5 per cent.; of these
only one-fifteenth, or 1.5 per cent. of the whole army, were laid up on
account of injuries in battle, and 21 per cent. were disabled by
diseases. From these causes 24,930 died, which is an annual average of
7,296, or a rate of 11.8 per cent, mortality.[16]
No better authority can be adduced, for the condition of men engaged in
the actual service of war, than Lord Wellington. On the 14th of
November, 1809, he wrote from his army in Spain to Lord Liverpool, then
at the head of the British Government,--"In all times and places the
sick-list of the army amounts to ten per cent of all."[17] He seemed to
consider this the lowest attainable rate of sickness, and he hoped to be
able to reduce that of his own army to it: this is more than five times
as great as the rate of sickness among male civilians of the army-ages.
The sickness in Lord Wellington's army, at the moment of writing this
despatch, was fifteen per cent., or seven and a half times as great as
that at home.
In the same Peninsular War, there was of the sick in the French army a
constant average of 136 per 1,000 in Spain, and 146 per 1,000 in
Portugal. Mr. Edmonds says, that, just before the Battle of Talavera,
the French army consisted of 275,000 men, of whom 61,000, or 22.2 per
cent.
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