Another great difficulty, of which Craig had complained again and again, was the want of drivers for the artillery. Lord Moira had brought with him guns but no drivers; and there were but two captains (not enough, as Craig said, to do a fortieth part of the work) at disposal for the superintendence of a huge mass of horses. Thus a new train of artillery, which had been sent out to replace the cannon lost at Tourcoing, became a positive embarrassment. The Commissariat also, as used so often to happen with British armies, was in a very bad state. The men of the new corps of Royal Waggoners had been recruited in London, and were the worst refuse of the population. They were known, in fact, as the “Newgate Blues.” “A greater set of scoundrels never disgraced an army,” wrote Craig, in his usual pithy style. “I believe it to be true that half of them, if not taken from the hulks, have at times visited them.... They have committed every species of villainy, and treat their horses badly.” But the very worst department of all was that of the hospitals, wherein the abuses were so terrible that men hardly liked to speak of them. In December 1793 the inhabitants of one of the English ports had been stupefied by the arrival of one hundred invalid soldiers from Ostend in indescribable distress. They had been on board ship for a week in the bitter wintry weather, without so much as straw to lie upon. Some of them were dead; others died on being carried ashore. No provision had been made for their comfort on landing, and, but for the compassion of the gentry who subscribed money for their relief, the poor fellows might well have perished.[270] Nothing was done to amend this state of things. Dundas’s idea of putting an army in the field was to land raw men on a foreign shore, and to expect discipline, arms, ammunition, clothing, victuals, medical stores, and medical treatment to descend on them from Heaven. Some kind of a medical staff was improvised out of drunken apothecaries, broken-down practitioners, and rogues of every description, who were provided under some cheap contract; the charges of respectable members of the medical profession being deemed exorbitant. “The dreadful mismanagement of the hospital is beyond description,” wrote Craig, “and the remedy beyond my power. Every branch and every fibre of every branch draws a contrary way. I really doubt if there will be any way to get any good from this department but by tying them all together and sending them to you to be changed for a new set.”[271]