The Sun.
London, England, 1854-12-26 00:00:00

STATE OF THE ARMY IN TilE CRIMEA.

(From the Times.)

We believe we have, fallen into considerable disgrace
among well fed gentlemen, in well-warmed houses and
well-aired beds, for taking up what they are pleased to
call a " croaking" tone about the state of affairs in the
East. We ought to have confined ourselves just now,
at all events, to transmitting the comoliments of the
season to the Allies in the Crimea and their anxious
friends at home. Indeed, if the war can be conducted
anywhere exactly as one pleases, it must be on paper.
Bore, at least, there need bo no fury of the winds or in-
clemency of the skies, no " chaos of mud," no midnight
or morning surprises. If the placid, well-favoured army
of wri!ers, compositors, and printers are good for any-
thing, they can at least wake it all pleasant, and "cook"
up a Christmas carol, even out of such materials as the
letters of our correspondents in tho Crimea. That is the
fi e!:ng in high quarters, and we cannot be surprised
that gentlemen who are now scattered to the four quar-
ters of the social and political horizon, making a merry
Christmas of their own, should wish Sebastopol to be
made safe till the end of the holydays. • Very well, we
will do what we can, though it certainly does force itself
on our recollection that the most terrible disaster that
has fallen upon the British arms during the present
generation happened just at this time of the year. It
was in a merry Christmas that a large British force dis-
appeared in Cabul. But let that alone. To the task
before us. The least; and perhaps the most, we can
do is to represent faithfully the expectations still oher-
ished, and just now rather revived.... Our official people
say that matters have certainly seen their worst. The
mortality has been frightful, 'but the rain is over ;
there will now be a spell of fine open Weather ; mate-
rials for " hutting" must be now arriving every day,
and other supplies in abundance. There are now be-
fore Sebastopol—so we are assured at .hongles.- though
we do not fled it in our letters—.4s,ooo Pi•ench and
25,000 British troops. These are sufficient for the
various purposes of protecting Balaklava, guarding our
right flank, manning all the trenches and batteries, and
leaving 10,000 to spare for the assault, which may take
place now any day we please. The whole army is eager
for an assault, if only to put au end to their own misery.
The Allies are only waiting till the English have mounted
the new guns and mortars of large calibre lately arrived.
This operation has hitherto been impeded' by the unfor-
tunate circumstances that, ever since the Battle of Bala-
klava, Liprandi's corps has held possession of the best
road, or rather the only regularly made road, from Bala-
klava to Sebastopol ; and we have been obliged to drag
our cannon and everything else as well as we could up
the steep face of the hill- from Balaklava towards the
French position, and that through mud instead of along
a high road. It is this that has killed nearly all our
horses and a great number of men, brought our army to
half-rations, prevented supplies of all kinds from reach-
ing our camp, and, in fact, prolonged the siege to the
middle of the winter. Happily, however, the retreat of
Liprandi has left the regular road open, and doubtless
the British army • has profited by the opportunity to
bring up its heavy pieces to the newly-constructed bat-.
teries. No impediment is now seen in the way of an
assault; and in " well-informed circles" there prevails a
confident expectation that ere this an assault has actu-
ator taken place, and that it is more than possible the
city is now in our hands.

We only wish that it may be so. Dreadful as it must
be to reflect on the possibility of 70,000 British and
French soldiers and some 30,000 Turks suddenly let
loose upon a city that has so long defied their efforts,
and for the possession of which they have gone through
so much suffering, yet we must desire it as the choice
of evils. We desire it indeed, and it is but natural
we should desire, at any sacrifice, the cessation
of a state of things which costs us every week
as much death and sickness as a pitched battle,
without the glory, and, still snore, without any result.
Nevertheless, we are obliged to confess that we have
little expectation that any such event has happened, or
is likely to happen at present. We bear in mind the
unpleasant fact that. Sebastopol is very much stronger
than it was when the allies first found themselves before
it. It is better fortified, better garrisoned, and, for
aught we know, quite as well provisioned. The new
works thrown up for the protection of the town on
every side excite the astonishment of the besiegers, not
merely for their extent, their scale, and their complete.
ness, but for the fastidious neatness with which they
have been executed. They indicate an abundance of
hands, and a zeal for the work presenting a strange con-
trast to the operations of our own over-worked army.
From the first day of the siege it has always been
thought quite possible to take the place by assault, at a
certain large sacrifice of men ; and the question is whe-
ther the generals who did not feel themselves equal to
the responsibility of such a step in September should
have got over their scruples now, when the odds are evi-
dently so much more against us. In fact, the price of
the capture rises like that of the Sybilline books, and
Lord Raglan, if he would ever see the inside of Sebas-
topol, must make up his mind to follow the example of
the King of Rome, and give three times as many men
for the city now as he would have had to pay at first.
For our part, there is hardly any present cost that we
should think too great for it now. Were the immediate
capture of the place to cost the allies 10,000 men in
killed and wounded, we are persuaded that three months
more of such work as we have had would cost as many
more and leave the work still to be done. Done, how-
ever, it must be, unless we would ►nake ourselves the
laughing-sto of the worl I, and enable _Russia to say
that we had done our worst, and that she feared us no

Longer.

Since, however, we have given publicity to these con-
fident expectations, we will add a word of another
purport. Should these expectations be utterly disap-
pointed ; should the army of the Allies dwindle down
from 70,000 to the old dead level of 45,000 men ; and
should the Generals still think it necessary to wait for
r inforcements, then we must say that the disappointed
public will require rather imperatively that the army
be reinforced, not only with fresh sinew and bone, but
also with new heart and mind. It is head—head—
head that is wanted, as well as the limbs of the rude
helpless soldier. What is the uas of sending regiments
perpetually onwards to the seat of war, to perish by
scores from the very day of their arrival, if we do not
send out men who can take care of them ? The regi-
ments advanced from Gibraltar, Malta, and Corfu, and
even the 50 strong, healthy policemen, sent from this
metropolis sicken and die, where they have to live, to
work, to walk, to sit, to eat and drink and sleep, in wet
clethes and wet boots, under wet tents, on the wet
ground, in watery trenches, under rainy skies. The
human frame was not made for this sort of work, and
since the work has doubled, the food been reduced to
half rations, and the tents been blown away, the
pest has stalked triumphant throughout the camp.
What, too, can be the use of sending for more of the
unfortunate Turks when they bring no food with them,
are dependent on a very short allowance of biscuit from
the British stores, and like Irish labourers on fourpence
a day, do nothing for nothing ? It is head that has
been wanted throughout. There is no denying it. A
plain proof is found in the fact that nothing has hap-
pened in the siege that was not known beforehand,
and that could not have been provided for. This was
not the case of a fortress or a position in the interior,
some hundreds of miles from the coast, attacked
after a long
and destructive march, presenting
unexpected obstacles, to be encountered by an
army diminished beyond computation. This was
a fortress on the lea, which we call our own, filled
with our ships, within 48 hours' sail of friendly
shores and cities, the besieging army being all the time
within sight, and even within sound of the surge. There
was nothing whatever that could not have been pro-
vided against. We knew the size and wide-spread posi-
tion of Sebastopol. The very maps hanging up on our
walls are from plans that existed in this country long
before the siege began. We knew that the siege might
be protracted into the heart of winter, and that the lat-
ter months of the year would be rainy and stormy. We
knew that soldiers would infallibly perish without suffi-
cient food, clothing, and covering over their heads.
We knew the sort of distances and roads we should have
to traverse in the event of our having to establish out-
selves outside the walls. We knew perfectly well the
nature of the soil rosind Sebastopol, and that, while we
were hammering in vain at 'the exterior defences, it
would be in the power of the Russians to construct an
inner line. We knew that whatever could be done
would be done. Yet we had foreseen nothing ; and,
possessing the most ingenious, ae well as the richest
people in the world, we have really shown no more
skill or artifice in the siege of Sebastopol than our an-
cestors would have done 2,000 years ago. All this time
we are surpassed by everybody, and only boast a sorry
superiority over the Turks, whom aecordingly we abuse
very freely. The French surpass us in their roads, in
their port, in their huts, in their food and clothing, in
their hospitals, in everything, and are beginning to look
on our helplessness much as we look on that of our bar-
barous allies. The Russians surpass all three—French,
British, and Turks—in everything, except is mere phy-
sical strength and courage. There we come off the best.
Yet how disgraceful that England, so wealthy, so me-
chanical, and with such infinity of reseureesrshould,
after all, depend on the rawest material of war—the
British soldier—and should be reduced to throw him
away by wholesale in order to make up for our
want of military science, not to say common sense !
That has been the case hitherto, though we cannot think
that it will last much longer.

FATAL ACCIDENT ON THE SuO:TnIit.TrSeTTIA:aPnOdRD:
RAILWAT.—On Saturday another accident, by which
had to
ono man lost his life, occurred at the Walsall station of
the South Staffordshire Railway. About one o'clock a
goods train arrived from Burton.
wait the departure of a passenger train before entering
the station. Whilst remaining on the main line in the
cutting another double goods train, heavily laden, and
drawn by two engines, came up on the same side, and
dashed into the luggage train with great violence, smash-
ing; eight.or nine of the waggons, and almost totally de-
stroying one of the engines. A breaksman on the train,
❑amed Stretton, was severely injured, and died on Sun-
day morning. Very fortunately, a passenger train from
Burton, which was due at the time, did not arrive, or in
all probability a frightful catastrophe would have been
the consequence. The loss of property by the destruc-
tion of the engine and waggons must be very consider-
able,