Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/48

44 the loss by sickness in the Duke of Wellington's army was one in thirty, whilst the Legion lost one in five from the same causes — sixty officers and 2000 men had died in one winter from disease, misery, and starvation, without pay and without rations. He denounced the conduct of the Spanish Government as infamous. He next found fault with Sir De Lacy Evans for having issued an order on his arrival at St. Sebastian that a soldier for certain offences should receive two dozen lashes without a court-martial, he himself having voted steadily in Parliament for the abolition of corporal punishment.

After denouncing Don Carlos's Darango Decree, he alluded to the retreat from Ernani: 'When the gallant officer [Sir De L. Evans] spoke of the retreat at Ernani as a "mischance," his force of 14,000 men having lost four hundred men in the retreat, the efforts of the Legion cannot have been very great.' When he criticised their conduct on that occasion, his criticisms were only equalled by those of the gallant officer himself in his own despatch; after such a despatch he considered the mischief irremediable, and that the Legion could do no more good. This defeat, he held, was owing to the 'insubordination which had arisen from the gross neglect of the Spanish Government.' He then showed that want of communication with Espartero and the other generals had created a disaster; and a disaster on the field of battle was much worse, and a very different thing from a retreat, which (as at Corunna) might be a brilliant achievement. He further stated that