Brigadier General McPherson and Officers of the 4th Division, 1855

Photograph by Roger Fenton (1819-1869), Crimean War, 1855.

Captain Arthur Maxwell Earle, 57th (West Middlesex) Regiment of Foot is second from right.

Casualties among general officers were so heavy at the Battle of Inkerman that a man like Philip McPherson, who - through seniority alone - had risen to the command of a battalion at an advanced age, was given leadership of a brigade. The verdict on McPherson's capabilities delivered by his Brigade Major, Maxwell Earle, pictured here reading a dispatch (McPherson is the white-bearded figure standing to his left), was damning: 'Had I but a Goldie for a Brigadier instead of an old nonentity who, were I to put his own death warrant on his desk, he would sign it!'.