BEFORE SEBASTOPOL, February 13, 1855.

MY DEAR LORD LUCAN,-It is with much concern that I fulfil the painful duty of transmitting to you a despatch which I received yesterday evening from the Duke of Newcastle.

I have anxiously considered how I could acquit myself of this task with most regard for your feelings; and I have arrived at the conclusion that the best way is to put you in possession of the Minister for War's communication and orders, without reserve or comment.

If you should desire to see me, I shall be happy to receive you at any time that may be most convenient to you.-Believe. me, very faithfully yours,

Lieutenant-General the EARL of LUCAN.

(Signed)

RAGLAN.

20 HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON, March 2, 1855.

SIR, I have obeyed her Majesty's commands to resign the command of the cavalry of the Army of the East, and to return to England; and have now the honour to report my arrival, for the information of the General Commanding-in-Chief.

I consider it due to my professional honour and character to seize the earliest moment of requesting that my conduct in ordering the charge of the Light Cavalry Brigade at Balaclava, on the 25th October, and writing the letter addressed to FieldMarshal Lord Raglan, on the 30th November, may be submitted to, and investigated by, a Court-martial.

I make this appeal to General Lord Hardinge with the greatest confidence, believing it to be the undoubted privilege, if not the positive right, of any soldier to be allowed a military inquiry into his conduct, when, as in my case, he shall consider it to have been unjustly impugned.-I have the honour, &c.

The Adjutant-General.

(Signed) LUCAN, Lieut.-Gen.

HORSE GUARDS, March 5, 1855.

MY LORD, I have had the honour to submit to the General Commanding-in-Chief your letter of the 2d March instant, reporting your arrival in London from the Army in the East, and requesting that your conduct in ordering the charge of the Light Cavalry Brigade at the action of Balaclava, on the 25th October last, and writing the letter you addressed to FieldMarshal Lord Raglan on the 30th November, may be submitted to, and investigated by, a Court-martial.

I am directed by the General Commanding-in-Chief to state in reply that, after a careful review of the whole correspondence which has passed, he cannot recommend to her Majesty that your lordship's conduct in these transactions should be investigated by a Court-martial.—I have the honour to be, &c. (Signed) G. A. WETHERALL,

Major-General the EARL of LUCAN.

HANOVER SQUARE, March 5, 1855.

SIR, I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter informing me that the Commander-in-Chief cannot recommend that my conduct should be investigated by a Court-martial.

Until this day I have been kept uninformed of the letter from Lord Raglan, which appears to have been addressed by his lordship to the Minister of War, when forwarding mine of the 30th of November last.

This letter contains entirely new matter, and is replete with new charges, reflecting more seriously than before on my professional judgment and character. There is now imputed to me, and for the first time, inattention to, and neglect of, another order; and again, a total incapacity to carry out my instructions, and to avail myself of the means placed by his lordship at my disposal.

Charges so grave, and of a character so exclusively professional, cannot, I submit, be properly disposed of without a

military investigation. I find myself, therefore, compelled to express iny anxious wish that the Commander-in-Chief will be induced kindly to reconsider his decision, and consent to my whole conduct on the day of the action of Balaclava (25th of October 1854) being investigated by a Court-martial. — I have the honour, &c.

To the Adjutant-General.

(Signed)

LUCAN, Lieut.-Gen.

March 12, 1855.

Letter from the Adjutant-General, stating that the Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards cannot recommend that your conduct on the 25th October should be investigated by a Court-martial.-I have the honour, &c.

(Signed)

Major-General LORD LUCAN, &c. &c.

G. A. WETHERALL, A.G.

No. IX.

The Nature of the Litigation in the Suit of the Earl of Cardigan v. Lieutenant-Colonel Calthorpe.

The tenor of the litigation in Cardigan v. Calthorpe was of this kind. In his Letters from Headquarters'-a book of which the successive editions appeared in 1856, 1857, and 1858-Colonel Calthorpe had substantially maintained that Lord Cardigan, after leading the Light Cavalry, retreated prematurely, and he had also stated in the same book that Lord Cardigan so retreated without having entered the battery.

In 1863, Lord Cardigan applied in the Court of Queen's Bench for a criminal information against Colonel Calthorpe, and supported his complaint by affidavits which proved that he had not only entered the battery, but had passed on, some way, beyond it.

Colonel Calthorpe being satisfied with the proofs which his adversary had adduced upon this particular point, acknowledged his mistake so far as concerned the spot where Lord Cardigan's retrograde movement began, and declared himself satisfied 'that the Earl of Cardigan entered the Russian battery,' but he firmly persisted in maintaining that Lord Cardigan had retreated prematurely; and in support of that contention, he adduced a mass of evidence which went to show that whilst the 4th Light Dragoons and the 8th Hussars were in the act of advancing towards the battery, Lord Cardigan rode by, on his way to the rear. Moreover, to show at how early a moment Lord Cardigan had retired, he adduced an affidavit by no less a personage than the commander of the whole English Cavalry in the Crimea—that is, by the Earl of Lucan.

It was considered that Colonel Calthorpe, having thus partly shifted his ground, could not be allowed, in that suit, to sustain the charge of premature retreat in a new form; and Lord Cardigan was not called upon to refute, if he could, the evidence which had been adduced against him.

So, the change wrought by the litigation was substantially this: On the one hand it had become clear from the proofs, nay it was even unanimously acknowledged that Lord Cardigan rode into the battery; and the highly favourable comments of the Lord Chief Justice added largely to the advantage thus gained by the plaintiff; but, on the other hand, the substance of the charge which had been brought against Lord Cardigan the charge of having prematurely retreated―remained still upheld against him as a charge deliberately persisted in by his adversary, and one which now rested no longer upon the mere assertion of an author narrating what he had heard from others, but-upon the testimony of numbers of men who (having at the time of the battle held various ranks in

* This he did by formally declaring in an affidavit his adherence to the following passage in his book: This was the moment when a general was 'most required, but unfortunately Lord Cardigan was not then present.'

The actual decision was that the rule obtained by Lord Cardigan must be discharged; but not for reasons founded on anything that occurred in the battle. The rule was discharged without costs.

the army from that of the Lieutenant-General commanding the cavalry down to the private soldier) declared upon oath that they had seen with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears, the things to which they bore witness.

Upon the whole, the upshot of the litigation was that, ostensibly, and so far as concerned the immediate impression of the public, Lord Cardigan was clearly the gainer; and yet by the very process which brought him this advantage he had provoked into existence a mass of sworn and written testimony which, though judged to be out of place in the particular suit of Cardigan v. Calthorpe, might nevertheless be used against him with formidable effect in any other contention.

When I had imparted to Lord Cardigan my idea of the state in which his military reputation was left by all this sworn testimony, he caused to be prepared some 'statutory declara'tions' by persons present in the combat, and laid these before me with great numbers of other documents. In fairness, these counter-declarations should be read as a sequel to the affidavits filed in Cardigan v. Calthorpe.*

Accordingly, if a report of the trial with copies of the affidavits be published, I should wish, in justice to the memory of Lord Cardigan, to have the declarations which were laid before me printed in the same volume.

END OF VOL. IV.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.