When I was at Theodosia in 1840, there were in the military hospital of the town 15,000 invalids, who were all dying for want of attendance and good medicine. A Courland general (whom I could name) justly incensed at these abuses, sent in a strong report of them directly to the emperor; and twenty days afterwards, a superior officer, despatched by the emperor himself, arrived on the spot. But the people about the hospital were rich; they had taken their measures, and the result of this mission, which looked so threatening at first, was a report extremely satisfactory as to the zeal of the managers and the sanatory condition of the establishment. The general was severely reprimanded, almost disgraced, and the robbers continued to merit official encomiums. I did not hear that they were rewarded by the government.
The most frightful mortality prevails among the troops in the Caucasus; whole divisions disappear in the space of a few months, and the army is used up and wholly renewed every three or four years. It is especially in the small forts on the seaboard, where the mischiefs of bad food are increased by almost total isolation, that diseases make frightful havoc, particularly scurvy. In the spring of 1840, the twelfth division marched to occupy the redoubts on the coasts of Circassia, and its effective number was 12,000 men, quite an extraordinary circumstance. Four months afterwards it was recalled to take part in the expedition at that time projected against the Viceroy of Egypt. When it landed at Sevastopol it was reduced to 1500 men. In the same year the commander-in-chief, in visiting the forts of the seaboard, found but nine men fit for service out of 300 that composed the garrison of Soukhoum Kaleh. According to official returns, the average deaths on the seaboard of Circassia in 1841 and 1842, were 17,000 in each year.
Is it to be wondered that with such a military administration, Russia makes no progress in the Caucasus? What can be expected of armies in which want of all necessaries and total disregard for the lives of men are the order of the day? The divisions and regiments in the Caucasus are in a state of permanent disorganisation, and the courage and activity of the troops sink altogether under the influence of the diseases by which they are incessantly mowed down. It needs all the force of discipline, all the stoic self-denial of the soldier, and, above all, the incessant renovation of the garrisons, to hinder the Russians from being driven out of all their positions.
People often ask with surprise why Russia does not take the field with 200,000 or even 300,000 men at once. We have already given sufficiently circumstantial details on the topography of the Caucasus, to enable every one to perceive immediately how difficult it is to employ large armies in regions so inaccessible, and so wonderfully defended by nature. Nor, on the other hand, must it be forgotten that the official strength of the army of the Caucasus is always at least 160,000 men. Its real strength, indeed, very seldom exceeds 80,000; but its proportion to the grand total of the imperial forces, paid as if they were at the full, still remains the same, and it is impossible, under existing circumstances, that the government should augment the number of its troops without most seriously increasing the already embarrassed condition of the finances. Another consideration of still greater weight is, that the movements of large armies are attended with extreme difficulty in Russia, to a degree unknown in any other country of Europe. In all the discussions that are held on the subject of the war in the Caucasus, the immense difficulties of the transport of men, military stores, and provisions, have never been taken into account, and people have always reasoned as if the Caucasus was situated in the midst of the tzar's dominions. A glance at the map of Russia will suffice to show, that those mountains lying on the most southern verge of the empire, are separated by real deserts from the great centres of the Russian population, and that to repair to the banks of the Kouban from the first governments where troops are recruited, they must traverse more than 150 leagues of country inhabited by Cossacks and Kalmucks, in which the nature of the soil and of the inhabitants forbids any cantonment of reserves.