As a young officer with the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards (later the Grenadier Guards) Sir James Simpson served in the Peninsular War and the Waterloo campaign. He later commanded the 29th Regiment in Mauritius and India. In February 1855, as a full General, he was sent out to the Crimea to act as Raglan’s chief of staff. When Raglan died in June, Simpson reluctantly took command of the army in the Crimea. He resigned that post on 10 November, ‘mortified and disgusted’ at his treatment in the British press, which continuously criticized his handling of the army. ‘He deserves recall,’ ran The Times after the British failure to capture the Sevastopol Redan on 8 September 1855. ‘The British army had been beaten, and beaten, it was reasonable to suppose, through the incapacity of the General . . . It cannot be too often that our army requires a younger man . . . not [a man] of the age of the British Commander-in-Chief who sits in a ditch muffled up in a cloak when a whole army rushes to the assault.’ Command of the army devolved upon William Codrington.