Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels

[“Neue Oder-Zeitung” No. 327 of July 17, 1855]

London, July 14. In our last but one correspondence <See present volume, pp. 352/53> we treated Lord John Russell’s resignation, voluntary or enforced, as a *fait accompli*. It took place yesterday afternoon, and indeed it is a synthetic resignation, voluntary and enforced at once. Palmerston, namely, drove the most place-hungry section of the Whigs, under the leadership of Bouverie, into a subordinate *émeute*. They declared that they would have to vote for Bulwer’s motion if Lord John did not resign. There was no resisting this. Not content with this high deed, the faithless Whig mob in the lobby of the House of Commons collected signatures for a petition to Palmerston, asking him to induce the Queen to accept Russell’s already submitted resignation. Russell at any rate derives satisfaction from these base manoeuvres – satisfaction at having created a party in his own image.

The resignation of the man who, as Urquhart says, “is in the habit of holding his hands behind his back in order to give himself a moral support,” would hardly affect the continuance of the Cabinet, were the majority of the House of Commons not greedily seizing upon every pretext that allows it to postpone the fate of dissolution. And dissolution of the House is inseparable from the adoption of Bulwer’s motion. If Palmerston remained despite the vote of no confidence, he would have to dissolve; if Derby succeeded him, he too would have to dissolve. The House seems hardly inclined to sacrifice itself on the altar of the country.

Sir George Grey has appointed a commission to investigate the police brutalities. It consists of the recorders <highest criminal judges> of London, Liverpool and Manchester and will open its session next Tuesday.

If time is money in trade, time is victory in war. To let the favourable moment slip, the moment when a superior force can be hurled at the enemy, is the greatest error possible in the conduct of war. This error is doubled when committed not in the defensive, where the consequences of the neglect can be repaired, but in the offensive, in a war of invasion, where such inattentiveness may entail the loss of the army. All these are commonplaces, of which every ensign knows that they are self-evident. And yet no other rule of strategy or tactics is sinned against so often, and it seems as though General Pélissier, the impetuous man of action, the “Marshal Forward” of the Crimean army, were called upon to illustrate in his own person this commonplace neglect of commonplaces.

The road to Sevastopol runs via Inkerman to the north side of the fortress. Pélissier and his staff know that better than anyone. But to gain the north side, the allied army must take the field with its main force, defeat the Russians, invest the north side, and detach a corps to keep the Russian field army at a distance. The favourable moment for this had arrived when the Sardinian corps and the Turks under Omer Pasha arrived. The Allies were then considerably stronger than the Russians. But nothing of the sort happened. The expedition to Kerch and the Sea of Azov was undertaken, and one assault after another attempted. Field operations were confined to reconnaissances and an extension of the camp as far as the opening into the Baidar valley. Now, at last, the alleged reason for this inactivity is revealed:
there is a lack of means of transport,
and after a fifteen months’ campaign the Allies are as nailed to the sea, to Kamiesch and Balaclava, as ever before! This is indeed unsurpassable. The Crimea is no barren isle somewhere at the South Pole. It is a country whose food resources can certainly be exhausted, but which always remains capable of supplying a mass of cattle fodder, draught animals, and carts, if skill and boldness are present to take them. Timid and sluggish movements back and forth within a radius of a few English miles around the Chernaya are of course not the means to get hold of them. But even if we leave the camels, ponies, and arbas <carts> of the Crimea entirely out of account, there remains an abundance of means of transport on the European and Asiatic coasts of the Black Sea, accessible to steamers in two days’ voyage. Why are they not requisitioned for the service of the Allies?

The Russians have in fact given them lessons enough as to how they ought to act. The 3rd, 4th and 5th army corps together with various reserve divisions were transported to the Crimea at a time when the Allies despaired of conveying provisions from Balaclava to the trenches. The troops were in part conveyed on waggons across the steppes, and the lack of food appears to have been crying among them. And yet the country around Perekop is thinly inhabited in a half-circle of 200 miles. But the resources of the more distant provinces were put under contribution, and it is certainly harder to send waggons from Yekaterinoslav, Poltava, Kharkov, etc., to the Russians in the Crimea, than to procure means of transport from Anatolia and Rumelia for the Allies in the Crimea. In any case, the conquest of the Crimea as far as Simferopol was allowed to slip away under the pretext of lack of means of transport. Now matters stand otherwise. The Russians have formed a reserve army for the Crimea between Odessa and Kherson. The strength of this army we can only calculate from the detachments from the Western Army – consisting of the whole of the 2nd army corps and two divisions of grenadiers. This makes altogether 5 divisions of infantry (82 battalions), 1 division of cavalry (32 squadrons) and 80 cannon. Infantry and cavalry reserves are added to this. All losses during the march being taken into account, the army assembled between Odessa and Perekop and destined for the Crimea can therefore be estimated at about 70,000 to 80,000 men. The advance guards of its columns must have passed Perekop by this time already, and before the end of July they will make themselves felt to the Allies.

What have the Allies now to oppose to these reinforcements? Their ranks are again being thinned by cholera and fever no less than by the various assault attempts. The British reinforcements are arriving sluggishly – very few regiments are indeed sailing. The 13,000 men whom we dispatched some time ago <See present volume, p. 320> prove to be a ministerial hoax. The French government for its part declares that it intends to send no fresh divisions, but only detachments from the depots to fill the gaps caused in the theatre of war. If these reinforcements arrive in time, they will scarcely suffice to bring the allied army up to the strength it possessed in June, i.e., to 200,000 men, Turks and Sardinians included. Probably they will bring it to no more than 180,000 men, who will confront at the beginning of August at least 200,000 Russians, in good positions, in command of the country in their rear and in possession of the south side of Sevastopol as a bridgehead. If, under these circumstances, the allied army were again wedged in on the narrow plateau behind the Chernaya, the latter, under the weight of such a human mass, would be turned into a churchyard.

The time for taking the field has not yet been lost. The best moment has certainly passed, but nonetheless a bold advance even now would secure a wider space of existence for the allied army. But it does not appear as though they thought of employing this chance.

In justification of Pélissier it may finally be adduced that public opinion here as in Paris seeks and finds in the interference of Louis Bonaparte, the general from a distance, the explanatory ground of all the misery of the second Crimean campaign.