Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/206

162 TIIK WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP. VIII. Extent to which the sufferings and losses of the French as ;i wliole be- came inaslv- ed from ob- servers on the Clier- soneae. transaction of warlike business, when spring and summer succeeded, when even a second year fol- lowed, and still the French soldiery in thousands were coming into hospital stricken with that ac- cusing disease which proved them to have been kept on the Chersonese without the food needed for liealth.(37) So far as concerned what men saw in General Canrobert's camp, the condition of his army as a whole was well masked ; for whilst constantly shipping off to his hospitals on the Bosphorus oreat cargoes of men wounded and sick, he from time to time also was welcoming reinforcements of fresh, healthy troops, and these reached him in numbers so great that, despite the heavy losses inflicted upon his people by disease and by com- bat, his strength went on increasing steadily from only 30,000 in September to 89,000 in February, and to 95,000 in March. (^8) Of course, under such conditions, his camp, more and more abounding in able - bodied troops showed only scant signs of the havoc which wounds and sickness had wrought. It is true that the number of soldiers daily perishing in the ambulances was great, very great; but — apparently to avert that depression which was to be feared if the men should too plainly see that death was thus rife in the midst of them — an expedient which veiled this mortality from the eye of the common observer was — perhaps not unwisely — adopted. The interments were effected at night.(^^) The trans])ort of the French sick and wounded