But in the British army, the carrying off the wounded, depended, partly upon the casual assistance of a weak waggon train, very badly disciplined, furnishing only three waggons to a division, and not originally appropriated to that service; partly upon the spare commissariat animals, but principally upon the resources of the country, whether of bullock-carts, mules, or donkeys, and hence the most doleful scenes after a battle, or when an hospital was to be evacuated. The increasing numbers of the sick and wounded as the war enlarged, also pressed on the limited number of regular medical officers, and Wellington complained, that when he demanded more, the military medical board in London neglected his demands, and thwarted his arrangements. Shoals of hospital mates and students were indeed sent out, and they arrived for the most part ignorant alike of war, and their own profession; while a heterogeneous mass of purveyors and their subordinates, acting without any military organization or effectual superintendence, continually bade defiance to the exertions of those medical officers, and they were many, whose experience, zeal, and talents would, with a good institution to work upon, have rendered this branch of the service most distinguished. Nay, many even of the well-educated surgeons sent out were for some time of little use, for superior professional skill is of little value in comparison of experience in military arrangement; where one soldier dies from the want of a delicate operation, hundreds perish from the absence of military arrangement. War tries the strength of the military frame-work; it is in peace that the frame-work itself must be formed, otherwise barbarians would be the leading soldiers of the world; a perfect army can only be made by civil institutions, and those, rightly considered, would tend to confine the horrors of war to the field of battle, which would be the next best thing to the perfection of civilization that would prevent war altogether. [Sidenote: Clauzel’s Correspondence, MSS.] [Sidenote: Foy’s correspondence, MSS.]