Camp life

The result of this expedition was one of the most fruitless and lamentable that has ever occurred in the history of warfare. The French Marshal, terrified by the losses of his troops, which the cholera was devastating by hundreds in their camps at Gallipoli and Varna, and alarmed by the deaths of the Duc d'Elchingen and General Carbuccia, resolved to send an expedition into the Dobrudscha, where there were — as Colonel Desaint, chief of the French topographical department, declared on his return from an exploration — about 10,000 Russians, two regiments of regular cavalry, 10 Sotnias of Cossacks, and 35 pieces of artillery. Marshal St. Arnaud, who was confident that the expedition for the Crimea would be ready by the 5th of August, and that the descent would take place on the 10th of the same month, imagined that by a vigorous attack on these detached bodies of men he might strike a serious blow at the enemy, raise the spirits and excite the confidence of the Allies, remove his troops from the camp where they were subject to such depressing influences, and effect all this in time to enable them to return and embark with the rest of the army. It has been said that he proposed to Lord Raglan to send a body of English troops along with his own, but there is, I believe, no evidence of the fact. The 1st Division was commanded by General Espinasse, and started on the 21st for Kostendji; the 2nd Division, under General Bosquet, marched on the 22nd towards Bajardik, and the 3rd Division, under Prince Napoleon, followed the next day and served as a support to the 2nd.{57} All the arrangements were under the control of General Yusuf. Having passed through the ruined districts of Mangalia, the 1st Division reached Kostendji on the 28th of July. They found that the whole country had been laid waste by fire and sword — the towns and villages burnt and destroyed, the stock and crops carried off. A cavalry affair took place on the same day between Yusuf's Bashi-Bazouks and some Russian cavalry, in which the former behaved so well that the General, aided by 1,200 Zouaves, pushed forward to make an attack on the enemy, and wrote to General Espinasse to march to his assistance. On that night, just ere the French broke up their camp at Babadagh, in order to set out on this march, the cholera declared itself among them with an extraordinary and dreadful violence. Between midnight and eight o'clock next morning nearly 600 men lay dead in their tents smitten by the angel of death! At the same moment the division of Espinasse was stricken with equal rapidity and violence at Kerjelouk. All that night men suffered and died, and on the 31st of July General Yusuf made his appearance at Kostendji with the remains of his haggard and horror-stricken troops, and proceeded towards Mangalia in his death march. On the 1st of August General Canrobert, who had returned from his reconnaissance, arrived at Kostendji from Varna, and was horrified to find that his camp was but a miserable hospital, where the living could scarcely bury the remains of their comrades. He could pity and could suffer, but he could not save. That day and the next the pestilence redoubled in intensity, and in the midst of all these horrors food fell short, although the General had sent most urgent messages by sea to Varna for means of transport, and for medicine and the necessaries of life. The 2nd and the 3rd Divisions were also afflicted by the same terrible scourge, and there was nothing left for the Generals but to lead their men back to their encampments as soon as they could, leaving behind them the dead and the dying. The details of the history of this expedition, which cost the French more than 7,000 men, are among the most horrifying and dreadful of the campaign. On returning to Varna the Bashi-Bazouks, tired of the settled forms of a camp life, and impatient of French drill, and the superintendence of brutal or rude non-commissioned officers, began to desert en masse, and on the 15th of August the corps was declared disbanded, and General Yusuf was obliged to admit his complete failure.