The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-13 00:00:00

THE ASSISPART SURGEONS' PETITION.

Dr. Andrew Smith, Director-General of Hospital, in
the Crimea, has received a reply from Lord Panmure
to the petitions to which 116 surgeons lately stated
various grievances and asked for redress. Lord Pan-
inure says he cannot admit that the rate of military pay
to these gentlemen is too low, but the present regula-
tion requiring ten years of service before the higher rate
of 10s. is attained, is " a fair subject for reconsideration
hereafter." Lord Panmure cannot draw from the more
rapid promotion of the executive than of the medical
officers any ground for the conclusion that it implies an
undeservedly low estimate of the exertions of the latter ;
but "with reference to the complaint of the inferior
character of some of the duties that now fall to the junior
medical officers, the memorialists should be informed
that this ground of complaint is under consideration.
Lord Panmure cannot, however, relax the principle
which requires that the assistant-surgeons in military
hospitals be prepared to do any duties, even those of
dispenser, dresser, or clerk, which may be required of
them by their professional superiors. With reference to
leave for professional improvement and other purposes,
Lord Panmure can only remark that when leave can be
properly granted it is not withheld. Leave of absence
must always. depend upon the calls of duty, to which
pleasure or study must equally yield. Lord Panmure
will not be indisposed to consider the case of the medi-
cal officers in respect to the length of service which gives
a claim for retirement, but upon this point, as well as
the general propositions following, his lordship can give
at present no other reply than that they shall receive
fair consideration in any change of the medical depart-
-1 ment that may take place. The complaint of the memo-
rialists on the introduction of civil practitioners to
posts of authority and emolument created by the neces-
sities of the war, is, in the opinion of Lord Pan'
more, entirely uncalled for. The ranks of the Mili-
tary Medical Department were totally unable to
supply the extensive hospitals created in the East.
These establishments were only temporary. It would
have been unwise and improvident to have based on
them an increase of permanent establishments, to become
a burden to the country in after years. The compara-
tively high pay of the civil practitioners appointed to
these hospitals, many of whom gave up valuable private
practices at the call of humanity, is based entirely upon
the temporary nature of their services, and can furnish
no ground for complaint that the regular department
has been overlooked."

NAPOLEON I. AND INTER QUARTERS

Colonel St. Ange takes notice in the Debats of a
recent wild attack made on Marshal Pelissier by
one of our daily journals. In the course of his re-
marks he says :
"The English public has been told that Napoleon I.
did not suspend his operations during the most inclement
season, and, as an instance, the battle of Austerlitz has
been quoted. That of Eylau might have been added,
both having been fought in the depth of winter. But in
each of those cases all the corps of the French army
were distributed in cantonments at two or three hours'
m?rch from one another, and it was the Russian ar.-ny
that attacked. In Moravia, in 1805, the French held
the country round Brunn, and the Russians the neigh-
bourhood of Olmutz. For several days previously hos-
tilities had been suspended by tacit consent, when the
Russian army advanced on Austerlitz, manoeuvring
against Napoleon's right, in order to cut him off from
the road to Vienna and the Danube, forming the basis
of his operations, and compel him to throw himself into
Bohemia by the Inglau road. It was a clever combina-
tion on the part of the Russian generals, but it milled
them, because Napoleon managed to turn it against
themselves. In the Polish campaign of 1807, Napoleon,
after occupying Warsaw, had sent his army into winter
quarters on the right bank of the Vistula, and the Rus-
sian army was cantoned towards Eastern Prussia.
During the latter days of January, this army, collecting
all its forces, marched on the Lower Vistula, in the hope
of cutting off and vanquishing in their cantonments the
various corps forming the left wing of the French. Na-
poleon hastened to parry this danger by promptly con-,
centrating his army, and -from these respective move-
ments a conflict ensued, which was the battle of Eylau.
We briefly allude to these facts for the purpose of show-
ing by celebrated examples that Napoleon took up winter
quarters as the Allied army is now doing in the Crimea,
and that if he took the field on two occasions during the
, cold season, it was because he was provoked."