[News from France]

[“Neue Oder-Zeitung” No. 457, 1 October 1855]

London, September 27. The reports of Generals Simpson, Pélissier and Niel, but in particular also the letters of the English newspaper correspondents in the Crimea, constitute a vast body of material, the critical sifting of which requires time. We can therefore only enter in greater detail into the events of the 7th and 8th September in our next correspondence. So much, however, may be remarked: that the English press, and almost unanimously, is with justice damning in its verdict on General Simpson and the senior English commanders directing operations under him. The witticism current in the Russian army: “L’armée anglaise est une armée des lions, commandée des ânes” (The English army is an army of lions, commanded by donkeys) was fully borne out in the storming of the Redan. A London paper is demanding a new Sevastopol Committee, forgetting that the wretched leadership of the English army is the inevitable product of the rule of an antiquated oligarchy. From the very outset all arrangements were faulty. The English trenches were still so far (250 yards) from the ditch of the Redan that the troops had to traverse more than a quarter of an hour, uncovered, under the enemy’s guns, and arrived out of breath. French engineers had drawn attention to this drawback beforehand; but the English side replied:

“If we advance a few yards, we come to an angle which will expose us to the enfilading fire of the Flagstaff Bastion and great loss.”

For one thing, this risk of loss was indisputably less than that of exposing the troops during the assault. For another, the enfilading fire could have been met partly by traverses and curving the trenches, partly by erecting counter-batteries. All the French remonstrances, however, foundered on Simpson’s thick-skinned obstinacy. Furthermore, while the French trenches were wide, spacious and capable of holding and of masking, not only enormous forces, the English trenches were narrow and so constructed that every somewhat stout Briton instantly drew the attention of the Russian staff upon himself. The great distance the English troops had to cover then caused them, on reaching the object of the attack, instead of going directly at the enemy, first to seek cover and to engage in a musketry fire that gave the Russians time to rally. How wretched all the arrangements were is shown also by the fact that, after the English troops had seized the rampart, no thought was given to spiking the Russian cannon mounted on it. Neither were men provided with the necessary implements assigned to them for this purpose, nor artillerymen, who would have managed the job without special tools. The palm, however, goes to General Simpson’s tactical dispositions before and during the storm. (During the storm, as we see from a [report of a] correspondent of the “Daily News”, Simpson, suffering from a cold, wrapped in a large hooded cloak, sat in an armchair in the Greenhill Battery.) He had detached against the formidable Redan, against which the attacks of the English had been breaking for six months, a storming party of 200 men, a covering party of 320 men and an entire operating force of no more than 1,000 men. After the English had broken through the salient angle of the Redan, they were exposed to the murderous fire of the redoubt, which had been turned into a keep, and of the casemates lying on the flanks behind it. Had they been present in sufficient numbers, they could have turned the redoubt, which would have rapidly put an end to the fight. But reinforcements did not come up, although Colonel Windham sent for them urgently three times and finally had to go in search for them in person. Thus the troops remained on the parapet for three deadly hours, twice penetrated into the interior, only to be butchered piecemeal uselessly, and finally had to retire in great disorder. The feebleness of the forces with which Simpson, who had more than twenty times the number of troops required at his disposal, originally undertook the assault, the holding back of the necessary reserves during the action, the useless and wanton sacrifice of the brave stormers – all this constitutes one of the greatest scandals known in modern military history. Under the first Napoleon, Simpson would infallibly have been brought before a court-martial.

On the Continent, and rightly so, polemics have been directed against the evil of patrimonial jurisdiction. The unpaid English magistracy, however, is nothing more than a modernised form of patrimonial jurisdiction with a constitutional gloss. Read the following literal extract from an English provincial paper:

“Last Tuesday, Nathaniel Williams, an elderly agricultural labourer, was brought before a magistrates’ bench at Worcester and fined 5 shillings and 13 shillings costs, because he had mowed a small quantity of wheat, belonging to himself, on Sunday, August 26. He pleaded that the work had been necessary, that the wheat would have been spoilt had he left it standing longer, that he had been employed by his master from early morning till late at night during the week. It was all to no avail. The magistrates, plentifully interlarded with Reverends, remained inexorable.”

Just as here the parson sits in judgement in his own cause, so do the factory owner, the squire and the other privileged classes who make up the unpaid magistracy.

From a private letter of an Englishman (a Whig) residing in Paris we extract the following:

“Today’s (dated September 24) bellicose article in the ‘Constitutionnel’ seems to greatly dispirit the Paris bourgeoisie; and in three different quarters, all, however, of great commercial importance, I heard the same remarks, almost in the same words. There you are! For almost a year we were told that once Sevastopol was taken it would be possible to open peace negotiations. Now that Sevastopol is taken, we are told it is a purely military factor, and that peace is not to be thought of until the whole Crimea has fallen. Thus it will go on, and heaven knows when peace will come. All this was brought forward in the utmost dejection. To be fair, it must be admitted that, apart from the question of national glory, the present war is inconvenient to France for many reasons. The autumn returns prove every week to be worse than had been supposed the week before. Bread, for instance, at this moment costs 26 sous for the four-pound loaf in Rouen, which is the equivalent of 3 francs or 60 sous in Paris. In Bordeaux the municipal council has already been compelled to vote a large sum in relief in case the four-pound loaf should rise to 1 franc, which in the Gironde is considered a famine price. This state of things is gradually manifesting itself over the whole surface of the country. The internal condition of France is therefore extremely alarming; the partisans of the revolution are scattered over the country in appalling numbers, and if the distress becomes too unbearable, they may rally thousands around their banners. The new organisation of the departmental and municipal councils was a colossal blunder: the system works fatally. In many departments no departmental council exists at this moment, and the mayors appointed by the government are now constantly compelled to dissolve their municipal councils. Almost every day one can read the official announcement that the mayor of this or that town has dissolved the municipal council or prefect so-and-so has dissolved the general council. The reasons are not published; but the fact, although no public comments on it are permitted, nonetheless agitates the department in which it occurs. This would make the presence of older and more tried soldiers desirable in many places.”