Victors and Lords by V. A. Stuart

Author:V. A. Stuart
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590133453
Publisher: McBooks Press
Published: 2001-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

THE LAST WEEK of July and the beginning of August was a period fraught with terrible anxiety for everyone in Varna. The lurking cholera germs, always present in unhealthy, over-crowded camps, were suddenly released in their full, hideous virulence.

At first the French suffered more acutely than the British. Marshal St Arnaud’s expedition to the Dobruja came to a disastrous conclusion, with the loss of over three thousand of his Zouaves from the disease—and without the sight of a single Russian. By the time he returned with his stricken force to Varna, cholera had begun to take heavy toll of his British allies as well.

In a single day—Sunday, 23 July—nineteen men died in the Light Division encampment, all men of the Rifle Brigade. The only precautionary measure the medical officers could suggest was the changing of the camp sites and this, although put swiftly into effect, did not prevent or even slow down the rapid spread of infection.

The Cavalry Division—initially the least affected—was moved to Jeni-Bazaar and then to Issytype, where it was cut off from the rest of the army, 28 miles beyond Devna. But the unhappy infantry, shift about as they might, could find no escape from the dreaded sickness. The Guards Brigade were hardest hit, with over three hundred cases of cholera, dysentery and typhoid in their new camp. When ordered to move yet again to a fresh site at Galata, on the south side of Varna Bay, their packs had to be transported for them by bullock wagon, since the men who managed to march there had not the strength to carry them.

Every day came news of more outbreaks, more cases of cholera, more deaths . . . including one in the Horse Artillery at Issytype, and every day the fear grew.

Emmy heard the rumors and the frightened whispers, despite the fact that such social life as there had been in Varna was abruptly curtailed and, for a time, she and Charlotte had no contact with either Lady Errol or Mrs Duberly—or indeed with anyone else, save for an occasional hurried visit from Phillip. But they witnessed the dreadful spectacle of the ambulance wagons, passing in slow procession through the streets, bringing the sick to the inadequate and soon overcrowded barracks on the far side of the town, which had been brought into use as a general hospital. Few survived incarceration in its filthy wards and rat-run corridors, and the poor old pensioners, whose duty it was to drive the wagons, died like flies, having little stamina to resist the ravages of cholera and dysentery.

At sea and in harbour, the British and French fleets also suffered. Many ships put to sea, in the hope of leaving the infection behind . . . only to learn that they had brought the disease with them. In the space of sixty hours, the French Admiral Bruat lost 153 of his crew and Admiral Dundas, in H.M.S. Britannia, had 100 deaths, with three times this number of unfortunate seamen lying helplessly below decks, all victims of cholera or typhoid.

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