Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/220

176 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP. Under all the existing conditions, it was from ^"^- no mysterious cause, but conformably to the Sickness of i^nowH wavs of Nature, that our army became our army. -^ . , , afflicted with scurvy, and besides with several maladies, ranging under their own special names, yet disclosing by recognised symptoms the fell scorbutic taint. Worn down by hard toil, numbed and lowered by cold and wet, suffering under wants so per- nicious as to be too surely followed by scurvy, and assailed too by cholerine, by true cholera, by dysentery, by fevers, and by numberless other complaints, our army underwent day by day appalling deductions from strength ; and, when once men fell sick, there awaited them, unless rescued by death, the unspeakable sufferings of the field-hospital, of the journey from camp to port, of the embarkation, and l)esides of those latter and yet more horrible miseries, of which we shall soon have to speak. The whole number of our officers disabled by battle or sickness soon became very great, and in some regiments but few remained. The Royal Fusiliers at one time had only three officers left. But it was amongst the rank and file that sick- ness most destructively raged. Throughout November, throughout December and January, our troops were passing into the sick-list with an always increasing rapidity ; (^) and even in February, when Lord Raglan with great joy observed the bright looks of his men under arms, this sign of a change for the better seemed at first to receive contradiction from the