Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/236

 192 THE WINTER TltOUBLES. CHAP, to any public functionaries, whether civil or • military. What, rather, I saw, brought to light by the scrutiny applied to their conduct, was — not of course faultless judgments, not men of routine all at once striking valiantly out of their orbits, but — everywhere, a stainless integrity, with, in general, a high public spirit, much ability, a strong sense of duty, and energies rising to zeal under stress of adverse times. It must be always understood that the mischiefs arising from official mismanagement brought about, after all, but a part of the winter calamity. Co-operating, as against the English soldier, with the yet graver hardship of excessive toil, those mischiefs, it is true, superadded a new load of suffering to that which must needs have resulted from a lengthening siege of Sebastopol not begun, nay, scarce even projected, until the month of October ; yet the evil, the main evil, lay — not alone, and not even capitally in the want of better means for facing a rigorous winter, but — rather in the ugly predicament of having to winter at all without long antecedent prepar- ation on bleak, open downs in Crim-Tartary ; and accordingly, having now shown the causes which aggravated the hardships of the soldier, we may well lay a yet greater stress on that series of strategic counsels which brought him step by step from the Alma to his miserable tent on the Chersonese. Tiiestrat- What sharc the French had in those counsels, skJnswhicii and what share also Burgoyne, we sufficiently obiigiDg tiie saw long ago ; and in this place, without again