According to what I heard from people, I was honoured by a good deal of abuse for telling the truth. I really would have put. on my Claude Lorraine glass, if I could. I would have clothed skeletons with flesh, breathed life into the occupants of the charnelhouse, subverted the succession of the seasons, and restored the legions which had been lost; but I could not tell lies to " make things pleasant." Any statements I had made I have chapter, and book, and verse, and witness for. Many, very many, that I did wotfmake I could prove to be true with equal ease, and could make public, if the public interest required it. The only thing the partisans of misrule could allege was, that I did not " make things pleasant " to the authorities, and that, amid the filth and starvation, and deadly stagnation of the camp, I did not go about "babbling of green fields," of present abundance, and of prospects of victory.
Suppose we come to "facts." Do people at home know howmany bayonets the British army could muster? Do they believe we had 25,000, after all our reinforcements? They might have been told — nay, it might have been proved to them by figures at home — that the British army consisted of 55,000 men. Froi>i the 1st of December, 1854, to the 20th of January, 1855, 8,000 sick. and wounded were sent down from camp to Balaklava, and theucc. on shipboard! Shall I state how many returned?
Yet people at home told us it was " croaking " to state the facts,, or even to allude to them! The man who could have sat calmly down and written home that our troops were healthy, that there was only an average mortality, that every one was confident of success, that our works were advancing, that we were nearer to the capture of Sebastopol than we were on the 17th of October, that transport was abundant, and the labours of our army light, might be an agreeable correspondent, but assuredly he would not have enabled the public to form a very accurate opinion on the real state of affairs in the camp before Sebastopol. The wretched boys sent out to us were not even fit for powder. They died ere a shot was fired against them. Sometimes a good draught was re»
CRIMEA.
ceived; but they could not endure long vigil and exposure in the trenches.
And now for another " fact." The battle of Inkerman was fought on the 5th of November, as the world will remember for ever. About 40 per cent, of the Brigade of Guards were killed or wounded on that occasion. They received reinforcements, and the brigade which mustered about 2,500 men when it left England had received some 1,500 men in various draughts up to the end of the year. What was the strength in the last week of January of the Brigade of Household troops — of that magnificent band who crowned the struggle of the Alma with victory, and -beat back the Russian hordes at Inkerman? I think they could have mustered, including servants, about 950 men in the whole brigade. Here is another faqt. Since the same battle of Inkerman, at least 1,000 men of the brigade had been "expended," absorbed, used up, and were no more seen. The official returns will show how many of that thousand were killed or wounded by the enemy. Another fact. There were two regiments so shattered and disorganised — so completely destroyed, to tell the truth, that they had to be sent away to be " re-formed." ISTow, mark, one of these regiments was neither at the Alma nor at Inkerman — the other was engaged in the latter battle only, and did not lose many men.
January 28 was celebrated by an extremely heavy fire between the Russians and the French. The volleys were as heavy as those at the Alma or Inkerman, and from the numbers of Russian infantry thrown into the works, it was evident the enemy intended to dispute the small space of ground between the last French trench and the broken outworks of their late batteries with the greatest vigour. Possibly, indeed, orders had been received to resist any nearer approaches of the French, who had burrowed up, zigzagged, paralleled, and parapetted the country from the Quarantine Fort to the Flagstaff Fort.
It was not to be expected that such an affair could take place without considerable loss on both sides. After daybreak the fire recommenced with great fury, and about eight o'clock a regular battle was raging in the trenches between the French and Russians. There could not have been less than 3,000 men on each side firing' as hard as they could, and the lines were marked by thick curling banks of smoke. The fire slackened about nine o'clock.