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CHAP. would be wrong for me to disregard this appeal; and I. having an opportunity the same day of conversing alone with Lord Raglan, I repeated to him the purLord Rag. port of what the interpreter had said. Lord Raglan's ception of reception of the statement was such as to assure me that he had seized the full import of Mr Cattley's warning.

lan's re

the warn

ing.

Step taken

by Lord Raglan.

Then, at all events, if not before, the grievousness of the calamity which awaited his army, if, indeed, it should be brought to such straits as to have to winter on the Chersonese, was very present to the mind of Lord Raglan. He called upon Mr Cattley for a report in writing upon the climate of the Crimea; and, having obtained it, proceeded to write thus (in private) to the Secretary of State: We have been for'tunate in having very fine weather, and Mr Cattley encourages us to hope that this may last till nearly ment (23d the middle of next month. Then we must be

His pri

vate communica

tion to the Govern

Oct.) in reference

to the contingency of the army having to winter on the Cherson

ese.

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pared either for wet or extreme cold, and in neither case could our troops remain under canvass, even 'with great and constant fires, and the country

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hardly produces wood enough to cook the men's 'food. I enclose a memorandum on the climate of 'the Crimea which Mr Cattley drew at my request two days ago. It shows what precautions the inhabitants and the Russian troops are obliged to take 'during the severe months of the winter for the preservation of their lives.' In the memorandum thus forwarded by Lord Raglan to the Home Government, Mr Cattley, after describing the winter of 1843 in the neighbourhood of Sebastopol, went on to say:

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In such weather, no human creature can possibly CHAP.

resist the cold during the night unless in a good

house properly warmed, and in the day-time unless warmly dressed.' *

The letter with which Lord Raglan accompanied the memorandum contained this impressive statement: 'Before concluding, I may be permitted to say a word with regard to this army. It requires, and should not be denied, repose. Although the 'marches have not been many, fatigue has pressed heavily upon the troops. The very act of finding 'water and of getting wood has been a daily unceasing exertion, and the climate has told upon 'them; and independently of cholera, sickness has prevailed to a great extent since the third week in 'July. Cholera, alas! is still lingering in the army.'+ Upon the supposition that the Allied armies should remain so engaged with the enemy as to be forced by sheer stress of war to winter on the Chersonese, those words of Lord Raglan's, notwithstanding all their calmness and moderation, had still a terrible import. They foreshadowed the evil that was to come.

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It was on the 23d of October that the Commander of the Forces thus wrote to the Secretary of State. Weeks and weeks after that, when the autumn had passed, and the streets of London once more were gloomy, and cold, and wet, it occurred to some newsdealers there that they would enter upon a course of

*This memorandum is given verbatim in the Appendix.

+ Lord Raglan to Duke of Newcastle (private letter), October 23,

1854.

I.

I.

CHAP. prophecy. Encountering in their own persons the discomfort of inclement weather, and coupling this experience with the fact that Crim Tartary was many degrees north of the equator, they made bold to foretell that there might be wintry weather on the Chersonese, and began-some months after the time-a series of strenuous warnings. It seems well to remember that the General who was to be roused to thoughts of the winter by reading exhortations at Christmas, had himself been awakening our Government so early as the month of October.

CHAPTER II.

I.

II.

dence

recall at

tention to the capitals of the belligerent

States.

On the day the Allies opened fire, there was witnessed CHAP. by Lord Raglan and the Headquarters Staff a half ludicrous, yet still provoking coincidence, which ab- Coinci ruptly compelled men to see how the Mind of our tending to nation at home was clashing with Fact on the Chersonese and although, for the moment, I avoided the inconvenience of breaking in upon a narrative then dealing with siege operations, the occurrence has served to remind me that war, after all, is the business of nations, not merely of their armies or their navies; that already accounts of the first battle of the campaign had travelled to Paris, to London, to St Petersburg; and that the nature of the reception accorded to such tidings as these may be almost as worthy of mark as the ruined front of the Malakoff, or the explosion of a French magazine.

During almost the whole of the week which ended the month of September, expectation in England had been kept upon the rack; and so keen was the desire of our people to know the result of the almost romantic adventure to which they had committed their

The state ancy en

of expect

dured by

the Eng

lish in the

last week

of Septem.

ber.

II.

CHAP. army, that, to an extraordinary degree, this great public care excluded, they say, other subjects from the minds of our statesmen. 'Every sort of business,' writes one of them-every sort of business has 'given way to this anxiety.'* Already apprised of the landing, people inferred that a battle had been fought-nay, were even enabled to conjecture that the conflict must have taken place on the heights of the Alma, and probably on Wednesday the 20th of September. Still, from that promised Wednesday more than a week had passed, and as yet the eagerness of the public mind remained baffled by space.

Arrival in
London of

of the

the Alma;

But on the morning of Saturday, the 30th of Septhe tidings tember, London heard that the Greek houses at Vienna battle of had already received tidings of a disaster sustained by the Russian army; and before evening, there came in Lord Stratford's telegraphic despatch announcing the victory of the Alma. This was published in a supplement to the Gazette; and, according to the usage which obtained in former wars, the authentic words were read out to the audience at one of the theatres. The next day, Sunday, Lord Raglan's telegraphed account of the battle reached the War Office, and was forthwith published in an Extraordinary Gazette.

and of rumours

Almost along with the authentic accounts of the announc. battle, rumours came from the south-east of Europe, which assured the people of London that already the

ing the

*To Lord Raglan, 24th September 1854.

As to the source to which the public owed this singularly happy computation, see post, p. 19.

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