The Press.
London, England, 1855-01-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

Canrobert, in reviewing on a late occasion his
soldiery, was greeted by acclamations of " Vive
Canrobert !" and pronounced an eloquent oration,
terminating with these memorable words :—" Ne
dites pas, mes braves, Vive Canrobert, mais vive
l'Empereur ! et que ce cri retentisse jusqu'au cteur
de nos ennemis—dont la derniere heure a sonne !
Vous crierez, Vive votre General, lorsque je me le.n-
cerai a votre tete, et que mon corps vous servira de
drapeau sur la breche. Si nous n'avons pas donne
encore l'assaut, c'est pour des raisons particulieres a
moi connues."
A letter from the Crimea, in the Vienna Gazette,
says :
An experiment as to the range of the cannon on the
heights of lnkermann, occupied by the English riflemen,
was made on the 4th against the Russian fleet in Sebas•
topol. The balls flew in the midst of the fleet, and broke
the mast of one of the vessels,

A Constantinople letter of the 14th says that Omer
Pacha had returned from Eupatoria to Varna to su-
perintend the embarkation of his troops. Bebram
Pacha (Colonel Cannon) remained at Eupatoria
with Tefik Pacha, Omer Pacha's son-in-law and
10,000 infantry, with artillery and some squadrons
of cavalry. The town had been fortified by the
Turks, and surrounded by a ditch, under the direction
of French engineers. The Cossacks in the neigh-
bourhood amounted to 7,000. The Henri IV.,
stranded near Eupatoria, was occupied by 100 French
seamen. The Egyptian ship of the line stranded
near the Henri IV. had taken fire, and been burnt to
the water's edge. Three hundred Tartar horses had
been purchased at Eupatoria, to remount the British
and French cavalry.
The Vienna Military Gazette states that the
Grand Dukes Michael and Nicholas have quitted
St. Petersburg to rejoin the Russian army in the
Crimea. They were daily expected at Odessa.

CHRONICLE OF THE SIEGE.
The incidents and prospects of the siege during the
opening week of the year are thus recorded by the
special correspondent of the Times :

NEW YEAR'S-DAY, 1865.—C01d, raw, bleak, and wet.
There is nothing to be said about the progress of the
siege, but the Russians have not yet abandoned the valley,
and have sent back some of their troops to Tchourgoum.
Our Rifle pickets yesterday morning were astonished to
see the Cossack vedettes within twelve hundred yards of
them. There is sad news about our Christmas•boxes and
New Year's gifts. It is credibly asserted that the boxes
sent out for the use of the Guards and others by the Royal
Albert were broken open on board the ship and that the con-
tents were stolen. Excellent cigars were sold for a penny
a piece by the plunderers, and, if the story be true,—and
more than one officer of the (3 uards has informed me there
is no doubt of the fact,—an inquiry ought to be made, and
the offenders, if detected, severely punished. However,
the Guards have received their cases of brandy, and the
survivors will have one hundred dozen of that very needful

stimulant for their use.
JAN. 2.—Winter is setting upon us, and we are already
in a position to form an opinion of its possible results. I
cannot conceal my impression that our army is likely to
suffer severely unless instant and most energetic measures
be taken to place it in a position to resist the inclemency of
the weather. It is uncertain whether the troops will be
exposed to much frost or not, but it is beyond doubt that
they will have much bad weather—violent cold winds and
great wet to contend against, and that, encamped as they
are, on the tops of mountain ridges and on an elevated and
perfectly bare plateau of rock, they require every artificial
aid to keep them in health, and to enable them to survive
their hardships, debilitated as they are by insufficient food
and excessive watching and labour. We have no means
of getting up the huts—all our army can do is to feed itself.
Captain Keen, 11 E., is here in charge of four thousand tons
of wood for hutting, but he cannot get any one to take
charge of it, or unload it out of the ships. Each hut weighs
more than two tons, and, somehow or other, I fear it will so
happen that no effort will be used to get them up till men
are found frozen to death in their tents. As to the " warm
clothing." the very words immediately suggest to us all
some extraordinary fatality. Some went down with the
ill fated and ill-treated Prince, some of it has been lost, and
now we hear that a ship with clothing for the officers has
been burnt off Constantinople ; that some of it has been
saturated with water ; and I had an opportunity of seeing
several lighters full of warm great-coats, kc., for the men
lying for a whole day in the harbour of lialtiklava beneath
a determined fall of rain and snow. There was no one to
receive them when they were sent to the shore, or rather
no one would receive them without orders. In fact, we are
ruined by etiquette, and by " service " regulations. No one
will take " responsibility " upon himself if it were to save
the lives of hundreds. When the Duke of Newcastle, at
the very outset of the expedition, bestowed his approbation
on the vigour which characterised the arrangements at
Malta, and especially selected for his praise those officers
who evinced a disposition to disregard " useless departmental
etiquette," we were in hopes that this horrible old hag, who
sits brooding over our army with more mischievous results
than even that " cold shade " which we have been told on
very good authority blighted it in days gone by, would be
consigned to the dreary abodes where the spirits of de-
parted pigtails, regulation coatees, pipeclayed gaiters, and
Brown Bess mourn over their former greatness.
We are cursed by a system of " requisitions," " orders,"
and " memos," which is enough to depress an army of
scriveners, and our captains, theoretically, have almost as
much work to do with pen and paper as if they were special
correspondents or bankers' deal; that is, they ought to

SATURDAY,

have as much to do, but, thanks to the realities of war, the;
have now no bookkeeping; their accounts are lost, and the
captain who once had forty or fifty pounds weight of books
and papers to carry has not now so much as a penny memo-
randum book. This fact alone shows the absurdity of our
arrangements. In peace, when these accounts are of com-
paratively little importance, we have plenty and too much
of checks and returns, but in time of war the very first
thing our army does is to leave all its stationery on board
the steamer that carries it to the scene of action.
There are other evils in our military system which this
war will expose—none greater or more patent, however,
than that which arises out of the different departments
forming what is called " The Army." We have the Ord-
nance Department, the Medical Department, the Commis-
sariat Department, and the Military Department pur sang,
and all the departments have different " heads," to whom
the subordinate officers look as the sole sources of honour
and promotion. The formation of our staff is severely criti-
cised, especially since the brevet, which has promoted the
staff en manse, has come out to us. The individual gal-
lantry and devotion of the officers of the various staffs are
not denied, nor can they be questioned; but they are not
selected on the score of merit, and general indiscriminate
promotion of all these officers as a " body " is regarded
with great jealousy and dissatisfaction. There are certainly
instances of great luck and good fortune in the list of
names selected for promotion on the ground of "distin-
guished services in the field," while the poor battalion
officers who fought at Alma and lnkermann by the side of
their men have much reason to complain of neglect, bad
luck, and misfortune. The captains of artillery in the
trenches have not been promoted ; those who were in com-
mand of batteries have all received a grade as a reward for
their conduct. Many familiar cases of inequality in the
distribution of rewards will soon be brought home to our
firesides, and will he spoken of throughout the three king-
dome for many a day to come.
JAN. 3.—To-day little was done, because the state of the
roads presented the greatest obstacles to the transport of
shot or shell, and all that could be done was to get up
scanty supplies of food and rum to the camp. The rain,
mingled with snow and sleet, fell heavily. There has been
a good deal of activity visible on the part of the Russians,
not only in Sebastopol, but among the divisions posted
over lnkermann. The outlying camp seems to have re•
ceived reinforcements, or the army which has been sta.
tioned on the Belbeck may possibly have sent down some
regiments to strengthen them. There was a vigorous
sortie at night on the French right and our left attack, and
there was continuous firing of musketry throughout the
night, but there was very little execution done by the Rue-
sian riflemen. The cold is developing itself, and I regret
to say our efforts to guard against it have been attended
with mischief. Captain Swinton, of the Royal Artillery, a
gallant and excellent officer, was found dead in his tent,
suffocated by the fumes of charcoal from a stove which he
had placed within it for the purposes of warmth. tireat
numbers of iron stoves have been brought out here from
Constantinople, and are not used with proper caution, and
several officers have been half killed by carbonic acid gas
generated in these deadly apparatus Fatigue parties from
the different regiments are employed every day in bringing
up biscuit and provisions to head-quarters, where they are
making some attempt to establish a central depot.
This duty is very hard on officers and men, and is almost
as severe as the labour of carrying up shot and shell. The
native drivers, and those we have imported, absolutely re-
fuse to work any longer. They cannot or will not face the
cold and wet, and either rebel openly or hide no one knows
where. Sometimes the military escorts miss their way or
lose their provisions, and the divisions to which they be-
long are deprived of their rum and biscuit.
JAN. 4.—From all I can bear, the frosts of the Crimea
are usually accompanied by extremely strong winds from
the northward, which are dry and penetrating, and even
the Cossack coastguards retire within their kraals when
such weather sets in, Our sentries have got an extra
great-coat—a kind of " grego " with a large hood : all our
men who are exposed to night duty should be provided
with them. What the men require most are warm lung
boots to protect the feet and legs. Some few boots of this
kind have been served out, and have been found invaluable
The mite are also most serviceable. May I ask why are
our blankets white? Is it to show dirt and to expose a
man who puts one on to the fire of the enemy at night?
The French blankets are grey, and look always clean, while
they render the wearer almost invisible in the dark.
'this afternoon we had a very important arrival: his
Excellency Omer Paella arrived, with his staff from Varna,
on board the Inflexible ; but as it was late when the vessel
came in, and the weather was very bad, the general did.
not land. The transport horses were quite beaten to-day,
and dropped and died in the roads by dozens. It is snow-
ing hard, and the thermometer marks 28 deg. to-night.
JAN. 5.-Au extremely hard frost began about midnight,
and the thermometer this morning was at 21 deg. 10 mm.,
or more than l 0 deg. of cold. The result may be imagined.
The cavalry division lost about sixty horses during the
night, and I dread to think of the number of our noble
soldiers who will receive their coup de grace from this
weather, if it lasts. lam credibly informed that, out of
one division alone 150 men were taken out of the trenches
to the hospital tents, seized with cramp and half frozen,
not so much perhaps from the cold as from the want of
proper clothing and inability to move about to circulate the
blood. Lieutenant Ramsbottom, of the 07th Regiment,
was found dead in his tent this morning from the vapours
of charcoal in a stove, and Mr. Vicars, of the same regi-
ment, was discovered in a precarious state from the same
cause, but is now better. I have heard that an engineer
officer is also dangerously ill from similar want of caution,
and there arc rumours, to which I do not attach much cre-
dence, of men having died on their posts last night.
The 30th Regiment have not yet disembarked.
In the afternoon the Leopard arrived with draughts and
stores from England. As an instanoe of the curious hal-