Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/80

 the field. 36 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, out committing any grave failure that could '_ justly be laid to their charge. Duties, Although the Commissariat body thus collected powers, and no- • j t j. j j .status of a for forBigii service was a new and almost sudden san"a't'foice crcatiou, it fell at once under the code which fng toan^'^' had long before stated the duties of any force amyin SO engaged. The burthen was huge. Upon the Commissariat serving with an English army in the field, there devolved charge of the military chest with the task of meeting all the needed expenditure, including the pay of the troops, and of entirely supplying the army — supplying it with food for man and beast, with fuel, with light, with the means of land-transport — land- transport for not only all kinds of stores, but for heavy guns and siege materials, for ammu- nition, for field equipments, for the needed supplies of provisions and forage and clothing, for the removal of the sick and the wounded. These were all of them tasks which normally, and as matter of course, attached upon the Commissariat; but besides, it was their duty to purchase or hire and bring up every manner of thing which the unforeseen necessities of the army or the orders of its chief might require. Of course, the performance of duties thus momentous involved the efficiency, the welfare, nay, the very existence of the army, and it was of necessity that any man undertaking such tasks should be armed v,'ith great power. By the authority of his own will, and with the purse of the United Kingdom in his unrestrained hand, the Commissary-General could ransack for the