of the defenders of the soil could be only guessed at; and the city was surrounded by fortifications, of the nature and strength of which no certain intelligence existed.

Landing unopposed, we overthrew the enemy at the Alma, when such a shout of triumph arose in France and England that the mere reverberations were mistaken for fresh pæans of victory, and on the 18th of October the men in front of Sebastopol read what seemed to them the bitter mockery of its reported fall. It is not easy to suppose that the confident anticipations, thus rife at home, of the speedy accomplishment of the enterprise, should have been without effect on the efforts made to provide for the contingency of a protracted siege. Nevertheless, before the middle of November, a supply of warm clothing arrived, which unfortunately was lost with the steamer Prince. Other supplies following were landed and distributed as soon as possible to the troops, the greater part of whom, however, remained without drawers, flannel shirts, or new clothes till January, when these articles began to arrive in a profusion quite, beyond our means of transport, which, at first inadequate to the wants of the army, had diminished every day.

Offering the foregoing remarks as in some degree explanatory of why the enterprise had been delayed, why it had taken place, and why better provision was not made for a winter campaign, I now come to the other question, as to the inadequacy of the expedition to accomplish its ends.

Experience daily strengthened the conviction, that the radical deficiency to be lamented in the British army was in the means of transport. It was in vain that supplies were landed at Balaklava, while no medium of conveyance existed from thence to the already overtaxed troops in camp. The baggage animals originally left behind at Varna had been brought to Balaklava, but the losses among them were so numerous and constant,

that sufficient horses, ponies, and mules did not remain to bring up the necessary provisions and supplies of ammunition. Thus it happened that we had the mortification of seeing ships lying in the harbor at Balaklava, containing clothing to warm, and huts to shelter the suffering troops, yet of no more avail, for want of means to transport them, than if they had been a thousand miles off. It is an old complaint that British troops in the field, in Europe, have been always deficient in means of transport, and never was the fault more apparent, or more severely felt, than in the campaign in the Crimea. Light capacious carriages, drawn by strong well-fed animals, and driven by persons in whom there was no necessity for demanding the same physical requisites as in soldiers, would have been invaluable. The troops would have been regularly supplied, clothed, and housed, and a great number set free to lighten the military labors of the siege; guns would have replaced those disabled in the batteries, and ammunition would have been accumulated in sufficient quantity for a sustained attack.

The efforts made to supply the constant drain of the English army left Gibraltar, Malta, Corfu, and the British Isles denuded of troops. As efficient soldiers can not be raised at short notice, it seems that the want of men now felt was altogether owing to the small number of troops which the national jealousy of a military force allowed to be kept on a peace establishment. The army, in all its branches of cavalry, infantry, artillery, and medical staff, being systematically kept down to the very lowest point consistent with affording the appearance of garrisons to our colonies and fortified places at home and abroad, while baggage and hospital trains are absolutely unknown, must of course be always found insufficient, and its arrangements defective, in a first campaign against a powerful enemy. Doubtless, to the British people, proud of the achievements, and deeply moved by

the privations of their army, it appeared impossible that they were themselves the authors of the disasters they deplored. Yet how long is it since oracles who proclaimed the impossibility of future European wars, and denounced our army as an useless and expensive incumbrance, commanded attention and applause? How long is it since the officers, now held up to the world as heroes, were considered fair targets for daily slanders and abuse, while the public looked on, applauding and amused? when did any minister, charged with the office of seeing that the nation got present substantial returns for its expenditure, venture to propose an augmentation of the forces now proved to be inadequate in all except what the public can not bestow, to maintain those interests which have so long engrossed the energies of our thriving people?

And

The naval portion of our armament was splendid. Our shipsof-war, our fleets of powerful steamers and huge transports, commanded the admiration and respect of the French. No signs of national frugality or shortcoming were visible there. But a very cursory glance at the condition of our military force, when the war began, will show its utter inadequacy to our rank and pretensions in the scale of nations. In all our garrisons at home and abroad, the troops were barely sufficient to supply the necessary guards. At Gibraltar we had eight hundred guns, and five hundred artillerymen to work them. At Chobham we thought we had done great things when we assembled ten thousand men to play at soldiers, while foreign potentates laughed in their sleeves at the display. Our cavalry force was absolutely ridiculous in its weakness, fitter numerically for some petty principality than for a mighty monarchy. Regiments appeared in Turkey, admirably equipped, but inferior in numbers to a respectable squadron. The artillery, that complex arm, involving duties so various, and which demand so much time in acquiring, has been

always kept at a strength below its due proportion in an army such as is now in the field. Batteries at Woolwich for years consisted of four guns and four wagons, each drawn by four horses, with gunners and drivers in proportion; whereas, in the field, each battery has six guns, drawn each by eight horses, and seventeen wagons of various kinds, ammunition, store and forge wagons, with three times the number of horses considered necessary on the peace footing. The horses, both of artillery and cavalry, always accustomed to be separated by stalls, at the beginning of the campaign perpetually kicked each other as they stood at their picket-ropes, and numbers of them were thus crippled for weeks, and some permanently injured. The train of carriages with the supply of small-arm ammunition for the infantry, was devised at Woolwich when the war broke out, and the vehicles were constructed in such a fashion, that the animals of the country we were employed in could not draw them, and they were left useless at Varna; which could not have happened had our field equipments been systematically kept as efficient as those of Continental armies. And, in mentioning Continental armies, I do not mean to draw any comparison unfavorable to our own troops and our own system, so far as they go. We have little to learn in war from any nation, and the superiority in the internal management of the French army is principally due, in my judgment, wherever it really exists, to the ample supplies of men and material which, maintained and practiced in time of peace, respond with ease and efficiency to the requirements of war.

Probably all this will now be remedied. Soldiers will be enlisted, transport procured, surgeons commissioned, and the glory of England maintained in a fashion worthy of her unrivaled resources-and then will come peace. And with peace will return our habit of considering that alone valuable, the value of

which can be measured by the commercial standard; the army will shrivel to a skeleton-its members will be again the object. of jealousy and taunts—until, in a new war, we shall again learn our deficiencies from our misfortunes. In our first campaigns, our victories will remain unimproved for want of cavalry; our supplies of all kinds will fail for want of transport; and our troops, suddenly transformed from popinjays to heroes, will be called on to make good with blood and sweat the parsimony of the repentant nation.

Lastly, to consider what course of action, having for its object the capture of Sebastopol, would have been preferable to that we had adopted, or rather, into which we had been urged.

If, landing in July, we had been conducted by the same sequence of events to our present position, where should we have been in September? The garrison would still have fortified the south side as fast as we could erect batteries to assail it. Our reenforcements could arrive no more quickly in summer than in winter-the command of the sea made the seasons equally available to us. But with the enemy the case was different. Myriads of troops, marching from the interior, would have thronged the roads of the Crimea. Supplies, not merely suf ficient for the present, but for any future emergency, would have been accumulated in Sebastopol and the neighboring towns. The garrison, secure of help, would have been encouraged to double efforts and when that help arrived, it would have been so effectual as, eventually, no matter how gallant and desperate our resistance, to penetrate by force of numbers our position, and drive us into the sea.

If the enterprise had been delayed till the spring of 1855, it is quite possible that our landing would have been no longer unopposed or cheaply effected. The Russians, alive to the danger, would have intrenched their coast line, reënforced the