26 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



great bulk of the material, yet leave many other departments unnoticed, 

 which we may call accessories, such as medical service, the treasury, the 

 post-office, the printing-office, and the telegraph. 



In no department did the French excel the English so much as in hos- 

 pital arrangements ; at least during the first half of the Avar-period. If it 

 had not been for Miss Nightingale, and a few other brave hearts, the deaths, 

 through want of the commonest medicines and necessaries, in the English 

 camp and hospitals, would have been much more numerous than they were. 

 The French sent over 27,000 bedsteads for invalids, about the same num- 

 ber of mattresses, and 40,000 coverlets. There were also thirty complete 

 sets of furniture and appliances of every kind, for movable hospitals of 500 

 invalids each. There were materials for ambulances for 24,000 sick men, 

 GOO cases of surgical instruments, and no less than 700,000 pounds weight 

 of lint, bandages, and dressings of various kinds. Then, for the sustenance 

 of the sick and wounded, there were such medical comforts as concentrated 

 milk, essence of bouillon, granulated gluten. Chollet's conserves, etc., to the 

 amount of 200,000 pounds. , 



The military train, or equipages militaires, were the carriers of the army, 

 so long as that army was on Turkish or Russian ground. The number of 

 vehicles required for this service was enormous, the tilted wagons, wagons 

 without tilts, Maltese carriages, Marseille charrettes, and Turkish arabas and 

 tekis, provided for the use of the French military train, were 2,900 in num- 

 ber. There were 900 large chests, to contain about 1,400 soldiers' daily 

 rations each. Altogether, there were 14,000 men and 20,000 horses, mules, 

 oxen, and buffaloes, engaged in carrying food and baggage to the troops. 



The treasury, the military-chest an important adjunct to any army 

 was well attended to in the French army of the Crimea, by a staff of officers 

 comprising about ninety persons, who managed the post-office as well as the 

 funds. Marshal Vaillant asserts that the French soldiers received their pay 

 and their letters with as much correctness and punctuality outside Sebasto- 

 pol, as if they had been garrisoned in France. The money was sent over, 

 partly in cash, and partly in treasury notes, which were readily taken by the 

 larger traders in the east. The money thus expended at the seat of war, 

 amounted to 285,000,000 francs, or 11,000,000 ; this was irrespective of the 

 sums, of course many times larger in amount, expended in France on mat- 

 ters pertaining to the war. 



Electro-telegraphy and printing are novel items in the operations of the 

 battle-field. They indicate two among many changes which are coming 

 over the art of war. Both semaphores and electric-telegraphs were provided 

 to communicate orders from head-quarters to the various army-corps en- 

 camped outside Sebastopol ; and a staff of about sixty persons was told off 

 for this service. The semaphores were wooden telegraphs, which could be 

 set up or removed at a short notice. Besides this, England having laid 

 down a submarine telegraphic-cable from Balaklava to Varna, France 

 undertook to connect that cable with the net-work of European telegraphs, 

 by a line from Varna into the Danubian Principalities, nearly two hundred 

 miles in length; and, a staff of forty persons, stationed at Varna, Shumh, 



