During a long and honourable life, of which considerably more than half a century was devoted to the unwearying and conscientious service of his country, and in which he displayed talents of the very highest order, his public conduct was such as to secure him the respect and confidence of men of all parties, while the winning grace of his manners and the native excellence of his heart endeared him to all who were brought within the range of their influence.
At the outset of his career he was associated as Military Secretary with the greatest captain of the age, and, while thus acquiring in the most practical of all schools the knowledge which would fit him for the duties of command, his great abilities obtained for him the respect, the affection, the approval, and even the deference, of his chief, who, little accustomed to rely on any other mind' than his own, always received with marked attention any suggestion coming from Lord Fitzroy Somerset.
There was no action or service in which the Duke of Wellington was engaged in the Peninsula in which Lord Eaglan did not bear a part, and at the siege of Badajos he was amongst the foremost in the breach at the capture of that fortress, and it was to him that the Governor of the place delivered up his sword. He was wounded at Busaco, and lost his right arm at Waterloo; but his active and energetic mind scorned the repose which he might have deemed fairly earned by years of brilliant and hazardous service. For forty years, under successive Commanders-in-Chief, he discharged with unremitting assiduity the arduous and delicate duties of Military Secretary at the Horse Guards, with such unswerving justice, and with such exquisite courtesy and kindness, that, as was truly remarked by the Duke of Cambridge, " there was not a single officer in the British Army who had occasion to address Lord Raglan, but felt that he was dealing with an intimate and personal friend." On the death of the Duke of Wellington it was justly and universally felt that there was none on whom the mantle of that illustrious man could so fitly descend as on the faithful comrade of his perils and successes, the trusted sharer of his councils, and the peculiar recipient of his confidence. Lord Fitzroy Somerset was raised to the peerage by the title which will be for ever associated with one of the most glorious, though saddest, pages of history, and assumed the supreme direction of affairs at the Horse Guards, only to abandon at the call of duty a post for which he was eminently fitted, and which promised an honourable provision for the declining years of one who had given too much care to the affairs of his country to permit him to improve his own. In obedience to the desire of his Queen and to the unanimous voice of the nation. Lord Eaglan assumed at the commencement of the war with Russia the command of the British expeditionary force, quitting thus a lucrative employment for a service whose perils he knew while he braved them. His services in the Crimea were too eminent, and must still be
THE EAST.
too recent in the mind of every reader, to need recapitulation here; but amongst them not the least important or remarkable was the admirable tact with which he surmounted the difficulties of a divided command, conciliated his indei^endence of action with the most cordial co-operation with his several colleagues, and cemented the union between the Allied Armies.
The French soldiers had been the witnesses of his valour in the field; their commanders knew by exj^erience his prudence and temper in council; and how much these qualities had endeared him to all ranks of that great and gallant army may be gathered from the eloquent yet simple and touching terms in which Marshal Pelissier communicated to it the loss of his beloved colleague: and which are quoted in a former page. Though he was not spared to witness the triumph of the cause for which he had laboured so unwaveringly and so well, and though the soldier's death which he had braved in so many stricken fields was not granted him, as unfading a glory surrounds the termination of a career pursued in honour and closed at the post of duty and of danger.
The strange and gorgeous spectacle presented by the line of route, as the earthly remains of this great and good man were conveyed to Kazatch Bay to be embarked for England has been so frequently and vividly described by other and abler pens, that it cannot be unfamiliar to the reader. And Mr. Simpson's drawing tells its own story so graphically as to render any written illustration superfluous.
PLATE XL VI.
THE TOWN BATTERIES OR INTERIOR FORTIFICATIONS OF
SEBASTOPOL,
From the Advanced Parallel of Chapman's Attack, 23rd June, 1855.
This view is taken from the advanced parallel of the left attack, which was always occupied by the Rifles, and shows the head of the South Harbour with the town beyond, the corner of the Barrack Batteries on the one side, and the Garden and Flagstaff Batteries on the other. It is here that the Woronzoff Road approaches the town: there are three embrasures staring in the direction it comes; it crosses the piece of flat marshy ground to the westward of the Creek, and mounts by a long incline to the Ville Civile. By a close inspection of the picture, embrasures will be found scattered in every direction of the town, but the most important of the interior works are the two batteries on the crest of the high ground upon which the town is built: from their height and central position they commanded the rear of all the important points of the defences of Sebastopol, except the Malakoff, and even it was scarcely beyond their range. Our troops in the attack on the Redan suffered severely from these batteries. The ruined houses on the left of the i^icture are where General