My dear William, — Your letter of the 12th has reached me. What events have happened since you wrote it! The last shabby note I wrote you on the 1 6th was written when we had just received the order to march to the front, to take part in the assault on the 1 8th, and I believe the whole army to have been then impressed with the conviction that we should be perfectly successful and that we should at last bring the wearisome siege to a termination; such, I know, was the opinion which the Headquarters people instilled into us. They told everybody that the arrangements were so good that they must succeed, whereas it is now palpable that the assault under the circumstances ought never to have been dreamt of, and the attempt was nothing short of folly and ignorance. I'll defy troops of any kind to have succeeded, and what a fearful loss has been the result! The Redan, which our troops had to attack, is so commanded by the Malakoff Tower hill that it must of itself fall into the hands of whichever party is master of the latter work, therefore there was no use attacking it except as a feint or diversion to draw off the enemy from the Malakoff while the French II
attacked it; but I am certain this was not the original intention. Then there appears to have been a fearful mistake in altering the hour of attack. Six o'clock in the morning was the hour first fixed upon, which would have given us three hours' bombarding previous to assaulting; but the night before Pelissier *2 alters the hour of attack from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m., thereby dispensing with the three hours' bombardment, inasmuch as it is not light enough before 3 a.m. to fire with sufficient certainty. The army has felt this failure very deeply, and literally now looks upon the siege as interminable, and another winter in the trenches before Sebastopol as a dead certainty. In the meanwhile our losses on the 5th and i8th are most serious, independently of the few we lose regularly every day in the trenches, thereby depriving us by little and little of our remaining old soldiers, men that cannot be replaced, and of officers whose experience, zeal, and courage are not to be surpassed. The fact is that a grave and inexcusable fault lies with the English people in ignoring as they virtually do, in time of peace, the existence of a standing army, reducing it in every department to the lowest possible state, and yet engaging in a Continental war on a gigantic scale. Are two such lines of policy compatible? And what is the result? That at the end of the first war, after nearly every regiment has been marched to the scene of action, there is scarcely an old soldier left in England. The war was entered into without any reserve being left at home, and thus the army out here found itself called upon to perform duties in the autumn and winter which should have been entrusted to three times its number. The men were worked to death. Then again, if the Army Medical Department, the Commissariat, and the Land Transport Service (which latter never existed at all) had been kept at all times upon a sufficiently decent footing to admit of a rapid expansion when war really broke out, we should not have lost half the men we did. Our army at starting should have been twice the strength it always
1855] ARMY TOO SMALL 147
has been — 200,000 instead of 100,000 men. The saddle should be put on the right horse, and instead of throwing blame upon staff officers, John Bull must take it upon himself. It is all very well to accuse them of inefficiency in this or that respect, but if you don't give them the proper means they can't do what is expected of them. It is too late to increase our army and organise all the military departments after the war has broken out. Will the country ever take this lesson to heart and profit by it? I doubt it. I think that the danger over and peace declared, peacemongers and narrow economists will again bring back things to their former state. Poor Lord Raglan's death has affected us all very much, and preceded as it has been by the death of General Estcourt and the reverses of the 1 8th, will be I dare say not less keenly felt at home. He was much beloved by all of us out here for his excellent and amiable qualities, but as Commander-in-Chief I doubt if his loss is considered irreparable. Till his successor replaces him our operations will probably be at a standstill. In the meantime the French are sapping up to the Malakoff, and are moreover constructing a casemated battery out of the solid cliff near [illegible] Bay to ply the shipping with redhot shot. These ships materially interfered with our successes on the 1 8th.... — Ever your affectionate brother,
Fredk. Stephenson.