The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-04 00:00:00

" FIRST REPORT.

" Constantinople, dune 10, 1855.
" My Lord—We have the honour to report that, in pur-
suance of your lordship's instructions, we set out from
London on the 23t1 of February, and arrived at Constan-
tinople on the 6th of March. We proceeded at once to
Scutari, and having visited the barrack and general hos-
pitals, examined the purveyor and principal medical offi-
cer. As the condition and arrangements of those hospi-
tals have been the subjects of a separate inquiry and
report, we shall not trouble your lordship with any de-
tails in regard to them.
" The information which we obtained at Scutari and at
Constantinople was of great importance to our future pro-
ceedings. We ascertained that the sick arriving from the
Crimea were nearly all suffering from diseases chiefly at-
tributable to diet, and that the food supplied to the army
during the winter, consisting principally of salt meat and
biscuit, with a very insufficient proportion of vegetables,
was calculated, in the circumstances in which the troops
were placed, to produce these diseases.
"It was, therefore, evidently desirable to increase the
supplies of fresh meat and vegetables, and to substitute
fresh bread for biscuit. On this subject we had the advan-
tage of a conversation with Dr. Sutherland, of the Sanitary
Commission, who confirmed, from the results of his profes-
sional investigations, the information we had obtained as
to the causes of the prevailing diseases, and entirely con-
curred in the necessity of substituting fresh meat for salt,
and fresh bread for biscuit, as well of increasing the supply
of fresh or preserved vegetables. Colonel Talloch had ac-
quired experience in such matters from having been chiefly
instrumental in providing a supply of fresh bread for his
regiment when stationed in the ceded provinces after the
first Burmese war, and, therefore, it was arranged that he

should direct his especial attention to that suitjeot from
the moment of our arrival in the Crimea.
" We entered the harbour of Balaklava upon the 12th of
March, and the following day proceeded to head-quarters
to wait upon Lord Raglan, and to arrange our proceedings
in conducting the inquiry intrusted to us. The course
which we proposed to pursue was explained in the letter
of the 13th of March, of which a copy i■ annexed ; his
Lordships entire concurrence in that course is conveyed to
as in his letter of the 15th of March, of which a copy is
also annexed ; and on the following day we commenced
the examination of the regimental officers stationed in the
vicinity of Balaklava.
"Following out that course, we have seen and personally
examined, either separately or collectively, the command-
ing officer, surgeon, and quartermaster of every corps in
the Crimea, who was not prevented by illness from attend-
ing; and from them have obtained evidence of such defi-
ciencies as have occurred in tie supplies of each corps, and
of the consequences of those deficiencies. We next exa-
mined the officers commanding brigades and divisions,
with the exception of Sir George Brown, who was absent
at Keitch ; together with the staff officers, the principal
medical officers, and the Commissariat officers attached to
brigades and divisions ; finally, we examined the Quarter-
master-General, and the senior Assistant Quartermaster-
General, the Commissary-General, and the two Deputy
Commissaries-General who are present with the army.
The personal examination of the Quartermaster-General,
however, having repeatedly been interrupted or prevented
by his being called upon to attend to more pressing duties,
and finding ourselves unable from illness to postpone our
departure till he should be sufficiently disengaged, a series
of written questions was sent to him to be answered.
" The notes of the examinations taken down in presence
of the witnesses, -without the assistance of a shorthand
writer, were in all cases subsequently sent to them for cor-
rection and signature. Printed queries were also addressed
to the commanding officer and to the surgeon of each corps
and the answers returned were signed by them. These
documents have net been subjected by us to any correction
beyond what was aecessary to rectify mere verbal errors or
omissions obviously arising from inadvertence. It would
have been easy to relieve them of many repetitions, and
otherwise to dress and polish them, without materially
altering their import; but we have thought it better to
submit them without erasing the rough original stamp of
authenticity then to change in any respect the form in
which they were returned to us, corrected and signed by
the witnesses.
"It is a great satisfaction- to us to find, on most of the
important points, a remarkable concurrence in the testi-
mony as to matters of fact,
" The sufferings of the army in the course of the winter,
and especially during the months of December and January,
must have been intense. We have not noted all the par-
ticulars related to us, many of which were unconnected
with our inquiry ; but we may state that it has been only
by slow degrees, and after the frequent repetition of simi-
lar details, as,one witness after another revealed the facts
that had come under his own observation, that we
have been able to form any adequate conception of the
distress and misery undergone by the troops, or fully
to appreciate the unparalleled courage and constancy
with which they have endured their sufferings.
Great Britain has often had reason lo be proud of her
army, but it is doubtful whether the whole range of
military history furnishes an example of an army exhibit-
ing, throughout a long campaign, qualities as high as have
distinguished the forces under Lord Raglan's command.
The strength of the men gave way under excessive labour,
watching, exposure, and privation ; but they never mur-
mured, their spirit never tailed, and the enemy, though
far outnumbering them, never detected in those whom he
encountered any signs of weakness. Their numbers were
reduced by disease and by casualties to a handful of men,
compared with the great extent of the lines which they
constructed and defended ; yet the army never abated its
confidence in itself, 'and never descended from its acknow-
ledged military pre-eminence.
" Both men and officers, when so reduced that they were
hardly fit for the lighter duties of the camp, scorned to be
excused the severe and perilous work of the trenches, lest
they should throw an undue amount of duty upon their
comrades ; yet they maintained every foot of ground against
all the efforts of the enemy, and with numbers so small
that, perhaps, no other troops would even have made the
attempt. . _ _

" SUffering and privation have frequently led to crime,
in armies as in other communities, but offences of a serious
character have been unknown in the British army in the
Crimea. Not one capital offence has been committed, or
even alleged to have been committed, by a soldier, and in-
teamerance has been rare.
" Every one who knows anything of the constitution of
the army must feel that, when troops so conduct them-
selves throughout a long campaign, the officers must have
done their duty and set the example. The conduct of the
men, therefore, implies the highest encomium that can be
passed upon their officers. They have not only shared all
the danger and exposure, and most of the privations which
the men had to undergo, but we everywhere found indi-
cations of their solicitude for the welfare of those who
were under their command, and of their constant readiness
to employ their private means iu promoting the comfort
of their men. Doubtless there has been, as there always
must be, better management in some regiments than in
ethers, but among much that was painful in the evidence
that we have heard it was always gratifying to observe the
community of feelings and interest which appeared every-
where to subsist between the men and their officers, and
which the regimental system of flee British army seems
almost al ways to produce.
"We hope to he excused for venturing to offer these
general observations upon the conduct of the army. It was
impossible to refrain from expressing, however inade.
quately, the admiration which a careful investigation of
the circumstances cannot fail to produce.
" It was inevitable that the operations of a siege, carried
on throughout the winter in the Crimea, should involve a
very considerable &mount of hardship and. sickness. These
aro consequences of such operations as certain as losses in
action when a battle is fought. The sickness and conse-
quent mortality in the British army in the Crimea have,
however, been very great. The deaths, including those at
Scutari and elsewitere, appear to amount to about 35 per
cent. of the average strength of the army present in the
Crimea from the Ist of October, 1854, to the 30th of April,
18:',5, and it seems to be clearly established that this ex-
cessive mortality is not to be attributed to anything pecu-
liarly favourable in the climate, but to overwork, exposure
to wet and cold, improper food, insufficient clothing dur-
ing part of the winter, and insuffieieut shelter from incle-
ment weather.

" To determine the limits beyond which we should de.
cline to pursue our investigations, demanded careful deli-
beration. The influence of overwork and exposure on the
health of the troops might appear to be foreign to the ob-
jects of an inquiry which had reference exclusively to the
supply of the army and the arrangements of the Com-
missariat • but much of the labour and exposure which the
troops had to undergo was a consequence of the want
of sufficient land transport, which it was the duty of the
Commissariat to provide. The effects of overwork and
exposure could not, therefore, be excluded from our
consideration. In like manner, the injurious conse-
quences of defective cooking, which are not obviously
connected with the subjects of our inquiry, were in a great
measure attributable to a deficiency of fuel, or of trans-
port to convevit fronalialakla.va to the both of which
are matters affecting the Commissariat.campft may be right
hero to state that, in doubtful eausrsiewes i,
ning the risk of pasbing our in have preferred run-
have been contemplated, to incgtirrin the
what might
hazard of falling
short of what was intende.l. At the same time, we have
not pursued our investigations lido matters unconnected
with the supply of the army.