and an arsenal with almost unlimited resources, while reinforcements and fresh supplies were constantly pouring into the place, which, with our limited forces, we could not possibly in

vest.

Long before the month of November, which is far more severe in the Crimea than in England, both the French and English armies had suffered severely from disease, and the English force more particularly, from privations, and in many instances from absolute want. In fact, sickness seized upon both French and English as soon as they set foot on Ottoman territory. They were affected at Gallipoli; they were not exempt from the endemic fevers at Constantinople, at Scutari, at Kulu-lee; their sufferings in Bulgaria were, as we have already explained, enormous; and disease, cholera, dysentery, and malaria fever, or its sad consequences, tracked them to the Crimea. Except such of them as had been previously acclimatised in Algeria, the French appear to have been more obnoxious to the endemic disorders than our own people; but there is no denying that they were much better cared for, that they knew better how to take care of themselves, and that their Quartermasters, Commissariat, and medical departments were far better managed than ours. This deficiency on the side of the English is not to be excused, or altogether accounted for, by our comparative want of experience and practice. Though our army has had no Algeria to serve in, we have had the vaster field of India, where all the difficulties, shortness of supplies, and obstruc

tions incidental to every Eastern country, exist in full force; we had officers who had struggled with and surmounted these difficulties, and it was reasonably to be presumed that many competent men, with ample Indian experience, might have been found to direct our inexperienced commissaries and clerks to manage our ambulance corps, and to see that our army never made a move without having at hand the means of subsistence and of comparative comfort, and the means of transport. Such men, most unfortunately, were not sought for and employed. Our commissaries fell into the fatal error of entrusting more than half they had to do to Frank merchants and agents at Pera, Galata, Varna, and other places; and through the total ignorance of the languages spoken in the country, that existed in our army, they were obliged to engage the services of a set of sordid Armenians, and those demoralised adventurers who swarm at Constantinople under the name of Christians and Franks. With all these classes (certainly not excepting that of the merchants), the one sole object was to make as much money as could be made out of our expeditionary force, and none of them had any scruple as to the means to be employed, or as to the amount of human suffering that might be the consequence of their dishonesty. While our brave men were perishing in the camp before Sebastopol, there were men openly boasting at Constantinople of the enormous gains they were making out of them, and laughing at the facility with which they could gull and dupe the English. There was

one English firm that profited so immensely by the prevalent ignorance and disorder, that it is confidently affirmed to have made by our army, in less than six months, the sum of 80,000l. An opinion obtained among many, as well at the British Legation as in commercial and other circles, that some of our commissaries were not ignorant as to the means by which such sums were made; and that if they did not participate in the spoil, they took no trouble to check it. There was also a great amount of neglect and carelessness in some matters. Our officers, restricted in the amount of baggage they could carry, left at Constantinople, or at Varna, clothing, bedding, books, and the various comforts which might have carried them through the winter. The merchants and agents to whom these effects were entrusted to be forwarded to the Crimea by the earliest opportunities, threw them into their filthy magazines as so much rubbish, and soon forgot, or seemed to forget, all about them. In vain our officers wrote the most urgent letters to these men; in vain they represented the sufferings they were enduring; months passed away without their receiving their effects, and in many instances they were never received at all. Several of the sufferers, on their return, wounded, or on sick leave, found their property huddled in a dark damp storehouse in the very place, but not in the condition, in which they had left it, for the clothes, bedding, &c., were mildewed or moth-eaten. If gentlemen, with abundance of money to spend, could be subjected to these annoyances, it may easily be con

ceived how it fared with the poor common soldiers.

Wherever our officers were so fortunate as to be tolerably supplied, they shared their comforts with the men, and the common soldiers were comparatively kept in good condition all through the winter. This was particularly the case with our First Division, in which the all-important duties of acting Quartermaster-general were ably performed by Colonel (now Major-General) Cunynghame, son-in-law to Lord Hardinge, an active officer, who had well studied his profession and had reaped the benefits of practical experience in war in China, in Canada, and in other regions.

In

The contrast drawn between the French and English armies, in nearly every case to the manifest disadvantage of ourselves, has been carried a great deal too far; but still, with the evidence before us, there is no room for doubt that in many points of superintendence, arrangement, and management, we had much to learn from our Allies. the French army men are not above their work. For example, a French quartermaster in his own person performs the onerous and important duties of his office. With us,-particularly in our cavalry regiments,-the quartermaster, disgusted with the details, and wearied with the task of collecting bread here, meat there, and rice or vegetables somewhere else, is too apt to throw the whole duty on the quartermaster serjeant, who cannot exercise the same authority over the men he takes with him, or the same influence over the country people who furnish the supplies, as could be exercised by the

quartermaster himself. The quartermaster serjeant would frequently be employed from morning till night in getting what was wanted; during these long delays the men would get to the raki shops, to imbibe the adulterated, maddening spirit prepared and sold by Greeks and Armenians, and by the time the supplies were collected and placed in the arabas or country waggons, half of the troopers would be in a state of intoxication or downright insensibility. Hence the loss of the lives of many fine soldiers in Bulgaria, before a shot was fired or an enemy seen. The French, at starting, took care to name the streets and squares of a town or village, to paint or chalk these names in a conspicuous place, and to number the houses in all that part of the town or village occupied by them. Neither at Constantinople, at Smyrna, at Adrianople, at Brusa, nor in any other city or town in the Ottoman dominions are the streets SO named and the houses so numbered. In the capital you may wander a whole day in search of the house of even a great pasha or government functionary. At Varna, a town of inconsiderable extent, the French, coming in for supplies, knew at once whither to go, while our quartermaster serjeants had to hunt from street to street, from lane to lane, and at the end of the day often found themselves unable to discover where was the store for bread, or for rice, or for something else. The French, though they had taken the precaution of naming the streets, and numbering the houses in their district, did not allow the stores or magazines to be removed; but

in our quarter, where no such precaution had been taken, the stores were constantly shifted from one place to another, so that the perplexed serjeant who found the baker's place to-day could be by no means certain that he should find it to-morrow, or when he next returned. Through this mismanagement, whole bodies of our troops were very frequently left for four-and-twenty or more hours without food; the meat was often ravenously consumed without any cooking, and even in Bulgaria, which was comparatively a land of plenty, our army was half starved. That the palpable remedies for these mischiefs should not have been seen and acted upon is matter of astonishment to most people. If adopted in time they might have saved the lives of thousands.

For a long time our army was as badly sheltered as it was fed. It fact, it had hardly any cover at all, and was starved by cold as well as by hunger. Our ambulances, as we have stated, broke down in the beginning and long before the army reached the Crimea. Some hundreds of horses which Captain Nolan with very great exertions had succeeded in procuring at Tunis, Tripoli, and other parts, were thrown ashore in a hurried manner at Varna, where most of them perished for want of a little necessary attention. At first there was actually nobody to take charge of them, and subsequently some of our foot soldiers, who knew nothing of horses, were told off in fatigue parties to look after them. By the time he was landed in Bulgaria every animal had cost a very large sum of money, and the service of every one of

them that could be procured, was demanded for the sick and wounded, and for the conveyance of baggage. The want of the means of transport in the Crimea was fatal to not a few of our sick, and was felt in many other ways. Owing to it the regimental officers frequently men of delicate health, and suffering from the effects of recent cholera, or dysentery, or feverwere compelled to carry their own baggage and provisions for three days; and hence the large amount of deaths among our officers as compared with the men, who were better prepared to carry such burdens. Where clothing and food could not be conveyed, it was idle to think of bedding and tents. Officers and common soldiers had alike to lie on the cold wet ground, with the sky for their canopy. The French managed these matters much better; every man carried with him a piece or part of a small tent, which, when fastened to the other several parts carried by his comrades, formed a complete tent, which afforded a tolerable shelter from cold and rain. Our people saw how the French did it, and they might have done likewise; but no attempt of the sort was made, no order to that effect was given, and so the army was sent on without any shelter whatever.* The way in which our

* Any officer who had made a campaign on the Malabar coast, or had been much in Ceylon, nust have seen among the natives a practice somewhat analogous to that of the French. A Malabar, or Cingalese, carries one of the great leaves of the Talipot Palm tree, each of his companions doing the same, and at the end of the day's march, a comfortable shelter is procured, in the space of two or three minutes, by fastening these immense leaves together.

men bore these and other privations reflects the greatest credit on the national character, and shows what extremities Englishmen can support for their Queen and country; but hundreds of them died under the infliction, and thousands, it is to be feared, contracted rheumatisms and other complaints which will affect them all the rest of their days.

When we first advanced a little up the country from Varna, the peasants, accustomed to be robbed or to have their provisions taken and consumed without payment, buried or otherwise concealed all that they had; but on seeing, to their great astonishment, that the English very gladly paid for whatever they could find, they threw open their hiding-places and produced their corn, maize, poultry, eggs, milk, wine, &c.; and it soon became evident that, as compared with other parts of this desolated empire, Bulgaria was a land of plenty. At the commencement they sold at moderate prices, or, at least, at prices which seemed moderate to Englishmen, although, in all probability, they were double or treble what would have been charged to natives. But the Bulgarian peasant, speaking generally, is a selfish, sordid fellow, who takes no interest in the war, and hates, with equal intensity, Russians and Turks, Greeks and all other races, and prices were rapidly raised to an exorbitant extent. Complaints were made to the Turkish Pasha, who cudgelled a few of the farmers and threatened a great many more; but this did not correct the evil, the same high prices continued to be demanded whenever an Englishman was the purchaser. The