between our trenches and Bosquet's corps. As they moved on, disposing by their mere impetus of any disjointed attempts to oppose them, they would have reached a hand to Gortschakoff on the one side, to the garrison of Sebastopol on the other, till the reunited Russian Army, extended across the Chersonese, would have found on those wide plains a fair field for its great masses of cavalry and artillery. To the Allies, having behind them only the sea-cliffs, or the declivities leading to their narrow harbours, defeat would have been absolute and ruinous ; and behind such defeat lay national degradation. On the other hand, when the 4 long crisis of the day was past, the fate of Sebastopol was already decided. It is true that our misfortunes grew darker and darker, that six weeks afterwards most of the horses that charged at Balaklava were rotting in a sea of mud, most of the men who fought at Inkerman filling hospitals at Scutari, or graves on the plain. Any history of the war would be incomplete that failed to record, as a main and characteristic feature of it, the extraordinary misery which the besieging armies endured. Nevertheless, when Inkerman had proved that the Russians could not beat us in battle, we were sure to win, because it was > impossible for us to embark in presence of the enemy. We could do nothing else but keep our hold ; and, keeping it, it was matter of demonstration that the Powers which held command of the sea must prevail over the Power whose theatre of war was separated from its resources, by roadless deserts. Such were the consequences which hung in the balance each time that the
164 Consequence of Victory.
Russian columns came crowding on, while their long lines of artillery swept the ridge; and it is not amiss that the nation, which sometimes gives its praise so cheaply, should be reminded how much it owed that day to the steadfast men of Inkerman.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HURRICANE AND THE WINTER.
The Hurricane — Its Effects — Privations of the Troops — Want of Transport— Transport done by the Men — The Cavalry Horses starved — Sufferings of the Sick — The Hospitals — Indignation in England — The French take part of our Duties — Relief begins — Why a Road was not made at first — Roads now made — Improvement in the Hospitals — Miss Nightingale arrives — The Influence She acquires — The Ratio of Deaths — Resignation of the Ministry — The Crimean Commission — The Commissary-General blamed — Defends himself — General Airey refutes Charges — Departments have Their Proper Limits — The Fault lay in the System.
THREE days after the battle of Inkerman, Lord Raglan informed his Commissary-General, Mr Filder, that our Army would winter in the Crimea, and desired him to make provision accordingly.
Up to this time the troops had undergone no great privation. During October the weather had been mild and sunny, with cool nights ; the tents stood on dry and level spaces of turf. The surface of the plains had been good for transit. Rations for men and horses had been supplied with sufficient regularity ; losses of men from sickness or battle had been repaired ; and notwithstanding the excessive work which the disproportion of our numbers to their task forced the men to undergo, and the lingering presence of the cholera pest, both of these causes, which lowered the health of the whole force, had not, as had just been shown, impaired
1 66 The Hiirricane.
its ability to fight, or even its cheerfulness. Therefore, though in the first half of November mists had begun to overspread the Black Sea, and between these and the blue sky hung a low canopy of cloud, nothing formidable had as yet threatened us.