those qualities which constitute military genius.  He possessed considerable professional experience, great application, and remarkable powers of endurance; but he lacked the energy, vehemence, and decision of character which are essential to the constitution of a successful military chieftain.”  To his hesitation in council, and his want of energy and promptness in action, have always been attributed, in large measure, the ruinous delays and the fearful suffering in the army which he commanded.  Lord Raglan died in June, 1855, in his sixty-seventh year.  General Simpson succeeded him.  “It was believed at the time,” writes Mr. Russell, “and now is almost notorious, that he opposed his own appointment, and bore testimony to his own incapacity.”  “He was slow and cautious in council, and it is no wonder that where Lord Raglan failed, General Simpson did not meet with success.”  The English press and people demanded his recall.  His incompetency was everywhere acknowledged, and indeed he himself would have been the last man to deny it.  In about three months from the date of General Simpson’s appointment, “the Queen was graciously pleased to permit him to resign the command of the army.”  As we have already seen, his place was filled by General Codrington.  This officer was as signally rewarded, because he had failed, as he could have been, if he had succeeded.  Mr. Russell quotes approvingly the comment of a French officer upon this appointment:—­“If General Codrington had taken the Redan, what more could you have done for him than to make him General, and to give him command of the army?  But he did not take it, and he is made General and Commander-in-Chief.”  With equal discrimination, Sir James Simpson was created Field-Marshal!  The remainder of the campaign gave General Codrington no further opportunity of displaying his qualities for command.  No other important action occurred before the termination of hostilities.

Great credit is certainly due to Mr. Russell for fearlessly exposing the errors and incompetency of the three officers successively at the head of the English army, in spite of “much obloquy, vituperation, and injustice,” and for bearing his invariable and eloquent testimony to the bravery, endurance, and patience of the British private soldier.

In this brief recital of English blunders during the Crimean War, we have made no mention of the desperate and disastrous “charge of the Light Brigade,” the gross and culpable inefficiency of the Baltic fleet under Admiral Sir Charles Napier, and other instances of military incapacity no less monstrous.  Enough, however, has been told to more than justify the very mild summing-up of Mr. Russell, that the “war had exposed the weakness of our military organization in the grave emergencies of a winter campaign, and the canker of a long peace was unmistakably manifested in our desolated camps and decimated battalions.”