The Crimean War полностью

Noir’s disdain for the English was commonplace among the French, who thought their allies lacked the ability to adapt to field conditions. ‘Ah! These English, they are men of undoubted courage but they know only how to get themselves killed,’ Herbé wrote to his family on 24 November.

They have had big tents since the beginning of the siege and still don’t know how to put them up. They haven’t even learned how to build a little ditch around the tents to stop the rain and wind from getting into them! They eat badly, although they receive twice or three times the rations of our troops and spend a lot more than we do. They have no resilience and cannot deal with misfortune or privations.

Even the English were forced to recognize that the French were better organized than themselves. ‘Oh how far superior are the French to us in every way!’ noted Fanny Duberly on 27 November. ‘Where are our huts? Where are our stables? All lying at Constantinople. The French are hutting themselves in all directions while we lie in mud and horses and men alike die of an exposure which might oh so easily be prevented. It is all alike – the same utter neglect and mismanagement runs throughout.’⁹

Unlike the French, the British could not seem to work out a system for collecting firewood. They allowed the men a ration of charcoal for burning in their fires but, because of the shortage of forage for the draught animals, it proved too difficult to haul the charcoal up from Balaklava to the heights, so the soldiers went without, though officers of course could send their servants down on their own horses to collect the fuel for them. The men suffered terribly from the freezing temperatures of December and January, with thousands of reported cases of frostbite, especially among the new recruits, who were not acclimatized to the Crimean winter. Cholera and other diseases also took their toll among the weakened men. ‘I found sad misery among the men; they have next to no fuel, almost all the roots even of the brushwood being exhausted,’ noted Lieutenant Colonel Sterling of the Highland Brigade:

They are entitled to rations of charcoal; but they have no means of drawing it, and their numbers are so reduced [by illness] that they cannot spare men enough to bring it six or seven miles from Balaklava. The consequence is they cannot dry their stockings or shoes; they come in from the trenches with frost-bitten toes, swelled feet, chillblains, etc.; their shoes freeze, and they cannot put them on. Those who still, in spite of their misery, continue to do their duty, often go into the trenches without shoes by preference, or they cut away the heels to get them on … . If this goes on, the trenches must be abandoned … I heard of men on their knees crying with pain.¹⁰

A cantinière in Zouave regimental uniform, 1855

It was the food supply where the British really fell down compared to the French. ‘It is painful for me to compare the French and English alongside of each other in this camp,’ wrote General Simpson to Lord Panmure. ‘The equipage of our Allies is marvellous. I see continual strings of well-appointed carts and wagons … conveying stores, provisions, etc … . Everything an army ought to possess is in full working order with the French – even the daily baking of their bread – all under military control and discipline.’ Every French regiment had a corps of people responsible for the basic needs of the troops – food supply and preparation, the treatment of the wounded and so on. There was a baker and a team of cooks in every regiment, which also had its own vivandières and cantinières, female sutlers, dressed in a modified version of the regimental uniform, who sold respectively food and drink from their mobile field canteens. Food was prepared collectively – every regiment having its own kitchen and appointed chefs – whereas in the British camp each man received his individual ration and was left to cook it on his own. This difference helps to explain how the French were able to maintain their health surprisingly well, compared to the British, even though they received half the rations and one-third as much meat as their allies. It was only in December that the British army moved towards the French system of mass food preparation in canteens, and as soon as they did so their circumstances began to improve.¹¹