M '*
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Brigham Young University
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THE
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BRITISH EXPEDITION
TO THE
CRIMEA
WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL, LL.D.
NEW AND REVISED EDITION
WITH MAPS AND PLANS
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LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET
THE INDIAN
MUTINY.
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, price js. 6d.
MY DIARY IN INDIA,
In the Year 3
WILLIAM HOWARD
RUSSELL, LL.D.
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
OF " THE TIMES."
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PROYO, UTAH
NOTICE TO THE READER.
The interest excited by the events of the Campaign in the Crimea has not died away. Many years, indeed, must elapse ere the recital of the details of that great struggle, its glories, and its disasters, cease to revive the emotions of joy or grief with which a contemporary generation regarded the sublime efforts of their countrymen. As records on which the future history of the war must be founded, none can be more valuable than letters written from the scene, read by the light documents, such as those which will shortly be made public, can throw upon them.* There may be misconception respecting the nature of the motives by which statesmen and leaders of armies are governed, but there can be no mistake as to what they do; and, although one cannot always ascertain the reasons which determine their outward conduct, their acts are recorded in historical memoranda not to be disputed or denied. For the first time in modern days the commanders of armies have been compelled to give to the world an exposition of the considerations by which they were actuated during a war, in which much of the sufferings of our troops was imputed to their ignorance, mismanagement, and apathy. They were not obliged to adopt that course by the orders of their superiors, but by the pressure of public opinion; and that pressure became so great that each, as he felt himself subjected to its influence, endeavoured to escape from it by throwing the blame on the shoulders of his
* The letter which appeared in the Times giving an account of the Battle of the Alma was written at a plank which Captain Montagu's sappers put on two barrels to form a table.
VI NOTICE TO THE EEADEE.
colleagues, or on a military scapegoat, known as " the system." As each in self-defence flourished his pen or his tongue against his brother, he made sad rents in the mantle of official responsibility and secrecy. Even in Russia the press, to its own astonishment, was called on to expound the merits of captains and explain grand strategical operations; and the public there, read in the official organs of their Government very much the same kind of matter as our British public in the evidence given before the Chelsea Commissioners. Much of what was hidden has been revealed. We know more than we did; but we never shall know all.
I avail myself of a brief leisure to revise, for the first time, letters written under very difficult circumstances, and to re-write those portions of them which relate to the most critical actions of the war. From the day the Guards landed in Malta down to the fall of Sebastopol, and the virtual conclusion of the war, I had but one short interval of repose. I was with the first detachment of the British army which set foot on Turkish soil, and it was my good fortune to land with the first at Scutari, at Varna, and at Old Fort, to be present at Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, to accompany the Kertch and the Kinburn expeditions, and to witness every great event of the siege — the assaults on Sebastopol, and the battle of the Tchernaya. It was my still greater good fortune to be able to leave the Crimea with the last detachment of our army. My sincere desire is, to tell the truth, as far as I knew it, respecting all I have witnessed. I had no alternative but to write fully, freely, fearlessly, for that was my duty, and to the best of my knowledge and ability it was fulfilled. There have been many emendations, and many versions of incidents in the war, sent to me from various hands — many now cold forever — of which I have made use, but the work is chiefly based on the letters which, by permission of the proprietors of the Times, I was allowed to place in a new form before the public.
W. II. RUSSELL. July, 1858.