ABSTRACT
The following is extracted from a letter written at the English camp, near Varna:—
“While I sat on one of the wooden benches of the coffeeshop, some of the soldiers came in, and, sitting down by me, told me about their sorrows and sufferings. They did not like idling about in a savage country like this. They wanted to fight the Russians, and have it over. There were among them some married men, whose wives had the questionable privilege of accompanying the regiment. The poor men—good and steady soldiers these—looked careworn and almost woe-begone. Their wives, the regimental women, were a source of continual anxiety to them. The War-office has privileged these poor women to go out; they were, at the expense of the nation, sent to Scutari and Varna. But the commander-in-chief, or the general commanding the division, or the colonel of the regiment (in these cases it is altogether impossible to trace the effect back to its first bad cause), or some one who has power, objects to the women. They get no quarters, and no measures are taken to enable them to keep up with the march of the light cavalry. Such was the soldiers’ complaint; and, believe me, in the silence of night, this barbarous treatment of the women has caused the flowing of many a ‘soldier’s tear.’ Fancy the burning sun of Bulgaria, and a number of these poor creatures trudging behind the horses of the troop, and groaning under the weight of the few traps which they needs must have in a country where the extremes of heat and cold meet within the narrow space of a few hours! And one of the men said, with tears in his eyes, that no shelter was provided for these poor women, and they must lie out at night. No tents were allowed them; they were not quartered on the inhabitants of the villages; they must shift for themselves, as best they may, and fair it or foul it according to their necessities and the degree of their temptation. This was what the men of the 8th Hussars said. I have not been able to ascertain whether the women of the other regiments were as badly off; but the few I saw on their way to fetch water from the Devna to the camp looked so careworn, wild, and sunburnt, that I much fear they too are mere outcasts in the eyes of the superior officers. And yet the treatment these women are receiving is exactly the one most likely to convert the decent British females into camp-followers—those pests of our armies.”
