The Destruction of Lord Raglan, A Tragedy of the Crimean War, 1854-55

In March 1854 England declared war on Russia, launching one of the most unnecessary campaigns in history. A few weeks later, the finest army that had ever left these shores sailed from Portsmouth, gloriously clothed, splendidly confident - fated for destruction in the Crimea. Commander-in-chief of this army was Lord Raglan, a courageous and inspiring leader who, nevertheless, was soon to be pilloried by the press and abandoned by his government. With Lord Raglan as its central character, the book tells the curious story of the Crimean War as a whole with its mismanagement, rivalries, and horrors. The camp life in Turkey and Bulgaria, the landing of the Crimean shores, the charge of the Heavy and Light Brigades at Balaclava, the frantic, nightmarish battle in the mist at Inkerman, the long and desperate winter, the final assaults - all are described with the clarity, perception, and dramatic power for which Christopher Hibbert is rightly well known. In the words of Lord Birkenhead in his review in The Bookman of London, It is the great merit of THE DESTRUCTION OF LORD RAGLAN that the author, while observing impeccable scholarship throughout, has given us a work as gripping and terrible as the chapters on Borodino in WAR AND PEACE from which one rises charged with torturing emotions. Such is the vivid power of the narrative and so keen the author's visual sense that the reader feels he is present as the terrible battle of Alma is fought, and hears the screams on the scaling ladders at Sebastopol. Wonderful too, is his evocation of the scents and scenery of this strange land, excruciating his description of the suffering o the troops. Extensive research from masses of family and official papers, diaries, letters and reports from England, France and Russia result in a book of remarkable power and subtlety - exciting and thorough, authoritative and vivid. -- from dust jacket.