cent., or over 14,000, 'constantly sick.' Out of 309,268
French soldiers sent to the Crimea in 1855-6, the number of killed
and those who died of wounds was 7500, the number who died of
disease was 61,700. At the same date navies also suffered. Dr.
Stilon Mends, in his life of his father,[74] Admiral Sir William
Mends, prints a letter in which the Admiral, speaking of the
cholera in the fleets at Varna, says: 'The mortality on board
the _Montebello_, _Ville_de_Paris_, _Valmy_ (French ships),
and _Britannia_ (British) has been terrible; the first lost 152
in three days, the second 120 in three days, the third 80 in ten
days, but the last lost 50 in one night and 10 the subsequent
day.' Kinglake tells us that in the end the _Britannia's_ loss
went up to 105. With the above facts before us, we are compelled
to adopt one of two alternatives. We must either maintain that
sanitary science made no advance between 1588 and 1855, or admit
that the mortality in Elizabeth's fleet became what it was owing to
ignorance of sanitary laws and not to intentional bad management.
As regards care of the sick, it is to be remembered that the
establishment of naval and military hospitals for the reception
of sick soldiers and sailors is of recent date. For instance,
the two great English military hospitals, Netley and the Herbert,
are only about sixty years old.

[Footnote 73: Philadelphia, 1864.]

[Footnote 74: London, 1899.]

So far from our fleet in 1588 having been ill-supplied with
ammunition, it was in reality astonishingly well equipped,
considering the age. We learn from Mr. Julian Corbett,[75] that
'during the few years immediately preceding the outbreak of the
war, the Queen's navy had been entirely re-armed with brass guns,
and in the process of re-armament a great advance in simplicity
had been secured.' Froude, without seeing where the admission
would land him, admits that our fleet was more plentifully supplied
than the Armada, in which, he says, 'the supply of cartridges
was singularly small. The King [Philip the Second] probably
considered that a single action would decide the struggle; and
it amounted to but fifty rounds for each gun.' Our own supply
therefore exceeded fifty rounds. In his life of Vice-Admiral
Lord Lyons,[76] Sir S. Eardley Wilmot tells us that the British
ships which attacked the Sebastopol forts in October 1854 'could
only afford to expend seventy rounds per gun.' At the close of
the nineteenth cent