Public attention was now riveted closely on the war, to the absolute exclusion of all other topics. Intelligence of all kinds was eagerly demanded; and those whose business it is to supply the want, could, with all their efforts, scarcely write up to the demand. Private correspondence from the seat of war was eagerly sought and extensively published, and columns set apart for “Letters from the Camp;” the special correspondence of the daily press was copied into other journals; leading articles in periodicals daily, weekly, and monthly, were founded on the information thus received, and the exaggerated statements were sometimes coloured still more highly; and popular opinion, thus originated and formed, began to exercise so powerful a pressure on the Parliament and the Government, that a glance at its sources becomes especially important.
It is useless to argue the question of whether it is on the whole more advantageous to publish or to suppress intelligence of the projected operations, or the state of the army, since the public curiosity on these heads will continue to be gratified at all hazards. The best means were adopted for obtaining intelligence, and conveying it in a pleasant form. The special correspondents of the newspapers are of course men of great ability. No expense or trouble would be spared to secure writers capable of satisfying the high requirements of the daily press; and their letters from the camp display great literary power. As pictures of life in the field, their correspondence is of the greatest value; as a guide to public opinion on the progress of the war, we may, without offence, consider it far less satisfactory. No one pretends that these gentlemen possessed either any exclusive means of obtaining information, or any aptitude for judging of the nature, progress, and success of the operations they witnessed, beyond that which any intelligent spectator might claim. The language in which they talk of the operations of the campaign is rather a military slang than the technical expression of military art, and resembles the latter only as the work of a poetaster resembles that of a poet. Nothing would be easier than to make a collection of leading articles founded on the information thus derived, and show them to be a mere jumble of absurdity. Yet this was the kind of writing which, by appealing to a circle of readers sufficiently large to constitute the public, exercised an important effect on the administration of the war. Very different was the style of an article which appeared in the Moniteur, descriptive of the conduct of the campaign, the facts of which were supplied apparently from public documents, and which was evidently written by a man of military attainments.
It would be scarcely fair to criticise closely the letters of officers, which, intended only for the perusal of their friends at home, were often, by the indiscretion of those friends, and to the annoyance of the writers, made public. It is a very common and excusable weakness for a man to avail himself, perhaps unconsciously, of a little exaggeration in the incidents he describes, when by so doing he may become a greater hero to the domestic circle; an exaltation which, far from doing harm to any one, forms one of the cases where it is delightful to be imposed on. Each family that has a member serving with the army, sees but one figure in the foreground of every scene of the campaign. In success the figure is a hero, in time of suffering a martyr. Every one likes to appear in the former character; but there were some who, during the most trying period of the campaign, too solicitous for sympathy, gave vent to lamentations which, if fortitude under privation be a virtue, must be considered unsoldierlike and unmanly.
Upon such correspondence were founded the lucubrations of those writers at home who undertook to instruct us on the war; and if military science be necessary to a right understanding of military affairs, they must be admitted to be deficient in an important element. We put the case hypothetically, because, if military science be necessary to a right understanding of military affairs, many of our self-constituted teachers must be convicted of presumptuous absurdity. Men who would never think of interfering with the most obscure country doctor in his treatment of their sick friend—who would trust blindly to their legal adviser in a question threatening character or property—who employ architects to plan their houses, and masons to build them, and, if the structure do not answer their expectations, never think of insinuating that they could have done it better themselves, are all ready to originate or amend the plan of a campaign, to censure those intrusted with its conduct, and to interfere in its most technical particulars. Clergymen, whose warfare has hitherto been waged only with the enemy of mankind, expatiate largely on the best mode of annoying our material foe; doctors abandon the study of the nervous for that of the military system; and Satan’s occupation of finding mischief for idle hands is for the present gone; for every idler thinks himself competent to discuss and advise in a military question. Modest men, diffident of giving opinions even on subjects open to general discussion, may be heard in all companies, praising and condemning with the confidence of the most accomplished critics. All are ready to quote in support of their views the opinions of the most celebrated generals; yet, while mentioning them with the greatest respect, seem to think that excellence in the profession in which they earned their reputation is attainable by the lowest capacity. A certain degree of reserve is generally practised by those who undertake to instruct the public on topics of popular interest, but no man seems to doubt the genuineness of his inspiration on any present, past, or future phase of the war; and in pamphlet, letter, or leader, he hastens to impart his light.
While regarding the pretensions of these tacticians and strategists as about as respectable as those of barber-surgeons in pharmacy, inspired cobblers in religion, or gypsies in divination, we do not think that any amount of study or previous training renders a man’s opinions really valuable, unless he has personally visited the scene of war, and is acquainted with the topographical features of the theatre of operations. Such an acquaintance as we speak of, neither descriptions nor maps can adequately afford. We have known instances where military men of great ability or experience, whose attention had been closely riveted on the conduct of the war, entertained ideas respecting the feasibility of certain operations, which an hour’s glance at the ground would at once have convinced them were erroneous, and which they relinquished after conversing with officers from the Crimea.
Having thus glanced at the unsatisfactory nature of the grounds on which the public form opinions on the war, we may point out some of the errors most strongly persisted in. Up to the present time, referring to the Russian attack on the Turkish outposts before Balaklava, it is constantly asserted that the loss of the Woronzoff road, which the presence of the Russians on the neighbouring ridge of hills rendered too precarious for the transport of convoys, was a principal cause of the subsequent disasters and sufferings of the army. Now the Woronzoff road is nowhere less distant than between three or four miles from Balaklava; and the intervening space is as badly adapted for the construction of a road as any part of the plains or heights,—worse indeed than most; so that, until it is shown that we possessed the means of uniting Balaklava with the Woronzoff road by a practicable road, we cannot be proved to have suffered materially by the presence of the Russians there. Liprandi’s movement, in occupying these hills, is generally regarded as a stroke of generalship, creditable to him, and damaging to the Allies; but it would be difficult to point to any commensurate effect resulting from his movement; while many officers—General Bosquet, we believe, among the rest—considered he had laid himself open to a defeat; and on a subsequent view of the ground, at the reconnaissance made by Omer Pasha in April, regrets were loudly expressed by both French and English that Liprandi should have been permitted to decamp unmolested.[[16]]
Another delusion which took complete possession of the public was, that Balaklava was constantly in peril, and that the Russians could easily attack it. The map showed a road from thence along the coast towards Yalta, and it was supposed the enemy could approach it in that direction. But this road, narrow, stony, and broken, was naturally very difficult even for field-artillery, and was easily to be rendered totally impracticable; while the right of the intrenchments surrounding Balaklava, crossing this road, with two advanced stockades looking upon a deep and narrow glen on one side, and the sea-cliffs on the other, along which the path wound precariously, rendered a successful attack impossible. Thus Balaklava could only be attacked in front directly down the valley; on entering which, supposing the intrenchments to be won, the enemy would have found themselves in a defile, with steep rocky sides; in their front the harbour, and in their rear the plain stretching to the Tchernaya, across which the Allies, descending in superior force from the plateau, might throw themselves, and so enclose the assailants.
More lately, the public has been persuaded that a direct advance against the Russian position was practicable; and that, if it were deemed unadvisable so to attack the position, it might easily be turned. Consequently, the advance of the French to the Belbek, after the conclusion of the siege, was watched with extreme interest at home, and great disappointment was felt when no result was attained. Yet those on the spot who had viewed the ground could have entertained no expectation of any success—must rather, indeed, have felt satisfaction that the French right, after being so extended, was withdrawn without disaster within the range surrounding the valley of Baidar. For if the reader, taking his map, will trace the line of heights extending from Inkermann by Mackenzie’s Farm to the Belbek, and will then imagine them to terminate at top in a steep perpendicular wall of chalky cliff, supporting the large plateau extending all round to the Belbek valley, on which the Russians were encamped—and will also observe that the one path up the plateau is guarded by the enemy, and the few narrow defiles which penetrate the heights are also held by them—he will have no difficulty in perceiving that to extend the Allied right was to give the enemy an opportunity, instantly perceived from their exalted point of view, of concentrating at the required point a superior force, marching through the defiles, and cutting off, or directly attacking, the French corps operating in advance.
These errors, although mortifying, and rendering the public unreasonably dissatisfied, produced no other ill consequences. But there have been other delusions, as obstinately maintained, the unfortunate results of which are but too visible. Such is the constant comparison to our disadvantage drawn between ourselves and the French. This is obviously a delicate subject to deal with, when an endeavour to be just to ourselves must almost necessarily offend our allies, whose own tact and good feeling have prevented them from adopting even the faintest echo of the depreciatory clamour raised by our countrymen, and would be ill repaid by invidious remarks. Yet surely we may be allowed to remind our readers that, in all the actions in the field during the earlier stage of the campaign, the English bore the brunt of the battle. Without offence, too, we may point to the records of the siege to prove that the French suffered repulses, on more than one occasion, no less sanguinary and discouraging than ours from the Redan: such, for instance, as the attack on the hills known afterwards as the White Works, east of Careening Bay, where our allies were defeated with slaughter, and did not renew the attack. Nor do we see any impolicy in asking what would have been the feeling in England, judging from its expression since, if it had been our batteries, instead of those of the French, which were silenced after a few hours’ fire at the commencement of the siege on the 17th of October? What indignation! what sarcasm! what abuse of our generals, engineers, and artillery! what glowing caustic eulogies of our gallant allies, depicted as maintaining the contest single-handed, and generously continuing their own fire to save their crushed and discomfited coadjutors from total ruin, though the ammunition, so scarce then in the trenches, and so painfully accumulated, was thereby expended without hope of success! Had the reverse of this picture at that time been drawn, it would have been highly impolitic, but perfectly true. And let us also allude to the report, which we believe to be an arrant falsehood, of English soldiers being protected from the first rigours of winter by French uniforms—and to the utter and apparently systematic disregard of all aid conferred by us on our allies—to show the important nature of which, we need only remind our readers of the number of powerful guns, and the vast quantities of ammunition, with which we, at various periods of the siege, furnished the French batteries. Too little stress has also been laid on the superiority we may venture to claim for the fire of our artillery throughout the siege: a superiority always apparent to those who watched the practice of the batteries from commanding points. That the services of our siege-artillery were appreciated by the French, is evident from the published despatch of Sir Richard Dacres, where it is stated that the assistance rendered by our fire was often warmly acknowledged by the French commanders. But where, in press or people, are we to expect the echoes of applause?
Again, to pass from particular instances to a wider field, let us inquire into the grounds of the preference so invariably and strenuously shown for the French military system, as having proved itself very superior to our own. Where, we would ask, is the evidence of this superiority? Has it appeared in the production of great generals? We really believe the French army would be as much puzzled as the English to select a man, young, enterprising, experienced, scientific, and sagacious, to be to it a tower of strength, and an assurance of victory. We know the English regimental officers to be younger than the French, whose system entails the existence of old subalterns and venerable captains: we know that ours are no less gallant than theirs: nor can an instance be pointed out where our discipline has appeared to disadvantage beside theirs. Let us at once record our opinion that no troops in Europe are more subordinate, better disciplined, or better led, than ours—and we will not do the gallant gentlemen who lead them the wrong to suppose that a different education, or a larger infusion from the ranks, would tend to exalt the valour or the morale of our army.