The Sun.
London, England, 1856-07-28 00:00:00

BER.

THE CRIMEAN INQUIRY AT CHELSEA

The following is the Report of the Board of Gene-
ral-Officers appointed to inquire into the statements
contained in the report of Sir J. M'Neill and Col.
Tullooh as to the conduot of operations in the
Crimea :

May it pleas .3 your Majesty,—ln obedience to your Majesty's
warrant, which bears date the 25th of Feb., 1856, command-
ing us, the general officers whose names are subscribed here-
to, to make strict examination into the statements contained
in the two reports of Sir J. and Col. Titlloch, dated
respectively Constantinople, June 10, 1855, and London,
Jan., 1856, and into the evidence taken by the said Sir John
M‘Neill and Col. Tulloch relative thereto, animadverting
upon the conduct of certain officers on the general staff and
others In your MAjesty's army, and to make a report to your
Majesty thereon, together with our opinion whether the said
officers of yourarmy be, or be not,responsible to any,atid what
extent, for the unsatisfactory condition of your army, or any
portion thereof, noticed by Sir J. MiNeill and Col. Tulloch in
their reports, and evidence theretrnto attached-=-,: •

Walleye, at several meetings, perused and considered
your Majesty's orders and instructions as transmitted to us
by the Right Hon. Lord Namur°, your Majesty's Secretary
of State for War, together with sundry letters and other do-
cuments therewith transmitted, and have, to the best of our
ability, made examination into the statementii'and evidence
contained into the two reports above referred to, and have
heard such witnesses as the several parties who appeared
before us desired to call, and also such 'other parties likely
to be able to give information upon the said matters, and
whose attendance could be obtained ; and, in order that
your Majesty may be fully possessed of every circumstance
which has appeared in the course of this inquiry, we beg
leave to lay before your Majesty the whole of our examina-
tions and proceedings to this our report annexed ;
And further humbly to submit to your Majesti the follow-
ing preliminary observations in explanation of the course
which we felt constrained to adopt in cur endeavour to give
effect to your Majesty's intentions, as signified in your Royal
warrant, namely:—
_ _

That the inquiry which we were commanded to institute
appeared to us to be—

First, very peculiar in its nature ; and,

Secondly, to be attended with unusual difficulties.
It appeared to. us to be very peculiar in its nature, and
one 'with which our military experience had not rendered us
conversant, inasmuch as ,it was an inquiry in England into
the correctness of conclusions which Sir John 111 'Neill and
Colonel Tulloch had founded on information obtained by them-
selves in the Crimea two years previodsly, whereas the duties
of a Court of Inquiry are ordinarily limited to an original in-
vestig,ation into certain matters of fact, or into the conduct
of certain persons with reference thereto.

It appeared to us to be attended with unusual difficulties,
inasmuch as some of the statements which were to be inquired
into were founded in part on evidence which we had not the
theans of investigating, and the attendance of several witnesses
whom it would have been desirable to examine could net be
obtained, _ _ .

Under these embarrassing eircuristanceswe felt it our duty
on the one hand, to give to each and to all of the parties re-
ferred to in your Royal warrant every facility for bringing
their cases under our consideration in such a manner as
seemed most likely to afford opportunity for a full inquiry,
and, on the other hand, to exercise such Care and caution in
giving expression to an opinion thereon as the character of
the inquiry and the peculiar difficulties aboveinentioned seemed
to render especially necessary, as well for the interests of
truth as of justice.

And we do therefore now, in further obedience to your
Royal command, most humbly report to your Majesty—

That having been directed to inquire into the cases sub-
mitted to us by the following officers-
1. Lieutenant-General the Earl of Lucan, K.C.B. ;
2. Major• General the Earl of Cardigan, K.C.B. ;
3. Major-General Sir Richd. Airey, K.C.8., Quartermaster-
General;

4. Colonel' the Hon. Alexander Gordon, C. 8., Deputy-Quar-
termaster-General.

5. Commissary-General Filder, C.B.
We proceed to inquire into them in the order above given.

LIEUT.-GEN. THE EARL OF LUCAN'S CASE.
The Earl of Lucan called our attention to the following
passages in the report of the commissioners, pp. 20-21 :--

" With reference to the effect of the deficiency of forage,
and the other privations to which the horses of the army
were exposed, we have ascertained the loss among them
from various causes iu the cavalry and artillery. A summary
of the returns obtained on that head will bo found at p. 193
of appendix, which shows the loss attributable to sickness
to be as follows, for the six months from October to March

inclusive :

Died by
Strength. Sickness.
Heavy Cavalry 1,055 ~. 493
Light Cavalry
Artillery

Ration per
Cent. of
Deaths.

Total 5.048 2,122 42
" On referring to the loss Sustained by the commissariat ani-
mals during the same period it will be found rather less than
in the cavalry or artillery, the deaths among them having,
according to a return furnished by Deputy-Commissary-Gene-
ral Adams, amounted to about 889 out of 2,329, originally im-
ported into the Crimea, or in the proportion of 38 per cent.
—a result which could scarcely have been expected, consider-
ing the advantages which cavalry horses might be supposed
to have over hard-worked baggage animals, to whom little at,
tention could be paid at such a period."
Pp. 36, 37.- "The date at which the hutting of the cavalry
commenced was in no case earlier than the end of January or
beginning of February, and it was not completed before the
middle of March, by which time the severity of the season had
so far abated that this shelter was of comparatively little im-
portance. Considering that these men were within about a
mile of the store where the wood might be obtained, that they
had no work in the trenches, and that the only duties likely
to interfere with the application both of horses and men to
this important object was the carrying up of their own forage
from Balaklava, and furnishing parties occasionally to bring
down sick and carry up provisions to the front (which seems
never to have occupied more than about a fifth part of the
whole), it appears strange that more rapid progress was not
made in obtaining the advantage of hut accommodation, par-
ticularly when they aro described as having suffered so much
in their tents.
" Considering, also, the suffering and severe loss of horses
from exposure to the weather in the commencement of the
winter, there appears to be a wait ofpromptitude or ingenuity
in devising for them some means of temporary shelter, such
as saved the baggage horses of the Sappers and Miners at Ba-
laklava. Experience has now proved that even a very mode-
rate degree of shelter would have been sufficient to save the
lives of many of the horses, if-not to maintain them in service-
able condition ; and it must be presumed that such measures
were considered practicable, for a proposal to erect, with the
assistance of his men, some sort of cover for the horses of the
corps, appears to have been made by the officer commanding
the Scots Greys, but the manner in which it is stated to have
been received by the Lieutenant-General commanding the
cavalry was calculated to deter other officers from making
any similar proposal."
With reference to these passages On Earl of Lucan proposed
to show that they contained animadversions on him as com-
mander of the cavalry, and that they were unfounded (pp. 8,
21), and his lordship objected, In .particular
1. To the calculation of the commissioners with respect to
the deaths of the cavalry horses (Proceedings, p. 8);
2. To the comparison instituted between the loss of horses
sustained by the cavalry relatively with that of the commis-
sariat (p. 9);
3. To the statement respecting the period of the hutting
the horses (p. 11);
4. To' the statement respecting the nature and amount of
the duties to be performed by the cavalry soldiers (p. 17);
5. To the statement respecting the hutting of the men (p.

19) ;
6. To the statement respecting the providing temporary
shelter for the horses (p. 21);
7. To the statement respecting a proposal made to the
Earl of Lucan by the officer commanding the Scots Greys to
erect temporary shelter for his horses (p. 20).
In reply to these objections on the part of the Earl of Lucan
Col. Tulloch alleged:—
That the commissioners had net animadverted on Lord
Lncan's conduct (see Proceedings, pp. 48, 53, 54, 108, 109,
110, 113, 130, 139, 141, 165).
That the statements alleged by Lord Lucan to be erro-
neous were correct—(see Proceedings, pp. 49, 50, 51, 54,
55) ; and that, if In some instances the statements were in-
correct, it was owing to the commissioners having been fur-
nished with incorrect information by the officers in the
Crimea, and that for this the commissioners were not respon-
sible. (See Proceedings, pp. 111, 140, 173.)
With regard to the passages above mentioned we are of
opinion that the remarks of the commissioners therein con-
tained amount to animadversions upon the conduct of the
Earl of Lucan as commander of the cavalry.
With regard to so much of those passages as is referred to
in objection 1, we are of opinion that the mode in which the'
percentage of deaths has been stated by the commissioners
is calculated to convey an erroneous impression, inasmuch
as, though the figures are perfectly accurate, neither the rate
percentage of deaths (contained in the table given at page 21
of the Report), nor the percentage of deaths according to the
average strength given in the suinmary subsequently fur-
nished by Colonel Tulloch, give the actual percentage of
mortality.
With regard to so much of thOse passages as is referred

to in objection 2, we are not enabled to offer as opinion there
on, as, on examining the returns which were furnished to us
by the Audit-office relative to the matter in question, we
found that the difficulties of ascertaining the periods at which
the Commissariat animals arrived in the Crimea, and of dis-
tinguishing between those lost or stolen and those that died,
were so great as to render any comparison of deaths between
them and the cavalry impossible;
With regard to so much of those passages as is referred to
in objection 3, it appeared that the words " shelter for horses,"
as entered in the margin of the passage above set forth (page
36 of the Commissioners' Report), had inadvertently been
annexed thereto, instead of to the following paragraph, to
which they properly belonged.
This was explained by Colonel Tnlloch, and the Earl of
Lucan's objection appeared to be thereby obviated (p. 112).
With regard to so much of the passages as is referred to
in objections 4 and 5, it appeared that after e cavalryntil
went to Kadikoi the hutting vias not carriedth out until
went
January or February, owing to delays and difficulties w
appear sufficiently to explain it ; inasmuch as, in
field, addition
to the ordinary duties of a cavalry soldier in the the
duties performed by the cavalry from the 12th of December
to the 19th of January, in conveying stores to the front,
and afterwards in transporting the sick, materially inter-
fered with the operation of hutting the men and putting up
stables for the horses.
The insufficiency and bad quality of the intrenchin tools g
added to this difficulty.
With regard to so much of those passages as is referred
to in objection 6, it was stated in evidence by Colonel Chap-
man, R.E., that— -
I The temporary shelter erected for the paigage-horses