Death of ton. G. LE M. The [1846 until, on the 18th of October, Lord Palmerston died in his eighty-second year. Though a strangely Conservative leader of the Liberal party, he represented in his fearlessness and energy the best qualities of the English people. He had been preceded to the grave on December 14th, 1861, by the Prince Consort, who, understood at last by the nation, had lived down the unpopularity under which he laboured at the time of the Crimean war. IN the spring of 1854 the Government sent a large force of British troops to Eastern Europe to act in concert with the French in the defence of Turkey against a Russian invasion. The expedition consisted of an aggregation of battalions, batteries and cavalry regiments, magnificent in drill and in physique, but wholly unused to working together as integral parts of a great fighting machine. At the beginning of 1854 the numbers of the army had fallen so low that to bring these different corps up to their war strength had been most difficult. In the words of the Secretary-at-War, "The army in the East was created by discounting the future. Every regiment at home, or within reach, and not forming a part of that army, was robbed (of its men) to complete it." Most of the generals were old men who had learnt nothing since the days of the Peninsular War. The staff, "the brain of the army," were no better trained in their profession than the regimental officers, for the Staff College was not founded until 1858. The system of the Commissariat department was not only hopelessly complicated, but inherently vicious; for the officials, whose duty it was to feed the troops and transport the stores, were not under the orders of the head of the army in the field, but of the head of the Treasury in London. For nearly forty years the nation, by its persistent neglect of all military questions, had sown the wind; and in the winter of 1854 the army in the Crimea reaped the whirlwind. In August, 1854, the Cabinets of London and Paris decided to attack Sebastopol, the great Crimean fortress from which Russia threatened the safety of Constantinople; and early in September a noble fleet of men-of-war and transports-600 vessels, guarded by 3,000 guns-reached the Crimea, a part of Russia then almost unknown to the nations of Western Europe. 1865] On the 14th of September the allied armycomposed of 25,000 English, 30,000 French, and 7,000 Turks-landed unopposed at Calamita Bay. Here history once more repeated itself. As in Schomberg's descent on Ireland in 1689, so in the invasion of the Crimea more than a century and a half later -our troops were disembarked without the means of moving away from the beach on which they had landed. With great difficulty carts were obtained from the natives, but in wholly insufficient quantities. For a battalion of infantry the proper allowance of transport in the field is five carts and eleven waggons. On the march to Sebastopol, after the battle of the Alına, only about nine carts were available for each division, to carry the baggage, medical stores, tents, and sick and wounded men belonging to the the six battalions and two batteries of which each of the divisions was composed. In Bulgaria the Commis Failure of Supply and [1846-1865 sariat had collected, with great trouble and expense, several thousand mules, horses and ponies; but for some departmental reason most of these beasts of burden had been left behind at Varna, although they would have been invaluable on landing in the Crimea After the victory of the Alma Lord Raglan, though grievously hampered by want of transport, pushed on to Transport. Balaclava, the fishing village which became our base of operations during the war. He encamped on a line of heights, some six or seven miles from the little bay on which Balaclava stands, and at once broke ground against Sebastopol. As the Commissariat could draw no supplies from the enemy's country, everything which the army required had to be brought by sea, landed at Balaclava, and carried up to the troops at the front. As long as the weather continued fine things went fairly well; but when the autumn rains set in the road from the port fell into a wretched condition. No men could be spared from the trenches for road-making; and the expedient of breaking up a wooden merchant ship, and laying down her timbers as a corduroy road, seems to have occurred to no one. Thus the troops on the "Upland" (as the heights were termed by Kinglake), separated from their supplies by an almost impassable slough of miry clay, were gradually reduced to the greatest misery. About the middle of November, when the pressure of actual want was first felt in our camps, there were still 2,000 beasts of burden at Varna. Some of them were brought from time to time to the Crimea, but they were soon worked to death; and in January, 1855, our available transport had dwindled down to less than 350 animals and 120 carts. How utterly inadequate this transport was may be inferred from the fact that twelve months later, with only double the number of men before Sebastopol, 8,000 animals, 200 waggons, 500 carts, a good road and a railway from Balaclava to the front, were found necessary to supply the wants of our besieging army. From the Turkish provinces on the Black Sea our fleets of transports could have brought over numbers of excellent horses, but the Commissariat made no effort to obtain them, because there was no forage in store on which animals could be fed. The officials at home had forgotten to send to the Crimea the 2,000 tons of hay which had been asked for; and the Commis Lack of Overwork of the Troops. Want of [1846 sariat at the seat of war had not the initiative to send ships round to the neighbouring countries to buy up forage. Sooner than face the responsibility of departing from strict official routine, they allowed the pack animals to die like flies from starvation and overwork. The transport virtually ceased to exist, and the cavalry horses perished so fast from want that the efficiency of the mounted branch of the service became seriously impaired. In every siege the strength of the besieging force is of necessity severely taxed. In addition to the ordinary duties of a camp, and of the outpost service against surprise, the troops have to provide labourers for digging in the trenches, and strong covering parties to protect them against the enemy's sorties. But our men were called upon to do far more than this in the Crimea. Owing to the failure of the transport, the soldiers, when not actually on duty before the enemy, were (to use their own expression) "turned into commissariat mules," and constantly struggled down to Balaclava to obtain supplies for the upland" camps. "I have seen our men," wrote Colonel Colin Campbell of the 46th, "after having come back from the trenches, and having barely time to eat some biscuit and coffee, sent off to Balaclava to bring up rations, warm clothing, blankets, etc. They would return at night after their fourteen-mile tramp through the mud, and throw themselves down on the floors of their tents as if they were dead, so exhausted that even if their dinners had been got ready for them, many of them could not have eaten a morsel. Next morning probably a third of them would be in hospital, and the remainder for the trenches the following evening." In the early part of the winter the condition of the men was terrible. Insufficiently protected from the weather by leaky tents, they slept in puddles on the bare ground. Though constantly wet through by rain and snow, they were without a change of clothes or boots. Their uniforms were in rags, their boots dropped to pieces in the mud. Their food (when they could get it) consisted of biscuit, rum, and salt beef or pork, the latter the more popular because it could be eaten raw; for until the end of December the Commissariat threw upon the troops the burden of foraging for their own fuel. Even when the men had been successful in their quest for wood their difficulties were |