Immediately after the battle of the Alma,’ and the march of the 
Allies on Balaklava, we expressed the opinion that the ultimate 
result of the Crimean campaign must depend on which of the 
contending parties should first bring up new forces sufficient to 
render it superior to its antagonist in numbers and efficiency.’ 
The aspect of affairs has, since then, greatly altered, and many 
illusions have been destroyed; but, throughout the whole time, 
both the Russians and the Allies have been engaged in a sort of 
steeple-chase at reenforcements, and, in this effort, we are 
compelled to say that the Russians have the advantage. In spite of 
all the boasted improvements in mechanical skill and the means of 
transport, three or five hundred miles of road are still far easier 
traversed by an army of Russian barbarians than two thousand 
miles of sea by an army of highly-civilized French and English— 
especially when the latter make it a point to neglect all the 
advantages which their high civilization places at their disposal, 
and when the Russian barbarians can afford to lose two men to 
the Allies’ one, without impairing their ultimate superiority. 

But what can be in store for the Allies when one of their 
armies—the British—despairing of being destroyed by the Rus- 
sians, deliberately sets about destroying itself with a systematic 
consistency, an eagerness, and a success which beat all its former 
achievements in any line whatever? Yet such is the case. The 
British force, we are now informed, has ceased to exist as an army. 
There are a few thousand men left, under arms, out of 54,000, 

but they themselves are reported “fit for duty” merely because 
there is no hospital-room for them to die in. Of the French, some 
50,000 may be still under arms, out of twice that number; and, at 
all events, they have managed to keep in a serviceable state at least 
five times as many, in proportion, as the British. But what are fifty 
or sixty thousand men to hold the Heracleatic Chersonese the 
winter through; to keep Sevastopol blockaded on the south side; 
to defend the trenches, and—what may be left of them—to take 
the offensive in spring? 

For the present, the British have ceased to send reenforcements. 
In fact Raglan, despairing of his army, does not appear to wish for 
any, not knowing how to feed, house and employ even what is left 
to him. The French may be preparing a fresh set of divisions for 
embarkation in March, but they have plenty to do to prepare 
against the eventuality of a great continental spring campaign, and 
there are ten chances to one that what they send will either be too 
weak or come too late. To remedy this state of things two steps 
have been taken, both of which denote the utter helplessness of 
the Allies to avert the fate which seems inevitably, though slowly, 
to approach their armies in the Crimea. First, in order to redress 
the colossal blunder of having attempted this expedition four 
months too late, they commit the incommensurably greater 
blunder of sending to the Crimea, four months after their own 
arrival, and in the depth of winter, the only remnant of a decent 
army which Turkey still possesses. That army which was already 
being ruined and dissolving itself at Shumla under the neglect, 
incapacity and corruption of the Turkish Government, once 
landed in the Crimea, will melt away, by cold and hunger, at 
a ratio which will put to the blush even the achievements of 
the English War-Office in this branch—that is, if the Russians have 
the sense to leave the Turks, for a time, to themselves, without 
attacking thera. If the weather permits an attack they will be 
destroyed at once, though at a greater cost to the Russians, and 
with hardly any advantage, except a moral one. 

Then the Allies have taken into their pay—for that is the only 
way to express it—fifteen to twenty thousand Piedmontese, who 
are to fill up the thinned ranks of the British army, and to be fed 
by the British Commissariat. The Piedmontese showed themselves 
brave and good soldiers in 1848 and ’49. Being mostly moun- 
taineers, they possess an infantry which, for skirmishing and 
fighting in broken ground, is naturally adapted in even a higher 
degree than the French, while the plains of the Po furnish cavalry 
soldiers whose tall, well-proportioned stature reminds one of the 

crack regiments of British horse. They have, besides, not passed 
through the severe campaigns of the revolution without profit. 
There is no doubt that these two Piedmontese divisions will turn 
out as good a “foreign legion” as will figure in this war. But what 
are these light-footed, agile, handy little fellows to do under the 
command of an old British martinet,? who has no idea of 
maneuvering, and who expects nothing from his soldiers but the 
dogged stubbornness which is the glory and at the same time the 
only military quality of the British soldier? They will be placed in 
positions unsuited to their mode of fighting; they will be 
prevented from doing what they are fit for, while they will be 
expected to do things which no sensible man would ever set them 
to. To lead a British army in that senseless, point-blank, stupid 
way to the slaughter-house, as was done at the Alma, may be the 
shortest way to make them settle the business before them. The 
old Duke” generally took matters quite as easy. German troops 
may be made to do the same thing, although the high military 
education of German officers will not stand such want of 
generalship in the long run. But to attempt such things with a 
French, Italian or Spanish army—with troops essentially fitted for 
light-infantry duty, for maneuvering, for taking advantage of the 
ground—with troops whose efficiency, in a great measure, is 
made up by the agility and quick glance of every individual 
soldier—such a clumsy system of warfare will never do. The poor 
Piedmontese, however, will probably be spared the trial of fighting 
in the English way. They are to be fed by that notorious body, the 
British Commissariat, which could never feed anybody but 
themselves. Thus they will share the fate of the fresh arrivals of 
British troops. Like them, they will die at the rate of a hundred a 
week, and furnish three times that number to the hospitals. If 
Lord Raglan thinks that the Piedmontese will stand his and his 
Commissaries’ incapacity as quietly as the British troops, he will 
find himself sadly mistaken. There are none but British and 
Russians who would remain in submission under such cir- 
cumstances; and, we must say, it is not to the credit of their 
national character. 

The probable development of this melancholy campaign—as 
melancholy and bleak as the muddy plateau of Sevastopol—will be 
this: The Russians, when fully concentrated, and when the 
weather permits, will probably attack the Turks of Omer Pasha 

first. This is expected by British, French and Turks, so well aware 
are they of the unenviable position assigned to the latter; it shows, 
at all events, that the Turks are sent to the North with open eyes; 
and no better proof of the desperate condition of the Allies can be 
conceived than is contained in this involuntary admission of their 
own Generals. That the Turks will be beaten may be taken for 
certain. Then what will be the fate of the allied and Piedmontese 
armies? The bluster about an assault on Sevastopol is now pretty 
much abandoned. On this head we find in the London Times of 
Feb. 6, a letter from Col. E. Napier, to the effect that if the Allies 
attack the south side of Sevastopol, they will most likely get into it; 
but they will be pounded into dust by the overwhelming fire of 
the north forts and batteries, and at the same time besieged by the 
Russian army in the field. That army, he says, should first have 
been defeated, and then both the north and south sides of the 
place invested. As an instance in point, he recalls the fact that 
the Duke of Wellington twice raised the siege of Badajoz, in 
order to march against a relieving army.’ Col. Napier is quite 
right, and the Tribune said quite as much, at the time of the famous 
flank march to Balaklava.* As to the Allies getting into Sevastopol, 
however, he appears to overlook the peculiar nature of the Rus- 
sian defenses, which make it impossible to carry the place at 
one single assault. There are first, outworks, then the main 
rampart, and behind this the buildings of the town converted into 
redoubts; streets barricaded, squares of houses loopholed; and, 
finally, the loopholed rear walls of the strand-forts, every one 
of which, in succession, will require a separate attack—perhaps a 
separate siege, and even mining operations. But beside all this, the 
successful sorties of the Russians of late have sufficiently proved 
that the town has been approached to a point where the forces of 
the opponents are fully balanced, and the attack deprived of any 
superiority except in point of artillery. As long as sorties cannot be 
made impossible, all idea of an assault is preposterous; the 
besieger who cannot confine the besieged to the space of the 
actual fortress, is much less able to take that fortress by a 
hand-to-hand encounter. 

Thus, the besiegers will continue to vegetate in their camp. 
Confined to it by weakness and the Russian army in the field, they 
will continue to melt away, while the Russians are bringing up 

fresh forces; and unless the new British Ministry brings into play 
some quite unexpected resources, the day must come when 
British, French, Piedmontese and Turks are swept from Crimean 
soil. 

Written about February 9, 1855 Reproduced from the newspaper