ns. The wagons
could not be dragged through the mud, which reached to their axles, and
the supplies had to be carried on the backs of mules and horses, of
which there was an insufficient number. Even the horses rapidly perished
from fatigue and hunger.

Thus were the French and English troops pent up on a bleak promontory,
sick and disheartened, with uncooked provisions, in the middle of
winter. Of course they melted away even in the hospitals to which they
were sent on the Levant. In those hospitals there was a terrible
mortality. At Scutari alone nine thousand perished before the end of
February, 1855.

The reports of these disasters, so unexpected and humiliating, soon
reached England through the war correspondents and private letters, and
produced great exasperation. The Press was unsparing in its
denunciations of the generals, and of the ministry itself, in not
providing against the contingencies of the war, which had pent up two
large armies on a narrow peninsula, from which retreat was almost
impossible in view of the superior forces of the enemy and the dreadful
state of the roads. The armies of the allies had nothing to do but fight
the elements of Nature, endure their unparalleled hardships the best way
they could, and patiently await results.

The troops of both the allied nations fought bravely and behaved
gallantly; but they fought against Nature, against disease, against
forces vastly superior to themselves in number. One is reminded, in
reading the history of the Crimean war, of the ancient crusaders rather
than of modern armies with their vast scientific machinery, so numerous
were the mistakes, and so unexpected were the difficulties of the
attacking armies. One is amazed that such powerful and enlightened
nations as the English and French could have made so many blunders. The
warning voices of Aberdeen, of Gladstone, of Cobden, of Bright, against
the war had been in vain amid the tumult of military preparations; but
it was seen at last that they had been thy true prophets of their day.

Nothing excited more commiseration than the dreadful state of the
hospitals in the Levant, to which the sick and wounded were sent; and
this terrible exigency brought women to the rescue. Their volunteered
services were accepted by Mr. Sidney Herbert, the secretary-at-war, and
through him by the State. On the 4th of November Florence Nightingale,
called the "Lady-in-Chief," disembarked at Scutari and began her usefu