Food and supplies beyond their utmost power of consumption, were hurried to the army by grateful England. Thousands of tons of wood for huts, shiploads of clothing and profuse provision for health and comfort, reached Balaklava.
While the tall masts of the ships bearing these treasures were visible from the heights of Sebastopol, men there were perishing for lack of food, fuel and clothing. In rags, almost barefoot, half-fed, often without fuel even to cook their food, in that terrible winter on the heights, whole regiments of heroes became extinct, because there was not sufficient administrative ability to convey the supplies to a perishing army!
So wretched was the hospital service, that to be sent there meant death. Gangrene carried off four out of five. Men were dying at a rate which would have extinguished the entire army in a year and a half. It was Florence Nightingale who redeemed this national disgrace, and brought order, care and healing into the camps.
When England recalls with pride the valor and the victories in the Crimea, let her remember it was the manhood in the ranks which achieved it. When all was over, war had slain its thousands,—but official incapacity its tens of thousands!
It was a costly victory: Russia was humiliated, was even shut out from the waters of her own Black Sea, where she had hitherto been supreme. To two million Turks was preserved the privilege of oppressing eight million Christians; and for this,—twenty thousand British youth had perished. But—the way to India was unobstructed!
England's career of conquest in India was not altogether of her own seeking. As a neighboring province committed outrages upon its British neighbors, it became necessary in self-defence to punish it; and such punishment, invariably led to its subjugation. In this way one province after another was subdued, until finally in the absorption of the Kingdom of Oude (1856) the natural boundary of the Himalaya Mountains had been reached, and the conquest was complete. The little trading company of British merchants had become an Empire, vast and rich beyond the wildest dreams of romance.
The British rule was upon the whole beneficent. The condition of the people was improved, and there was little dissatisfaction except among the deposed native princes, who were naturally filled with hate and bitterness. The large army required to hold such an amount of territory, was to a great extent recruited from the native population, the Sepoys, as they were called, making good soldiers.
[Sidenote: Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858.]
In 1857 the King of the Oude and some of the native princes cunningly devised a plan of undermining the British by means of their Sepoys, and circumstances afforded a singular opportunity for carrying out their design.
A new rifle had been adopted, which required a greased cartridge, for which animal grease was used. The Sepoys were told this was a deep-laid plot to overthrow their native religions. The Mussulman was to be eternally lost by defiling his lips with the fat of swine, and the Hindu, by the indignity offered to the venerated Cow. These English had tried to ruin them not alone in this world, but in the next.