Lord Raglan presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and has the honour to acknowledge with every sentiment of devotion and gratitude your Majesty's most gracious letter of 1st January, and the kind wishes which your Majesty and the Prince are pleased to unite in offering to the Army and your Majesty's most humble servant on the occasion of the New Year.
The deep concern and anxiety felt by your Majesty and the Prince for the privations of the troops, their unceasing labours, their exposure to bad weather, and the extensive sickness which prevails among them, are invaluable proofs of the lively interest which your Majesty and His Royal Highness take in the welfare of an Army which, under no circumstances, will cease to revere the name, and apply all its best energies to the service of your Majesty.
THE COMMISSARIAT
Lord Raglan can with truth assure your Majesty that his whole time and all his thoughts are occupied in endeavouring to provide for the various wants of your Majesty's troops. It has not been in his power to lighten the burthen of their duties. Those exacted from them before Sebastopol are for the preservation of the trenches and batteries; and there are many other calls upon the men, more especially when, as at present, the roads are so bad that wheeled carriages can no longer be used, and that the horse transport is diminished by sickness and death, and that the Commissariat, having no longer any sufficient means of conveyance at its command, cannot bring up the daily supplies without their assistance, thereby adding, however inevitably, to their labour and fatigue.
Lord Raglan begs leave to submit, for your Majesty's information, that the Allied Armies have no intercourse with the country, and can derive no resources from it; and consequently all the requirements for the conveyance of stores and provisions, as well as the stores and provisions themselves, must be imported. Such a necessity forms in itself a difficulty of vast magnitude, which has been greatly felt by him, and has been productive of the most serious consequences to the comfort and welfare of the Army.
The coffee sent from Constantinople has been received and issued to the troops green, the Commissariat having no means whatever of roasting it. Very recently, however, an able officer of the Navy, Captain Heath of the Sanspareil, undertook to have machines made by the engineers on board his ship for roasting coffee; and in this he has succeeded, but they have not yet produced as much as is required for the daily consumption.
The Commissary-General applied to the Treasury for roasted coffee three months ago. None has as yet arrived. A very large amount of warm clothing has been distributed, and your Majesty's soldiers, habited in the cloaks of various countries, might be taken for the troops of any nation as well as those of England.
Huts have arrived in great abundance, and as much progress is made in getting them up as could be hoped for, considering that there has been a very heavy fall of snow, and that a thaw has followed it, and the extremely limited means of conveyance at command.
Much having been said, as Lord Raglan has been given to understand, in private letters, of the inefficiency of the officers of the Staff, he considers it to be due to your Majesty, and a simple act of justice to those individuals, to assure your Majesty that he has every reason to be satisfied with their exertions, their indefatigable zeal, and undeviating, close attention to their duties, and he may be permitted to add that the horse and mule transport for the carriage of provisions and stores are under the charge of the Commissariat, not of the Staff, and that the Department in question engages the men who are hired to take care of it, and has exclusive authority over them.
Lord Raglan transmitted to the Duke of Newcastle, in the month of December, the report of a Medical Board, which he caused to assemble at Constantinople for the purpose of ascertaining the state of health of the Duke of Cambridge. The report evidently showed the necessity of His Royal Highness's return to England for its re-establishment. This, Lord Raglan knows, was the opinion of the Honourable Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonald,4 whose attention and devotion to His Royal Highness could not be surpassed, and who was himself very anxious to remain with the Army.