Friedrich Engels

Airey

Written between 11 July and 10 August 1857.

From the English.

["The New American Cyclopædia", Vol. I]

Airey
, Sir Richard, Knight of the Order of the Bath, major-general and at present Quartermaster-General of the British army, entered the service as an ensign in 1821, was promoted captain in 1825, lieutenant-colonel in 1851, and as such took command of a brigade in the Army of the East in 1854. In September 1854, shortly before the Crimean expedition sailed from Varna, he was appointed Quartermaster-General of the expeditionary force, and as such belongs to the 6 or 8 officers who have been accused of having, under Lord Raglan's command, destroyed the English army through routine, pretended fulfilment of duty, and lack of sound common sense and energy. Airey had been given the task of laying down the mode of distribution by which the various articles of field equipment—tents, coats, blankets, and boots—were to be issued to the different regiments. By his own admission (before the Chelsea Board of Inquiry),

"from the first week of December 1854 there was not a single day on which a considerable supply of warm clothing was not available at Balaclava, and at the very same time regiments at the front in the trenches were suffering bitter want of those very articles which lay ready for them 7 or 8 miles away."

This, he said, was not his fault, for there had never been the slightest difficulty in obtaining his signature to authorise the receipt of such articles. On the contrary, he prides himself on having shortened and simplified as far as possible the routine process of approving, reducing, or rejecting requisitions addressed to him by divisional or regimental officers.