Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/194

 150 Till': AVINTER TROUBLES. (J HA P. VIII. General character- istics of tlic winter of 1854-55, in the south- west of the Crimea ; and of the state of tlir CTound on the Cher- sonese. The evils in- separable from an attempt to winter tlio Allied armies on were lowlier beings, and in no sense free men, they have not a coequal space in the annals ol' human woe with the suldiery of the AVestern invaders, who sank and died from like causes. Towards gauging the stress of the hardships undergone by the French and the English, one ouRht to learn at the outset what kind of winter it was that their soldiery had to confront. The hurricane of the 1 4th of November was an outburst of unexampled violence not destined to be speedily repeated in the south-west of the Crimea ; but thenceforth, during more than three months, the vicissitudes of the weather prevailing on the heights of the Chersonese were of much the same kind as those that make a ' hard winter ' in England. There were gusty, boisterous days ; days licsides — long called ' Inkerman weather' — when, the winds having lulled, there came on heavy mists and low drizzling clouds : there were periods of bitter, killing frost, days of thaw, days fair now and then, with light breezes and hours of sunshine, l)ut followed too soon by cutting l)lasts, by per- sistent falls of snow, by storms sweeping over the liills, with sleet or torrents of rain ; and meanwhile, the soldier's bed, when not one of snow or chill mud, was the bare earth, hard, frozen, and rugged, or a wet, cold, tenacious clay. For troops to be lying out day and night under such hard conditions, to have their camps devastated and turned into scenes of ruin and misery by the blasts of a hurricane, and then —