to the Hotel Marie, Boulevard des Capucins, telling him where to find them. M. Silvain was desolated not to have been able to come sooner, but his perfumery had not arrived, and he had been obliged to send a special messenger after it.
It was a well-learned story, but what is the use of a lover if he cannot learn anything his mistress orders! It was a bold falsehood, but what is the use of an ally who is timid? At any rate it sent Mr. Lygon away from Versailles.
THE SOLDIER AND SAILOR:
THEIR HEALTH.
In former days it would have been a dreary task to describe the condition and prospects of our Soldiers and Sailors in regard to health. Neither the men themselves, nor society in general, knew that the perils of warfare and of wind and weather were less to be dreaded than those of disease in the barrack and the ship; but there was some general notion of the ravages of ship fever, and of epidemics in camps abroad. The Walcheren expedition in 1809 has ever since been regarded as an illustration of the very worst circumstances in which a body of soldiers can find themselves; but, till we had warning from the Crimean war, we were not fully aware that the calamities of the Walcheren expedition might be reproduced at any time, and that a mortality quite as needless, though less excessive, was always going on, wherever the British army was distributed over the world. We know all about it now; and this is the same thing as saying that such mischief can never happen again.
I can just remember the sending out of those forty thousand men to Walcheren, nearly the worst known place for marsh fever in the world: yet no precautions were taken, no special provision of doctors, nurses, medicines, and comforts was made, because it was to be a secret where the force was going. So the men sank down by hundreds in a day, among the slimy sands on which they slept, and the stagnant water, alive with insects, which was all they had to drink; and within three months there were only four thousand of the forty thousand men fit for duty. What reinforcements were sent, I do not know; and the records of the Walcheren camp are actually lost, for want of understanding the value of experience; but we are in possession of the astounding fact that, after the thousands of deaths on the spot, there were 35,500 of the Walcheren soldiery admitted into the hospitals at home, in the course of the next winter and spring.
The mischief did not end even here. Lord Wellington was conducting the Peninsular war at that time. All his resources were scanty—men, supplies, money, and everything; and yet he had, on an average, twenty-one men ill in every hundred. The poor fellows were not only useless but dreadfully burdensome. They could not be moved; they occupied healthy men in taking care of them, and they were a prodigious expense. How was it that nearly a quarter of his force was always ill? It was partly owing to the general ignorance of the management of health on a large scale; but it was yet more because the Walcheren patients were sent out to Portugal as soon as they were able to go. The voyage and the southern climate, it was thought, would set them up completely; but the first broiling noon or night dew prostrated them again; and they lay, as ill as ever, in every village along the march of the British army.
Where there is a constant low state of health, there is a constant low state of morals; and it is no wonder that the British soldier was, in those days, a rather disreputable member of society. It always hurt the national feeling, to say so: but it was undeniably true. Wellington’s despatches show that he thought so; and he caused great offence in the army by the plainness with which he spoke in his public orders. The wonder would have been if the case had been otherwise. Sickly men, reckless of life because they do not expect to live, always do, and always will, make their short life what they call a merry one: and so our soldiers in the Peninsula, always brave in battle, were mischievous at other times—breaking into the wine cellars, and indulging in every kind of excess. The natural consequence of such conduct was punishment by the lash; and the consequence of that punishment was debasement and further recklessness, disease, and death.
This was not the way to make the British army a safe defence at home, or an honour to our country abroad; and in fact the evil reputation which has hitherto attached to the ordinary soldiery of all countries, was the lot of the English soldier half a century ago, and up nearly to the present time. Even at this day it is but too true that the scamp element is large in our army. All our soldiers are volunteers; and till very recently there have been drawbacks in the lot of the soldier which deterred thousands of men who would have been a great advantage to the national defence, while their proper place has been filled by worthless fellows who have entered the army as a refuge, or for swindling purposes. Even now the amount of desertion is shocking, because it shows how many thieves have got into the force. These rogues enlist, desert, and sell their outfit, and enlist again under another name. They are not only an affliction in themselves, but they deter good men from entering. They have seriously lowered the character of the whole force; and it will take some time to bring up the general character of the British soldier to a level with his reputation for valour. But the condition and prospects of the soldier are immeasurably superior to what they were five years ago; and there is no longer the excuse for recklessness that the soldier’s life is of less value than that of others.
We may remember that, about a dozen years ago, there was a stir in the public mind about improving the mind and life of the soldier. We heard of a good deal of effort to supply the men with instruction in regimental schools, and with books and newspapers for evening reading. Much kind feeling was called forth, valuable suggestions were offered; and not a little good was really effected. If it had been only that the soldiers saw that their fellow-citizens cared for them, in peace as well as in war, the benefit would not have been small. But experience has since shown us that we had not then got hold of the right handle. The