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Title: Crimean Prospects. January 22, 1855
Description: Leading article of the New-York Daily Tribune on the ruin of the British army before Sevastopol, compared with the French organization, and on the Russian forces gathering in the Crimea.
Author: Friedrich Engels
Date: 1855-01-22
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1855%20Crimean%20Prospects.%20January%2022%2C%201855
---


*Published unsigned as a leading article in the* New-York Daily Tribune*, No. 4310, February 10, 1855, p. 4, under the heading “Crimean Prospects”; dated January 22, 1855, and attributed to Friedrich Engels by MEGA² (I/14). Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1855%20Perspectivas%20en%20Crimea%20%2822%20de%20enero%20de%201855%29).*

When the Allied Expedition—late in the season, and, in strength too great for a coup de main, too small for a campaign or even a siege—set sail for the Crimea, and when the British and French press were reveling in the presentiment of the victories which this army was to win, we pointed to the disastrous expedition of the British to Walcheren in 1809. We showed that in expeditions based upon the presence of a fleet, as soon as they degenerate into a lengthened campaign, disease is more to be feared than the sword of the enemy, and that with the already evident maladministration in the British army, a result similar to that of Walcheren was now probable. The intelligence which has reached us for some time past has gone far to show that the fate of the Walcheren expedition was steadily, though not inevitably, approaching the British army in the Crimea. But now, from our correspondence and journals received yesterday by the Atlantic, we have almost the certainty that Walcheren is being repeated over again, and even improved upon, before Sevastopol.

*The London Times* of Jan. 20, in a leading article, of which we last week had an extract by telegraph from Halifax, and which we this morning copy entire, declares, that in the face of the increasing mismanagement in the Crimea, and the helplessness of the Government at home, it would be criminal to hide any longer the full truth from the British public. And then it startles John Bull with the information that of the 50,000 or 60,000 men who went to the East, not more than 14,000 infantry, and perhaps 1,500 artillery and sappers and miners are fit for duty, the remainder being dead, sick or wounded, while the cavalry, as a force, is broken up, the horses having been turned over to the ordnance to convey guns and provisions to the trenches. And even of these 15,000 men the great majority are only by courtesy fit for duty; they are weak and exhausted, harboring the germs of disease; they are disabled by sickness at the rate of a thousand a week, and the deaths number from 300 to 400 a week; there is no chance of this mortality decreasing, for the work to be done by a force which becomes weaker and weaker every day, remains the same, and overworking is as great a cause of disease among these soldiers as any; and of the less than two thousand men who are reported to have been actually in good health on the 1st January, very many must have been reduced to helpless fever and dysentery by this time. Another article from the same journal on Jan. 25, which we also copy, sums up the dreadful facts of the case by saying, that at the existing rate of diminution, Lord Raglan and his staff would, by the middle of March, be the only survivors of the expedition: and Lord John Russell, in his speech in Parliament in explanation of his resignation, stated that the accounts from Sevastopol were “not only painful, but horrible and heart-rending.” The number of deaths in the camp Lord John also states at from 90 to 100 daily. It is therefore impossible to suppose that the allegations of the London journals on the subject are mere partisan exaggerations, as has been pretended in some quarters.

It is plain, then, that if it were not for the French, the miserable remnant of the British army would have been cut up and destroyed long since. But the admirable management of the French army has at all events contrived to keep that army intact. This management is not the merit of any particular administration—it is the consequence of the warlike spirit of the French; of that other quality, in which they excel, of arranging details in the most harmonious and practical manner, and, finally, of twenty-five years experience of Algerian war. This system was not created either by Louis Philippe, the Republic, or Louis Bonaparte; it is the result of circumstances, of a continued series of necessities, and of the labor of many generals of division, of brigade, and their subordinates.

The French, although posted on the extremity of the Chersonese, where they are entirely dependent upon their fleet, while with skill and courage the British might have foraged out the fruitful Valley of Baidar—the French have plenty of everything; because, in the French service, nine men out of ten know their business—which, in the British service, is the case with, perhaps, one man out of a hundred—and this exceptional individual is generally placed in such a position that he would appear presumptuous, and wanting in discipline, if he should offer his advice. If the British are spared the disgrace of a reëmbarkation without having taken Sevastopol, or being able to bring their guns with them, they will have the French to thank for it. There is now hardly a doubt that we shall soon hear of part of the British lines having been handed over to the French, and the British army being reduced to a puny division, composed of a few thousand, indomitably courageous, but sickly and helpless men, who will stick to the post of honor, although unable to hold it without constant support from their stronger and more skillful allies.

Whoever has seen anything of actual warfare knows that individual courage in the soldier is a great thing; but yet comparatively insignificant where organization, good officers, and especially good commanders and a good commissariat and medical staff, are wanting. But never was there such a striking illustration of the fact as this British Crimean expedition. The admirable daring of the soldiers is made worse than useless by the incapacity and nonchalance of the commander—by the ignorance of the officers—by the helplessness of every man in the army, and by the total want of any organization, beyond that required for the parade-ground. It is this combination of individual courage and individual cleverness in the soldiers, of military science and practical experience in the officers, of a well-defined and comprehensive division of labor among all departments, of simplicity and efficiency in the administration, which makes a French army, upon the whole, the best on earth, and enables the French to maintain the reputation of the military nation *par excellence*.

Nevertheless, it must not be imagined that the French are in an enviable condition before Sevastopol. The very fact that nine full divisions have been sent out, of which eight and a half (17 brigades) are in the Crimea, occupying a very small space of ground, is sufficient to show that they, too, must have suffered severely. A French brigade of infantry generally counts two regiments of two field battalions each, and one battalion of riflemen—or five battalions in all. The French battalion, on the war-footing, numbers, upon an average, 1,100 men. Thus, each brigade amounts to 5,500, and each division to 11,000 men at least, besides cavalry and artillery, sappers and miners. The whole French infantry sent out to the Crimea should, therefore, muster about 94,000 men, and the whole force, with artillery, cavalry, and engineering troops, at least 110,000 men. Now, it is materially impossible that more than 65,000 Frenchmen should, at this time, be on the Heracleatic Chersonese. They could not be bivouacked on this small piece of ground, as far as its occupation falls to the share of the French. Thus, a loss of 45,000 men, in dead, wounded and sick, has fallen upon the French, and if we consider that the losses at Varna and during the expedition into the Dobrodja amounted to some 10,000 men—that the Alma, Balaklava, Inkermann, cost then about 4,500—that the losses in the trenches must be something like 1,500—there will remain about 29,000 to be counted as victims of disease. This loss, though heavy, is not at all out of the way in a four months’ campaign, accompanied with such hardships and sufferings as that in the Crimea at the present season. Ten per cent. a month is a very commonly adopted deduction from the effective force of a campaigning army, and the French have hardly exceeded this proportion: but for all that, a 110,000 men sent from France are equivalent only to 65,000 fit for duty in the Crimea; and such an army, even if judicious arrangements have enabled it to keep in pretty good health, to do no more duty than the men can well manage, to remove their sick to hospital, and to keep roads, trenches and batteries in good repair—such an army is nowise strong enough to take Sevastopol, even the south side, and at the same time to keep at bay the Russian army in the field.

But the Turks are landing north of the Alma! So they are, and it will be well for them if they can manage to get back again without any material injury. The Turks, who are expected to land in the course of January to the number of some 60,000, (some of which are, however, not yet concentrated,) are no longer the men of the late Danubian campaign. These have gone the same way of all flesh with the British guards. The present Turkish forces are mostly a herd of raw recruits or of reserves (redifs) the former too fresh, the latter too much spoiled by family life to make good soldiers. The mismanagement and disorganization of the Turkish army administration is worse than even that of the British; and if the Russians do not annihilate the Turks in a battle, their own bad management and fatalistic neglect will do the business quite as effectively. Besides, the faulty strategy of the Allies, which, as we have previously stated makes them operate with two distinct corps, incapable of supporting each other against an active and clever enemy, invites the Russians to fall upon the Turks separately and drive them back into the sea before the French can get out of their mouse-trap in the Chersonese.

In the meanwhile the Russians are far from inactive. The sixth and part of the fifth corps formed the original garrison of the Crimea; the fourth corps arrived a few days before the battle of Balaklava; now the third corps is in the Peninsula; the eight division entered Batchkisarai on the 28th ult., at which date the seventh and ninth divisions, with the first division of dragoons, about 140 guns, and four regiments of Cossacks had taken up a position on the neck of the peninsula, at Perekop. The light cavalry division, (the third) belonging to this corps, is advanced toward Eupatoria, which it observes. Thus about one-half of the Russian active army (exclusive of the reserves) is now engaged in the Crimea, or garrisoning Odessa, Cherson, and Nicolaief, and portions of the second corps, under Paniutin, are said to be marching to support them. What effective numbers these twelve divisions of infantry and six of cavalry actually represent, after the losses of an unlucky campaign and immense marches, it is of course impossible to say, for we cannot know whether any of these losses have been made up. But at all events they must represent at least 100,000 men available in the field, not counting what soldiers there may be in Sevastopol, beside sailors and marines. Now, with the two corps of the enemy divided and unable to support each other, with the men of Inkermann rotting by disease, with Sevastopol built up stronger than ever, this force can hardly fail to drive the Allies into the sea, unless the Russians are conducted with a contempt of strategy hitherto unparalleled.

And now look at the curious manner in which England is going to make up for her past shortcomings. An expedition goes out to construct a railway—aye, a railway, double line of rails, stationary engines and all—from Balaklava to Sevastopol—a railway! while nobody seems to have thought of the more simple and practical plan of constructing a good road! Not satisfied with this, a submarine telegraph is actually on the way to be laid down from Varna to Balaklava, while the telegraph from Bucharest to Varna is not yet in a fair way of completion. After putting the cart before the horse, and having locked the stable after the horse was stolen, John Bull has worked himself up into such zeal that, in his bustle, he no longer knows what he is about at all. He has allowed his soldiers to starve, but he is constructing a railway to carry the dead bodies off. He has mismanaged the medical department, and sent out incompetent men in every branch of the service—but, in two months, the head doctor will be able to report by telegraph direct. His commanding general is imbecile, and his officers—according to the avowal of his own Secretary-at-War—quite unfit for their functions. But who knows whether, at this moment, a fate infinitely more miserable than death in battle, has not forever removed them from human blame and retribution? It is a melancholy, an awful spectacle, which almost saddens criticism and almost silences the voice of truth itself.