James Simpson (British Army officer)

Educated at the University of Edinburgh, Simpson was commissioned into the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards on 3 April 1811.[2] He served with his regiment during the Peninsular War and the Waterloo Campaign, and then commanded the 29th Regiment of Foot in Mauritius and Bengal.[2]

In 1839 Simpson married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Dundas, 1st Baronet of Beechwood. She died in 1840.[2] Promoted to major general on 11 November 1851, he became General Officer Commanding the South-West District that same month.[2]

In February 1855 he was sent out to the Crimea to act as chief of staff to the army commander Lord Raglan. Raglan died on 28 June, and Simpson reluctantly took command of the army, as the senior division commander Sir George Brown had been invalided home the same day as Raglan's death.[2] He resigned on 10 November, and was succeeded by Sir William Codrington.[2]

Historians Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used the phrase "lions led by donkeys" on 27 September 1855, in an article published in Neue Oder-Zeitung, No. 457 (1 October 1855), on the British military's strategic mistakes and failings during the fall of Sevastopol, and particularly Simpson's military leadership of the assault on the Great Redan:

The joke making the rounds of the Russian army, that "L'armée anglaise est une armée de lions, commandée par des ânes" (The English army is an army of lions led by asses) has been thoroughly vindicated by the assault on Redan.[1]