Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/234

 190 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP. VIII. winter on the French and on the Englisli urmy. Recapitula- tion. army, there is no sufficient basis in the existing statistics. It was only by reinforcements that either the French or the English army was saved from extinction ; and the question asking which of the two wouhl have perislied the first, if no succour at all had come, is onc^ that can hardly be answered by any arithmetical })roofs. The calamities we have had to record were in great part the too sure result of a tardily commenced undertaking to winter on the Cher- sonese Heights ; and the plague of the cholera, no less than the devastating hurricane of the 14th of November, was, after all, a natural visitation which could not have been warded oil" by any human foresight or skill ; but there supervened other misfortunes which were not of sucli kind as to be necessarily resultant from the military operation. Of those supervening misfortunes we have seen what the causes were : — With the French, a cruel economy which pro- vided for the soldier a scanty allowance of meat, and a miserable species of tent ; With the English, excessive toil, an interrup- tion of the land -transport power resulting in many privations ; and last, though in one sense predominant, that want of a real War Depart- ment which involved lesser wants unnumbered, carrying with it, amongst other evils, a grievous inadequacy of the means provided by the State for watching over the health of an army and tending the sick and wounded. How some of those causes of evil descended