| Description | On board ship - materials & means make writing more difficult than at camp. Returns tomorrow, but still suffering from indigestion & fever & fears for his constitution in the long term. Very few officers who started with the Expedition still survive - 4 in my regiment. Glad to hear of Lord Palmerston's Govt. coming into office - "we all feel assured that under him our time will not be wasted. How shamefully Lord John [ ] has behaved according to all accounts his desertion of his friends in their hour of need is truly shameful. We are all indignant with Sidney Herbert who to clear himself lays the blame & failure of the expedition on the incapacity of Regimental Officers who he says are quite useless, really too bad after all we have done." All impatient for another attack - more than 300 guns now in position. "From all accounts ... the Russian army is in a much worse state than our own. They are in want of provisions & are dying by hundreds from disease & want of the commonest medicines. Omar Pasha has 30,000 men at Eupatoria, 15,000 Piedmontese are coming, & the French have upwards of 80,000 men here. Our own working strength is almost 12,000 bayonets. Think of the review on the Queen's birthday at Scutari." |