Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/238

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220 R A F R A G Leyden, he began his elaborate researches into the history, laws, and literature of the Hindu and Malay races. In zoology he took special interest, and on his return to England became founder and first president of the Zoolo- gical Society. While in Calcutta in 1809, Raffles sug- gested to Lord Minto, then governor-general of India, the desirableness of wresting Java from the French. The governor-general took up the idea with vigour ; a fleet of ninety ships dropped anchor before Batavia in August 1811, and in a short time the conquest of the island was effected. Raffles was made lieutenant-general of the new territory, and resolved to give to the island a pure and upright administration. There were three sources of abuse to eradicate the revenue system, the system of police and public justice, and the slave trade. In a period of only five years Raffles had almost effected his design ; his popularity was secured, and the revenue was eight times larger than it had been under the Dutch. The policy of some of his measures being, however, considered doubtful by the home authorities, he was recalled in 1816, but his conduct was approved. He published a valuable and well-illustrated History of Java, in 2 vols. 4to, 1817. Having received knighthood, Sir Stamford Raffles set out for Sumatra as lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen, arriving in March 1818, and immediately recommenced the work of reform. In 1819 he induced the marquis of Hastings to annex Singapore. He again visited Singapore, his "political child," in 1822, and occupied himself for nearly a year in laying out the new city, and in estab- lishing its constitution as a free port. Java had been given up to the Dutch shortly after Sir Stamford left it, and now Bencoolen was granted to them in exchange for Malacca. On setting sail for England from Sumatra in February 1824 the ship took fire and the crew and pass- engers were with difficulty saved. The loss to Sir Stam- ford was beyond all repair. The whole of his drawings, all his collections in botany and zoology, all his multi- tudinous papers and manuscripts, fell a prey to the flames, his pecuniary loss amounting to more than 20,000. During one of his excursions into the interior of Sumatra, in company with Dr Arnold, he came upon the largest and most extraordinary of known flowers, the Rafflesia Arnoldi (see PARASITISM, vol. xviii. p. 265). In 1820 he sent home a large collection of preserved animals, now in the museum of the London Zoological Society, described in the Transactions of the Linnean Society. He died of apoplexy at his house near London on 5th July 1826. RAFN, CARL CHRISTIAN (1795-1864), Danish archae- ologist, was born in Brahesborg, Fiinen, on 16th January 1795 and died at Copenhagen on 20th October 1864. He is chiefly known in connexion with the controversy as to the question of the discovery of America by the Norsemen. (See AMERICA, vol. i. p. 706.) RAGATZ, or RAGAZ, a watering-place in Switzerland, in the canton of St Gall, with a station on the railway to Coire, 64 miles south-east of Zurich, stands 1700 feet above the sea at the mouth of the magnificent gorge through which the impetuous Tamina forces its way to the Rhine ; its baths are supplied with mineral water from the hot springs of Pfaffers, which issue from the right side of the ravine 2 miles higher up. As the tourist centre for one of the most picturesque districts of Switzer- land, Ragatz has greatly increased since the middle of the century. It had then only 650 inhabitants ; in 1870 there were 1825, and in 1880 1996, while the annual number of visitors is about 50,000. In the churchyard is the grave of Schelling, who died at Ragatz in 1854. Ragatz originally belonged to the abbots of the Benedictine monastery of Pfaffers (713-1838); their residence became in 1840 the "Hof Ragatz" hotel, and in 1868 the whole property, which had been seized by the state in 1838, passed into private hands. The Swiss defeated the Austrians at Ragatz in 1446. RAGLAN, FITZROY JAMES HENRY SOMERSET, BARON (1788-1855), English general, was the eighth and youngest son of the fifth duke of Beaufort by Elizabeth, daughter of Admiral the Hon. Edward Boscawen, and was born on 30th September 1788. He entered the army in 1804. In 1807 he was attached to the Hon. Sir Arthur Paget's embassy to Turkey, and the same year he was selected to serve on the staff of Sir Arthur Wellesley in the expedi- tion to Copenhagen. In the following year he accom- panied the same general in a like capacity to Portugal, and during the whole of the Peninsular War was at his right hand, first as aide-de-camp and then as military secretary. He specially distinguished himself at the storm- ing of Badajoz, being the first to mount the breach, and it was to him that the governor delivered up his sword. During the short period of the Bourbon rule in 1814 and 1815 he was secretary to the English embassy at Paris. On the renewal of the war he again became aide-de-camp and military secretary to the duke of Wellington. At Waterloo he lost his right arm by a shot, but he quickly gained the facility of writing with his left hand, and on the conclusion of the war resumed his duties as secretary to the embassy at Paris. From 1818 to 1826 he sat in the House of Commons as member for Truro. In 1819 he was appointed secretary to the duke of Wellington as master- general of the ordnance, and from 1827 till the death of the duke in 1852 was military secretary to him as com- mander-in-chief. He was then appointed master-general of the ordnance, and shortly afterwards was raised to the House of Lords as Baron Raglan. In 1854 he was appointed to the command of the English troops sent to the Crimea. Here the advantage of his training under the duke of Wellington was seen in the soundness of his military tactics, but the trying winter campaign in the Crimea also brought into prominence defects perhaps traceable to his long connexion with the formalities and uniform regulations of military offices in peace time. At the same time the hampering influence of a divided com- mand must be taken into account, and it ought not to be forgotten that, if his advice had been adopted by the French at the beginning, Sebastopol would very probably have fallen in a few weeks after the landing of the allies. His suggestion was to march straight upon the north side of Sebastopol, but after the battle of Alma on 20th September the plan was abandoned, and the south side was reached by the desperate expedient of a perilous flank march. For the hardships and sufferings of the English soldiers in the terrible Crimean winter owing to a failure in the commissariat, both as regards food ' and clothing, Lord Raglan and his staff were at the time severely cen- sured by the press and the Government ; but, while Lord Raglan was possibly to blame in representing matters in a too sanguine light, it afterwards appeared that the chief neglect rested with the home authorities. The monotony of the siege was broken by the battles of Balaclava on 26th October and of Inkermann on 5th November, in which the accurate and rapid decision of Lord Raglan changed impending disasters into brilliant victories. During the trying winter of 1854-55 the suffering he was compelled to witness, the censures, in great part unjust, which he had to endure, and all the manifold anxieties of the siege seriously undermined his health, and he died of dysentery on 28th June 1855. See Kinglake's History of the Invasion of the Crimea. RAGMAN ROLLS, the name given to the collection of instruments by which the nobility and gentry of Scotland were compelled to subscribe allegiance to Edward I of