sxxvi BIOGKAPIUCAL SKETCH. 



About the middle of July Lord Arthur had just recovered from a severe attack of illness, 

 and writes in reference to the reappearance of cholera : — " It is the most horrible disease to 

 witness, that I know of. I go generally twice a day to our hospital tents to see the sick and 

 wounded, and am therefore tolerably familiar with disease of all sorts ; but cholera is by far the 

 most frightful. Imagine a gale of wind blowing down all our hospital tents, filled as they were 

 with amputations and crying men, you cannot picture the scene of rescuing the poor wretches 

 from under the canvas and bringing them out into the rain until we got the tents up again. 



" This is a curious existence. In one tent, amidst men suffering from every description of 

 wounds, some dying, some just operated upon, some being dressed, it is the cholera case which 

 excites your interest, and engrosses you amidst the stifled moans and groaning of the wounded, 

 and the calls for drink from the fever patients. Close at hand a French band is playing a polka 

 or a waltz, and in the distance the guns are firing ; and so we go on day after day with our lives 

 not worth twelve hours' purchase, and with the firm conviction that when sacrificed it will be for 

 no purpose and to no good." 



Just at this period, trench-work had become very hot. Latterly the enemy had taken to 

 shell the English advanced trenches considerably, and had also " sorlied " upon the French. 

 They lost men by hundreds, the English by scores. The Russians also were losing heavily, as 

 might be gathered " from the daily increasing proportions of their graveyard, which lies in full 

 view on the slope that runs down to the harbour from the north." 



The French, under the vigorous and perhaps reckless command of Pelissier, were now 

 pushing forward upon the Malakoff, while the enemy, with equal vigour, were retrenching the 

 work, deepening its inner ditches, and heightening the parapets. In reference to an assault, 

 Hay entertained the opinion previously expressed, that success could not be calculated on 

 until we had brought an overpowering force of mortars and guns to bear on the Malakoff — a fire 

 80 overpowering as to preclude the possibility of living under it. 



" But nothing indeed," Lord Arthur writes, " can be worse than the conduct of the siege as 

 far as the English are concerned. The gross ignorance of their business, the presumption of those 

 in authority, their reckless stupidity and want of forethought, skill, and determination, are pitiable 

 in people belonging to so arrogant a nation as our own. Knowing as we do the real state of 

 afiairs, it is quite sickening to read the accounts in the papers. At this moment, in a military 

 sense, the defence is stronger than the attack. The actual defensive position of the town is 

 stronger than it has ever been, and our attack is not proportionate. The works we have failed 

 in taking are retrenched, though before they were all but impregnable. Batteries of six guns 

 are now batteries of ten ; in fact the defence is so magnificent that we cannot help admiring the 

 genius that directs it and the courage with which it is executed. As to the future I have my 



