ur thousand English troops found themselves opposed by
forty thousand Russians and drove them into flight. No thanks, however,
to our allies, who--with the exception of sixty brave Zouaves and their
lieutenant, who played truant from their regiment to give us timely
assistance--either looked on or absolutely ran away.[144] Spectators of
this battle were two of the Imperial family, a circumstance alluded to
in vol. xxvii. by Leech's cartoon of _The Russian Bear's Licked Cubs,
Nicholas and Michael_.

THE PURCHASE SYSTEM.

Picton remarked of our officers, when _en route_ to Waterloo, that with
fifty thousand of his own men, and _French_ officers at their head, he
would march from one end of Europe to the other. But both the quality of
French officers and soldiers had deteriorated at the time of the Crimean
War, and was destined still further to deteriorate until the utter
unsoundness of their military discipline was laid bare years afterwards by
Prussia. The French had no generals, while we had _one_ general and an
excellent body of soldiers. Unquestionably the Russian war did us the
service of thoroughly exposing the rottenness of our military system so
far as concerned the officering of the army. The principle followed was
precisely that complained of by Sir Thomas Picton forty years before;
there was no actual test of fitness until it came to be subjected to the
practical test of emergency; money invariably had the advantage of merit,
not only in the appropriation of first commissions, but in the purchase of
subsequent regimental grades, which were given in exchange for pecuniary
value, and not as a reward for military efficiency. The material thus
obtained was splendid as regards manliness and bravery, but something more
than these were wanted in the absence of a leader like the great Duke; and
although the type selected is an extreme one, the result may be indicated
by my Lord Cardigan, who, though equal to any amount of endurance and
heroism, proved himself incapable of the exercise of the smallest particle
of common sense. The scandal of the then existing system of purchase was
aptly exposed by the artist in vol. xxviii., where we find a rich titled
old lady in a shop served by military counter-jumpers, one of whom,
wrapping up a lieutenant-colonelcy for her boy, inquires, in the
well-known jargon of the trade, "What is the next article?" in answer to
which she expresses a wish to have "a nice majority for his l