It is useless to deny that we may have challenged criticism and provoked a smile by our large promise and our smaller performance.  But are we the sole and exclusive proprietors of this experience?  Where in the past or the present shall we find a great and powerful nation much addicted to modesty or self-depreciation?  Least of all, should we have expected such venomous criticism and such unsparing ridicule from England.  To be sure, we have long since ceased to look for sympathy or even justice at her hands.  We have come to understand and appreciate the tone and temper of her ruling classes towards this country.  In addition to their inherited antipathy to Republics, they believe in sober earnest what one of their greatest wits said jocosely, that “the great object for which the Anglo-Saxon race appears to have been created is the making of calico.”  And whatever interferes, or threatens to interfere, with this ennobling occupation is sure to incur their passive displeasure, if not their active hostility.  We expect nothing, therefore, from their good-will; but we have a right to demand, as a matter of good taste, that, in criticizing our campaigns, they shall not wholly ignore their own military blunders, especially those so recent as to be fresh in the recollection of every third-form school-boy in the kingdom.  For, if campaigns carried on with the smallest possible result in proportion to the magnitude of the sacrifice of money and life,—­if a succession of incompetent generals in command,—­if critical military opportunities neglected and enormous strategic blunders committed,—­if indecision, nepotism, and red tape at home, envy, want of unity, and incapacity among officers, and unnecessary and inexcusable hardship among the privates,—­if all this declares the decadence of a Government, then was the sun of England hastening to its setting during the Crimean War.

We hear much said abroad about our indecisive battles, our barren victories, our failure to take advantage of the crippled condition of a defeated enemy, and our unaccountable disinclination to follow up a successful attack by a prompt pursuit.  Now, not for the sake of excusing or palliating the numerous and grave errors into which we have fallen during our own unhappy struggle, nor yet to exonerate from censure any civil officers or military leaders who may be wholly or in part responsible for these errors, but simply to demonstrate that they are liable to occur under any form of government, and, indeed, have recently befallen the very Government whose rulers now hold us to the strictest account, and are most eager to convict us of extraordinary misconduct and incapacity, we propose, very briefly, and without further introduction, to examine the record of the English army during the Crimean War.

The first important battle fought on the Peninsula was that of the Alma.  We will give, as concisely as possible, so much of the history of this engagement, compiled from authentic English sources, as will present a correct picture of the plans formed and the results accomplished.