James Armar Butler

Given the rank of Lt/Capt in the Coldstream Guards shortly before his death, but he didn't live to know it. THE HERO OF SILISTRIA (Lots of good contemporary journals and reading to be had online about this young man.) CENOTAPH Markers have been raised in Sir Lanka, the Royal Garrison Church at Old Portsmouth, and Thomastown (Kilkenney). Youngest son of Lt-General the Hon. Henry Edward Butler. Irish by birth and family. Baptized 10 May 1827 in Paddington, London. His death was recorded, at the time, as having occurred on the 20th, the 21st, and the 22nd. "Mr. Nasmyth (one of the distinguished English officers who so nobly defended Silistria) came up whilst we were there talking and remarking the Turkish troops, and General Cannon introduced me to him. His appearance at once prepossesses you in his favour; very good-looking without being positively handsome, rather pale and delicate, with quiet, gentlemanlike manners, and quite young. He immediately informed us of the sad news that Captain Butler, the other hero of Silistria, was dead. He expired on the morning of the 22nd ult., and was buried with military honours on the 25th, in the Greek cemetery close to the town. His death was caused by a wound received some days previously, when looking through a newly-constructed embrasure in the Fort of Arab Tabia; a bullet from a Russian sharpshooter hit hom on the forehead, and would doubtless have caused instant death had it not first of all passed through some earth at the side. He is a loss to the army and to the country at large, a man whose name will go down to posterity as one of England's heroes. Poor fellow! he had just been removed from the Ceylon Rifles into the Guards, and made a brevet-major, but he did not live to hear of these rewards for his services. (Letters from Head-Quarters by Lt-Colonel John Gough Calthorpe) "It is said that Omar Pasha has been more affected by the death of Captain Butler than by any event which had occurred during the progress of the campaign. He purposes to mark his sense of the public calamity and of his private grief by the erection of a monument, which may perpetuate the memory of the young hero." (The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol 196-7, September 1854, page 304) In on letter to the Illustrated London News (from a fellow soldier), Major Butler was credited with having been the first English soldier to die in that war.