With Lord Stratford in the Crimean War (1883) (Hardcover)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. THE TURKISH CONTINGENT. A Story is told of a Scotch farmer, who, while expressing one day to his laird the interest with which he read the news from the Crimea in the newspapers, which at the same time discussed at great length the other burning question of the day, confessed that he was somewhat puzzled to distinguish between the Turkish Contingent and the Immaculate Conception. The formation of this Turkish Contingent, which puzzled the poor farmer so sorely, was a happy thought of Lord Stratford's, who saw how best to make use of the excellent raw material of courage and discipline which are undoubtedly characteristic of the Turkish soldier. The Turkish troops were so badly fed and so irregularly paid, that they used to come about the English and French camps, begging for scraps of food. When English sailors went from their ships to the Naval Brigade at the front, they would capture three Turkish soldiers apiece, ride on the shoulders ofone, and drive the others before them with a long whip, to relieve the first when he should get tired. The poor Turks would then get a few biscuits as payment of their eight miles' stage, and return to Balaclava perfectly satisfied. They were so inefficiently officered, that when Lord Raglan obtained from Omar Pasha four battalions of them to hold the four redoubts which he constructed to strengthen the lines above Balaclava, their officers gave the order to fly before the attack of the Russian General, Liprandi, who thus took the sixteen English field-pieces entrusted to them. The ' Great Elchi' conceived the idea of taking twenty-five thousand men of the best Turkish troops into British pay, under British officers, above the rank of major, leaving the Turkish majors, captains, and subalterns unchanged. This plan proved perfectly...