Doyne, and they will not sign the papers, and the result is that the men receive no money at all, and do not believe they will ever get a farthing. In this dilemma. General Simpson applied to the Commissary-General to know if he felt inclined to pay, but Sir George Maclean is understood to entertain very great doubts whether he could order the issue of money from the Commissariat chest for such pm'poses. It will be observed that in General Orders provision has been made to remedy this inconvenience, and that the men will be paid out of the Commissariat chest. The great majority of the men will be dismissed from the roads this evening, and not more than 2500 or 2800 men will be required by Mr.
Doyne for the \Yorks to be cai'ried on hereafter. The men released from this kind of labour will now be available for the Generals of Division, who have been in much need of them, in order to prepare for the winter, and to get the works of necessity and utility completed in the divisional camps before it sets in. The main road will be opened on Saturday from Balaklava to General Simpson's head quarters. It will be an enduring mark of our presence, but one is irresistibly tempted to ask as he looks at it, " Wliat on earth would have become of our army this winter had Sebastopol not ftillen, if labour could not have been spared, and if the road on which we have daily employed 9000 men, and of which there is only a portion ready on the tenth of November, could not have been made.''" There is a locomotive on the railway below Kadikoi, and in two or three days two will be at work on the line. jyovc7nber 9.
It is announced formally in the despatches that LieutenantGeneral Sir W. J. Codrington, K.C.B., is to succeed General Sir James Simpson, K.C.B., in the command of the British army; and the announcement has caused a little surprise, but has at the same time been received by an expression of very general satisfaction, more especially in the Light Division, where the General is very popular with both ofHcers and men. Sir W. Codrington came out from England on the 23rd of February, 1854, with the rank of Colonel in the Coldstream Guards. He entered the army as Ensign and Lieutenant on the 22nd February, 1821; became Lieutenant in April, 1823; Captain in July, 1826; Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel on the 9th of November, 1846; and Major-General on the 20th June, 1854.
He commanded a brigade of the Light Division throughout the early portion of the campaign, and succeeded to the command of that Division on the retirement of Sir George Brown. Possessed of a strong constitution, a spare and vigorous frame, quiet in manner, energetic in action, vigilant, and painstaking, Sir William Codrington acquired a high reputation throughout the war, and was often spoken of as the coming man — t/ie General, who was at last to arise out of the debris of old fogeyism, red tapery, staffery, Horse-Guardism, and of the British army; but the Eedan dammed the current which had eet so long and so quietly in his favour, because it was supposed that he did not exhibit all the qualities which were attributed to him in an eminent degree hy the army, and produced all the SIR w. codringtok's antecedents. 323 backwater, eddies, and whirlpools usually formed on such occasions.
Sir \V. Codrington was possibly struggling with the internal conviction that the attack had become hopeless, and consequently felt some hesitation in sacrificing more soldiers when he perceived the failure of our assaults and the confusion of the regiments swarming on the face of the salient, but it is certain that in that supreme hour he did not display that extreme coolness, those internal resources, that self-possession and energy which every one had with good reason, from his antecedents at Alma and Inkermann, and his conduct during the winter campaign in the trenches, generally attributed to him. The revulsion of popular feeling, either in a nation or an army, is often unjust in proportion to its violence, and there were very many indeed who thought " it would be only fair to give Codrington another chance," and now he has indeed got it, and it is believed that he will use it nobly.