On the 30th of July a medical board was ordered on Lieuten ant- General Sir R. England, G.C.B., commanding Third Division, and he was recommended to return to England. He was the last of the generals who left England in command of a division. Major- General Eyre succeeded him in the Third Division.
On the 5th, Brigadier Lockyer was in orders for Ceylon, and Colonel Windham, C.B., was nominated to succeed him in the command of the Second Brigade, 2nd Division. On the 3rd of August General Canrobert was recalled.
At an early hour on the 7th, General Simpson went round the lines, examining the works. A council of war was held on Wednesday evening, 8th, at the British head-quarters. The principal medical officers of Divisions received orders to clear the hospitals, to send to Balaklava such patients as could safely be moved, and to complete the preparations for the reception of wounded men.
Leave of absence continued to be granted to a very large extent. Taking five of the then latest general orders, those of the 3rd, 5th, Gth, 7th, and 8th of August, we find the names of no less than seventy officers who had received permission to absent themselves. Of these, twenty-nine proceeded to England — twenty-six of them in virtue of medical certificates, and three upon "urgent private affairs," or in consideration of peculiar circumstances: twenty-seven went to Scutari and Therapiafor periods varying from two to five weeks; twelve on board ship, and two to the Monastery of St. George, where there were ten rooms fitted up for ailing or convalescent officers. I heard a colonel declare that he had but one captain and three subalterns on duty in his battalion, and that he, consequently, had to send one hundred men into the trenches under charge of a youth of
CRIMEA.
eighteen. If this state of things could not have been helped, it, at least, was very unfortunate. Enough officers did not come out to replace those who went home. The protracted siege — if siege it could be called, which in reality was a tedious struggle between two rows of detached forts — was certainly not popular with the officers of the army, few of whom cared to remain if they had a respectable pretext for returning home, while fewer still desired to return hither when they once got away. I am persuaded that if there had been more movement in the campaign — if, instead of monotonous trench duty we had been engaged in ordinary warfare, manoeuvring, marching, fighting, there would have been both less sickness and fewer seeking leave. I do not attempt to decide the question whether leave was sometimes too easily granted, and more to interest than to necessity. The French were thought to fall into the other extreme, and instances were cited to me in which the lives of valuable officers would have been saved had they been allowed to exchange severe duty (one night out of three in the trenches, independently of ordinary guards and parades, cannot be considered light labour) for a period of relaxation in a more salutary climate.
On the 9th the Russians amused themselves by throwing a few round shot into the camp of the Fourth Division. Two of these buried themselves in the ground, close to a hospital hut of the 17th Regiment, shaking the edifice and astonishing the wounded, but doing no other damage; another killed a man of the field-train as he lay in his tent. It was said the missiles were intended for General Bentinck's tents, which were near the Fourth Division flagstaff on Cathcart's Hill. The Duke of Newcastle was staying there. A new kitchen, building for the General, was thought to have attracted the attention of the Muscovite gunners.