When the cases containing the new Minié rifles were opened, and the weapons they contained served out to the Cut Red Feathers and their neighbors, the Bearskins Plain, in lieu of the old smooth-bore Brown Bess, this intrusive person—destined to earn an unfading halo of popularity by telling unpleasant truths with force and vigor—happened, by the merest accident, to be upon the ground.
The odor of cabbaging was rank in the nostrils—not only of young Mortimer Jowell—as the contents of the cases were distributed. For only the top layers consisted of Miniés. Removing these new and serviceable weapons of warfare, the Armorer-Sergeant and his minions laid bare—what a heterogeneous collection of obsolete and discarded firelocks, bearing the marks of no less than fifty different corps!
Roars of Homeric laughter went up from the ranks as the men stood at ease and handled the interesting relics. And Morty’s C. O. promptly returned Brown Bess to her original owners, conferred the Miniés upon certain Regimental sharpshooters, tumbled the rusty relics back into their cases, and returned them whence they came. And the War Office—which had contracted with Crowell for the supply of the new rifles, maintained a Rhadamanthine silence—and Crowell, a member of the great fraternity not previously mentioned, preserved a discreet opaqueness.... Of his blunt iron swords that would not cut through Russian helmets and great-coats; of his soft-iron, short-handled picks and mattocks, that bent and buckled and broke in the frost-bitten hands of the soldiers toiling at the trenches before Sevastopol—Tussell, War Correspondent of The Thunderbolt, told us later on.
The myrmidons of other Fleet Street rags, following Tussell’s lead, presently took to telling the truth in ladlefuls. There was no silencing them. They would write home. And Jowell, Cowell, Sowell, Crowell, Dowell, Bowell, and Co., danced and popped like chestnuts on a red-hot shovel as they perused the columns containing their latest revelations. And when one ink-smeared varlet presumed to weigh in with a copy of the official statement regarding the personnel of the Medical Department of the Eastern Expedition—which afforded for the comfort and relief of twenty-seven thousand men of all arms, two hundred and four medical officers; including one chief Apothecary and three dispensers of medicines—and provided no ambulance-corps, beyond the stretcher-carrying bandsmen—and revealed the fact that three out of the four Divisions of troops landed in the Crimea had been without their knapsacks since the day of disembarkation—even Officialdom wriggled uneasily in its well-stuffed chair at the War Office Council Board; and Britannia, lulled to hypnotic slumber by the mellifluous voice and snaky eye of Sire my Ally, drowsily wondered whether it would not be as well to think about waking up?
Those Letters from the Seat of Hostilities, how eagerly they were devoured by the British Public! How they were welcomed, discussed, denounced, and praised! And presently, when sorrow and bereavement came knocking at the doors of people of all ranks and classes, and every hour added to the huge roll of Deaths issued from the War Office—even Routine and Red Tape were powerless to silence those voices that clamored in Britannia’s drowsy ears....
“Wake up!” they cried, “wake up! for your sons are dying! On the stinking, earthen floors of the hospital-tents—on the naked, filthy planks of the hospital-ships, they lie unhelped, unfed, unclothed, unpitied! Doomed to be the food of vermin, flies, and maggots!—sealed as the victims of Fever, Gangrene, and Cholera, unless you wake and come speedily to the rescue!”
And so, with a tremendous start, Britannia WOKE UP.
Over the United Kingdom broke a cyclone of indignant grief and generous emotion. Not a woman but was enveloped and carried off her feet. From the seamstress in the attic to the Queen in her palace the wave spread, the thrill was communicated, the magic worked its wonder.... Do you remember when that cry of pity came from the heart of Victoria? She was more a sovereign in the true sense of the word, at that moment, than any Queen that had ever reigned before her on the throne of England.... She atoned for a thousand faults, she reached the hearts of her people once and forever, with those outstretched, womanly hands of sorrow and compassion and love.