Fitzroy James Henry Somerset (1788-1855)

British Army Field Marshal. A veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, where as a junior officer he served as a military secretary to General Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, he rose to the rank of Field Marshall, and was the commander of the British forces on the Crimean Peninsula during the Crimean War. He along with cavalry commander Major General George Charles Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan and staff officer Captain Louis Edward Nolan were responsible for the suicidal cavalry charge at the October 1854 Battle of Balaclava that was immortalized as "The Charge of the Light Brigade". He died of dysentery in June 1855 after the failure of the Siege of Sevastopol.