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Special pages :
Airey
| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 24 July 1857 |
Reproduced from The New American Cyclopaedia
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 18
Engels informed Marx of his intention to write this article (“Airey”) in a letter dated May 28, 1857. The letter contained a list of themes planned for the beginning of their contribution to The New American Cyclopaedia (the theme in question was not in the list). In this letter Engels asked Marx for information about Airey’s military career prior to the Crimean campaign. Marx’s extracts from several sources have survived, in particular from the Opening Address of Major-General Sir Richard Airey, K.C.B., Quartermaster-General of the Forces. Before the Board of General Officers Assembled at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London, 1856, which were used in this article.
Marx may have put the finishing touches to the text sent to New York, and the article can be regarded as written jointly by Marx and Engels. But it is also possible that Engels himself used the extracts made for him by Marx.
Airey, Sir Richard, K.C.B.,[1] major-general, and, at present, quartermaster-general of the British army, entered the service in 1821 as ensign, was made a captain 1825, a lieutenant-colonel 1851[2] and as such took the command of a brigade in the army of the east in 1854. When the Crimean expedition was about to sail from Varna, he was made, Sept. 1854, quartermaster-general of the expeditionary force, and, as such, became one of the 6 or 8 officers who, under the command of Lord Raglan, have been charged with destroying the English army by dint of routine, ostensible fulfilment of duty, and want of common sense and energy. To Airey’s share, fell the fixing of the proportions in which the different articles of camp-equipage, tents, great-coats, blankets, boots, should be dealt out to the various regiments. According to his own admission (before the Chelsea commission of inquiry),
“there never was a period after the first week in Dec. 1854, when there was not at Balaklava a considerable supply of warm clothing, and [...] at that very time there were regiments engaged at the front [...] in the trenches, which were suffering acutely from the want of these very articles, which [...] lay in readiness for them at a distance of 7 or 8 miles.”[3]
This, he says, was not his fault; there never having been the slightest difficulty in getting his signature of approval to a requisition for such articles. On the contrary, he gives himself