Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/221

 SUFFERINGS OF THE ARMIES. 177 figures of the 'morning state.' On the last day chap. of February our army, out of a mean strength of ^"^' 30,919 for the month, had lying in hospital no less than 13,608 men;(^^) and even that im- mense number is utterly insufficient to measure the evil which it partly disclosed. Between the beginning of November (^^) and the end of the day of which we are speaking — that is, the 28th of February, our soldiers perished in hospital to the number of 8898 ; and accordingly, it may be said that Death — only Death — kept down to its actual limit the before-given number of 13,608, and prevented it from reaching to 22,506 ; for that last would have been the number in our hospitals at the close of February, if the patients there treated during the period of the same four months had all remained alive in their wards. Putting into yet other words the same ugly truth, one may say that our army on that last day of February had lying in hospital beds, or else in new hospital graves, dug all of them within the four months, a number of sick and dead together amounting to 22,506, the number before assigned. Far from showing an increase in February of the numbers of men fit for duty, the ' morning states ' confessed a falling off of more than 2000 — for the ' effectives ' at the end of January were 19,371, and at the end of J'ebruary only 17,311. Nor was even this very small number sufficiently small to indicate the real extent of the force which could be used against the enemy in any coming fight for exist- ence ; because many of the troops it comprised VOL. VII. M