A CRIMEAN VETERAN.'
GENERAL SIR GEORGE HIOGINSON, at the age of ninety, has written one of the most attractive volumes of military reminiscences that we have seen for a long time. Any veteran with a good memory may hope to interest his readers, though as a rule the memory unaided by letters or diaries is apt to play strange tricks with the truth. This book, however, is solidly based in its long Crimean section on the letters which the author wrote home to his parents and which, by a happy chance, ho has preserved intact. Thus he is able to give a highly instructive and detailed account of his experiences in the last European war in which we were engaged. The story of the campaign, as viewed on the spat by a regimental officer, undoubtedly supports the opinian that it came near to being a military catastrophe as well as a political blunder, and that such success as it attained was due to the courage and endurance of the troops in tho face of the most deplorable incom- petence at the War Office and in the higher command.
The author's early recollections take us back to the days when Belgravia was on the outskirts of the town and footpads made the road to Kensington unsafe. His father, a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Guards, was the first to live in Wilton Crescent, and his mother as a young girl in Wimpole Street often saw Nelson coming to call on their neighbour Lord Hood. Sir George himself remembers that George IV. patted him on the head one day at Windsor, and William IV. more than once stopped to view the Higgin_son children picnicking in Kensing- ton Gardens. In the year of Queen Victoria's accession, Sir George was taken by his father through Normandy and met Beau Brummell at Caen. He went to Eton in 1839, in the reign of Dr. Hawtrey, and learned some Latin and Greek. When his father suggested the study of German, Sir George's tutor remarked: " Very useful thing to enable yen to read the notes in the Greek plays I" The lad received a vommission in the Grenadier Guards in 1845, and on presenting himself at the Tower was received by the old quartermaster with the remark : " I was your father's colour-sergeant at the battle of Coruna." An old Guardsman, Grosvenor, who occasionally dined with the mess, aston- ished the youngsters by saying that he had been on duty at the Bank in the Gordon Riots of 1780. The author took his share of the pleasures of the town. He had seen Mars sot in Paris and heard Jenny Lind sing at Munich ; he knew Vauxhall Gardens when they were still a popular resort and saw the immaculate Count D'Orsay walking in the Row. His first taste of serious military work came in 1848, •when troops were secretly concentrated in London to overawe the Chartists and the Guards were hidden in Millbank Prison for some days. Ho became Adjutant in 1851, and was on duty at Wellington's funeral in the following year. The Duke in his old age had done nothing for the Army, which was very small and innocent of any field organization. When he had gone, the menacing outlook in Europe compelled the Government to consider the question of defence. In 1853 the author and a fellow-officer wore sent to report on sites for camps at Chobham and Aldershot. Sir George thought Chobham unsuitable, but his advice was ignored and nine thousand men were collected there for manoeuvres. They had a very.primitive commissariat and no transport, • Seemly-elm Years of a ausaistesn'i Life. By General Sir George ilinduson. Loudon : Smith, Elder, and 0o. ans. Cd. =kJ and the Staff managed the field day so badly as to excite the laughter of a Russian General and his Staff who were present The author thinks that the Russian report on Cliobham may have led the Tsar Nicholas to conclude, as another monarch has done since, that our " contemptible little Army " might be safely ignored. Six months later the politicians had decided that we could fight Russia, and the Grenadier Guards, as part of the expeditionary force of thirty thousand men, were sent out to Malta, on their way to Turkey. The Guards received their new Mink% rifles while they were at Malta, but they had very few cartridges. The French troops were sent to Gallipoli. and after a long delay the Guards found transports to take them to Scutari. " The more I see and the more I hear," wrote the author, " the more I am convinced we have to learn. Our system is imperfect and our equipment villainous." English officers confessed themselves humbled by the superiority of the Zouaves' uniform ; the author vowed that he would quietly abolish the terrible old stock as soon as serious work began. A curious incident at Scutari reminds us that, as in the - Peninsula, some soldiers' wives accompanied their husbands to the front. One of these women
" had lost her way while returning to barracks front Scutari, and inquired of a Turkish soldier by means of signs and gestures. Not being able clearly to understand his directions, she took his arm and made him escort her. On the road they mot two Turkish women who, the instant they saw the Turk arm in arm with an infidel, unveiled too, darted at him, abused and spit upon him. The poor man, in a horrid fright, tried to make a belt for it • but the English dame would not hear of it, and without a moment's hesitation ' went for ' the Turkish fair ones, knocked them both down and blackened both their eyes ! After which she triumphantly resumed the arm of the Turkish soldier and returned to barracks."
When the soldiers' wives landed at Varna, an old Zouave remarked " Quells prevoyance ! " The author describes the terrible cholera epidemic which more than decimated the force at Varna ; as the doctors were helpless, ho tried pale ale as a remedy, not without some effect. The French made an advance into the Dobrudja, only to lose thousands of men from cholera and fever in that inhospitable waste. The officers looked forward with uneasiness to the prospect of an invasion of the Crimea ; both the commanders had reported against so hazardous an operation. Fortunately the Russians did not oppose the landing of the Allies on September 14th, and retreated after their defeat at the Alma on the 20th. The author gives a vivid description of the slow, eteady, but irresistible advance of the Guards against the redoubt, after the repulse of the Light Division, and the charge over the last fifty yards which took the position and decided the battle. Ho does not attempt to explain the failure to pursue the enemy or the com- manders' decision not to attack the northern forts of Sebastopol, which were near at hand, but to march right across the enemy's front to Balaclava and thence assail the southern side of the fortress. The Army
• was still a prey to cholera, and lacked supplies of every kind. Canrobert, who succeeded at St. Arnaud's death to the command of the French, was afflicted by indecision. On October 17th the bombardment began, and the officers hoped that the fortress would soon be taken. But the French aiege batteries were a disappointment. Writing three mouths later, the author said frankly " No sooner did the fire open than the French batteries proved to be so badly constructed, so weak and so ill-engineered that their guns were silenced ; and they implored us to keep up an incessant fire in order to distract the Russians while they repaired and altered their flimsy earth. works."
The result was that our gunners used up their stook of munitions and could never again replace it fully. The mules that should have brought up food for the men were worn out in carrying shot and shell. Stores had to be fetched, after that, by fatigue parties, already exhausted by trench duty. The hospitals began to fill, and there were no medicines or comforts for the sick and no transport. The great storm of Novem- ber 14th that wrecked the store-ships was partly accountable for the tragedy. But the alleged weaknees of the British commander, Lord Raglan, and the inefficiency of the Staff and the supply officers at home were thought at the time, in Balaclava, to bo contributory causes of the suffering that followed in that terrible winter of 1854-55. As an eyewitness of Balaclava, the author attributes the sacrifice of the Light Brigade mainly to the notorious illwill existing between Lord Lucan, the Divisional Commander, and he Brigadier, Lord Cardigan. He met Nolan on his way with the fatal message and thought "that under the stress of some great excite- ment he had lost self-command"; Nolan was known to hold "exag- gerated views on the capability of cavalry to perform any daring act." At Inkerman General Higginson was, of course, in the thick of it. The Grenadiers had taken their colours into action and had much difficulty in saving them. Retiring from the Sandbag Battery before the over- whelming masses of Russians, the few survivors of the 3rd Battalion, forming round Verschoyle and Turner who held the colours, fought their way baok step by step for nearly half-a-mile, under fire from front, flank, and rear, and regained the main body, who had given them up for lost. The author wrote home :-
"However, it was a day only for Englishmen to boast of, not English generals. The less said about generalship the better. We began by being shamefully surprised, for which two poor officers of the Second Division are alone responsible. We fought for our lives and our camp, and no one received an order from anyone ! "
By January the Guards Brigade was reduced to an oftactivo of three hundred men. Two months later, when some of the sink had recovered, it could muster six hundred and seventy men. Tho supply problem began to be solved, but the command did not improve. In letter after letter the author complained that the regimental officers received no orders and no help in their trench work. " All that is told to an officer to whom a whole siege attack,' including battery, trench, zigzag and advanced work is given, is that so many men are to go to one, so many to another." Some thirteen-inch mortars arrived in March, but there were no fuses for the now shells. The gunners had to fall back on old fuses of 1804, which they borrowed from the field artillery. What with Canrobert's hesitation and Raglan's excessive kindliness, the combined armies had no loading at all. On Raglan's death, he June, 1835, the author wrote home despairingly, more than once saying that success was impossible. The costly failure of the June attack on the Malakoff and Radon had depressed the armies. When the September assault had been achieved, at a great cost the author told his father quite frankly that our attack on the Roden was sadly bungled. The supporting party wad made up of detachments from all the regiments in tho 2nd Division and had no cohesion ; the officers vainly tried to lead them over the parapet and the stormers had to fall back. Further, the attack was unnecessary. Once the Malakoff had fallen, the Roden was untenable ; the same night tho Russians evacuated it and Sebastopol was won. There was nothing more to do alter this, as both parties were tired of the war, and peace came in the spring. It is noteworthy that throughout the letters there is not an unkindly word about the enemy, and that as soon as an armistice was declared the armies fraternized. The author with other officem was allowed to go on a pleasure trip into the interior of the Crimea. Other wars, other manners ! One interesting duty that fell to the author's lot was to take charge of the American mission, which included both McClellan and Robert E. Lee. He returned home with his battalion—the only one of thirty-four officers who had gone out with it two years before. Tho Government, having at last an efficient Army, could think of nothing better than to disband a thousand Guardsmen and many others, most of whom joined the ranks of the unemployed.
General Higginson had a full and varied life after ho left the Crimea. He was with the Guards in Canada in 1861-63, during the anxious days after the 'Trent' affair. He describes in a series of pleasant letters the Russian manoeuvres of 1884 and the Italian manoeuvres of 1885. His last military post was that of Lieutenant of the Tower from 188!) to 1893. But he touches lightly on those matters, giving most of his book to the Crimean chapters, which, as we have seen, are uncom- monly fresh and interesting.
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