mode of accounting, and if the system be in your opinion unnecessarily complicated for a period of actual warfare, you will suggest such means of simplification as may occur to you.

"To enable you to conduct this inquiry satisfactorily, you will have authority from Lord Raglan to summon and examine witnesses, and to require the production of all books and papers that you may consider necessary for completing your investigation.

"I have a full reliance upon your executing this duty satisfactorily, and request that copies of all reports and suggestions made to Lord Raglan may be

transmitted to me.

"You will be furnished with copies of the Rules and Regulations in force for the guidance of the Commissariat, and defining the duties of the Department with an army in the field, also of any special instructions issued by the authorities at home to the Commissariat with the army, and of such Reports relating to the supply of the army as may have been made by the Commissariat to the authorities at home.

steeped in blood and cumbered with corpses, and which the French stormed twice on the 7th of June, placing on it a battery against the still more famous Malakoff. The harbour of Balaklava was no longer the dismal scene of helplessness and confusion which it had continued during the winter. Admiral Boxer's energy had lined its shores with wharves, and established order; and the railway, which afterwards so materially helped our attack by supplying ammunition to the trenches, was already partially completed. Sir John and his colleague took up their residence on

The Commissioners reached Balaklava on the 12th March. At that time affairs had assumed a much brighter aspect. The severity of winter had relaxed, the health of the troops was much improved, and our trenches and batteries were daily presenting a more complete and formidappearance. The Russians had grown more active as well as we, and, the day before the Commissioners arrived, had seized on and begun to fortify the famous Mamelon, the small hill destined to be for months

able

board a steamer at the head of the harbour, on the side opposite the town, and there began their investigations. The commanding - officer, surgeon, and quartermaster of every corps in the Crimea, if not prevented by illness from attending, were personally examined by them. The next witnesses were the officers commanding brigades and divisions: lastly, the Quartermaster-General, the senior Assistant-Quartermaster-General, the Commissary-General, and the two Deputy-Commissaries-General. Their evidence, being corrected and signed by themselves, formed the basis of the Reports of the Commission

ers.

Here, then, the reader, perplexed and overwhelmed by the heterogeneous mass of censure, foreboding, suggestion, and reviling which formed the materials from whence to mature his idea of the existing evils, will find the best evidence to be procured carefully sifted by competent men, and the result presented in a compact and lucid form. Clear and wellwritten, the reports prove the labour, the caution, and the penetration which the Commissioners brought to bear upon their object. The reader who carefully peruses it will form a much clearer idea than he could possibly have before possessed of the complications, difficulties, and embarrassments which accompany the administration of an army in the field at all times, as well as of those peculiar to the expedition to the Crimea, The First Report, dated 10th June 1855, relates to the food and transport of the army.

At the commencement of the first

report a warm tribute is paid to the military_qualities of Lord Raglan's army. The inquiries they had instituted, and the scenes they had witnessed, led the Commissioners to entertain such an admiration for the conduct of the army, as, though apart from their specified duties, they found it impossible to refrain from expressing:"It is doubtful," say they, "whether the whole range of military history furnishes an example of an army exhibiting throughout a long campaign qualities as high as have distinguished the forces under Lord Raglan's command." Their labours, their privations, their spirit, and their discipline, form the subjects of admiring comments. "The army," says the Report, "never descended from its acknowledged military pre-eminence." We italicise the word, because, occurring in a Report so careful and well considered, it has peculiar weight, and is in itself a refutation of the ignorant and ignoble attempts so incessantly made during the war to disparage our army in comparison with that of the French.

Considering the privations of their army in this last winter, it is not likely that its condition in the preceding one was much better than that of our own. To those amongst our allies who were behind the scenes it must have been amusing to listen to our blind admiration. French generals, French systems, military, medical, divisional, and regimental, were all held up to us as models. The criticism of French officers on our system and operations was considered as final. Nothing was more common than to find some disparaging absurdity ushered in by "A French officer told me," "I heard a Zouave remark to a friend;" any opinion reflecting disgrace upon us was assented to with a groan, if backed by the authority of some shadowy Gaul-a cloudy oracle speaking through a foolish priest to a gaping multitude.

"Both men and officers, when so reduced that they were hardly fit for the lighter duties of the camp, scorned to be excused the severe and perilous work of the trenches, lest they should throw an undue amount of duty upon their comrades; yet they maintained every foot of ground against all the efforts of

the enemy, and with numbers so small that, perhaps, no other troops would even have made the attempt.

"Suffering and privation have frequently led to crime, in armies as in other communities, but offences of a in the British army in the Crimea. Not one capital offence has been committed, or even alleged to have been committed, by a soldier, and intemperance has been rare.

serious character have been unknown

"Every one who knows anything of the constitution of the army must feel that, when troops so conduct themselves throughout a long campaign, the officers must have done their duty, and set the example. The conduct of the men, therefore, implies the highest encomium that can be passed upon their officers. They have not only shared all the danger and exposure, and most of the priva tions which the men had to undergo, but we everywhere found indications of their solicitude for the welfare of those who were under their command, and of their constant readiness to employ their private means in promoting the comfort of their men. Doubtless there has been, as there always must be, better management in some regiments than in others, but amongst much that was painful in the evidence that we have heard, it was

always gratifying to observe the community of feelings and of interests that appeared everywhere to subsist between the men and their officers, and which the regimental system of the British army seems almost always to produce."

Yet to more than nine-tenths of the officers and men this was a first campaign. When they came in sight of the Russian masses arrayed on the Alma, they for the first time saw an enemy; when the shot from the Russian guns dashed past, they were for the first time under fire. Yet under that fire, and against that enemy, they advanced with all the confidence, discipline, and determination which can attend the onset of troops long accustomed to victory. That the same discipline and spirit distinguished them under circumstances still more trying to young troops, the Commissioners bear witness. Not in some peaceful happy community, the realisation of a utopian dream, could temperance, obedience, diligence, cheerfulness, be more conspicuous than in that camp in the wintry desert, where various and in

cessant horror and distress might have been expected to dissolve the ties of order, to cast submission to the winds, and to leave despair, in the form either of apathy or recklessness, sole master of the suffering host. Such an extraordinary exhibition of soldierly qualities resulted partly from the nature of the soldier himself, partly from his relation to his officers. Sprung from a race in which the influence of the commercial and the levelling spirit has not yet extinguished the respect for social superiority which had birth under a vanished system, the recruit is already in subordination a soldier. He finds his comfort and welfare the care of those to whom he has always been accustomed to look up. His obedience is not the sullen submission of him who finds his late equal "dressed in a little brief authority," suddenly elevated into his tyrant, but ready and cheerful, as honouring those to whom honour is due; and his energies, neither crushed by oppression nor fretted away in discontent, are ready to respond to the legitimate occasion. He finds those whom he has been accustomed to respect and cheerfully obey, eager to lead in peril and to share in privation; he finds in his officers men, young, generous, enterprising; manly by habit, elevated by birth, honourable of necessity. Hence we have the most perfect regimental

system in the world.

our

bly the smallest in Europe, as compared with our resources, is dispersed for the most part in our numerous colonies; everybody knows that, for many years, the feeling of the public has been in favour of reducing it to its narrowest limits. Yet, as if the public had no share in the inexperience of those members of the profession to whom we refer, it has assumed the aggrieved and indignant tone of those who have a right to complain. It is eloquent on the subject of its wrongs-it denounces the inefficient system and want of organisation. But how can organisation exist where there is nothing to organise? How can a system be found efficient, some parts of which are always in disruption, some altogether wanting? Look at the French! was the cry. France, with an army vastly more numerous than ours, is comparatively destitute of colonies. Everybody in France is familiar with the sight of a large military force assembled as if for a campaign, whose supplies, obtained and regulated by a commissariat, are conveyed by the means of transport which would attend it in an enemy's country. The geographical position of France obliges her to maintain such bodies and such material; but she cannot do it for nothing. For this, among other reasons, she is poorer than England. She is compelled to expend her resources in purchasing security, while we prefer being rich and impuissant. In pointing this out, we do not mean at present to argue whether England should or should not augment her military power, but to show that, having made her election, she must accept the consequences; and that when, at the beginning of another war, the command, the supply, the reinforcement, and the organisation of our army shall be again found defective, she should remember that this is only the natural result of the deliberate national choice. Given the materials, and we could compete with the French as successfully in organising an army as in organising anything else; but to expect the genius of war to display itself without material is as unreasonable as to expect poetry without language, or painting without colours. We by no means insist that the ad

ministration of the army is, with our present means, as good as it might be. We at once grant that none of what is commonly termed genius was elicited in the war. Nor do we object to the exposure of incompetence wherever it really exists, provided the exposure takes place on just grounds and with due provocation. We are the less disposed to do battle for the chiefs of the army, because we know of no class of men so intolerant of talent in their subordinates, so impervious to reason, and so unteachable as old soldiers of rank. The revolving years which have raised them to commands, have also removed them farther from the warlike experiences of their youth, probably their only education for war thus as they rise in rank they decline in ability-and the natural growth of authority, combined with incapacity, is arrogance. The disdain with which an ancient prude regards some pretty mutineer against propriety is not more ostentatious than many a venerable commander's sour discountenance of a subordinate who stands charged with information or talent. For once that such a one meets with encouragement from his seniors he will twenty times chafe beneath the cold sneer, the grim reserve, the open rebuff, or the studied depreciation, which, according to the disposition of the man, are equally the signs of the ungraceful and contemptible jealousy we allude to.

Our readers will agree that the most important part of the Commissioners' duty was to ascertain what deficiencies were remediable, and how -the fixing of culpability on this or that individual, however gratifying to public feeling, being of comparatively small moment. The Report is so condensed and weighty with facts, being itself the essence of the mass of evidence appended to it, that it would be difficult to attempt to give a resumé, but we will trace briefly its facts and conclusions.

The first fact recorded is, that the Commissariat was never without a supply at Balaklava of the articles issued as rations to the men. But in the fourth and light divisions the men were frequently on three-quarters, two-thirds, and sometimes on

half rations of meat and rum; on two occasions they had only quarter rations, and on one day they had none at all. Shocking as it may appear, that men who were suffering so much from overwork and exposure should be so ill-fed, there are circumstances which diminish the importance of the deficiency in the rations. A continuance of salt diet is found to result in loathing for that kind of food, and many men rejected it altogether, while many others could only prevail on themselves to eat part of their daily supply. After a time, too, it appears that salt meat not only becomes nauseous but poisonous, and while a variety of disorders were altogether caused by it, others were considerably aggravated. For these reasons the Commissioners came to the conclusion that there were other deficiencies more to be lamented than the want of salt meat and biscuit:

"The deficiencies in the supplies provided by the Commissariat, from which the army, and especially that part of it which was encamped upon the heights before Sebastopol, suffered most, were, a deficiency of fresh meat, a deficiency of vegetables, a deficiency of fresh bread, particularly for the sick, and more espe cially for those whose gums were affected with scurvy, a deficiency of fuel, a deficiency of hay and straw, to such an exto fill the paillasses of the sick, and, tent that enough could not be procured above all, a deficiency of land transport, to which many of the other deficiencies are mainly to be attributed."

What a list of privations is here! The condition of the sick, extended on the damp ground without even sufficient straw to lie on, craving a morsel of soft bread instead of the biscuit, which, from the soreness of their mouths from scurvy, it was torture to them to eat, seems especially horrible. A deficiency of fuel ! Think of that in such a climate, and with such shelter as a tent or a burrow in the earth! Think of raw pork as frequently the diet of those who underwent such extremities of cold and fatigue! No wonder that in those days half the people of England felt almost ashamed of the comforts and luxuries of home, the cheerful firesides, the soft beds, the plentiful meals, when those