The only person to whom blame was imputed, in the first report of the commissioners, was the Commissary- General. Failure to issue articles of diet, such as lime juice and tea, which were in store at Balaklava, deficiencies of fresh meat, vegetables, and fuel, and defective arrangements respecting forage, were all laid at his door, and he was charged with not being a man of comprehensive
1 86 Defends Himself.
views, with not having sufficiently turned to account the resources of surrounding provinces, and with being deficient in inventive resource and administrative capacity. In reply, Mr Filder laid before the House a counter statement. In the first place, he set forth the extraordinary difficulties which the commissariat laboured under ; its extensive duties, the total inexperience of its officers, the absence of necessary establishments, the ignorance as to where winter quarters would be, — and then dealt with the charges in detail. The lime juice and tea had been sent for the sick, and were not more than was needful for them ; when demanded, these articles were at once issued to the troops. As to the fresh meat, many of his cattle-vessels had been disabled by the storm ; nevertheless, the supply both of fresh meat and vegetables had been kept up in a degree which, under the circumstances, might be called surprising. There had always been sufficient fuel at Balaklava ; the only difficulty was to find means of conveying it to the camps, owing to want of transport, and that, as we have seen, was owing to want of forage. Now the Commissary-General showed that he had made ample provision for forage had the army remained in Turkey. When it was ordered to the Crimea, he made contracts at Constantinople for having it pressed (very necessary for transport by sea) and despatched to him. Finding that the contractors were likely to fail in their agreement, he wrote to England for 2000 tons. Of this he only received one-tenth in six months. " Had my requisitions for hay been complied with, the deficiency
General Air ey refutes Charges. 187
which was felt throughout the winter would have been prevented, and I should have been able to maintain a sufficient transport establishment." This demand he made before the armies landed in the Crimea ; he frequently reiterated it, and it was many times enforced by Lord Raglan, but without effect, till near the close of the winter. Finally, a committee of inquiry appointed later declared that the insufficiency was owing to the omission of the Treasury to send a proper supply of forage from England.
This report was followed by a second, in which several officers, notably the Quartermaster-General and the two cavalry generals, conceived themselves to be made objects of censure. And, finally, a Board of General Officers sat at Chelsea, in April 1856, "to take into consideration so much of the reports as animadverts upon the conduct of certain officers." The blame, if any, imputed to Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan was so slight and vague that they had no difficulty in justifying themselves. General Airey's reply may be briefly summed up. Its essence consisted in showing that, while the commissioners had imputed blame to his department for not issuing supplies in store, it was its province to provide, not for the issue, but the apportionment of these supplies. He showed that to the oft-quoted want of transport alone was due the fact that stores of clothing and other necessaries remained unissued ; that no official barrier was raised between the men and the supplies ; on the contrary, the issues of clothing were authorised very much faster than the men could draw
188 Departments have Their Proper Limits.
it. He rightly observed that, in the altered state of affairs existing in the middle of March, it was impossible for any two persons, such as the commissioners fully to appreciate the position of the army, in the midst of the unheard-of difficulties of the winter, and concluded with a picture of the condition of the troops and the causes of distress and perplexity by which they were surrounded.