was promoted to the substantive rank of full general on 20 June 1854. While Raglan's primary objective was to defend Constantinople he was ordered by the Duke of Newcastle, who was at the time Secretary of State for War, to besiege the Russian port of Sevastopol "unless it could not be undertaken with a reasonable prospect of success". An Anglo-French force under the joint command of Somerset and General Jacques St. Arnaud defeated General Alexander Menshikov's Russian army at the Battle of the Alma in September 1854.

During the campaign Raglan had the abstracted habit of referring to the Russian enemies as "the French". While this eccentricity is often cited as evidence of his unsuitability for high command, he did in fact speak fluent French and relations between the two allies in the field were good.

At the Battle of Balaclava in October 1854, Raglan issued an order to the Earl of Lucan, his cavalry commander, who in turn ordered the Earl of Cardigan, a subordinate commander who happened to be Lucan's brother-in-law and who detested him, to lead the fateful Charge of the Light Brigade leading to some 278 British casualties. Despite an indecisive result at Balaclava the British and French allied army gained a victory at the Battle of Inkerman in November 1854 and Raglan was promoted to the rank of field marshal on 5 November 1854. He was also awarded the Ottoman Empire Order of the Medjidie, 1st Class on 15 May 1855.

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Reference sku: 11600 1394736-1