Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/244

 rendered his own office important and gracious with the army, and with such discretion and judgment that the military hierarchy was in no manner weakened’. He was given a brevet majority on 9 June, after Fuentes d'Onoro.

As soon as the breaches had been stormed at Badajoz, he rode through the town to the drawbridge of San Christoval, and obtained its surrender before the French had time to organise further resistance. At Wellington's special request he was made brevet lieutenant-colonel on 27 April 1812. During the blockade of Pampeluna he succeeded in deciphering a message from the governor to Soult which came into Wellington's hands.

He received the cross with five clasps for the Peninsula, having been at all the battles at which Wellington himself was present, and was made K.C.B. on 2 Jan. 1815. On 25 July 1814 he was transferred to the 1st guards, as captain and lieutenant-colonel. On 6 Aug. he married Emily Harriet, second daughter of the third earl of Mornington, and Wellington's niece.

After Napoleon's first abdication, Wellington went to Paris as ambassador, and Somerset accompanied him as secretary to the embassy. He was left in charge of the embassy from 18 Jan. 1815, when Wellington went to Vienna, till Napoleon's return. On 14 March—the day on which Fouché made his remarkable prediction that the empire would be restored, but would last only three months—Somerset wrote to Wellington: ‘I see no reason why it should be at all expected that Napoleon should not succeed.’ On the 20th Napoleon reached Paris; and on the 26th Somerset left it, and joined Wellington in the Netherlands, being reappointed military secretary.

At Waterloo, towards the close of the day, as he was standing beside Wellington, his right elbow was struck by a bullet from the roof of La Haye Sainte, and the arm had to be amputated. He bore the operation without a word, but, when it was ended, called to the orderly, ‘Hallo! don't carry away that arm till I have taken off my ring’—a ring which his wife had given him. Wellington, in writing to his brother about his wound, said: ‘You are aware how useful he has always been to me, and how much I shall feel the want of his assistance, and what a regard and affection I feel for him.’ He recommended him warmly soon afterwards for the appointment of aide-de-camp to the prince regent. This was given to him with the rank of colonel in the army on 28 Aug.

Somerset returned to the British embassy at Paris, and remained there as secretary till the end of 1818, when the allied armies were withdrawn from France. Wellington was then made master-general of the ordnance, and Somerset became his secretary. He accompanied him to the congress of Verona in 1822. In January 1823 he was sent on a special mission to Spain to explain the duke's views upon the constitutional crisis to some of the leading politicians, in the hope of averting French intervention. He spent two months at Madrid ineffectually (cf. Wellington Despatches, 3rd ser. vol. ii.). He was promoted major-general on 27 May 1825. In 1826 he went with Wellington to St. Petersburg on the accession of Nicholas I, and had a share in the negotiations for common action against Turkey on behalf of Greece. During this period he twice sat in parliament as M.P. for Truro—in 1818–20 and in 1826–9.

When Wellington became commander-in-chief on the death of the Duke of York (22 Jan. 1827), Somerset was made military secretary at the Horse Guards, and he held this post for more than twenty-five years. He was noted for quickness and accuracy in the despatch of business, for impartiality, and for the tact and urbanity with which he discharged his duties, which became more responsible with the duke's increasing age. At the same time Wellington described him as ‘a man who wouldn't tell a lie to save his life.’ He was made colonel of the 53rd foot on 19 Nov. 1830, became lieutenant-general on 28 June 1838, and received the G.C.B. on 24 Sept. 1852. He was granted the degree of D.C.L. in 1834, when Wellington was installed as chancellor at Oxford. On Wellington's death (14 Sept. 1852) Hardinge succeeded him in the command of the forces, and Somerset succeeded Hardinge as master-general of the ordnance. He was made a privy councillor, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Raglan of Raglan, Monmouthshire, on 12 Oct.

In the spring of 1854, when England and France declared war against Russia, Raglan was selected to command the British troops sent to the east. Though sixty-five years of age, he had the strength and vigour of a much younger man. He had never led troops in the field, but no man had served so thorough an apprenticeship in the art of leading them. His diplomatic experience, as well as his personal character and charm of manner, marked him out for an expedition in which the difficulties inherent in joint naval and military operations were superadded to those which always attend the operations of allied forces. He left London on 10 April, spent