The British Expedition to the Crimea

by Sir William Howard Russell

The 11th was a day quite worthy of "General Février's" gratitude—bleak, raw, and stormy; the wind raging furiously between intervals of profound calm—the sky invisible in a murky sheet, from which fell incessant showers of rain, sleet, or snow alternately, or altogether—and the landscape shut out of sight at a few yards' distance by the grey walls of drizzling clouds and vapour. It might be imagined that no one who could help it stirred out; a few drenched fatigue parties and some artillery wagons sent down for shot and shell were all one could see between Balaklava and the camp, and in the front all was silent—not a gun was fired the greater part of the day, and the popping of rifles also nearly ceased.

CHAPTER VII.

Sickness in the French Camp—Their System of Cooking—Ingenuity—A Crimean Dinner—Recipes—Cost of a Soldier—Lord Lucan's Recal—A Reconnaissance—Disappointment—An Adventure—Lose the Way—Russian Attack—Activity in The Harbour—Good View of Sebastopol—General Appearance—A Furious Cannonade—An Armistice—Pen-and-ink Work.

THERE was a good deal of sickness in the French camp, and one regiment was said to have suffered as much from scorbutic diseases as any of our own, and to have ceased to exist, like the 63rd Regiment. But the French had no large steamers which they could send to forage in all the ports of Asia Minor; and, with their deficient transport, they had less sickness and less loss of life from disease cent. per cent. than our troops, while they were better provided with food and soldiers' luxuries. Had the French army undergone the same amount of vigil, labour, and fatigue to which our army was exposed, I am convinced it would have been in as bad a plight, and that it would have suffered very nearly the same losses. Their system of cooking was better; their system of hutting was better; instead of having twelve or fourteen miserable, gloomy fellows, sitting moodily together in one tent, where each man ate his meal, cooked or uncooked, as best he could, they had four men together in a tent, who were neither miserable nor gloomy as a general rule, because they had a good dish of soup and bouilli well made at the mess fire, and carried away "piping hot" in the camp kettle of the tent. The canvass of the tente was in bad weather only a roof to a deep pit in the shape of the parallelogram formed by the flaps of the canvass. This pit was dug out of the earth; it contained a little fireplace at one end, with a mud chimney outside, and was entered by a flight of two or three steps, which descended to the dry floor. Our men rarely dug out the earth, and their tents were generally pitched on the surface of the ground. They had no time to do any better.

NEW RECIPE FOR COOKING MUTTON.

In cooking, our neighbours beat us hollow. I partook of a sumptuous banquet in the tent of an officer of the Guards one night, the staple of which was a goose, purchased for a golden egg in Balaklava, but which assumed so many forms, and was so good and strange in all—coming upon one as a pièce de résistance, again assuming the shape of a giblotte that would have done credit to Philippe, and again turning up as a delicate little plat with a flavour of woodcocks, that the name of the artist was at once demanded.

He was a grisly-headed Zouave, who stood at the door of the tent, prouder of the compliments which were paid to him than of the few francs he was to get for his services, "lent," as he was, by the captain of his company for the day.

A few days after—these were Christmas times, or were meant to be so—there was a dinner in another friendly tent. A Samaritan sea-captain had presented a mess with a leg of English mutton, a case of preserved turnips, and a wild duck. Hungry as hunters, the little party assembled at the appointed hour, full of anticipated pleasure and good fare from the fatherland. "Bankes, bring in dinner," said the host, proudly, to his chef de cuisine. The guests were seated—the cover was placed on the table—it was removed with enthusiasm, and, lo! there lay the duck, burnt black, and dry as charcoal, in the centre of a mound of turnips. "I thout vowls wor always ate vurst," was the defence of the wretched criminal, as he removed the sacrifice for the time. Then he brought in the soup, which was excellent, especially the bouilli, but we could not eat soup all night, especially when the mutton was waiting. "Now then, Bankes, bring in the leg of mutton." "The wawt, zur?" "The leg of mutton, and look sharp, do you hear? I hope you have not spoiled that too." "Woy, zur, thee's been 'atin oo't!" The miserable being had actually boiled down the leg of mutton in the soup, having cut large slices off it to make it fit the pot!

We had great fun with the recipes for cooking rations which appeared in the papers. M. Soyer's were good and simple, but every one of them had been found out by experiment months before, and were familiar, however little successful, to every camp cook. The recipes which taught the men how to make rations palatable by the help of a "sliced turkey," nutmegs, butter, flour, spices, and suet, were cruel mockeries. Can any one tell us why the army was compelled to eat salt pork? Why was this the only meat except beef that was served out? The lean was always very hard and tough, and required great care and trouble in cooking to make it masticable—the fat was ever in undue proportion to the lean, and was far too "rich" for a debilitated stomach. Are "pigs" a national institution, to be maintained at any cost? Is the flesh of the bull a part of the constitution? A soldier is a very dear animal. A crop of them is most difficult to raise, and once they have been fully grown, and have become ripe soldiers, they are beyond all price. Had we not abundance of meals in our warehouses, of vegetables, of all kinds of nutritious preparations, to bestow on those who were left to us, and who were really "veterans," for in the narrow limits of one campaign they had epitomized all the horrors, the dangers, and the triumphs of war? The ration, with its accessories of sugar, tea or coffee, tobacco and rice, was sufficient, as long as it was unfailing, and while the army was in full health; but it was not sufficient, or, rather, it was not suitable, when the men were debilitated from excessive labour.

What was the cost to the country of the men of the Brigade of Guards who died in their tents or in hospital of exhaustion, overwork, and deficient of improper nutriment? The brigade mustered in the middle of February very little over 400 men fit for duty. It would have been cheap to have fed the men we had lost on turtle and venison, if we could have kept them alive—and not only those, but the poor fellows whom the battle spared, but whom disease took from us out of every regiment in the expedition. It was the men who were to be pitied—the officers could, in comparison, take care of themselves; they had their bât-horses to go over to Kamiesch and to Balaklava for luxuries; their servants to send for poultry, vegetables, wine, preserved meats, sheep, and all the luxuries of the sutlers' shops; and they had besides abundance of money, for the pay of the subaltern is ample while he is in the field.