By Karl Marx

The Misfortune of the 18th of June –

Reinforcements

[“Neue Oder-Zeitung” No. 291, 26 June 1855]

London, 23 June. The 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, was not celebrated in London this time, as was natural. It was to be celebrated in the Crimea by a victory, not against the French, but with the French. The event seemed all the more piquant as Raglan, Wellington’s famulus, was commanding more or less under the orders of a general of Napoleon III. The inscription was ready; only the event that was to immortalise it failed to materialise. In the history of the restored Empire one cannot fail to recognise the fatalistic predilection with which the great dates of the Empire are summoned back to life, affirming success, negating misadventure by a second, improved edition. This glorious resurrection of Napoleonic dates, hitherto successful in the blows against the Republic, comes to grief in the blows against the foreign foe. And the Empire without the Empire’s victories recalls the adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in which not only the melancholy of the Danish prince is missing, but the Danish prince himself. On 2 December 1854 a great feat of arms in the Crimea had been ordered from Paris. It was ruined by an excess of rain and a lack of ammunition. On 18 June 1855 the battle was to be staged before Sevastopol in an improved version and with reversed point. Instead, the first serious defeat of the French-English army occurs.

London is gloomy; the funds have fallen, and Palmerston has lost again in a single day what he had secured by the subtlest tactics in months. The defeats occurred on 18 June; the telegraphic news announces them only on the 22nd. Last Thursday the official “Globe” indicated, at Palmerston’s behest: “nothing serious had occurred”. In the night sitting of the House of Commons on the same date, Palmerston solemnly repeated the same assurance. And now it is established that he had received the telegraphic dispatch as early as 4 o’clock in the afternoon, Wednesday, 20 June. The “Leader” asserts that this was done at the urgent request of Paris, where the misfortune in the field had been turned into a stroke of luck on the Bourse. Be that as it may, the Cockney (a nickname for Londoners) is seriously angry with Palmerston. To be defeated is bad enough. But to be swept away in the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres by the ministers’ perfidy into ridiculous ovations for the capture of Sevastopol – this is too bad, Sir!

We had sufficiently prepared our readers that Pélissier’s obstinate insistence on the storming of the south side presaged disaster for the allied armies. At the same time, when he took over the command, we drew attention to the extenuating circumstance that lack of transport facilities piled up great difficulties for him in operations in the open field. Both are now confirmed by the English press. The “Morning Herald” of today, for example, says:

“The army cannot move into the open field, as it would have to do in accordance with all the rules of strategy, to defeat the relief army at Simferopol. It cannot, because the official grave-diggers, negligence and delay, have again been at their murderous work, and of the 28,000 draught animals we need, only 4,000 to 5,000 are at our disposal; and all this while disease again creeps through a camp which harbours every stimulus for fever, cholera and plague. This inability to move, similar to that at Varna and in the Valley of Death, is the reason why day after day our generals are forced to waste the lives of our troops in desperate assaults upon almost impregnable earthworks, while the high-spirited army that should take the field lies idle on the Chernaya, without cavalry or transport.”

With what refined negligence the Cabinet from the beginning of the war handled the means placed at its disposal is proved once again by just published financial returns. According to this official return, the cash balance of the monies granted for the army on 1 January 1854 amounted to £1,835,882 and the sum expended for the army up to 1 April 1854 only £2,270,000, so that less than 3/4 of the sum voted by Parliament was used for raising troops. And from what, according to the report of the Roebuck committee, did the army perish? From overwork. And whence the overwork? From numerical weakness. The numerical weakness, however, as the financial return shows, was the result of a cabinet intrigue. And Prince Albert complains that the Queen has no troops at her disposal! And that the Cabinet’s hands are tied! How this same Cabinet, while it complained of lack of transport, sent transport ships to Portsmouth via Newcastle-on-Tyne to take on coal there, or from the Clyde to Liverpool and from Deptford to Woolwich, to be inspected by the surveyor (controller of incoming and outgoing ships), has been exposed in the Layard debate.

The misfortunes of the 18th of June have necessitated immediate reinforcement. Accordingly, orders were given yesterday to embark forthwith: the 15th Infantry Regiment, lately returned from Ceylon; the 51st King’s Light Infantry, the 80th and 94th Infantry Regiments, all detachments for India from the various depot companies, and 1,200 cavalry are to proceed immediately to the theatre of war. Telegraphic orders have been despatched to Marseilles to send extra steamers from there to the governors of Malta and Gibraltar and the Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, with the instruction to ship all manpower fit for duty, not only of the garrisons, but also of the reserve of the Household Brigade and all disposable reserve battalions, before the arrival of the relief regiments and militia. The following will immediately set sail: the 13th Light Infantry from Gibraltar, the 31st Infantry from the Ionian Islands, the 48th from Corfu, the 54th from Gibraltar, the 66th from Gibraltar, the 92nd Highlanders from Gibraltar. The British forces in the Crimea will thus be increased by more than 13,000 men. Added to this are 4 field batteries, a body of horse artillery and a reinforcement of the siege train, all of which are ready and only awaiting transport ships. England, for the rest, is in the same situation as in 1854. No reserve army. And worse. In 1854, as the Roebuck report admits, Palmerston prevented and delayed the formation of the militia; but in 1855 he has succeeded in dissolving, as good as, the already formed militia. The reinforcements, as may be seen from the above enumeration, not only absorb the bulk of the army; they swallow up the depot battalions and dissolve the cadres. England thus resembles Montesquieu’s savage who fells the tree to obtain its fruits. The economical country par excellence expends its military capital instead of the interest. This is the result of the cabinet’s manoeuvres, in which Prince Albert demands unconditional trust! Nothing more false than the notion on the Continent that England is too poor in men to put armies into the field. In 1815, after a 22-year war, England had more than 350,000 men under arms! But the cabinet deliberately neglects both means, raising the premium for the standing army, ballot for the militia! What else can be expected of the Premier, for whom Princess Lieven paid his debts in 1827 and whom she appointed Foreign Secretary in 1830, who by the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi secured for Russia an eight-year dictatorship over Turkey, and renewed it in the Dardanelles Treaty eight days before the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi expired?

Yesterday, in the House of Commons, Roebuck gave notice that he would move on 3 July (Tuesday week) the following motion:

“That this House, deeply deploring the sufferings of the army in the Crimea during the winter campaign, and concurring with the report of its committee that the conduct of the Government was the first and chief cause of the calamities which afflicted that army, hereby passes its severe censure upon every member of that Cabinet whose counsels led to such disastrous results.”

Roebuck’s motion thus deliberately includes: Palmerston, Russell, Clarendon, Granville and Lansdowne, members simultaneously of the present and the last Cabinet. The little venomous, Thersites-like, but shrewd and in parliamentary tactics accomplished attorney saw himself compelled to this motion because his Sheffield constituents threatened to visit him, who on Tuesday denounced Palmerston and on Thursday voted his confidence in the same Palmerston, with a vote of no confidence in a public meeting. Prince Albert’s unfortunate meddling between Cabinet and Parliament, his provocation of parliamentary omnipotence, was another motive for this motion, which threatens to deprive the Queen again “of her confidential servants”.

More on the latest deeds and fates of the administrative reformers, as well as on the clerical intrigues, next time.