The Press. — London, England, 1855-06-23 00:00:00

During the night repeated attacks, six in all, were made upon our men iu the quarries, who defended their new acquisition with the utmost courage and pertinacity, and at a great sacrifice of life, against superior numbers, con tinually replenished. June 8. June 9, Twelve o'clock. At this last moment I bear it stated that the Russians are carrying shot and shell off to the other side of the har bour—that may mean that they are getting ready for a bolt, a la bonne heure—may it prove true. Last night passed quietly—that is to say, so far as attacks on either side were concerned—but the shelling was micessively heavy during the whole time. Russian prisoners and deserters represent their lose in these battles as enormous. 25,000 men are spoken of as their loss since the reopening of the bombardment; 15,000 alone during the attack the other day. There is a truce to-day for the burying of the dead on both sides. The following official despatches had been pr viously received from Lord Raglan : Before Sebastopol, June 5, 1855. I have great satisfaction in informing your lordship that I received intelligence the night before last of the evacua tion of Soujak Kale by the Russians on the 28th ult. It appears that previously to their retirement from the place the troops destroyed the principal buildings and the armament, which consisted of about sixty heavy guns and six mortars, and it is concluded that they have joined the garrison of Anapa, from whence many of the inhabitants have removed. Sir Edmund Lyons has been so good as to send me the detached report of the naval operations in the Sea of Azoff, which will reach England either before or at the same time as this despatch. They reflect the highest credit on Captain Lyons of the Miranda, and the officers and men serving under his orders, and are remarkable for the intel ligence, gallantry, and judgment with which they have been conducted ; and it is a matter of much grain ation, which will be peculiarly felt by her Majesty, that whilst great injury has been inflicted on the enemy in the loss of resources of every description, the most brilliant and wawonted success has been achieved in an incredibly short tame with only one casualty, and that not of a serious assure. _ . _ These gallant exploits of the navy have spread joy in our camps, and afforded vast satisfaction to every indi vidual in the army. A body of French troops, under the command of General Morris and General Canrobert, and a column of the Sar dinian corps, under General de la Marmora, made a recon naissance on Balder, on the morning of the 3rd. The former proceeded along the Woronzow road, and pushed their cavalry several miles beyond Binder ; the latter operated on the left, through a mountainous district, and advanced into Bidder, after a fatiguing march. Only a small number of Cossacks showed themselves. Nothing has occurred in front of the town. 1 inclose the return of casualties to the 3rd instant inclusive. _ June 5. I am deeply concerned to have to inform your lordship that. Rear• Admiral Boxer died on board the Jason last night, outside the harbour of Balaklava, after a very short illness. He was removed to that ship in the hope that the pure sea air might prove beneficial to him ; but this expectation was not fulfilled. His malady made rapid progress, and early in the afternoon of yesterday it was intimated to me that his life was despaired of. His nephew died of cholera last week, and this melan choly event so deeply affected him that his health at once gave way, and he sunk under the same disease. It is well known that this officer devoted his whole life to the public service. Since he undertook the appoint ment of Admiral Superintendent of the harbour of Bala klava be has applied himself incessantly to the discharge of his arduous duties, exposing himself in all weathers ; and he has rendered a most essential service to the army Jr/ improving the landing-places and establishing wharfs gate west side of the port, whereby the disembarkation ,Wltbores and troops has been greatly accelerated, and Leternmunications with the shore have been rendered much easier. June 5. have the honour to inclose a letter from the Inspector. General of Hospitals forwarding the weekly state of the sick of the army. The cholera has sensibly diminished in the camps before Sebastopol, but it has attacked the Guards and the 31st Regiment, near lialaklava, and some of the new batteries, as well as the followers of the army in that town. It is hoped that the disease will pass from them as it has from the stations where it first appeared. I am grieved to have to say that it has fallen heavily on the Sardinian Contingent, and that General de la Marmots is in great anxiety about it. lam rendering him all the assistance in my power. Whilst writing to your lordship an officer has brought me a letter from him, announcing that his brother, General de la Marmora, who commands his second division, has been very severely attacked. He has been accomodated with a quarter at Kadikoi, and every attention shall be paid him. RAGLAN. THE ARMY WORKS CORPS. Under this title a body of men are now organised for immediate service at the seat of war, where they relieve the troops from a long series of severe and most harassing duties. The corps is 1,000 strong at present, brut will probably be increased if found to answer the ob jects for which it has been formed. There are MOO " navvies " organised into gangs of twenty-five. seventy carpenters and smiths, and silty-five artificers. including in that term shoemakers, tailors, harnessmakera, barbers, aid other special crafts. The staff consists of a chief othcer,hir. Doyne, who is a civil engineer of high promise ; THE PRESS. a superintendent of works, Mr. Pope, who has participated in some of the most remarkable undertakings that have been executed in this country; six assistant-superinten dents, all tried men; a superintendent of stores and com missariat supplies, a secretary, paymaster, chaplain, two surgeons, and a dresser; au assistant-storekeeper, five clerks, eleven foremen, and two gangers. The corps strictly preserves its civil character, having no uniform, being engaged during the continuance of the war as for any ordinary job, entitled to neither pension nor honours, and not expected or bound to take any share whatever in the fighting. The men, however, have not hesitated to engage to work under fire, they consent to place them selves under the provisions of the Mutiny Act, and while they are under the supreme and absolute direction of Mr. Doyne, he takes his orders from Sir Harry Jones and Lord Raglan. None of the suhordinate authorities of the army, except the head of the Royal Engineers, will be en titled to exercise control over the corps, and in his case it must be done through the chief. The duties which they will have to discharge may, perhaps, best be described under the rather vague term of making themselves "generally useful ; " as among the objects of the corps are the formation of siege or field works, the construction of bridges, the making and repairing roads, building huts, erecting and striking tents, draining and cleansing the sites of encampments, sinking wells, digging grave-pits, mending damaged materials of all kinds, and, in fact, doing a multitude of " odd jobs," the inability to attend to which is one of the chief causes why in military operations in the field there is such a waste of things indispensable to the efficiency and success of troops. Respecting the equipment of the new corps, there is a good deal which is worthy of special notice. The means of shelter and of cooking, the clothing and land transport provided, are all excellent, and the greatest care, inventive skill, and forethought have been exercised in making them as perfect as possible. It was justly considered a matter of primary importance to obtain tents of such improved construction, and so fitted internally, as to afford substan tial guarantees for the health of the men. Accordingly, for each gang of twenty-five a tent of the bell shape, but three or four times larger than that used by the Ordnance, has been supplied. The top is furnished with an umbrella ventilator of metal, which can be raised or lowered at plea sure, and will secure a good and wholesome atmosphere at all times to the inmates. The tent pole is of metal tubing, in pieces, and so arranged as to form the chimney to the cooking-stove if desired, or otherwise to assist in the ventilation. Round the interior aie ranged in a circle twenty-five very lightly-framed bedsteads of angle iron, which lift the men off the damp ground, fold up in the simplest manner, and are so clntrived that the sacking at one end, by giving it a slight elevation, forms a comfort able pillow. They each weigh only 191 b., yet they have ample strength to bear the burly, stalwart fellows who are to sleep on them. It will give some idea of the spacious character of the tents when we state that, with the bed steads in their places, a clear space of eighteen feet diameter is left unoccupied in the centre. The cooking-stove sent out with each gang is so arranged as to burn any kind of fuel and boil or steam for a mess of thirty at least. Every navvy takes out with him in a bag a well-selected kit, adapted both for warm weather and cold, and not too bulky, nor containing a single superfi nous articl e. With respect to the land transport arrangements of the corps, they present several important improvements upon ordinary military practice. Light one-horse carts are made, weighing only ficwt. 41b., with the shafts, by a clever de , vice, converted into strong yet excellent springs, and the whole so well balanced as to render the draught as easy as possible for the animal. These carts seem admirably adapted for the purpose which they are intended to serve, and might advantageously be used as a pattern for the general land transport service of the army. They would make at a pinch very fair ambulances, and, contrasted with the lumbering springless waggons of the French equipage mililaire, their superiority is in every way conspicuous. Every gang will have a cart, which, when loaded with tent, bedsteads, stove, and all appurtenances, will not weigh more than 141 cwt.—a very moderate load to draw. Such are the leading features in the equipment of the new corps, which is immediately to take its departure for the East in ships provided with every suitable arrangement for the comfort of the men by W. S. Lindsay and Co. The care and skill with which the corps has been organised, and the many improvements introduced in its equipment, are entirely due to Sir Joseph Paxton, who was the first to call attention to the valuable aid which might thus be rendered to the army, and who was intrnsted by Lord Panmure with the task which he has ably and gratuitously executed. Lord Panmure went down to Sydenham on Wednesday morning to satisfy himself by a personal inspection that the organisation and equipment of the c rps were complete. In the wounds of the Crystal Palace he examined every detail of the arrangements, and had the staff presented to him by Sir Joseph Paxton, and addressed suceessively to them and to such of the navvies as were present on the oceasion a few words of encouragement and advice. Ilia lordship expressed great confidence in the success of the undertaking, which he had closely at heart, and in which he considered his reputation as Minister of War to be involved. MAJOR NAsmrrit, the gallant colleague of the brave and lamented Butler in the defence of Silistria, has been appointed to the office of Assistant-Adjutant General of the Kilkenny military distric:, until suffi ciently restored to health to return to the seat of war. THE Irish claim General Pelissier as the son of a countryman. It is said that his father was a Limerick gentleman, a Mr. Palisser, who was obliged to fly from Ireland during the troubles of 1798. REAR-ADMIRAL CHARLES H. FREMANTLE has been selected by the Admiralty to succeed Rear-Admiral Boxer at Balaklava. SATURDAY, REPORT OF THE SEBASTOPOL INQUIRY COMMIT fE E. THIS document, after a prolonged discussion and frequent deliberations among the members of the committee, was finally agreed to on Monday last. Upon that same evening the paper was laid on the table of the house, and, upon the motion of Mr. Disraeli, read very audibly by the Clerk at the table, so as to give the members, who were very numerously in attendance, the earliest possible information of its contents. The report thus presented is exceedingly voluminous, the committee having analysed the enormous mass of evidence collected during their many sittings, recapitulating the points of chief force and importance, and presenting the conclusions at which they arrived upon a variety of administrative and executive departments, both of the civil and military services. Our limits prevent us from giving more than a bare skeleton of the results arrived at in this report. The committee begin by setting forth the ditticulties of the task and the distribution of the topics presented for investigation : The complicated nature of this inquiry, the variety of subjects investigated, the number of witnesses examined, and the frequent inconsistency and contrariety of the evidence, render it no easy task tc present a clear, definite, and just exposition of the matters submitted to your com mittee. The difficulty of this task has been enhanced by the impossibility of summoning some persons as witnesses who might have furnished important information. From the same cause some persons are left under imputations, in regard to which your committee regret that they can pronounce no conclusive opinion. The fulness of the investigation has, moreover. been restricted by considera tions of State policy, so that in the outset of this report your committee must admit that they have been compelled to end an inquiry which they have been unable satisfac torily to complete. Having offered this preliminary explanation, your com mittee will endeavour to state, as shortly as the subject will allow, the opinions which they have formed in regard to the following heads of this inquiry, viz.:- 1. The condition of our army before Sebastopol. 2. The conduct of the departments, both at home and abroad, whose duty it has been to minister to the wants of that army. On the first head very brief observations are Trade, the subject being treated in ample detail when the departmental performances and failures came under consideration. As a general conclusion it is remarked : An army encamped in a hostile country, at a distance of 3,000 miles from England, and engaged during a severe winter in besieging a fortress which, from want of numbers, it could not invest, was necessarily plated in a situation where unremitting fatigue and hardship had to be endured. Your committee are, however, of opinion that this amount of unavoidable suffering has been aggravated by causes hereafter enumerated, and which are mainly to be attri buted to dilatory and insufficient arrangements for the supply of this army with necessaries indispensable to its healthy and effective condition. In arriving at this opinion they have made allowance for the unexpected severity of the storm on the 16th of November, and they have not been unmindful of the difficulties which a long period of peace must inevitably produce at the commencement of a campaign. Passing on to review the " conduct of the depart ments," the committee state : Of the GOVERNMENT AT HOME : The responsibility of the expedition to the Crimea rests upon the Home Government To Lord Raglan was left a discretion only "in case of some insuperable impediment." The Cabinet appear to have been confident of success. Lord Aberdeen states it to have been their impression that Sebastopol would fall almost immediately by a coup de main. The Duke of Newcastle says, that h_ expected the army, after capturing Sebastopol, would winter there, or else, after destroying the fortress, would return to winter on the shores of the Bosphorus. Sir James Graham has the strongest opinion that the order for the expedition was given at the right time, and was executed at the right time. The general direction of the war was in the hands of the Duke of Newcastle, who in the spring of Isti-1 held the office of Secretary for War and Colonies. In July these departments were divided, and the duke, being relieved from colonial duties, undertook the immediate conduct of the war. When this important change was effected it does not ap pear that any order in council, minute, or other docu ment, was prepared defining the special ditties of the War Department. In making the separation between the Secretaryships of War and the Colonies, together with the transference of the Commissariat from the Treasury to the Secretary for War, the Cabinet considered that they had adopted measures initiatory to other changes which would necessarily follow. The members of the Cabinet did not, however, hold any consultations upan the changes to be made, or the best mode of effecting them; they sepa rated, as usual, at the close of the parliamentary session in August, and as they were not summoned to a meeting they did not reassemble in council until the second week of Octol er. At a later period of the year Lord John Russell expressed his dissatisfaction with the state of the War I te partment, and suggested Lord Palmerston as the fittest person for the office of Secretary of War. He adduced some CIL9f9 where he said there had been a want of rigour in the exercise of authority, although the Cabinet, he added, 588