Ref Number: 157
Heights of Galata Burun on whiech was encamped part of the british army during the months of July and August 1854
Ref Number: 157
Cholera and The Great Varna Fire
July saw the 1st Division arrival, preceded by the Spahis from the Orient, arrived at Kargalik, bulgarian Kargalik or Gargalik, in the municipality of Kavarna, being the district of Dobrich, North of Varna.
The cholera which had appeared the day before in the First Division suddenly assumed a terrible character and intensity. The Spachias and the three divisions fall back to the Franka camp. Billeted at Frangen plateau
The 1st Division proceeded inwards and camped eight miles upstream from Varna in a valley around a lake called Alladyn. During the day, the valley looked beautiful and healthy, but at night, “the damp and mist rising from the place like a white cloud.” Men started to have diarrhea, feel tired all the time, and get sick, and there were even a few cases of cholera.
Like the camps of other sections, this one was moved, but the sickness got worse. Almost every day, a hot wind came from the west and covered the grass, tarps, food, and a cloud of white limestone powder and dead flies.
Then, on July 19, it became known that cholera had spread to the French camp, joining an outbreak that was happening all over the south of Europe that summer. After three days, the British camps got sick. The tents were moved again, but this time the sickess went with them.
The army fell into a horrible sleepiness. Men were slow, dark, and pale, like ghosts, as they walked around. It was “wonderful how hard he worked,” but Lord Raglan himself looked “pale and worn.”
The Quartermaster-General, Lord de Ros, was a “really bad mess.” A doctor in the Guards Brigade wrote in his notebook, “All seem as if twelve years of hard suffering had been added to their lives.”
On July 31, he saw a group of officers from his own company, but their droopy faces made it hard for him to recognize them. There were a lot of flies, gnats, and brown bugs in the camps. They settled on pieces of meat that the men, who were too tired to eat, threw away into the dust.
Simple rules about keeping things clean were not followed especially in the French camps . Men were too tired to dig any more latrines, and bodies were lying around rotting in the sun.
In Varna, a large prison was used as a general hospital. Tired orderlies stood around and looked at the sick people’s squirming, sweating bodies with a blank stare. Lice, fleas, and rats—”great big grey fellows”—crawled over the crumbling floors, making people shiver. Mr. Russell, who was the main reporter for The Times, saw a long line of carts carrying sick French soldiers from the camps along the two white walls of the part of the building that the French used.
It was early August and the moon was out. A group of troops was sitting quietly by the road, and the moonbeams shot off their piled arms every once in a while. The only sound that broke the silence were the groans and cries of pain from the poor people in the carts. Russell saw that about fifty of the carts were empty, so he asked a worker below him “why they were needed.” “Pour les morts” was his short and angry answer.
Most people thought that no one got out of this crowded hospital alive, and guys who were sick did everything they could to hide it for fear of being sent there. “Cholera is rising,” the 1st Regiment’s senior officer said in his usual blunt style, “and men are dying quickly.” The General Hospital in Varna has seen every patient who came in. 15 people have died in the last two nights. The old pensioners who were sent out with the ambulances are quickly leaving. I think they will all be buried in Varna. They were tired before they came here, so they drink when they can and die like dogs.
It wasn’t just the old ambulance drivers who got drunk. People began to think that the French got cholera because they drank so much bad red wine and that the rough, strong brandy that could be bought from sutlers’ shops for 3s. 6d. a bottle was a good way to stay healthy. French and English troops were often seen lying dead in the hot sun, covered in flies, and drunk by the middle of August.
Even though there were more and more rules about behavior and what to wear, punishment was quickly becoming less strict. Once, someone from the 88th broke into a house and destroyed everything inside. Because of this, theft became a capital crime in his section. People who strayed a mile from the camp would be flogged as a punishment. Officers weren’t allowed to wear civilian clothes, but many of them were still walking around with their shoulders back, turbans around their forage caps, and nothing around their necks. As one person put it, “a great many having nothing perceptible but their noses which appear from a dense forest of beard and whiskers.” “Bored to death, longing to go anywhere,” they all said.
The Great Fire of 7th to 16th August 1854
It was hot until August 7th, when it turned cold and windy. The troops’ health did not change, though. The next three days were cool and sunny, and a fierce fire at Varna burned thousands of pounds worth of goods, including 16,000 pairs of boots and more than 150 tons of biscuits. That same day, 80 Coldstream Guardsmen died of cholera. Colonel Bell said, “It’s time we moved on from this; burying the dead is our main job.” In a letter home, a major in the 8th Hussars said, “No doubt we shall go soon.” “But our lack of interest is so deep that no one seems to care if we go to Sebastopol or South America, stay where we are, or do nothing.”
The fire raged on for sevearl days, however the troops managed to safeguard the ammunition and relative powder stores and take them to higher ground, the fire was thought to have set by Russian sympathisers probably of Greek origin as they had been found to be attempting said previously. At the end of the fourth day the city was left half in ruins forcing further supply and troop ship debarkation to move to Burgas.
Losses to cholera were mounting far more within the French camps that the British, this has been put down to far better discipline when it came to latrine management and sanitary methods deployed by the Commanders of the troops.
The precise number of French and English troops that died from Cholera is uncertain, although a significant number of French soldiers, estimated to be in the thousands, and around one thousand known English personnel are interred in improvised graves scattered across Varna.
We have put together a staff of first-rate, well-informed tour guides to help you discover the city.
Offering introductory walks of Varna, a city for tourism and history, as well as family pleasure. If you want to learn more, arrange a complete tour with one of our experienced experts.
© 2024 Varna Eye. Designed & Maintained by PC Consultants