CRIMEAN WAR. General d'ALLONVILLE Armand Octave Marie (1809 - Lot 611

CRIMEAN WAR. General d'ALLONVILLE Armand Octave Marie (1809 - 1867) Major General and Senator - Letter A.S. "D'ALLONVILLE", to a general, from GALLIPOLI (Turkey) May 18, 1854 - 2pp in-8°: "I have been very late, my dear General, in replying to your kind letter of March 15... having left France on March 20 and arrived here on April 4, I have been sent on a mission to CONSTANTINOPLE.... I don't yet know what we are destined to do in this distant country; we have rallied almost all our Infantry but we don't have half our horses: so we are deprived of Cavalry, Artillery and Crew. The Marshal has arrived, and there's talk of bringing us closer to the Balkans, but nothing has been done yet..., because we can't start active operations for more than a month; ...; the fact is, it's no small matter to assemble 80,000 men 700 leagues from home... everything has to be transported by sea. What's more, the Navy's willingness to transport them is not great...".