Chapter I
English Head-Quarters--Investment of Sebastopol--Russian Batteries open fire--The Greeks expelled from Balaklava--First Sortie--Plan of the Works--The Turks--Review of the Campaign--Impediments--"Right" and "Left" Attacks--Officers in Command--Opening of the Siege--First Bombardment--Its Results--The "Valley of Death"--Hard Pounding--Privations--Russian Movements--Conflagrations--A Stratagem--Returns of Killed and Wounded--Diminution of our Numbers--Russian Tactics.
Lord Raglan and Staff established head-quarters in a snug farmhouse, surrounded by vineyards and extensive out-offices, about four and a half miles from Balaklava, on the 5th of October. From the rising ground, about a mile and a half distant from head-quarters, in front, the town of Sebastopol was plainly visible. The Russians were occupied throwing up works and fortifying the exposed portions of the town with the greatest energy.
The investment of the place on the south side was, as far as possible, during the night of the 7th, completed. Our lines were to be pushed on the right and closed in towards the north, so as to prevent supplies or reinforcements passing out or in on this side of the Black River. This measure was absolutely necessary to enable our engineers to draw the lines or measure the ground.
The Russians continued to work all the week at the White Fort, and cast up strong earthworks in front of it, and also on the extreme left, facing the French. They fired shell and shot, at intervals of ten minutes, into the camps of the Second and Light Divisions. Sir George Brown had to move his quarters more to the rear.
[Sidenote: EFFECTS OF MARTIAL MUSIC.]
The silence and gloom of our camp, as compared with the activity and bustle of that of the French, were very striking. No drum, no bugle-call, no music of any kind, was ever heard within our precincts, while our neighbours close by kept up incessant rolls, fanfaronnades, and flourishes, relieved every evening by the fine performances of their military bands. The fact was, many of our instruments had been placed in store, and the regimental bands were broken up and disorganized, the men being devoted to the performance of the duties for which the ambulance corps was formed. I think, judging from one's own feelings, and from the expressions of those around, that the want of music in camp was productive of graver consequences than appeared likely to occur at first blush from such a cause. Every military man knows how regiments, when fatigued on the march, cheer up at the strains of their band, and dress up, keep step, and walk on with animation and vigour when it is playing. At camp, I always observed with pleasure the attentive auditory who gathered every evening at the first taps of the drum to listen to the music. At Aladyn and Devno the men used to wander off to the lines of the 77th, because it had the best band in the division; and when the bands were silenced because of the prevalence of cholera, out of a humane regard for the feelings of the sick, the soldiers were wont to get up singing parties in their tents in lieu of their ordinary entertainment. It seemed to be an error to deprive them of a cheering and wholesome influence at the very time they needed it most. The military band was not meant alone for the delectation of garrison towns, or for the pleasure of the officers in quarters, and the men were fairly entitled to its inspiration during the long and weary march in the enemy's country, and in the monotony of a standing camp ere the beginning of a siege.
Soon after daybreak on the morning of the 10th, the Russian batteries opened a heavy fire on the right of our position, but the distance was too great for accuracy. On the same day four battalions of French, numbering 2400 men, broke ground at nine o'clock P.M., and before daybreak they had finished a ditch, parapet, and banquette, 1200 metres long, at a distance of 900 metres from the enemy's line; and so little did the Russians suspect the operation, that they never fired a gun to disturb them. Each man worked and kept guard at one of the covering parties in turn till daybreak, and by that time each man had finished his half metre of work, so that the 1,200 metres were completed. From this position a considerable portion of the enemy's defences on their right was quite under control, and the French could command the heaviest fort on that side. From the top of the ditch seventy-six guns could be counted in the embrasures of this work, which was called the Bastion du Mât. The French had got forty-six guns ready to mount when the embrasures should be made and faced with gabions and fascines, and the platforms were ready. Their present line was from 200 to 300 yards nearer to the enemy's lines than ours; but the superior weight of our siege guns more than compensated for the difference of distance.
On the previous night the British, who had already thrown up some detached batteries, broke ground before Sebastopol on the left. Soon after dark, 800 men were marched out silently under the charge and direction of Captain Chapman, R.E., who has the construction of the works and engineering department of the left attack under his control. About 1200 yards of trench were made, though the greatest difficulty was experienced in working, owing to the rocky nature of the ground. The cover was tolerably good. The Russians never ceased firing, but attempted nothing more, and those who were hoping for a sortie were disappointed. As an earthwork for a battery had been thrown up the previous day, within fire of the enemy's guns, their attention was particularly directed to our movements, and throughout the day they kept up a tremendous fire on the high grounds in front of the Light and Second Divisions. The Russians, who usually ceased firing at sunset, were on the alert all night, and continued their fire against the whole line of our approaches almost uninterruptedly. Every instant the darkness was broken by a flash which had all the effect of summer lightning--then came darkness again, and in a few seconds a fainter flash denoted the bursting of a shell. The silence in the English Camp afforded a strange contrast to the constant roar of the Russian batteries, to the music and trumpet calls and lively noises of the encampment of our allies. After nightfall the batteries on the Russian centre opened so fiercely that it was expected they were covering a sortie, and the camp was on the alert in consequence. Lord Raglan, accompanied by Quartermaster-General Airey and several officers, started at ten o'clock, and rode along the lines, minutely inspecting the state and position of the regiments and works. They returned at half-past one o'clock in the morning. The casualties on the night of the 10th were, one man, 68th, died of wounds, legs taken off; one man, 57th, killed by cannon-shot; another man, 57th, arm shot off; Lieutenant Rotherham, 20th, slightly wounded in the leg by a stone which had been "started" by a cannon-shot.
Colonel Waddy, Captain Gray, and Lieutenant Mangles, 50th, were wounded by a shell on the evening of the 11th. It was rumoured that the Russians would attack Balaklava, while the Greeks were to aid them by setting fire to the town. The information on this point was so positive, that the authorities resorted to the extreme measure of ordering the Greeks, men, women, and children, to leave the town, and the order was rigidly carried into effect before evening. An exception was made in favour of the Tartar families, who were all permitted to remain. The Greeks were consoled in their flight by a good deal of plunder in the shape of clothes which had been left with them to wash.
[Sidenote: THE TERRORS OF A RINGING CHEER.]
Capt. Gordon, R.E., commenced our right attack soon after dark. Four hundred men were furnished from the Second and Light Divisions on the works, and strong covering parties were sent out in front and in rear to protect them. The working party was divided into four companies of 100 men each, and they worked on during the night with such good will, that before morning No. 1 party had completed 160 yards; No. 2, 78 yards; No. 3, 95 yards; No. 4, 30 yards--in all 363 yards of trench ready for conversion into batteries. These trenches were covered very perfectly. It was intended that a party of similar strength should be employed on the left and centre; but, owing to one of those accidents which unavoidably occur in night work, the sappers and miners missed their way, and got in advance towards the lines of the enemy. They were perceived by an advanced post, which opened fire on them at short distance, and, wonderful to relate, missed them all. The flashes, however, showed our men that strong battalions of Russian infantry were moving silently towards our works, and the alarm was given to the division in the rear. At twenty-five minutes past one a furious cannonade was opened by the enemy on our lines, as they had then ascertained that we had discovered their approach. The Second and Light Divisions turned out, and our field guns attached to them opened fire on the enemy, who were advancing under the fire of their batteries. Owing to some misunderstanding, the covering parties received orders to retire, and fell back on their lines--all but one company of riflemen, under the command of Lieutenant Godfrey, who maintained the ground with tenacity, and fired into the columns of the enemy with effect. The Russians pushed on field-pieces to support their assault. The batteries behind them were livid with incessant flashes, and the roar of shot and shell filled the air, mingled with the constant "ping-pinging" of rifle and musket-balls. All the camps "roused out." The French on our left got under arms, and the rattle of drums and the shrill blast of trumpets were heard amid the roar of cannon and small arms. For nearly half-an-hour this din lasted, till all of a sudden a ringing cheer was audible on our right, rising through the turmoil. It was the cheer of the 88th, as they were ordered to charge down the hill on their unseen enemy. It had its effect, for the Russians, already pounded by our guns and shaken by the fire of our infantry, as well as by the aspect of the whole hill-side lined with our battalions, turned and fled under the shelter of their guns. Their loss was not known; ours was very trifling. The sortie was completely foiled, and not an inch of our lines was injured, while the four-gun battery (the main object of their attack) was never closely approached at all. The alarm over, every one returned quietly to tent or bivouac. In order to understand this description of the works, it will be necessary to refer to the plan which accompanies this. It affords a good idea of the appearance presented by the lines and works on the eve of the first bombardment.
At the distance of about 700 sagenes (a sagene is seven feet), from the south extremity of the Careening Bay, was placed a round tower, around which the Russians had thrown up extensive entrenchments, armed with heavy guns. There was a standing camp of cavalry and infantry on a rising ground, on the summit of which this tower was placed, and probably 10,000 or 12,000 men were encamped there. This round tower was provided with guns, which, equally with those in the earthworks below, threw shot and shell right over our advanced posts and working parties, and sometimes pitched them over the hills in our front into the camps below. At the distance of 1200 yards from this round tower, in a direction nearly due south-south-east, our first batteries were to be formed, and the earthworks had been thrown up there, inclining with the slope of the hill towards the end of the Dockyard Creek, from which they were distant 930 yards. The guns of works were intended to command the Dockyard Creek, the ships placed in it, and the part of the town and its defences on the west and south of the creek.
Our left attack extended up towards the slope of the ravine which divided the French from the British attacks, and which ran south-east from the end of the Dockyard Creek up to our headquarters at Khutor. Dominating both of these entrenchments, for most of their course, was a heavy battery of eight Lancaster and ten-inch naval guns, placed at a distance of 2500 yards from the enemy's lines. The extreme of the French right was about two and a half miles from the extreme of the British left attack. South of the Cemetery, and inclining up towards Quarantine Bay and the fresh-water wells, were the French lines, which were beautifully made and covered. The fire of the Russian batteries thrown up from the circular position at the end of the western wall towards the barracks, near the end of the Dockyard Harbour, was incessantly directed on them, and shells sometimes burst in the lines; but as a general rule they struck the hill in front, bounded over, and burst in the rear. Our left attack crept round towards Inkerman, and commanded the place from the influx of the Tchernaya into the head of the bay or harbour of Sebastopol, to the hills near the round tower already threatened by our right attack. The French commanded the place from the sea to the ravine at the end of the Dockyard Harbour, and when their guns were mounted, it was hoped that all the forts, intrenchments, buildings, earthworks, barracks, batteries, and shipping would be destroyed.
The front of both armies united, and the line of offensive operations covered by them, extended from the sea to the Tchernaya for seven and a half or eight miles. From our extreme right front to Balaklava our lines extended for about the same distance, and the position of the army had been made so strong on the eastern, south-eastern, flank and rear, as to set all the efforts of the Russians to drive us from it utterly at defiance. In the first place, the road from Kadikoi to Kamara, and the western passes of the mountains, had been scarped in three places so effectually that it would have been difficult for infantry, and therefore impossible for artillery, to get along it to attack us. A heavy gun had, however, been placed in position on the heights to command this road, and to sweep the three scarps effectually. On the heights over the east side of Balaklava, were pitched the tents of about 1000 marines from the various ships of the fleet, and several 24 pound and 32 pound howitzers had been dragged up into position on the same elevation. At Kadikoi, towards the north-west, was situated a sailors' camp of about 800 men, with heavy guns in support, and with a temporary park for artillery and ship-guns below them. From Kadikoi towards Traktir the ground was mountainous, or rather it was exceedingly hilly, the heights having a tumular appearance, and the ridges being intersected by wide valleys, through a series of which passed on one side Prince Woronzoff's road, the road to Inkerman, and thence to Sebastopol, by a long détour over the Bakschiserai road, and that to Traktir.
[Sidenote: SUSPICIONS OF PORK IN DISGUISE.]
On five of these tumular ridges overlooking the road to Balaklava, a party of 2000 Turks were busily engaged casting up earthworks for redoubts, under the direction of Captain Wagman, a Prussian engineer officer, who was under the orders of Sir John Burgoyne. In each of these forts were placed two heavy guns and 250 Turks. These poor fellows worked most willingly and indefatigably, though they had been exposed to the greatest privations. For some mysterious reason or other the Turkish government sent instead of the veterans who fought under Omar Pasha, a body of soldiers of only two years' service, the latest levies of the Porte, many belonging to the non-belligerent class of barbers, tailors, and small shopkeepers. Still they were patient, hardy, and strong--how patient I am ashamed to say. I was told, on the best authority, that these men were landed without the smallest care for their sustenance, except that some Marseilles biscuits were sent on shore for their use. These were soon exhausted--the men had nothing else. From the Alma up to the 10th of October, the whole force had only two biscuits each! The rest of their food they had to get by the roadside as best they might, and in an inhospitable and desolated country they could not get their only solace, tobacco; still they marched and worked day after day, picking up their subsistence by the way as best they might, and these proud Osmanli were actually seen walking about our camps, looking for fragments of rejected biscuit. But their sorrows were turned to joy, for the British people fed them, and such diet they never had before since Mahomet enrolled his first army of the faithful. They delighted in their coffee, sugar, rice, and biscuits, but many of the True Believers were much perturbed in spirit by the aspect of our salt beef, which they believed might be pork in disguise, and they subjected it to strange tests ere it was incorporated with Ottoman flesh and blood.
Eighteen days had elapsed since our army, by a brilliant and daring forced march on Balaklava, obtained its magnificent position on the heights which envelope Sebastopol on the south side from the sea to the Tchernaya; the delay was probably unavoidable. Any officer who has been present at great operations of this nature will understand what it is for an army to land in narrow and widely separated creeks all its munitions of war--its shells, its cannon-shot, its heavy guns, mortars, its powder, its gun-carriages, its platforms, its fascines, gabions, sandbags, its trenching tools, and all the various matériel requisite for the siege of extensive and formidable lines of fortifications and batteries. But few ships could come in at a time to Balaklava or Kamiesch; in the former there was only one small ordnance wharf, and yet it was there that every British cannon had to be landed. The nature of our descent on the Crimea rendered it quite impossible for us to carry our siege train along with us, as is the wont of armies invading a neighbouring country only separated from their own by some imaginary line. We had to send all our matériel round by sea, and then land it as best we could. But when once it was landed the difficulties of getting it up to places where it was required seemed really to commence. All these enormous masses of metal had to be dragged by men, aided by such inadequate horse-power as was at our disposal, over a steep and hilly country, on wretched broken roads, to a distance of eight miles, and one must have witnessed the toil and labour of hauling up a Lancaster or ten-inch gun under such circumstances to form a notion of the length of time requisite to bring it to its station. It will, however, serve to give some idea of the severity of this work to state one fact--that on the 10th no less than thirty-three ammunition horses were found dead, or in such a condition as to render it necessary to kill them, after the duty of the day before. It follows from all these considerations that a great siege operation cannot be commenced in a few days when an army is compelled to bring up its guns.
Again, the nature of the ground around Sebastopol offered great impediments to the performance of the necessary work of trenching, throwing up parapets, and forming earthworks. The surface of the soil was stony and hard, and after it had been removed the labourer came to strata of rock and petrous masses of volcanic formation, which defied the best tools to make any impression on them, and our tools were far from being the best. The result was that the earth for gabions and for sand-bags had to be carried from a distance in baskets, and in some instances enough of it could not be scraped together for the most trifling parapets. This impediment was experienced to a greater extent by the British than by the French. The latter had better ground to work upon, and they found fine beds of clay beneath the first coating of stones and earth, which were of essential service to them in forming their works.
The officers commanding the batteries on the right attack were Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson, Captain D'Aguilar, and Captain Strange. The officers commanding the batteries of the left attack were Major Young, Major Freese, and Major Irving. The whole of the siege-train was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Gambier.
Our left attack consisted of four batteries and 36 guns; our right attack of 20 guns in battery. There were also two Lancaster batteries and a four-gun battery of 68-pounders on our right. The French had 46 guns. In all 117 guns to 130 guns of the Russians. The night was one of great anxiety, and early in the morning we all turned out to see the firing. On 17th October the bombardment began. It commenced by signal at 6.30 A.M.; for thirty minutes previous the Russians fired furiously on all the batteries. The cannonade on both sides was most violent for nearly two hours.
At eight o'clock it was apparent that the French batteries in their extreme right attack, overpowered by the fire and enfiladed by the guns of the Russians, were very much weakened; their fire slackened minute after minute.
At 8.30 the fire slackened on both sides for a few minutes; but recommenced with immense energy, the whole town and the line of works being enveloped in smoke.
[Sidenote: TERRIFIC CANNONADES.]
At 8.40 the French magazine in the extreme right battery of twelve guns blew up with a tremendous explosion, killing and wounding 100 men. The Russians cheered, fired with renewed vigour, and crushed the French fire completely, so that they were not able to fire more than a gun at intervals, and at ten o'clock they were nearly silenced on that side.
At 10.30 the fire slackened on both sides, but the Allies and Russians re-opened vigorously at 10.45. Our practice was splendid, but our works were cut up by the fire from the Redan and from the works round a circular martello tower on our extreme right.
At 12.45 the French line-of-battle ships ran up in most magnificent style and engaged the batteries on the sea side. The scene was indescribable, the Russians replying vigorously to the attacks by sea and land, though suffering greatly.
At 1.25 another magazine in the French batteries blew up. The cannonade was tremendous. Our guns demolished the Round Tower but could not silence the works around it.
At 1.40 a great explosion took place in the centre of Sebastopol amid much cheering from our men, but the fire was not abated. The Lancaster guns made bad practice, and one of them burst. At 2.55 a terrific explosion of a powder magazine took place in the Russian Redan Fort. The Russians, however, returned to their guns, and still fired from the re-entering angle of their works. The cannonade was continuous from the ships and from our batteries, but the smoke did not permit us to discern whether the British fleet was engaged.
At 3.30 a loose powder store inside our naval battery was blown up by a Russian shell, but did no damage. The enemy's earthworks were much injured by our fire, the Redan nearly silenced, and the fire of the Round Tower entrenchments diminished, though the inner works were still vigorous.
At 3.35 the magazine inside the works of the Round Fort was blown up by our shot.
At four the ships outside were ripping up the forts and stone-works and town by tremendous broadsides. Only the French flag was visible, the English fleet being on the opposite side of the harbour. Orders were given to spare the town and buildings as much as possible.
From four to 5.30 the cannonade from our batteries was very warm, the Russians replying, though our fire had evidently established its superiority over theirs, the ships pouring in broadside after broadside on Forts Nicholas and Constantine at close ranges. Towards dusk the fire slackened greatly, and at night it ceased altogether, the Russians for the first time being silent.
The French lost about 200 men, principally by the explosions; our loss was very small--not exceeding 100 killed and wounded from the commencement of the siege.
The fire was resumed on the morning of the 18th, soon after daybreak. The French on that occasion were unable to support us, their batteries being silenced.
During the night the Russians remounted their guns and brought up fresh ones, and established a great superiority of fire and weight of metal.
On the 18th, early in the morning, a vedette was seen "circling left" most energetically;--and here, in a parenthesis, I must explain that when a vedette "circles left," the proceeding signifies that the enemy's infantry are approaching, while to "circle right" is indicative of the approach of cavalry. On this signal was immediately heard the roll-call to "boot and saddle;" the Scots Greys and a troop of Horse Artillery assembled with the remaining cavalry on the plain; the 93rd got under arms, and the batteries on the heights were immediately manned. The distant pickets were seen to advance, and a dragoon dashed over the plain with the intelligence that the enemy was advancing quickly. Then cavalry and infantry moved upon the plain, remaining in rear of the eminences from which the movements of the vedettes had been observed. This state of things continued for an hour, when, from the hills, about 3000 yards in front, the Turks opened fire from their advanced entrenchments. The Moskows then halted in their onward course, and in the evening lighted their watch-fires about 2000 yards in front of our vedettes, the blaze showing bright and high in the darkness. Of course we were on the alert all night, and before the day broke were particularly attentive to our front. If the Russians had intended to attack us at that time, they could not have had a more favourable morning, a low dense white fog covering the whole of the plain. The sun rose, and the mist disappeared, when it was found the Russians had vanished also. The next day, the 19th, we naturally expected would be a quiet one, and that we should not be annoyed by having to remain at our arms for our final work. Not a bit of it; we had just laden ourselves with haversacks to forage among the merchant shipping in the harbour, when a vedette was seen to "circle right" most industriously. "Boot and saddle" again resounded through the cavalry camps, and another day was passed like its predecessor, the enemy finally once more retiring, this time without advancing near enough for a shot from the Turks.
The enemy scarcely fired during the night of the 18th. Our batteries were equally silent. The French on their side opened a few guns on their right attack, at which they worked all night to get them into position; but they did not succeed in firing many rounds before the great preponderance of the enemy's metal made itself felt, and their works were damaged seriously; in fact, their lines, though nearer to the enemy's batteries than our own in some instances, were not sufficiently close for the light brass guns with which they were armed.
[Sidenote: FEATS OF HEROISM.]
At daybreak on the 19th the firing continued as usual from both sides. The Russians, having spent the night in repairing the batteries, were nearly in the same position as ourselves, and, unaided or at least unassisted to the full extent we had reason to expect by the French, we were just able to hold our own during the day. Some smart affairs of skirmishers and sharpshooters took place in front. Our riflemen annoyed the Russian gunners greatly, and prevented the tirailleurs from showing near our batteries. On one occasion the Russian riflemen and our own men came close upon each other in a quarry before the town. Our men had exhausted all their ammunition; but as soon as they saw the Russians, they seized the blocks of stone which were lying about, and opened a vigorous volley on the enemy. The latter either had empty pouches, or were so much surprised that they forgot to load, for they resorted to the same missiles. A short fight ensued, which ended in our favour, and the Russians retreated, pelted vigorously as long as the men could pursue them. The coolness of a young artillery officer, named Maxwell, who took some ammunition to the batteries through a tremendous fire along a road so exposed to the enemy's fire that it has been called "The Valley of Death," was highly spoken of on all sides. The blue-jackets were delighted with Captain Peel, who animated the men by the exhibition of the best qualities of an officer, though his courage was sometimes marked by an excess that bordered on rashness. When the Union Jack in the sailors' battery was shot away, he seized the broken staff, and leaping up on the earthworks, waved the old bit of bunting again and again amid a storm of shot, which fortunately left him untouched.
Our ammunition began to run short, but supplies were expected every moment. Either from a want of cartridges, or from the difficulty of getting powder down to the works, our 12-gun battery was silent for some time. The Admiral (Sir E. Lyons), on his little grey pony, was to be seen hovering about our lines indefatigably.
The French fire slackened very much towards one o'clock, the enemy pitching shells right into their lines and enfilading part of their new works. Hour after hour one continuous boom of cannon was alone audible, and the smoke screened all else from view. At a quarter past three there was an explosion of powder in the tower opposite to our right attack. The Flagstaff Fort seemed much knocked about by the French. The Redan and Round Tower earthworks fired nearly as well as ever. As it was very desirable to destroy the ships anchored in the harbour below us, and to fire the dockyard buildings, our rockets were brought into play, and, though rather erratic in their flight, they did some mischief, but not so much as was expected. Wherever they fell the people could be seen flying up the streets when the smoke cleared. At three o'clock P.M. the town was on fire; but after the smoke had excited our hopes for some time, it thinned away and went out altogether. They kept smartly at work from three guns in the Round Tower works, and from some four or five in the Redan, on our batteries.
Two 68-pounders were mounted during the night of the 19th in our batteries, and the firing, which nearly ceased after dark, was renewed by daybreak. We were all getting tired of this continual "pound-pounding," which made a great deal of noise, wasted much powder, and did very little damage. Our amateurs were quite disappointed and tired out. Rome was not built in a day, nor could Sebastopol be taken in a week. In fact, we had run away with the notion that it was a kind of pasteboard city, which would tumble down at the sound of our cannon as the walls of Jericho fell at the blast of Joshua's trumpet. The news that Sebastopol had fallen, which we received viâ England, excited indignation and astonishment. The army was enraged, as they felt the verity, whenever it might be realized, must fall short of the effect of that splendid figment. They thought that the laurels of the Alma would be withered in the blaze of popular delight at the imaginary capture. People at home must have known very little about us or our position. I was amused at seeing in a journal a letter from an "Old Indian," on the manufacture of campaign bread more Indico, in which he advised us to use salt! milk! and butter! in the preparation of what must be most delicious food. Salt was a luxury which was very rarely to be had, except in conjunction with porky fibre; and as to milk and butter, the very taste of them was forgotten. Lord Raglan was very glad to get a little cold pig and ration rum and water the night before we entered Balaklava. However, the hardest lot of all was reserved for our poor horses. All hay rations for baggagers were rigidly refused; they only received a few pounds of indifferent barley. There was not a blade of grass to be had--the whole of these plateaux and hills were covered with thistles only, and where the other covering of the earth went I know not. The hay ration for a charger was restricted to 6lb. daily. Under these circumstances horseflesh was cheap, and friendly presents were being continually offered by one man to another of "a deuced good pony," which were seldom accepted.
The next day, the 20th, I had a foraging expedition, and returned with a goose, butter, preserved milk, &c.--a very successful foray, and a full havresack. We were just beginning our meal of commissariat beef and pork, tempered with the contents of the aforesaid havresack, when away went the vedette again, first circling right and then reversing as suddenly to the left. Again sounded trumpet, bugle, and drum through the plain, and masses again moved into position upon it. So we remained till dark, a night attack on the Turkish position in our front being anticipated, and so we again stood all ready for some hours, during which the only amusement was in the hands of the Turks, who fired a round or two; darkness found us similarly occupied.
At 2.50 P.M. a fire broke out behind the Redan. At 3.15 P.M. a fire of less magnitude was visible to the left of the Redan, further in towards the centre of the town.
Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar was wounded in the trenches. His wound was, however, not at all serious. Our loss was three killed and thirty-two or thirty-three wounded.
On the 21st a battery was finished before Inkerman, and two 18-pounders were mounted in it, in order to silence the heavy ship gun which annoyed the Second Division.
The steamer Vladimir came up to the head of the harbour and opened fire on the right attack. She threw her shell with beautiful accuracy, and killed two men and wounded twenty others before we could reply effectually. A large traverse was erected to resist her fire, and she hauled off. Twenty-two guns were placed in a condition to open in this attack by the exertions of the men under Major Tylden, who directed it.
[Sidenote: RUSSIAN STRATAGEM.]
Lord Dunkellin, Captain Coldstream Guards, eldest son of the Marquis of Clanricarde, was taken prisoner on the 22nd. He was out with a working party of his regiment, which had got a little out of their way, when a number of men were observed through the dawning light in front of them. "There are the Russians," exclaimed one of the men. "Nonsense, they're our fellows," said his lordship, and off he went towards them, asking in a high tone as he got near, "Who is in command of this party?" His men saw him no more, but he was afterwards exchanged for the Russian Artillery officer captured at Mackenzie's farm.
The Russians opened a very heavy cannonade on us in the morning; they always did so on Sundays. Divine Service was performed with a continued bass of cannon rolling through the responses and liturgy. The Russians made a stealthy sortie during the night, and advanced close to the French pickets. When challenged, they replied, "Inglis, Inglis," which passed muster with our allies as bonâ fide English; and before they knew where they were, the Russians had got into their batteries and spiked five mortars. They were speedily repulsed; but this misadventure mortified our brave allies exceedingly.
The return of killed and wounded for the 22nd, during the greater part of which a heavy fire was directed upon our trenches, and battery attacks right and left, showed the excellent cover of our works and their great solidity. We only lost one man killed in the Light Division, and two men in the Siege Train; of wounded we had one in the First Division, two in the Second Division, two in the Third Division, six in the Fourth Division, five in the Light Division, and ten in the Siege Train. A request made to us by the French that we would direct our fire on the Barrack Battery, which annoyed them excessively, was so well attended to, that before evening we had knocked it to pieces and silenced it. But sickness continued, and the diminution of our numbers every day was enough to cause serious anxiety. Out of 35,600 men borne on the strength of the army, there were not at this period more than 16,500 rank and file fit for service. In a fortnight upwards of 700 men were sent as invalids to Balaklava. There was a steady drain of some forty or fifty men a-day going out from us, which was not dried up by the numbers of the returned invalids. Even the twenty or thirty a-day wounded and disabled, when multiplied by the number of the days we had been here, became a serious item in the aggregate. We were badly off for spare gun carriages and wheels, for ammunition and forage. Whilst our siege works were languishing and the hour of assault appeared more distant, the enemy were concentrating on our flank and rear, and preparing for a great attempt to raise the siege.
Chapter II
Criticisms on the British Cavalry--The Light Cavalry--Rear of our position--Endangered by the Russians--Redoubts defended by Turks--93rd Highlanders--The position--Advance of the Russians--Retreat of the Turks--Marshalling of the forces--The Cossacks stopped by the Highlanders--Charge of the Heavy Cavalry--Captain Nolan's Order--The Charge resolved upon--The Advance--Splendid spectacle--Fearful struggle--Retreat of the Russians--Our loss--Sortie on the 26th of October.
If the exhibition of the most brilliant valour, and of a daring which would have reflected lustre on the best days of chivalry, could afford full consolation for the affair of the 25th of October, we had no reason to regret the loss we sustained.
In the following account I describe, to the best of my power, what occurred under my own eyes, and I state the facts which I heard from men whose veracity was unimpeachable. A certain feeling existed in some quarters that our cavalry had not been properly handled since they landed in the Crimea, and that they had lost golden opportunities from the indecision and excessive caution of their leaders. It was said that our cavalry ought to have been manoeuvred at Bouljanak in one way or in another, according to the fancy of the critic. It was affirmed, too, that the Light Cavalry were utterly useless in the performance of one of their most important duties--the collection of supplies for the army--that they were "above their business, and too fine gentlemen for their work;" that our horse should have pushed the flying enemy after the battle of the Alma; and, above all, that at Mackenzie's farm first, and at the gorge near Kamara on the 7th October, they had been improperly restrained from charging, and had failed in gaining great successes, which would have entitled them to a full share of the laurels of the campaign, owing solely to the timidity of the officer in command. The existence of this feeling was known to many of our cavalry, and they were indignant and exasperated that the faintest shade of suspicion should rest upon any of their corps. With the justice of these aspersions they had nothing to do, and perhaps the prominent thought in their minds was that they would give such an example of courage to the world, if the chance offered itself, as would shame their detractors for ever.
[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF RUSSIAN LANDSCAPE.]
It has been already mentioned that several battalions of Russian infantry crossed the Tchernaya, and threatened the rear of our position and our communication with Balaklava. Their bands could be heard playing at night by the travellers along the Balaklava road to the camp, but they "showed" but little during the day, and kept among the gorges and mountain passes through which the roads to Inkerman, Simpheropol, and the south-east of the Crimea wind towards the interior. The position we occupied was supposed by most people to be very strong. Our lines were formed by natural mountain slopes in the rear, along which the French had made entrenchments. Below these entrenchments, and very nearly in a right line across the valley beneath, were four conical hillocks, one rising above the other as they reached from our lines; the farthest, which joined the chain of mountains opposite to our ridges being named Canrobert's Hill, from the meeting there of that general with Lord Raglan after the march to Balaklava. On the top of each of these hills the Turks had thrown up redoubts, each defended by 250 men, and armed with two or three heavy ship guns--lent by us to them, with one artilleryman in each redoubt to look after them. These hills crossed the valley of Balaklava at the distance of about two and a half miles from the town. Supposing the spectator, then, to take his stand on one of the heights forming the rear of our camp before Sebastopol, he would have seen the town of Balaklava, with its scanty shipping, its narrow strip of water, and its old forts, on his right hand; immediately below he would have beheld the valley and plain of coarse meadow land, occupied by our cavalry tents, and stretching from the base of the ridge on which he stood to the foot of the formidable heights at the other side; he would have seen the French trenches lined with Zouaves a few feet beneath, and distant from him, on the slope of the hill; a Turkish redoubt lower down, then another in the valley; then, in a line with it, some angular earthworks; then, in succession, the other two redoubts up to Canrobert's Hill.
At the distance of two or two and a half miles across the valley was an abrupt rocky mountain range covered with scanty brushwood here and there, or rising into barren pinnacles and plateaux of rock. In outline and appearance this portion of the landscape was wonderfully like the Trosachs. A patch of blue sea was caught in between the overhanging cliffs of Balaklava as they closed in the entrance to the harbour on the right. The camp of the Marines, pitched on the hill sides more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea, was opposite to the spectator as his back was turned to Sebastopol and his right side towards Balaklava. On the road leading up the valley, close to the entrance of the town and beneath these hills, was the encampment of the 93rd Highlanders.
The cavalry lines were nearer to him below, and were some way in advance of the Highlanders, but nearer to the town than the Turkish redoubts. The valley was crossed here and there by small waves of land. On the left the hills and rocky mountain ranges gradually closed in towards the course of the Tchernaya, till, at three or four miles' distance from Balaklava, the valley was swallowed up in a mountain gorge and deep ravines, above which rose tier after tier of desolate whitish rock, garnished now and then by bits of scanty herbage, and spreading away towards the east and south, where they attained the Alpine dimensions of the Tschatir Dagh. It was very easy for an enemy at the Belbek, or in command of the road of Mackenzie's farm, Inkerman, Simpheropol, or Bakschiserai, to debouch through these gorges at any time upon this plain from the neck of the valley, or to march from Sebastopol by the Tchernaya, and to advance along it towards Balaklava, till checked by the Turkish redoubts on the southern side, or by the fire from the French works on the northern--i.e., the side which, in relation to the valley at Balaklava, formed the rear of our position. It was evident enough that Menschikoff and Gortschakoff had been feeling their way along this route for several days past, and very probably at night the Cossacks had crept up close to our pickets, which were not always as watchful as might be desired, and had observed the weakness of a position far too extended for our army to defend, and occupied by their despised enemy, the Turks.
At half-past seven o'clock on the eventful morning of the 25th, an orderly came galloping in to the head-quarters camp from Sir Colin Campbell with the news, that at dawn a strong corps of Russian horse, supported by guns and battalions of infantry, had marched into the valley, had nearly dispossessed the Turks of the redoubt No. 1 (that on Canrobert's Hill, which was farthest from our lines), and they had opened fire on the redoubts Nos. 2, 3, and 4. Lord Lucan, who was in one of the redoubts when they were discovered, brought up his guns and some of his heavy cavalry, but they were obliged to retire owing to the superior weight of the enemy's metal.
Orders were despatched to Sir George Cathcart and the Duke of Cambridge, to put the Fourth and the First in motion; and intelligence of the advance of the Russians was furnished to General Canrobert. Immediately the General commanded General Bosquet to get the Third Division under arms, and sent artillery and 200 Chasseurs d'Afrique to assist us. Sir Colin Campbell, who was in command of Balaklava, had drawn up the 93rd Highlanders a little in front of the road to the town, at the first news of the advance of the enemy. The Marines on the heights got under arms; the seamen's batteries and Marines' batteries, on the heights close to the town, were manned, and the French artillerymen and the Zouaves prepared for action along their lines. Lord Lucan's men had not had time to water their horses; they had not broken their fast from the evening of the day before, and had barely saddled at the first blast of the trumpet, when they were drawn up on the slope behind the redoubts in front of their camp, to operate on the enemy's squadrons.
When the Russians advanced, the Turks fired a few rounds, got frightened at the advance of their supports, "bolted," and fled with an agility quite at variance with common-place notions of Oriental deportment on the battle-field.
[Sidenote: PICTURESQUE SITUATIONS OF THE ARMIES.]
Soon after eight o'clock, Lord Raglan and his staff turned out and cantered towards the rear of our position. The booming of artillery, the spattering roll of musketry, were heard rising from the valley, drowning the roar of the siege guns before Sebastopol. As I rode in the direction of the firing, over the undulating plain that stretches away towards Balaklava, on a level with the summit of the ridges above it, I observed a French light infantry regiment (the 27th, I think) advancing from our right towards the ridge near the telegraph-house, which was already lined by companies of French infantry. Mounted officers scampered along its broken outline in every direction.
General Bosquet followed with his staff and a small escort of Hussars at a gallop. Never did the painter's eye rest on a more beautiful scene than I beheld from the ridge. The fleecy vapours still hung around the mountain tops, and mingled with the ascending volumes of smoke; the patch of sea sparkled freshly in the rays of the morning sun, but its light was eclipsed by the flashes which gleamed from the masses of armed men.
Looking to the left towards the gorge, we beheld six masses of Russian infantry, which had just debouched from the mountain passes near the Tchernaya, and were advancing with solemn stateliness up the valley. Immediately in their front was a line of artillery. Two batteries of light guns were already a mile in advance of them, and were playing with energy on the redoubts, from which feeble puffs of smoke came at long intervals. Behind these guns, in front of the infantry, were bodies of cavalry. They were three on each flank, moving down en échelon towards us, and the valley was lit up with the blaze of their sabres, and lance points, and gay accoutrements. In their front, and extending along the intervals between each battery of guns, were clouds of mounted skirmishers, wheeling and whirling in the front of their march like autumn leaves tossed by the wind. The Zouaves close to us were lying like tigers at the spring, with ready rifles in hand, hidden chin deep by the earthworks which ran along the line of these ridges on our rear; but the quick-eyed Russians were manoeuvring on the other side of the valley, and did not expose their columns to attack. Below the Zouaves we could see the Turkish gunners in the redoubts, all in confusion as the shells burst over them. Just as I came up, the Russians had carried No. 1 redoubt, the farthest and most elevated of all, and their horsemen were chasing the Turks across the interval which lay between it and redoubt No. 2.
At that moment the cavalry, under Lord Lucan, were formed--the Light Brigade, under Lord Cardigan, in advance; the Heavy Brigade, under Brigadier-General Scarlett, in reserve, drawn up in front of their encampment, and were concealed from the view of the enemy by a slight "wave" in the plain. Considerably to the rear of their right, the 93rd Highlanders were in front of the approach to Balaklava. Above and behind them, on the heights, the Marines were visible through the glass, drawn up under arms, and the gunners could be seen ready in the earthworks, in which were placed the ships' heavy guns. The 93rd had originally been advanced somewhat more into the plain, but the instant the Russians got possession of the first redoubt they opened fire on them from our own guns, which inflicted some injury, and Sir Colin Campbell "retired" his men to a better position. Meantime the enemy advanced his cavalry rapidly. The Turks in redoubt No. 2 fled in scattered groups towards redoubt No. 3, and Balaklava; but the horse-hoof of the Cossack was too quick for them, and sword and lance were busily plied among the retreating herd. The yells of the pursuers and pursued were plainly audible. As the Lancers and Light Cavalry of the Russians advanced they gathered up their skirmishers. The shifting trails of men, which played all over the valley like moonlight on the water, contracted, gathered up, and the little peloton in a few moments became a solid column. Up came their guns, in rushed their gunners to the abandoned redoubt, and the guns of No. 2 soon played upon the dispirited defenders of No. 3 redoubt. Two or three shots in return and all was silent. The Turks swarmed over the earthworks, and ran in confusion towards the town, firing at the enemy as they ran. Again the solid column of cavalry opened like a fan, and resolved itself into a "long spray" of skirmishers. It lapped the flying Turks, steel flashed in the air, and down went the Moslem on the plain. In vain the naval guns on the heights fired on the Russian cavalry; the distance was too great. In vain the Turkish gunners in the batteries along the French entrenchments endeavoured to protect their flying countrymen; their shot flew wide and short of the swarming masses.
The Turks betook themselves towards the Highlanders, where they checked their flight and formed on the flanks. As the Russian cavalry on the left of their line crowned the hill across the valley, they perceived the Highlanders drawn up at the distance of some half a mile. They halted, and squadron after squadron came up from the rear. The Russians drew breath for a moment, and then in one grand line charged towards Balaklava. The ground flew beneath their horses' feet; gathering speed at every stride, they dashed on towards that thin red line tipped with steel. The Turks fired a volley at eight hundred yards and ran. As the Russians came within six hundred yards, down went that line of steel in front, and out rang a rolling volley of Minié musketry. The distance was too great; the Russians were not checked, but swept onwards, here and there knocked over by the shot of our batteries; but ere they came within two hundred and fifty yards, another volley flashed from the rifles. The Russians wheeled about, and fled faster than they came. "Bravo, Highlanders! well done!" shouted the excited spectators. But events thickened; the Highlanders and their splendid front were soon forgotten--men scarcely had a moment to think of this fact, that the 93rd never altered their formation to receive that tide of horsemen. "No," said Sir Colin Campbell, "I did not think it worth while to form them even four deep!" Then they moved en échelon, in two bodies, with another in reserve. The cavalry who had been pursuing the Turks on the right were coming up to the ridge beneath us, which concealed our cavalry from view. The Heavy Brigade in advance was drawn up in two lines. The first line consisted of the Scots Greys, and of their old companions in glory, the Enniskillens; the second, of the 4th Royal Irish, of the 5th Dragoon Guards, and of the 1st Royal Dragoons. The Light Cavalry Brigade was on their left, in two lines also.
[Sidenote: A GALLANT CHARGE.]
Lord Raglan sent orders to Lord Lucan to cover the approaches, and his heavy horse were just moving from their position near the vineyard and orchard, when he saw a body of the enemy's cavalry coming after him over the ridge. Lord Lucan rode after his cavalry, wheeled them round, and ordered them to advance against the enemy. The Russians--evidently corps d'élite--their light blue jackets embroidered with silver lace, were advancing at an easy gallop towards the brow of the hill. A forest of lances glistened in their rear, and several squadrons of grey-coated dragoons moved up quickly to support them as they reached the summit. The instant they came in sight, the trumpets of our cavalry gave out the warning blast which told us all that in another moment we should see the shock of battle beneath our very eyes. Lord Raglan, all his staff and escort, and groups of officers, the Zouaves, French generals and officers, and bodies of French infantry on the height, were spectators of the scene as though they were looking on the stage from the boxes of a theatre. Every one dismounted, and not a word was said. The Russians advanced down the hill at a slow canter, which they changed to a trot, and at last nearly halted.
The trumpets rang out again through the valley, and the Greys and Enniskilleners went right at the centre of the Russian cavalry. The space between them was only a few hundred yards; it was scarce enough to let the horses "gather way," nor had the men quite space sufficient for the full play of their sword arms. The Russian line brought forward each wing as our cavalry advanced, and threatened to annihilate them as they passed on. Turning a little to the left, so as to meet the Russian right, the Greys rushed on with a cheer that thrilled to every heart--the wild shout of the Enniskilleners rose through the air at the same instant. As lightning flashes through a cloud, the Greys and Enniskilleners pierced through the dark masses of Russians. The shock was but for a moment. There was a clash of steel and a light play of sword-blades in the air, and then the Greys and the redcoats disappeared in the midst of the shaken and quivering column. The first line of Russians, which had been smashed by and had fled off at one flank and towards the centre, were coming back to swallow up our handful of men. By sheer steel and sheer courage Enniskillener and Scot were winning their way right through the enemy's squadrons, and already grey horses and red coats appeared at the rear mass, when the 4th Dragoon Guards, riding at the right flank of the Russians, and the 5th Dragoon Guards, following close after the Enniskilleners, rushed at the enemy and put them to utter rout.
A cheer burst from every lip--in the enthusiasm, officers and men took off their caps and shouted with delight; and thus keeping up the scenic character of their position, they clapped their hands again and again. Lord Raglan at once despatched Lieutenant Curzon, aide-de-camp, to convey his congratulations to Brigadier-General Scarlett, and to say "Well done!" The Russian cavalry, followed by our shot, retired in confusion, leaving the ground, covered with horses and men.
At ten o'clock the Guards and Highlanders of the First Division were seen moving towards the plains from their camp. The Duke of Cambridge came up to Lord Raglan for orders, and his lordship, ready to give the honour of the day to Sir Colin Campbell, who commanded at Balaklava, told his Royal Highness to place himself under the direction of the Brigadier. At forty minutes after ten, the Fourth Division also took up their position in advance of Balaklava. The cavalry were then on the left front of our position, facing the enemy; the Light Cavalry Brigade en échelon in reserve, with guns, on the right; the 4th Royal Irish, the 5th Dragoon Guards, and Greys on the left of the brigade, the Enniskillens and 1st Royals on the right. The Fourth Division took up ground in the centre; the Guards and Highlanders filed off towards the extreme right, and faced the redoubts, from which the Russians opened on them with artillery, which was silenced by the rifle skirmishers under Lieutenant Godfrey.
At fifty minutes after ten, General Canrobert, attended by his staff, and Brigadier-General Rose, rode up to Lord Raglan, and the staffs of the two Generals and their escorts mingled in praise of the magnificent charge of our cavalry, while the chiefs apart conversed over the operations of the day, which promised to be one of battle. At fifty-five minutes after ten, a body of cavalry, the Chasseurs d'Afrique, passed down to the plain, and were loudly cheered by our men. They took up ground in advance of the ridges on our left.
Soon after occurred the glorious catastrophe. The Quartermaster-General, Brigadier Airey, thinking that the Light Cavalry had not gone far enough in front, gave an order in writing to Captain Nolan, 15th Hussars, to take to Lord Lucan. A braver soldier than Captain Nolan the army did not possess. He was known for his entire devotion to his profession, and for his excellent work on our drill and system of remount and breaking horses. He entertained the most exalted opinions respecting the capabilities of the English horse soldier. The British Hussar and Dragoon could break square, take batteries, ride over columns, and pierce any other cavalry, as if they were made of straw. He thought they had missed even such chances as had been offered to them--that in fact, they were in some measure disgraced. A matchless horseman and a first-rate swordsman he held in contempt, I am afraid even grape and canister. He rode off with his orders to Lord Lucan.
When Lord Lucan received the order from Captain Nolan, and had read it, he asked, we are told, "Where are we to advance to?" Captain Nolan pointed with his finger in the direction of the Russians, and according to the statements made after his death, said "There are the enemy, and there are the guns," or words to that effect.
[Sidenote: THE CHARGE OF BALAKLAVA.]
Lord Raglan had only in the morning ordered Lord Lucan to move from the position he had taken near the centre redoubt to "the left of the second line of redoubts occupied by the Turks." Seeing that the 93rd and invalids were cut off from the cavalry, Lord Raglan sent another order to Lord Lucan to send his heavy horse towards Balaklava, and that officer was executing it just as the Russian horse came over the ridge. The Heavy Cavalry charge then took place, and afterwards the men dismounted on the scene. After an interval of half an hour, Lord Raglan again sent an order to Lord Lucan--"Cavalry to advance and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the heights. They will be supported by infantry, which has been ordered to advance upon two fronts." Lord Raglan's reading of this order was, that the infantry had been ordered to advance on two fronts. It does not appear that the infantry had received orders to advance; the Duke of Cambridge and Sir G. Cathcart stated they were not in receipt of such instruction. Lord Lucan advanced his cavalry to the ridge, close to No. 5 redoubt, and while there received from Captain Nolan an order which as follows:--"Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns; troops of Horse Artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate."
Lord Lucan gave the order to Lord Cardigan to advance upon the guns, conceiving that his orders compelled him to do so. The noble Earl saw the fearful odds against him. It is a maxim of war, that "cavalry never act without a support." "Infantry should be close at hand when cavalry carry guns, as the effect is only instantaneous," and should always be placed on the flank of a line of cavalry. The only support our light cavalry had was the heavy cavalry at a great distance behind them, the infantry and guns being far in the rear. There were no squadrons in column. There was a plain to charge over, before the enemy's guns could be reached, of a mile and a half in length.
At ten minutes past eleven our Light Cavalry Brigade advanced. The whole Brigade scarcely made one effective regiment, according to the numbers of continental armies; and yet it was more than we could spare. They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war. They advanced in two lines, quickened their pace as they closed towards the enemy. At the distance of 1,200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame. The flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain. In diminished ranks, with a halo of steel above their heads, and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow's death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries; but ere they were lost from view the plain was strewed with their bodies.
[Illustration:
PLAN OF BALAKLAVA SHEWING THE CAVALRY ACTION OF OCT 25th 1854.
Table of Killed & Wounded
+-----------------+------------------++------------------+---------+-+ | | OFFICERS || MEN | HORSES | | | | Killed | Wounded || Killed | Wounded | Killed | | | | | || | | | | | { British | 13 27 || 142 | 197 | 361 | | | { | | || | | | | |Allies { French | 2 | 4 || 21 | 33 | 79 | | | { | | || | | | | | { Turkish | 3 | 7 || 285 | -- | | | +--------+---------++--------+---------+---------+ | | Total | 18 | 38 || 678 | 450 | | | +--------+---------++------------------+---------+ | | | | Russian 700 Killed & Wounded | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Total Numbers on the Field
+-------------------+--------++--------+-+ | | MEN || GUNS | | | | || | | | { British | 9,900 || 24 | | | { | || | | |Allies { French | 4,800 || 12 | | | { | || | | | { Turkish | 400 || 8 | | | | || | | | Russians | 18,500 || 40 | | | +--------++--------+ | | Total | 33,600 || 84 | | | +--------++--------+ | +----------------------------------------+
Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabres flashing as they rode between the guns, cutting down the gunners as they stood. We saw them riding through, returning, after breaking through a column of Russians, and scattering them like chaff, when the flank fire of the batteries on the hill swept them down. Wounded men and dismounted troopers flying towards us told the sad tale. At the very moment a regiment of Lancers was hurled upon their flank. Colonel Shewell, of the 8th Hussars, whose attention was drawn to them by Lieutenant Phillips, saw the danger, and rode his few men straight at them. It was as much as our Heavy Cavalry Brigade could do to cover the retreat of the miserable remnants of that band of heroes as they returned to the place they had so lately quitted in all the pride of life. At thirty-five minutes past eleven not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of these Muscovite guns. The Heavy Cavalry, in columns of squadrons, moved slowly backwards, covering the retreat of the broken men. The ground was left covered with our men and with hundreds of Russians, and we could see the Cossacks busy searching the dead. Our infantry made a forward movement towards the redoubts after the cavalry came in, and the Russian infantry in advance slowly retired towards the gorge; at the same time the French cavalry pushed forward on their right, and held them in check, pushing out a line of skirmishers, and forcing them to withdraw their guns.
Captain Nolan was killed by the first shot fired, as he rode in advance of the first line. Lord Cardigan received a lance thrust through his clothes.
While the affair was going on, the French cavalry made a most brilliant charge at the battery on our left, and cut down the gunners; but they could not get off the guns, and had to retreat with the loss of two captains and fifty men killed and wounded out of their little force of 200 Chasseurs.
The Russians from the redoubt continued to harass us, and the First Division were ordered to lie down in two lines. The Fourth Division, covered by the rising ground, and two regiments of French infantry which had arrived in the valley, followed by artillery, moved onwards to operate on the Russian right, already threatened by the French cavalry. The Russians threw out skirmishers to meet the French skirmishers, and the French contented themselves with keeping their position. At eleven A.M., the Russians, feeling alarmed at our steady advance and at the symptoms of our intention to turn or cut off their right, retired from No. 1 redoubt, which was taken possession of by the allies. At fifteen minutes past eleven they abandoned redoubt No. 2, blowing up the magazine; and, as we still continued to advance, they blew up and abandoned No. 3 at forty-five minutes past eleven; but, to our great regret, we could not prevent their taking off seven out of nine guns in the works.
At forty-eight minutes past eleven, the Russian infantry began to retire, a portion crept up the hills behind the 1st redoubt, which still belonged to them. The artillery on the right of the First Division fired shot and rockets at the 1st redoubt, but could not do much good, nor could the heavy guns of the batteries near the town carry so far as to annoy the Russians. At twelve o'clock the greater portion of the French and English moved on, and an accession to the artillery was made by two French batteries, pushed on towards the front of our left. The First Division remained still in line along the route to Balaklava. From twelve to fifteen minutes passed, not a shot was fired on either side, but the Russians gathered up their forces towards the heights over the gorge, and, still keeping their cavalry on the plain, manoeuvred in front on our right.
[Sidenote: A HARMLESS ATTACK.]
At twenty-eight minutes after twelve the allies again got into motion, with the exception of the First Division, which moved en échelon towards the opposite hills, keeping their right wing well before Balaklava. At forty minutes after twelve, Captain Calthorpe was sent by Lord Raglan with orders which altered the disposition of our front, for the French, at one P.M. showed further up on our left. As our object was solely to keep Balaklava, we had no desire to bring on a general engagement; and as the Russians would not advance, but kept their cavalry in front of the approach to the mountain passes, it became evident the action was over. The cannonade, which began again at a quarter-past twelve, and continued with very little effect, ceased altogether at a quarter-past one. The two armies retained their respective positions.
Lord Raglan continued on the hill-side all day, watching the enemy. It was dark ere he returned to his quarters. With the last gleam of day we could see the sheen of the enemy's lances in their old position in the valley; and their infantry gradually crowned the heights on their left, and occupied the road to the village which is beyond Balaklava to the southward. Our Guards were moving back, as I passed them, and the tired French and English were replaced by a French division, which marched down to the valley at five o'clock.
We had 13 officers killed or taken, 162 men killed or taken; 27 officers wounded, 224 men wounded. Total killed, wounded, and missing, 426. Horses, killed or missing, 394; horses wounded, 126; total, 520.
In the night when our guns were taken into Sebastopol, there was joy throughout the city, and it was announced that the Russians had gained a great victory. A salvo of artillery was fired, and at nine o'clock P.M. a tremendous cannonade was opened against our lines by the enemy. It did no injury. At one P.M. on the 26th, about 4,000 men made an attack on our right flank, but were repulsed by Sir De Lacy Evans's Division, with the loss of 500 men killed and wounded. As I was engaged in my tent and did not see the action, I think it right to give the dispatches which relate this brilliant affair.
"Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans to Lord Raglan.
"2nd Division, Heights of the Tchernaya, Oct. 27, 1854.
IND "MY LORD,
"Yesterday the enemy attacked this division with several columns of infantry supported by artillery. Their cavalry did not come to the front. Their masses, covered by large bodies of skirmishers, advanced with much apparent confidence. The division immediately formed line in advance of our camp, the left under Major-General Pennefather, the right under Brigadier-General Adams. Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzmayer and the Captains of batteries (Turner and Yates) promptly posted their guns and opened fire upon the enemy.
"Immediately on the cannonade being heard, the Duke of Cambridge brought up to our support the brigade of Guards under Major-General Bentinck, with a battery under Lieutenant-Colonel Dacres. His Royal Highness took post in advance of our right to secure that flank, and rendered me throughout the most effective and important assistance. General Bosquet, with similar promptitude and from a greater distance, approached our position with five French battalions. Sir G. Cathcart hastened to us with a regiment of Rifles, and Sir G. Brown pushed forward two guns in co-operation by our left.
"The enemy came on at first rapidly, assisted by their guns on the Mound Hill. Our pickets, then chiefly of the 49th and 30th Regiments, resisted them with remarkable determination and firmness. Lieutenant Conolly, of the 49th, greatly distinguished himself, as did Captain Bayley, of the 30th, and Captain Atcherley, all of whom, I regret to say, were severely wounded. Serjeant Sullivan also displayed at this point great bravery.
"In the meantime our eighteen guns in position, including those of the First Division, were served with the utmost energy. In half an hour they forced the enemy's artillery to abandon the field. Our batteries were then directed with equal accuracy and vigour-upon the enemy's columns, which (exposed also to the close fire of our advanced infancy) soon fell into complete disorder and flight. They were then literally chased by the 30th and 95th Regiments over the ridges and down towards the head of the bay. So eager was the pursuit, that it was with difficulty Major-General Pennefather eventually effected the recall of our men. These regiments and the pickets were led gallantly by Major Mauleverer, Major Champion, Major Eman and Major Hume. They were similarly pursued further towards our right by four companies of the 41st, led gallantly by Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable P. Herbert, A.Q.M.G. The 47th also contributed. The 55th were held in reserve.
"Above 80 prisoners fell into our hands, and about 130 of the enemy's dead were left within or near our position. It is computed that their total loss could scarcely be less than 600.
"Our loss, I am sorry to say, has been above 80, of whom 12 killed, 5 officers wounded. I am happy to say, hopes are entertained that Lieutenant Conolly will recover, but his wound is dangerous.
"I will have the honour of transmitting to your Lordship a list of officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates, whose conduct attracted special notice. That of the pickets excited general admiration.
"To Major-General Pennefather and Brigadier-General Adams I was, as usual, greatly indebted. To Lieutenant-Colonel Dacres, Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzmayer, Captains Turner, Yates, Woodhouse, and Hamley, and the whole of the Royal Artillery, we are under the greatest obligation.
[Sidenote: THE GENERAL'S DESPATCH.]
"Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert, A.Q.M.G., rendered the division, as he always does, highly distinguished and energetic services. Lieutenant-Colonel Wilbraham, A.A.G., while serving most actively, I regret to say, had a very severe fall from his horse. I beg leave also to recommend to your Lordship's favourable consideration the excellent services of Captains Glasbrook and Thompson, of the Quartermaster-General's Department, the Brigade-Majors Captains Armstrong and Thackwell, and my personal staff, Captains Allix, Gubbins, and the Honourable W. Boyle.
"I have, &c. "DE LACY EVANS, Lieutenant-General."
"Lord Raglan to the Duke of Newcastle.
"Before Sebastopol, Oct. 28, 1854.
IND "MY LORD DUKE,
"I have nothing particular to report to your Grace respecting the operations of the siege since I wrote to you on the 23rd instant. The fire has been somewhat less constant, and our casualties have been fewer, though I regret to say that Captain Childers, a very promising officer of the Royal Artillery, was killed on the evening of the 23rd, and I have just heard that Major Dalton, of the 49th, of whom Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans entertained a very high opinion, was killed in the trenches last night.
"The enemy moved out of Sebastopol on the 26th with a large force of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, amounting, it is said, to 6,000 or 7,000 men, and attacked the left of the Second Division, commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans, who speedily and energetically repulsed them, assisted by one of the batteries of the First Division and some guns of the Light Division, and supported by a brigade of Guards, and by several regiments of the Fourth Division, and in rear by the French Division, commanded by General Bosquet, who was most eager in his desire to give him every aid.
"I have the honour to transmit a copy of Sir De Lacy Evans's report, which I am sure your Grace will read with the highest satisfaction, and I beg to recommend the officers whom he particularly mentions to your protection.
"Captain Bayley of the 30th, and Captain Atcherley of the same regiment, and Lieutenant Conolly of the 49th, all of whom are severely wounded, appear to have greatly distinguished themselves.
"I cannot speak in too high terms of the manner in which Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans met this very serious attack. I had not the good fortune to witness it myself, being occupied in front of Balaklava at the time it commenced, and having only reached his position as the affair ceased, but I am certain I speak the sentiments of all who witnessed the operation in saying that nothing could have been better managed, and that the greatest credit is due to the Lieutenant-General, whose services and conduct I have before had to bring under your Grace's notice.
"I inclose the return of the losses the army has sustained since the 22nd.
"I have, &c. "RAGLAN."
On the 28th of October our cavalry abandoned their old camp. They took up ground on the hills on the road to Balaklava, close to the rear of the French centre. We thus abandoned the lower road to the enemy.
Chapter III
Relative Position of the rival Forces at the end of October--"Whistling Dick"--Sir De Lacy Evans's Accident--No Bono Johnnies--French Batteries again open Fire--A Weak Point--First Surprise--Commencement of the Battle of Inkerman--Heroic Defence--Death of Sir George Cathcart--Sir George Brown wounded--Fearful Odds--The Guards--Casualties--The Sandbag Battery--Superiority of the Minié Rifle--Advance of the French--Complete Rout of the enemy--Inkerman won.
The end of October. All waiting for the French. I am not sure but that the French were waiting for us to "écraser" some of the obnoxious batteries which played upon their works from ugly enfilading positions.
[Sidenote: A TRICK OF "WHISTLING DICK."]
The Quarantine Fort was opposed to them on their extreme left. Then came a long, high, loopholed wall or curtain extending in front of the town from the back of the Quarantine Fort to the Flagstaff Battery. The Russians had thrown up a very deep and broad ditch in front of this wall, and the French artillery had made no impression on the stonework at the back. The Flagstaff Battery, however, and all the houses near it, were in ruin; but the earthworks in front of it, armed with at least twenty-six heavy guns, were untouched, and kept up a harassing fire on the French working parties, particularly at certain periods of the day, and at the interval between nine and eleven o'clock at night, when they thought the men were being relieved in the trenches. Inside the Road Battery we could see the Russians throwing up a new work, armed with six heavy ships' guns. They had also erected new batteries behind the Redan and behind the Round Tower. The latter was a mass of crumbled stone, but two guns kept obstinately blazing away at our 21-gun battery from the angle of the earthwork around it, and the Redan had not been silenced, though the embrasures and angles of the work were much damaged. The heavy frigate which had been "dodging" our batteries so cleverly again gave us a taste of her quality in the right attack. She escaped from the position in which she lay before where we had placed two 24-pounders for her, and came out again on the 29th in a great passion, firing regular broadsides at our battery and sweeping the hill up to it completely. Occasionally she varied this amusement with a round or two from 13-inch mortars. These shells did our works and guns much damage: but the sailors, who were principally treated to these agreeable missiles, got quite accustomed to them. "Bill," cries one fellow to another, "look out, here comes 'Whistling Dick!'" The 13-inch shell has been thus baptized by them in consequence of the noise it makes. They look up, and their keen, quick eyes discern the globe of iron as it describes its curve aloft. Long ere "Whistling Dick" has reached the ground the blue-jackets are snug in their various hiding-places; but all the power of man could not keep them from peeping out now and then to see if the fusee is still burning. One of them approached a shell which he thought had "gone out;" it burst just as he got close to it, and the concussion dashed him to the ground. He got up, and in his rage, shaking his fist at the spot where the shell had been, he exclaimed, "You ---- deceitful beggar, there's a trick to play me!"
Sir De Lacy Evans met with an accident on the 29th, which compelled him to resign the command to Brigadier-General Pennefather. His horse fell with him as he was going at a sharp trot; and the shock so weakened him that he was obliged to go on board the Simoom.
The Turks, or, as they were called, the "Bono Johnnies," except by the sailors, who called them "No bono Johnnies," were employed in working in the trenches. The first night in Captain Chapman's attack they worked till ten o'clock at night, when a Russian shell came over. They ran away, carrying a portion of our working and covering parties; they were re-formed and worked till eleven o'clock, when they declared it was "the will of Heaven they should labour no more that night," and, as they had exerted themselves, it was considered advisable to let them go. They were decimated by dysentery and diarrhoea, and died in swarms. They had no medical officers, and our surgeons were not sufficient in number for our army. Nothing could exceed their kindness to their own sick. It was common to see strings of them on the road to Balaklava carrying men on their backs down to the miserable shed which served them as a hospital, or rather as a "dead-house."
A deserter from the Russian cavalry on the 30th said the Russians were without tents or cover; their fare was scanty and miserable, and their sufferings great.
The French batteries opened on the 1st of November. For an hour they fired with vivacity and effect; one battery which enfiladed them on the right was plied with energy, but the remainder, with the exception of the Flagstaff redoubt, were silent. The Russians had about 240 guns in their new works, reckoning those which had been subject to our fire. The French had 64 guns in position, most of them brass twenty-fours, the others thirty-twos and forty-eights, some ship's eighty-fours not mounted. The French might be seen like patches of moss on the rocks, and the incessant puffs of smoke with constant "pop!" rose along our front from morning to night.
The earthworks around the town of Balaklava began to assume a formidable aspect. Trenches ran across the plains and joined the mounds to each other, so as to afford lines of defence. On the right of the approach the Highlanders, in three camps, were placed close to the town, with a sailors' battery of two heavy guns above. Higher up, on a very elevated hill-side, the Marines and Riflemen were encamped. There were four batteries bearing on this approach. The battery on the extreme right, on the road leading over the hills from Yalta, contained two 32-pounder howitzers; the second battery on the right, facing the valley, contained five guns; and the fourth battery, nearest Balaklava, contained eight brass howitzers, four 12, two 32, and two 24-pounders. The left approach was commanded by the heights held by the French infantry over the valley, and by the Turkish works in front. A formidable redoubt, under the command of Captain Powell, R.N., overlooked the approaches, armed with heavy ship's guns.
The Turks had cut up the ground so that it almost resembled a chess-board when viewed from one of the hills. They constructed ditches over valleys which led nowhere, and fortified passes conducting to abstruse little culs-de-sac in the hill sides.
From the road to Balaklava on the 3rd, we could see the Russians engaged in "hutting" themselves for the winter, and on the 3rd of November I made a little reconnaissance of my own in their direction. Their advanced posts were just lighting bivouac fires for the night. A solitary English dragoon, with the last rays of the setting sun glittering on his helmet, was perched on the only redoubt in our possession, watching the motions of the enemy. Two Cossacks on similar duty on the second redoubt were leaning on their lances, while their horses browsed the scanty herbage at the distance of about 500 yards from our dragoon sentry. Two hundred yards in their rear were two Cossack pickets of twenty or thirty men each. A stronger body was stationed in loose order some four or five hundred yards further back. Six pelotons of cavalry came next, with field batteries in the intervals. Behind each peloton were six strong columns of cavalry in reserve, and behind the intervals six battalions of grey-coated Russian infantry lay on their arms. They maintained this attitude day and night, it was said, and occasionally gave us an alert by pushing up the valley. On looking more closely into their position through the glass, it could be seen that they had fortified the high table-land on their right with an earthwork of quadrilateral form, in which I counted sixteen embrasures.
[Sidenote: COVERT ATTACK BY THE RUSSIANS.]
In their rear was the gorge of the Black River, closed up by towering rocks and mountain precipices. On their left a succession of slabs (so to speak) of table-land, each higher than the other, and attaining an elevation of 1,200 feet. The little village of Kamara, perched on the side of one of these slabs, commanded a view of our position, and was no doubt the head-quarters of the army in the valley. The Russians were stationed along these heights, and had pushed their lines to the sea on the high-peaked mountain chain to the south-east of our Marines. As the valley was connected with Sebastopol by the Inkerman road, they had thus drawn a cordon militaire around our position on the land side, and we were besieged in our camp, having, however, our excellent friend, the sea, open on the west.
On the 4th November the fire on the place and the return continued. The Russians fired about sixty guns per hour, and we replied. The French burrowed and turned up the earth vigorously. A quantity of 10-inch shot were landed, but, unfortunately, we had no 10-inch guns for them. Two guns were added to the batteries of the right attack, which now contained twenty-three pieces of artillery. Whenever I looked at the enemy's earthworks I thought of the Woolwich butt. What good had we done by all this expenditure of shot, and shell, and powder? a few guns, when we first came, might have saved incredible toil and labour because they would have rendered it all but impossible for the Russians to cast up entrenchments and works before the open entrance to Sebastopol.
Whilst we were yet in hopes of taking the place, and of retiring to the Bosphorus for winter quarters, the enemy, animated by the presence of two of the Imperial Grand Dukes, made a vigorous attempt to inflict on the allies a terrible punishment for their audacity in setting foot on the territory of the Czar. The Battle of Inkerman was at hand.
It had rained almost incessantly for the greater part of the night of November 4th, and the early morning gave no promise of any cessation of the heavy showers. As dawn broke the fog and drifting rain were so thick that one could scarcely see two yards. At four o'clock A.M. the bells of the churches in Sebastopol were heard ringing drearily through the cold night air, but the occurrence excited no particular attention. About three o'clock A.M., a man of the 23rd regiment on outlying picket heard the sound of wheels in the valley, but supposed it arose from carts or arabas going into Sebastopol by the Inkerman road. After the battle he mentioned the circumstance to Major Bunbury, who rebuked him for neglecting to report it. No one suspected that masses of Russians were then creeping up the rugged heights over the Valley of Inkerman against the undefended flank of the Second Division, and were bringing into position an overwhelming artillery, ready to play upon their tents at the first glimpse of day.
Sir De Lacy Evans had long been aware of the insecurity of his position, and had repeatedly pointed it out. It was the only ground where we were exposed to surprise. Ravines and curves in the hill lead up to the crest against which our right flank was resting, without guns, intrenchments, abattis, or defence of any kind. Every one admitted the truth of the representations, but indolence, or a false sense of security led to indifference and procrastination. A battery was thrown up of sandbags on the slope of the hill, but Sir De Lacy Evans, thinking that two guns without any works to support them would only invite attack, caused them to be removed as soon as they had silenced the Light-house Battery, which had been firing on his camp.
The action of the 26th of October might be considered as a reconnaissance en force. They were waiting for reinforcements to assault the position where it was vulnerable, speculating on the effects of a surprise of a sleeping camp on a winter's morning. Although the arrangements of Sir De Lacy Evans on repulsing the sortie were, as Lord Raglan declared, "so perfect that they could not fail to insure success," it was evident that a larger force would have forced him to retire from his ground, or to fight a battle in defence of it. No effort was made to intrench the lines, to cast up a single shovel of earth, to cut down the brushwood, or form an abattis. It was thought "not to be necessary."
Heavy responsibility rests on those whose neglect enabled the enemy to attack where we were least prepared for it, and whose indifference led them to despise precautions which might have saved many lives, and trebled the loss of the enemy. We had nothing to rejoice over, and almost everything to deplore, in the battle of Inkerman. We defeated the enemy indeed, but did not advance one step nearer Sebastopol. We abashed, humiliated, and utterly routed an enemy strong in numbers, in fanaticism, and in dogged courage, but we suffered a fearful loss when we were not in a position to part with one man.
It was a little after five o'clock in the morning, when Codrington, in accordance with his usual habit, visited the outlying pickets of his brigade. It was reported that "all was well" along the line. The General entered into conversation with Captain Pretyman, of the 33rd Regiment, who was on duty, and in the course of it some one remarked it would not be surprising if the Russians availed themselves of the gloom to make an attack. The Brigadier, an excellent officer, turned his pony round vigilant, and had only ridden a few yards, when a sharp rattle of musketry was heard down the hill on the left of his pickets, and where the pickets of the Second Division were stationed. Codrington at once turned in the direction of the firing, and in a few moments galloped back to camp to turn out his division. The Russians were advancing in force. The pickets of the Second Division had scarcely made out the infantry clambering up the steep hill through a drizzling rain before they were forced to retreat by a close sharp musketry, and driven up the hill, contesting every step, and firing as long as they had a round of ammunition. Their grey greatcoats rendered them almost invisible even when close at hand.
The pickets of the Light Division were soon assailed and obliged to fall back. About the time of the advance on our right flank took place a demonstration against Balaklava, but the enemy contented themselves with drawing up their cavalry in order of battle, supported by field artillery, at the neck of the valley, in readiness to sweep over the heights and cut off our retreat, should the assault on our right be successful. A steamer with very heavy guns was sent up by night to the head of the creek at Inkerman, and threw enormous shells over the hill.
[Sidenote: A CHEERING PROSPECT.]
Everything that could be done to bind victory to their eagles was done by the Russian Generals. The presence of the Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael, who told them that the Czar had issued orders that every Frenchman and Englishman was to be driven into the sea ere the year closed, cheered the common soldiers, who regard the son of the Emperor as an emanation of the Divine presence. Abundance of a coarser and more material stimulant was found in their flasks; and the priests "blessed" them ere they went forth, and assured them of the aid and protection of the Most High. A mass was said. The joys of Heaven were offered those who might fall in the holy fight, and the favours of the Emperor were promised to those who might survive the bullets of the enemy.
The men in camp had just began to struggle with the rain in endeavouring to light their fires, when the alarm was sounded. Pennefather, to whom Sir De Lacy Evans had given up for the time the command of the Second Division, got the troops under arms. Adams's brigade, consisting of the 41st, 47th, and 49th Regiments, was pushed on to the brow of the hill to check the advance of the enemy by the road from the valley. Pennefather's brigade, consisting of the 30th, 55th, and 95th Regiments, was posted on their flank. The regiments met a tremendous fire from guns posted on the high grounds. Sir George Cathcart led such portions of the 20th, 21st, 46th, 57th, 63rd, and 68th Regiments as were not employed in the trenches, to the right of the ground occupied by the Second Division.
It was intended that Torrens's brigade should move in support of Goldie's, but the enemy were in such strength that the whole force of the division, which consisted of only 2,200 men, was needed to repel them. Codrington, with part of the 7th, 23rd, and 33rd, sought to cover the extreme of our right attack, and the sloping ground towards Sebastopol; Buller's brigade was brought up to support the Second Division on the left; Jeffrey's with the 88th, being pushed forward in the bushwood on the ridge of one of the principal ravines. As soon as Brown brought up his division, they were under fire from an unseen enemy. The Third Division, under Sir R. England, was in reserve. Part of the 50th, under Wilton, and 1st Battalion Royals, under Bell, were slightly engaged ere the day was over. The Duke of Cambridge turned out the Guards under Bentinck, and advanced on the right of the Second Division to the summit of the hill overlooking the valley of the Tchernaya. Between the left and the right of the Second Division there was a ravine, which lost itself on the plateau, close to the road to Sebastopol. This road was not protected; only a few scarps were made in it, and the pickets at night were only a short distance in advance. A low breastwork crossed this road at the plateau by the tents of the Second Division. On arriving at the edge of the plateau on the right ravine, the Duke of Cambridge saw two columns coming up the steep ground covered with brushwood. The enemy were already in the Sandbag Redoubt, but His Royal Highness at once led the Guards to the charge.
It has been doubted whether any enemy ever stood in conflicts with the bayonet, but here the bayonet was employed in a fight of the most obstinate character. We had been prone to believe that no foe could withstand the British soldier; but at Inkerman, not only were desperate encounters maintained with the bayonet, but we were obliged to resist the Russian infantry again and again, as they charged us.
It was six o'clock before the Head-Quarter camp was roused by the musketry, and by the report of field guns. Soon after seven o'clock A.M. Lord Raglan rode towards the scene, followed by his staff. As they approached, the steady, unceasing roll told that the engagement was serious. When a break in the fog enabled the Russian gunners to see the camp of the Second Division, the tents were sent into the air or set on fire. Gambier was ordered to get up two 18-pounders to reply to a fire which our light guns were utterly inadequate to meet. As he was exerting himself in his duty, Gambier was severely but not dangerously wounded. His place was taken by Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson, and the fire of those two pieces had the most marked effect in deciding the fate of the day.
Our Generals could not see where to go. They could not tell where the enemy were. In darkness and rain they had to lead our lines through thick bushes and thorny brakes, which broke our ranks. Every pace was marked by a man down, wounded by an enemy whose position was only indicated by the rattle of musketry and the rush of ball.
[Sidenote: A BRAVE MAN KILLED.]
Cathcart, advancing from the centre of our position, came to the hill where the Guards were engaged, and, after a few words with the Duke, led the 63rd Regiment down on the right of the Guards into a ravine filled with brushwood, towards the valley of the Tchernaya. He perceived, as he did so, that the Russians had gained possession of the hill in rear of his men, but his stout heart never failed him for a moment. A deadly volley was poured into our scattered companies. Sir George cheered and led them back up the hill, and Cathcart fell from his horse close to the Russian columns. He rode at the head of the leading company, encouraging them. A cry arose that ammunition was failing. "Have you not got your bayonets?" As he lead on his men, another body of the enemy had gained the top of the hill behind them on the right, but it was impossible to tell whether they were friends or foes. The 63rd halted and fired. They were met by a fierce volley. Seymour, who was wounded, got down from his horse to aid his chief, but the enemy rushed down on them, and when our men had driven them back, they lay dead side by side. The 63rd suffered fearfully. They were surrounded, and won their desperate way up the hill with the loss of nearly 500 men. Sir George Cathcart's body was recovered with a bullet wound in the head and three bayonet wounds in the body. In this attack where the Russians fought with the greatest ferocity, and bayoneted the wounded, Colonel Swyny, 63rd, Major Wynne, 68th, Lieutenant Dowling, 20th, and other officers, met their death. Goldie, who was engaged with his brigade on the left of the Inkerman road, received the wounds of which he afterwards died about the same time. The fight had not long commenced before it was evident that the Russians had received orders to fire at all mounted officers. The regiments did not take their colours into the battle, but the officers, nevertheless, were picked off, and it did not require the colour to indicate their presence.
The conflict on the right was equally uncertain and equally bloody. The 88th in front were surrounded; but four companies of the 77th, under Major Straton, charged the Russians, and relieved their comrades. Further to the right, a fierce contest took place between the Guards and dense columns of Russians. The Guards twice charged them and drove the enemy out of the Sandbag Battery, when they perceived that the Russians had out-flanked them. They were out of ammunition. They had no reserve, and they were fighting against an enemy who stoutly contested every inch of ground, when another Russian column appeared in their rear. They had lost fourteen officers; one-half of their number were on the ground. The Guards retired. They were reinforced by a wing of the 20th under Major Crofton. Meanwhile the Second Division, in the centre of the line, was hardly pressed. The 41st Regiment was exposed to a terrible fire. The 95th only mustered sixty-four men when paraded at two o'clock, and the whole Division when assembled by Major Eman in rear of their camp after the fight was over numbered only 300 men.
At half-past nine o'clock, as Lord Raglan and his staff were on a knoll, a shell came and exploded on Captain Somerset's horse; a portion tore off the leather of Somerset's overalls. Gordon's horse was killed, and it then carried away General Strangeway's leg; it hung by a shred of flesh and bit of cloth from the skin. The old General never moved a muscle. He said in a quiet voice, "Will any one be kind enough to lift me off my horse?" He was laid on the ground, and at last carried to the rear. He had not strength to undergo an operation, and died in two hours.
At one time the Russians succeeded in getting up close to the guns of Captain Wodehouse's and Captain Turner's batteries in the gloom of the morning. Uncertain whether they were friends or foes, our artillerymen hesitated to fire. The Russians charged, bore down all resistance, drove away or bayoneted the gunners, and succeeded in spiking four of the guns.
The rolling of musketry, the pounding of the guns were deafening. The Russians, as they charged up the heights, yelled like demons. The regiments of the Fourth Division and the Marines, armed with the old and much-belauded Brown Bess, could do nothing against the Muscovite infantry, but the Minié smote them like the hand of the Destroying Angel. The disproportion of numbers was, however, too great--our men were exhausted--but at last came help. At last the French appeared on our right.
It was after nine o'clock when the French streamed over the brow of the hill on our right--Chasseurs d'Orleans, Tirailleurs, Indigènes, Zouaves, Infantry of the Line, and Artillery--and fell upon the flank of the Russians. On visiting the spot it was curious to observe how men of all arms--English, French, and Russians--lay together, showing that the ground must have been occupied by different bodies of troops. The French were speedily engaged, for the Russians had plenty of men for all comers. Their reserves in the valley and along the road to Sebastopol received the shattered columns which were driven down the hill, allowed them to re-form and attack again, or furnished fresh regiments to assault the Allies again and again. This reserve seems to have consisted of three large bodies--probably of 5,000 men each. The attacking force could not have been less than 20,000 men, and it is a very low estimate indeed of the strength of the Russians to place it at from 45,000 to 50,000 men of all arms. Some say there were from 55,000 to 60,000 men engaged on the side of the enemy; but I think that number excessive, and there certainly was not ground enough for them to show front upon. Captain Burnett, R. N., states that he saw fresh bodies of Russians marching up to the attack on three successive occasions, and that their artillery was relieved no less than four times. The Minié rifle did our work, and Lord Hardinge is entitled to the best thanks of the country for his perseverance in arming this expedition as far as he could with every rifle that could be got, notwithstanding the dislike with which the weapon was received by many experienced soldiers.
Three battalions of the Chasseurs d'Orleans rushed by, the light of battle on their faces. Their trumpets sounded above the din of battle, and when we watched their eager dash on the flank of the enemy we knew the day was safe. They were followed by a battalion of Chasseurs Indigènes. At twelve o'clock they were driven pell-mell down the hill towards the valley, where pursuit was impossible, as the roads were commanded by artillery.
The day, which cleared up about eleven, again became obscured. Rain and fog set in, and we could not pursue. We formed in front of our lines, the enemy, covering his retreat by horse on the slopes, near the Careening Bay, and by artillery fire, fell back upon the works, and across the Inkerman Bridge. Our cavalry, the remnant of the Light Brigade, were moved into a position where it was hoped they might be of service, but they were too few to attempt anything, and lost several horses and men. Cornet Cleveland, was struck by a piece of shell and expired.
General Canrobert, who was wounded in the early part of the day, directed the French, ably seconded by General Bosquet, whose devotion was noble. Nearly all his escort were killed, wounded, or unhorsed.
The Russians, during the action, made a sortie on the French, and traversed two parallels before they were driven back; as they retired they fired mines inside the Flagstaff Fort, afraid that the French would enter pell-mell after them.
The last attempt of the Russians took place at about thirty-five minutes past twelve. At forty minutes past one Dickson's two guns had smashed up the last battery of their artillery which attempted to stand, and they limbered up, leaving five tumbrils and one gun-carriage on the field.
[Sidenote: SURVEY OF THE BATTLE-FIELD.]
Chapter IV
The Battle-field--Review of the Struggle--The Dead and the Dying--Harrowing Scene--Firing on Burying Parties--The French at Inkerman--Number of the Russians--Losses--"Hair-breadth Scapes"--Brutal Conduct of the Russians--How the Victory was won--Use of Revolvers--Want of Ammunition.
I went carefully over the position on the 6th, and as I examined it, I was amazed at the noble tenacity of our men. The tents of the Second Division were pitched on the verge of the plateau which we occupied, and from the right flank of the camp the ground rises gently for two or three hundred yards to a ridge covered with scrubby brushwood, so thick that it was sometimes difficult to force a horse through it. The bushes grew in tufts, and were about four feet high. On gaining the ridge you saw below you the valley of the Tchernaya, a green tranquil slip of meadow, with a few white houses dotting it at intervals, some farm enclosures, and tufts of green trees. From the ridge the hill-side descended rapidly in a slope of at least 600 feet. The brushwood was very thick upon it, and at times almost impervious. At the base of this slope the road wound to Inkerman, and thence to Sebastopol. The sluggish stream stole quietly through it towards the head of the harbour, which was shut out from view by the projections of the ridge to the north. At the distance of a quarter of a mile across the valley the sides of the mountains opposite to the ridge of the plateau on which our camp stood rose abruptly in sheer walls of rock, slab after slab, to the height of several hundred feet. A road wound among those massive precipices up to the ruins of Inkerman--a city of the dead and gone and unknown--where houses, and pillared mansions, and temples, were hewn out of the face of the solid rock by a generation whose very name the most daring antiquaries have not guessed at. This road passed along the heights, and dipped into the valley of Inkerman, at the neck of the harbour. The Russians planted guns along it to cover the retreat of their troops, and at night the lights of their fires were seen glimmering through the window and door places from the chambers carved out from the sides of the precipice.
Looking down from the ridge, these ruins were, of course, to one's left hand. To the right the eye followed the sweep of the valley till it was closed in from view by the walls of the ridge, and by the mountains which hemmed in the valley of Balaklava, and one could just catch, on the side of the ridge, the corner of the nearest French earthwork, thrown up to defend our rear, and cover the position towards Balaklava. Below, to the right of the ridge, at the distance of 200 feet from the top towards the valley, was the Sandbag, or two-gun battery, intended for two guns, which had been withdrawn a few days before, after silencing a Russian battery at Inkerman, because Sir De Lacy Evans conceived that they would only invite attack, and would certainly be taken, unconnected as they would have been with any line of defence. On the left hand, overlooking this battery, was a road from Balaklava right across our camp through the Second Division's tents on their front, which ran over the ridge and joined the upper road to Inkerman. Some of the Russian columns had climbed up by the ground along this road; others had ascended on the left, in front and to the right of the Sandbag Battery.
Litter-bearers, French and English, dotted the hillside, hunting through the bushes for the dead or dying, toiling painfully up with a burden for the grave, or some object for the doctor's care. Our men had acquired a shocking facility in their diagnosis. A body was before you; there was a shout, "Come here, boys, I see a Russian!" (or "a Frenchman," or "one of our fellows!") One of the party advances, raises the eyelid, peers into the eye, shrugs his shoulders, says "He's dead, he'll wait," and moves back to the litter; some pull the feet, and arrive at equally correct conclusions by that process. The dead were generally stripped of all but their coats. The camp followers and blackguards from Balaklava, and seamen from the ships, anxious for trophies, carried off all they could take from the field.
Parties of men busy at work. Groups along the hill-side forty or fifty yards apart. You find them around a yawning trench, thirty feet in length by twenty feet in breadth, and six feet in depth. At the bottom lie packed with exceeding art some thirty or forty corpses. The grave-diggers stand chatting, waiting for arrivals to complete the number. They speculate on the appearance of the body which is being borne towards them. "It's Corporal----, of the--th, I think," says one. "No! it's my rear rank man, I can see his red hair plain enough," and so on. They discuss the merits or demerits of dead sergeants or comrades. "Well, he was a hard man: many's the time I was belled through him!" or "Poor Mick! he had fifteen years' service--a better fellow never stepped." At last the number in the trench is completed. The bodies are packed as closely as possible. Some have still upraised arms, in the attitude of taking aim; their legs stick up through the mould; others are bent and twisted like fantoccini. Inch after inch the earth rises upon them, and they are left "alone in their glory." No, not alone; for the hopes and affections of hundreds of human hearts lie buried with them!
For about one mile and a half in length by half a mile in depth the hill-side offered such sights as these. Upwards of 2,000 Russians were buried there.
[Sidenote: WATCHING A TREACHEROUS ENEMY.]
As I was standing at the Sandbag Battery, talking to some officers of the Guards, who were describing their terrible losses, Colonel Cunynghame and Lieutenant-Colonel Wilbraham of the Quarter-Master-General's staff rode up to superintend the burial operations. The instant their cocked hats were seen above the ridge a burst of smoke from the head of the harbour, and a shell right over us, crashed into the hill-side, where our men were burying the Russian dead! Colonel Cunynghame told me Lord Raglan had sent in a flag of truce that morning to inform the Russians that the parties on the hill-side were burying the dead. As he was speaking a second shell came close and broke up our party. It is quite evident that the society of two officers in cocked hats, on horseback, is not the safest in the world. We all three retired.
During the battle of Inkerman the French were drawn up in three bodies of about 2,000 men each on the ridge of the hills over Balaklava, watching the movements of the Russian cavalry in the plain below. As I came up the enemy were visible, drawn out into six divisions, with the artillery and infantry ready to act, and horses saddled and bridled. It was evident they were waiting for the signal to dash up the hills in our rear and sabre our flying regiments. They had a long time to wait! The French lines below us were lined by Zouaves; the gunners in the redoubts, with matches lighted, were prepared to send their iron messengers through the ranks of the horse the moment they came within range. Behind the French 5,000 "Bono Johnnies" were drawn up in columns as a reserve, and several Turkish regiments were also stationed under the heights on the right, in a position to act in support should their services be required. The French were on their march from the sea to our assistance, and the black lines of their regiments streaked the grey plain as they marched double-quick towards the scene of action. The Chasseurs d'Afrique on their grey Arabs swept about the slopes of the hills to watch an opportunity for a dash. Our own cavalry were drawn up by their encampments, the Heavy Brigade on the left, the Light Brigade in the centre of our position. The latter were out of fire for some time, but an advance to the right exposed them to shot and shell. Mr. Cleveland received a mortal wound, and several men and horses were injured later in the day. The Heavy Cavalry were employed in protecting our left and rear.
The column on the extreme Russian right, which came on our position at the nearest point to Sebastopol, was mainly resisted by the Fourth Division and the Marines. The Russian centre was opposed by the Second Division and the Light Division. The Guards were opposed to the third or left column of the Russians. The Fourth Division in a short time lost all its generals--Cathcart, Goldie and Torrens--killed or mortally wounded, and 700, or more than one quarter of its strength, put hors de combat. The Second Division came out of action with six field officers and twelve captains; Major Farrer, of the 47th Regiment, was senior, and took command of the Division.
Sir De Lacy Evans was unwell on board ship when the fight began, but he managed to ride up to the front, and I saw him on the battle-field in the thick of the fight. Captain Allix, one of his aides-de-camp, was killed; Captain Gubbins, another, was wounded.
The Brigade of the Guards lost fourteen officers killed; the wonder is that any escaped the murderous fire. The Alma did not present anything like the scene round the Sandbag Battery. Upwards of 1,200 dead and dying Russians laid behind and around and in front of it, and many a tall English Grenadier was there amid the frequent corpses of Chasseur and Zouave. At one time, while the Duke was rallying his men, a body of Russians came at him. Mr. Wilson, surgeon, 7th Hussars, attached to the brigade, perceived the danger of his Royal Highness, and with great gallantry assembled a few Guardsmen, led them to the charge, and dispersed the Russians. The Duke's horse was killed. At the close of the day he called Mr. Wilson in front and thanked him for having saved his life.
[Sidenote: AN INTERESTING COLLOQUY.]
Book IV
PREPARATIONS FOR A WINTER CAMPAIGN--THE HURRICANE--THE CONDITION OF THE ARMY--THE TRENCHES IN WINTER--BALAKLAVA--THE COMMISSARIAT AND MEDICAL STAFF.
Chapter I
Formation of the Russian Army--Difficulties explained--Appearance of the Men--Liège Muskets--Bayonets--Killing the Wounded--Glories of Inkerman--Commissary Filder's merits--Hardships of the Campaign--Officers in rags--Hurricane of the 14th of November--A mighty and strong Wind--Tents dislodged--A Medical Officer in difficulty--Horrors of the Scene--Sleet and Snow--Officers in distress--Bad news from Balaklava--A Lull.
From a deserter at Head-Quarters I gleaned some particulars respecting the formation of the Russian army. It had long been a puzzle to ignorant people like ourselves why the Russian soldiers had numbers on their shoulder-straps different from those on their buttons or on their caps. In recording my observations of the appointments of the men killed at the Alma, I remarked that certain "regiments" were present, judging by the shoulder straps. It will appear that these numbers referred not to regiments, but to divisions. So let our Pole, one of the few who came in after Inkerman, speak for himself through an interpreter:--
"What does the number on the strap on your shoulder indicate?"
"It is No. 16. It shows that I belong to the 16th Division of the army."
"Who commands it?"
"I don't know--a General."
"What does the number 31 on your buttons mean?"
"It means that I belong to Regt. 31 of the 16th Division."
"What does the number 7 on your cap, with P after it, mean?"
"It indicates that I belong to the 7th rota of my polk."
"What does a rota mean?"
"It means a company of 250 men."
"How many rotas are in a polk?"
"There are sixteen rotas in each polk."
"And how many polks are in a division?"
"There are four polks in a division."
"If that is so, why have you 31 on your buttons?" (A pause, a stupid look.)--"I don't know."
Finding our friend was getting into that helpless state of confusion into which the first glimpses of decimal fractions are wont to plunge the youthful arithmetician, we left him. Now let us combine our information, and see what, according to this Polish authority, a Russian division consists of. It stands thus:--
1 Rota = 250 men. 16 Rotas = 1 polk = 4,000 " 4 Polks = 1 division = 16,000 " One Division of infantry.
The men resembled those we met at the Alma, and were clad in the same way. We saw no infantry with helmets, however, and our soldiers were disappointed to find the Russians had, in most cases, come out without their knapsacks. Their persons were very cleanly, and the whiteness of their faces and of their feet were remarkable. Few of them had socks, and the marauders had removed their boots whenever they were worth taking. Our soldiers and sailors, as well as the French, looked out with avidity for a good pair of Russian boots, and were quite adepts in fitting themselves to a nicety by their simple mode of measurement--viz., placing their feet against those of the dead men. Many had medals, "the campaign of 1848-49 in Hungary and Transylvania." They were generally carried inside tin cases about their persons. Officers and men wore the same long grey coats, the former being alone distinguishable by the stripe of gold lace on the shoulder. Their uniform coats, of dark green with white facings and red and yellow trimmings, were put on underneath the great coat.
A considerable number of the Liège double-grooved rifles were found on the field. Many of the muskets bore the date of 1841, and had been altered into detonators. I remember a juvenile superstition in my sparrow-killing days, that such guns "shot stronger" than either flint or detonator, pur sang. Every part of the arm was branded most carefully. The word "BAK" occurs on each separate part of it. The Imperial eagle was on the brass heelplate, and on the lock "[Cyrillic: TULA] (Tula), 1841." The bayonets were long, but not well steeled. They bent if rudely handled or struck with force against the ground. The long and polished gun-barrels were made of soft, but tough iron. They could be bent to an acute angle without splitting. From the trigger-guard of each musket a thong depended, fastened to a cap of stout leather, to put over the nipple in wet weather. This seemed a simple and useful expedient. The devotion of the men to their officers was remarkable. How else was it that we seldom found either dead or wounded officers on the ground? It was again asserted--and I fear with truth--that the wounded Russians killed many of our men as they passed. For this reason our soldiers smashed the stock and bent the barrels. Some carried rifles, and heavy, thick swords with a saw-back, which they sold to the captains and sailors of merchantmen. Medals, ribands, the small brass crucifixes, and pictures of saints, and charms found upon the dead, were also in great request.
[Sidenote: THE COMMISSARIAT.]
If it is considered that the soldiers who met these furious columns of the Czar were the remnants of three British divisions, which scarcely numbered 8,500 men; that they were hungry and wet, and half-famished; that they belonged to a force which was generally "out of bed" four nights out of seven; enfeebled by sickness, by severe toil; that among them were men who had previously lain out for forty-eight hours in the trenches at a stretch--it will be readily admitted that never was a more brilliant contest maintained by our army.
Up to the beginning of this winter Commissary Filder deserved credit for his exertions in supplying our army. No army, I believe, was ever so well fed under such very exceptional circumstances. From Balaklava alone came our daily bread; no man had up to this time been without his pound of biscuit, his pound and a half or a pound of beef or mutton, his quota of coffee, tea, rice, and sugar, his gill of excellent rum, for any one day, excepting through his own neglect. We drew our hay, our corn, our beef, our mutton, our biscuits, spirits, and necessaries of all kinds from beyond sea. Eupatoria supplied us with cattle and sheep to a moderate extent; but the commissariat of the army depended on sea carriage. Nevertheless, large as were our advantages in the excellence and regularity of the supply of food, the officers and men had to undergo great privations.
The oldest soldiers never witnessed a campaign in which Generals were obliged to live in tents in winter, and officers who passed their youth in the Peninsular war, and had seen a good deal of fighting in various parts of the world, were unanimous in declaring that they never knew of a war in which the officers were exposed to such hardships. They landed without anything, marched beside their men, slept by them, fought by them, and died by them. They laid down at night in the clothes which they wore during the day; many delicately-nurtured youths never changed shirts or shoes for weeks together.
"Rank and fashion," under such circumstances, fell a prey to parasitical invasion--an evil to which the other incidents of roughing it are of little moment. The officers were in rags. Guardsmen, who were "the best style of men" in the Parks, turned out in coats and trousers and boots all seams and patches, mended with more vigour than neatness, and our smartest cavalry men were models of ingenious sewing and stitching. The men could not grumble at old coats, boots, or shoes when they saw their officers no better off than themselves. We had "soldiering with the gilding off," and many a young gentleman would be cured of his love of arms if he could but have had one day's experience. Fortunate it is for us that we have youth on which we can rely, and that there are in England men "who delight in war," who will be ever ready to incur privation and danger at her summons. As to young ladies suffering from "scarlet fever,"--who are thinking of heroes and warriors, singing of "crowning conquerors' brows with flowers," and wishing for "Arab steeds and falchions bright"--if they could but for one instant have stood beside me, and gazed into one of the pits where some thirty "clods of the valley," decked with scarlet and blue, with lace and broidery, were lying side by side, staring up at heaven with their sightless orbs, as they were about to be consigned to the worm, they would have joined in prayer for the advent of that day--if come it ever may--when war shall be no more, and when the shedding of blood shall cease. After Inkerman there was a period of collapse in the army. The siege languished. Our strength was wasting away--men's spirits failed--the future looked dark and uncertain.
It happened that we had a forewarning of what might be expected. On Friday, the 10th of November, just four days ere the fatal catastrophe which caused such disasters occurred, I was on board the Jason Captain Lane, which happened to be lying outside, and as it came on to blow, I could not return to the shore or get to the camp that evening. The ship was a noble steamer, well manned and ably commanded, but ere midnight I would have given a good deal to have been on land; for the gale setting right into the bay, raised a high wild sea, which rushed up the precipices in masses of water and foam, astonishing by their force and fury; and the strain on the cable was so great that the captain had to ease it off by steaming gently a-head against the wind. The luckless Prince, which had lost two anchors and cables on bringing up a day or two before, was riding near the Agamemnon, and adopted the same expedient; and, of the numerous vessels outside, and which in so short a time afterwards were dashed into fragments against those cruel rocks, the aspect of which was calculated to thrill the heart of the boldest seaman with horror, there were few which did not drag their anchors and draw towards the iron coast which lowered with death on its brow upon us. Guns of distress boomed through the storm, and flashes of musketry pointed out for a moment a helpless transport which seemed tossing in the very centre of the creaming foam of those stupendous breakers, the like of which I never beheld, except once, when I saw the Atlantic running riot against the cliffs of Moher. But the gale soon moderated--for that once--and wind and sea went down long before morning. However, Sir Edmund Lyons evidently did not like his berth, for the Agamemnon went round to Kamiesch on Sunday morning, and ordered the Firebrand, which was lying outside, to go up to the fleet at the Katcha. As to the Prince, and the luckless transports, they were allowed, nay, ordered, to stand outside till the hurricane rushed upon them.
On the 14th of November came a new calamity--the hurricane.
I had been in a listless state between waking and sleeping, listening to the pelting of the rain against the fluttering canvas of the tent, or dodging the streams of water which flowed underneath it, saturating blankets, and collecting on the mackintosh sheet in pools, when gradually I became aware that the sound of the rain and the noise of its heavy beating on the earth had been swallowed up by the roar of the wind, and by the flapping of tents outside. Presently the sides of the canvas, tucked in under big stones, began to rise, permitting the wind to enter and drive sheets of rain right into one's face; the pegs indicated painful indecision and want of firmness of purpose. The glimpses afforded of the state of affairs outside were little calculated to produce a spirit of resignation to the fate which threatened our frail shelter. The ground had lost solidity. Mud--nothing but mud--flying before the wind and drifting as though it were rain, covered the face of the earth.
The storm-fiend was coming, terrible and strong as when he smote the bark of the Ancient Mariner. The pole of the tent bent like a salmon-rod; the canvas tugged at the ropes, the pegs yielded. A startling crack! I looked at my companions, who seemed determined to shut out all sound by piling as many clothes as they could over their heads. A roar of wind again, the pole bent till the "crack" was heard again. "Get up, Smith! Up with you; Eber! the tent is coming down!" The Doctor rose from beneath his tumulus of clothes. Now, if there was anything in which the Doctor put confidence more than another, it was his tent-pole; he believed that no power of Æolus could ever shake it. There was normally a bend in the middle of it, but he used to argue, on sound anatomical, mathematical, and physical principles, that the bend was an improvement. He looked on the pole, as he looked at all things, blandly, put his hand out, and shook it. "Why, man," said he, reproachfully, "it's all right--that pole would stand for ever," and then he crouched and burrowed under his bed-clothes.
Scarcely had he given that last convulsive heave of the blankets which indicates perfect comfort, when a harsh screaming sound, increasing in vehemence as it approached, struck us with horror. As it neared us, we heard the snapping of tent-poles and the sharp crack of timber. On it came, "a mighty and a strong wind." It struck our tent! The pole broke off short in the middle, as if it were glass; in an instant we were half stifled by the folds of the wet canvas, which beat us about the head with fury. Breathless and half blind, I struggled for the exit, and crept out into the mud. Such a sight met the eye! The whole head-quarters' camp was beaten flat to the earth, and the unhappy occupants of tents were rushing in all directions in chase of their effects, or holding on by the walls, as they strove to make their way to the roofless barns and stables.
[Sidenote: A MIMIC VOLCANO.]
Three marquees stood the blast--General Estcourt, Sir John Burgoyne, and Major Pakenham's. The General had built a cunning wall of stones around his marquee, but ere noon it had fallen before the wind; the Major's shared the same fate still earlier in the day. Next to our tent was the marquee of Captain de Morel, aide-de-camp to Adjutant-General Estcourt, fluttering on the ground, and, as I looked, the canvas was animated by some internal convulsion--a mimic volcano appeared to be opening, its folds assumed fantastic shapes, tossing wildly in the storm. The phenomenon was accounted for by the apparition of the owner fighting his way against the wind, which was bent on tearing his scanty covering from his person; at last he succeeded in making a bolt of it and squattered through the mud to the huts. Dr. Hall's tent was levelled, the principal medical officer of the British army might be seen in an unusual state of perturbation and nudity, seeking for his garments. Brigadier Estcourt, with mien for once disturbed, held on, as sailors say, "like grim Death to a backstay," by one of the shrouds of his marquee. Captain Chetwode was tearing through the rain and dirt like a maniac after a cap, which he fancied was his own, and which he found, after a desperate run, to be his sergeant's. The air was filled with blankets, hats, great coats, little coats, and even tables and chairs! Mackintoshes, quilts, india-rubber tubs, bedclothes, sheets of tent-canvas went whirling like leaves in the gale towards Sebastopol. The barns and commissariat sheds were laid bare at once. The shingle roofs of the outhouses were torn away and scattered over the camp; a portion of the roof of Lord Raglan's house was carried off to join them.
Large arabas, or waggons, close to us were overturned; men and horses were rolled over and over; the ambulance waggons were turned topsy-turvy; a large table in Captain Chetwode's was whirled round and round till the leaf flew off, and came to mother earth deprived of a leg and seriously injured. The Marines and Rifles on the cliffs over Balaklava lost everything; the storm hurled them across the bay, and the men had to cling to the earth with all their might to avoid the same fate.
Looking over towards the hill occupied by the Second Division, we saw the ridges, the plains, and undulating tracts between the ravines, so lately smiling in the autumn sun, with row after row of neat white tents, bare and desolate, as black as ink. Right in front the camp of the Chasseurs d'Afrique presented an appearance of equal desolation. Their little tentes d'abri were involved in the common ruin. One-half of our cavalry horses broke loose. The French swarmed in all directions, seeking for protection against the blast. Our men, more sullen and resolute, stood in front of their levelled tents, or collected in groups before their late camps. Woe to the Russians had they come on that day, for, fiercer than the storm and stronger than all its rage, the British soldier would have met and beaten their battalions. The cry was, all throughout this dreadful day, "Let us get at the town; better far that we should have a rush at the batteries and be done with it, than stand here to be beaten by a storm."
[Sidenote: FLYING FROM THE STORM.]
Let the reader imagine the bleakest common in all England, the wettest bog in all Ireland, or the dreariest muir in all Scotland, overhung by leaden skies, and lashed by a tornado of sleet, snow, and rain--a few broken stone walls and roofless huts dotting it here and there, roads turned into torrents of mud and water, and then let him think of the condition of men and horses in such a spot on a November morning, suddenly deprived of their frail covering, and exposed to bitter cold, with empty stomachs, without the remotest prospect of obtaining food or shelter. Think of the men in the trenches, the covering parties, the patrols, and outlying pickets and sentries, who had passed the night in storm and darkness, and who returned to their camp only to find fires out and tents gone. These were men on whose vigilance the safety of our position depended, and many of whom had been for eight or ten hours in the rain and cold, who dared not turn their backs for a moment, who could not blink their eyes. These are trials which demand the exercise of the soldier's highest qualities.
A benighted sportsman caught in a storm thinks he is much to be pitied, as, fagged, drenched and hungry, he plods along the hillside, and stumbles about in the dark towards some uncertain light; but he has no enemy worse than the wind and rain to face, and in the first hut he reaches repose and comfort await him. Our officers and soldiers, after a day like this, had to descend to the trenches again at night, look out for a crafty foe, to labour in the mire and ditches of the works; what fortitude and high courage to do all this without a murmur, and to bear such privations and hardships with unflinching resolution! But meantime--for one's own experience gives the best idea of the suffering of others--our tent was down; one by one we struggled out into the mud, and left behind us all our little household gods, to fly to the lee of a stone wall, behind which were cowering French and British of all arms and conditions.
Major Blane was staggering from the ruins of his marquee, under a press of greatcoat, bearing up for the shelter of Pakenham's hut. The hospital tents were all down, the sick had to share the fate of the robust. On turning towards the ridge on which the imposing wooden structures of the French were erected, a few scattered planks alone met the eye. The wounded of the 5th November, who to the number of several hundred were in these buildings, had to bear the inclemency of the weather as well as they could. Several succumbed to its effects. The guard tents were down, the occupants huddled together under the side of a barn, their arms covered with mud, lying where they had been thrown from the "pile" by wind. The officers had fled to the commissariat stores near Lord Raglan's, and there found partial shelter. Inside, overturned carts, dead horses, and groups of shivering men--not a tent left standing. Mr. Cookesley had to take refuge, and was no doubt glad to find it, amid salt pork and rum puncheons.
With chattering teeth and shivering limbs each man looked at his neighbour. Lord Raglan's house, with the smoke streaming from the chimneys, and its white walls standing out freshly against the black sky, was the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes." Lord Lucan, meditative as Marius amid the ruins of Carthage, was sitting up to his knees in mud, amid the wreck of his establishment. Lord Cardigan was sick on board his yacht in the harbour of Balaklava. Sir George Brown was lying wounded on board the Agamemnon, off Kamiesch Bay; Sir De Lacy Evans, sick and shaken, was on board the Sanspareil, in Balaklava; General Bentinck, wounded, was on board the Caradoc. The Duke of Cambridge was passing a terrible time of it in the Retribution, in all the horrors of that dreadful scene, off Balaklava. Pennefather, England, Campbell, Adams, Buller--in fact all the generals and officers--were as badly off as the meanest private.
The only persons near us whose tents weathered the gale were Mr. Romaine, Deputy Judge-Advocate-General; Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson, Artillery; and Captain Woodford. The first had pitched his tent cunningly within the four walls of an outhouse, and secured it by guys and subtle devices of stonework. They were hospitable spots, those tents--oases in the desert of wretchedness; many a poor half-frozen wanderer was indebted almost for life to the shelter they afforded. While reading this, pray never lose sight of the fact, as you sit over your snug coal-fires at home, that fuel was nearly all gone, and that there were savage fights among the various domestics, even in fine weather, for a bit of shaving or a fragment of brushwood. Never forget that the storm raged from half-past six o'clock till late in the day, with the fury of Azraël, vexing and buffeting every living thing, and tearing to pieces all things inanimate. Now and then a cruel gleam of sunshine shot out of a rift in the walls of clouds and rendered the misery of the scene more striking. Gathered up under the old wall, we could not but think with anxious hearts of our fleet of transports off Balaklava and the Katcha. Alas! we had too much reason for our anxiety.
Towards ten o'clock matters were looking more hopeless and cheerless than ever, when a welcome invitation came through the storm to go over to the shelter of Romaine's tent. Our first duty was to aid the owner in securing the pole with "a fish" of stout spars. Then we aided in passing out a stay from the top of the pole to the wall in front. A cup of warm tea was set before each of us, provided by some inscrutable chemistry, and with excellent ration biscuit and some butter, a delicious meal, as much needed as it was unexpected, was made by my friends and myself, embittered only by the ever-recurring reflection, "God help us, what will become of the poor fellows in the trenches?" And there we sat, thinking and talking of the soldiers and of the fleet hour after hour, while the wind and rain blew and fell with the full sense of the calamity with which Providence was pleased to visit us.
Towards twelve o'clock the wind, which had been blowing from the south-west, chopped round more to the west, and became colder. Sleet fell first, and then a snow-storm, which clothed the desolate landscape in white, till the tramp of men seamed it with trails of black mud. The mountain ranges assumed their winter garb. French soldiers flocked about head-quarters, and displayed their stock of sorrows to us. Their tents were all down and blown away--no chance of recovering them; their bread was "tout mouillé et gâté," their rations gone to the dogs. The African soldiers seemed particularly miserable. Several of them were found dead next morning outside our cavalry camp. Two men in the 7th Fusileers, one man in the 33rd, and one man of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, were found dead, "starved to death" by the cold. About forty horses died, and many never recovered.
[Sidenote: A REFUGE FROM THE STORM.]
At two o'clock the wind went down a little, and the intervals between the blasts of the gale became more frequent and longer. We took advantage of one of these halcyon moments to trudge to the wreck of my tent, and having borrowed another pole, with the aid of a few men we got it up muddy and wet; but it was evident that no dependence could be placed upon it; the floor was a puddle, and the bed and clothes dripping. Towards evening there were many tents re-pitched along the lines of our camps, though they were but sorry resting-places. It was quite out of the question to sleep in them. What was to be done? There was close at hand the barn used as a stable for the horses of the 8th Hussars, and Eber Macraghten and I waded across the sea of nastiness which lay between us and it, tacked against several gusts, fouled one or two soldiers in a different course, grappled with walls and angles of outhouses, nearly foundered in big horse-holes, bore sharply up round a corner, and anchored at last in the stable.
What a scene it was! The officers of the escort were crouching over some embers; along the walls were packed some thirty or forty horses and ponies, shivering with cold, and kicking and biting with spite and bad humour. The Hussars, in their long cloaks, stood looking on the flakes of snow, which drifted in at the doorway or through the extensive apertures in the shingle roof. Soldiers of different regiments crowded about the warm corners, and Frenchmen of all arms, and a few Turks, joined in the brotherhood of misery, lighted their pipes at the scanty fire, and sat close for mutual comfort. The wind blew savagely through the roof, and through chinks in the mud walls and window-holes. The building was a mere shell, as dark as pitch, and smelt as it ought to do--an honest, unmistakeable stable--improved by a dense pack of moist and mouldy soldiers. And yet it seemed to us a palace! Life and joy were inside, though melancholy Frenchmen would insist on being pathetic over their own miseries--and, indeed, they were many and great--and after a time the eye made out the figures of men huddled up in blankets, lying along the wall. They were the sick, who had been in the hospital marquee, and who now lay moaning and sighing in the cold; but our men were kind to them, as they are always to the distressed, and not a pang of pain did they feel which care or consideration could dissipate.
A staff officer, Colonel Wetherall, dripping with rain, came in to see if he could get any shelter for draughts of the 33rd and 41st Regiments, which had just been landed at Kamiesch, but he soon ascertained the hopelessness of his mission so far as our quarters were concerned. The men were packed into another shed, "like herrings in a barrel." Having told us, "There is terrible news from Balaklava--seven vessels lost, and a number on shore at the Katcha," and thus made us more gloomy than ever, the officer went on his way, as well as he could, to look after his draughts. In the course of an hour an orderly was sent off to Balaklava with dispatches from head-quarters; but, after being absent for three-quarters of an hour, the man returned, fatigued and beaten, to say he could not get his horse to face the storm. In fact, it would have been all but impossible for man or beast to have made headway through the hurricane.
We sat in the dark till night set in--not a soul could stir out. Nothing could be heard but the howling of the wind, the yelping of wild dogs driven into the enclosures, and the shrill neighings of terrified horses. At length a candle-end was stuck into a horn lantern, to keep it from the wind--a bit of ration pork and some rashers of ham, done over the wood fire, furnished an excellent dinner, which was followed by a glass or horn of hot water and rum--then a pipe, and as it was cold and comfortless, we got to bed--a heap of hay on the stable floor, covered with our clothes, and thrown close to the heels of a playful grey mare, who had strong antipathies to her neighbours, a mule and an Arab horse, and spent the night in attempting to kick in their ribs. Amid smells, and with incidents impossible to describe or allude to more nearly, we went to sleep in spite of a dispute between an Irish sergeant of Hussars and a Yorkshire corporal of Dragoons as to the comparative merits of light and heavy cavalry, with digressions respecting the capacity of English and Irish horseflesh, which, by the last we heard of them, seemed likely to be decided by a trial of physical strength on the part of the disputants.
Throughout the day there had been very little firing from the Russian batteries--towards evening all was silent except the storm. In the middle of the night, however, we were all awoke by one of the most tremendous cannonades we had ever heard, and, after a time, the report of a rolling fire of musketry was borne upon the wind. Looking eagerly in the direction of the sound, we saw the flashes of the cannon through the chinks in the roof, each distinct by itself, just as a flash of lightning is seen in all its length and breadth through a crevice in a window shutter. It was a sortie on the French lines. The cannonade lasted for half-an-hour, and gradually waxed fainter. In the morning we heard that the Russians had been received with an energy which quickly made them fly to the cover of their guns.
Chapter II
A change for the better--Visit to Balaklava--Devastation--Affair of Pickets--Newspaper Correspondents in the Crimea--Difficulties they had to encounter--False Hopes--A smart affair--Death of Lieutenant Tryon--Flattering Testimonies--Want of Generals--Attack on Oupatoria--Affair between the Chasseurs de Vincennes and the Russian Riflemen--The Ovens--A Deserter's Story--Movements of the Russians--A Reconnaissance--Suffering caused by hard work and scarcity of supplies--Warnings--Cholera--Dreadful Scenes amongst the Turks in Balaklava.
[Sidenote: BALAKLAVA AFTER THE STORM.]
With the morning of the 15th of November, came a bright cold sky, and our men, though ankle deep in mud cheered up when they beheld the sun once more. The peaks of the hills and mountain sides were covered with snow. As rumours of great disasters reached us from Balaklava, I after breakfasting in my stable, made my way there as well as I could. The roads were mere quagmires. Another day's rain would have rendered them utterly impassable, and only for swimming or navigation. Dead horses and cattle were scattered all over the country, and here and there a sad little procession, charged with the burden of some inanimate body, might be seen wending its way slowly towards the hospital marquees, which had been again pitched.
In coming by the French lines I observed that the whole of the troops were turned out, and were moving about and wheeling in column to keep their blood warm. They had just been mustered, and it was gratifying to learn that the rumours respecting lost men were greatly exaggerated. Our men were engaged in trenching and clearing away mud.
The Russians in the valley were very active, and judging from the state of the ground and the number of loose horses, they must have been very miserable also.
Turning down by Captain Powell's battery, where the sailors were getting their arms in order, I worked through ammunition mules and straggling artillery-wagons towards the town. Balaklava was below--its waters thronged with shipping--not a ripple on their surface. It was almost impossible to believe that but twelve hours before ships were dragging their anchors, drifting, running aground,, and smashing each other to pieces in that placid loch. The whitewashed houses in the distance were as clean-looking as ever, and the old ruined fortress on the crags above frowned upon the sea, and reared its walls and towers aloft, uninjured by the storm.
On approaching the town, however, the signs of the tempest of the day before grew and increased at every step. At the narrow neck of the harbour, high and dry, three large boats were lying, driven inland several yards; the shores were lined with trusses of compressed hay which had floated out of the wrecks outside the harbour, and pieces of timber, beams of wood, masts and spars, formed natural rafts, which were stranded on the beach or floated about among the shipping. The old tree which stood near the guard-house at the entrance to the town was torn up, and in its fall had crushed the house into ruin. The soldiers of the guard were doing their best to make themselves comfortable within the walls. The fall of this tree, which had seen many winters, coupled with the fact that the verandahs and balconies of the houses and a row of very fine acacia trees on the beach were blown down, corroborate the statement so generally made by the inhabitants, that they had never seen or heard of such a hurricane in their life time, although there was a tradition among some that once in thirty or forty years such visitations occurred along this coast. The City of London, Captain Cargill, was the only vessel which succeeded in getting out to sea and gaining a good offing during the hurricane of the 14th, and the Captain told me, in all his experience (and as an old Aberdeen master, he has passed some anxious hours at sea) he never knew so violent a gale.
There was an affair of pickets during the night of the 15th between the French and the Russians, in which a few men were wounded on both sides, and which was finished by the retreat of the Russians to their main body. This took place in the valley of Balaklava, and its most disagreeable result (to those not engaged) was to waken up and keep awake every person in the town for a couple of hours.
During this winter newspaper correspondents in the Crimea were placed in a rather difficult position. In common with generals and chiefs, and men-at-arms, they wrote home accounts of all we were doing to take Sebastopol, and they joined in the prophetic cries of the leaders of the host, that the fall of the city of the Czar--the centre and navel of his power in those remote regions--would not be deferred for many hours after our batteries had opened upon its defences. In all the inspiration of this universal hope, these poor wretches, who clung to the mantles of the military and engineering Elijahs, did not hesitate to communicate to the world, through the columns of the English press, all they knew of the grand operations which were to eventuate in the speedy fall of this doomed city. They cheered the heart of England with details of the vast armaments prepared against its towers and forts--of the position occupied by her troops--the imbecility of the enemy's fire--of the range of the guns so soon to be silenced--of the stations of our troops on commanding sites; and they described with all their power the grandiose operations which were being taken for the reduction of such a formidable place of arms. They believed, in common with the leaders, whose inspiration and whose faith were breathed through the ranks of our soldiers, that the allied forces were to reduce Sebastopol long ere the lines they penned could meet the expectant gaze of our fellow-countrymen at home; and they stated, under that faith and in accordance with those inspirations, that the operations of war of our armies were undertaken with reference to certain points and with certain hopes of results, the knowledge of which could not have proved of the smallest service to the enemy once beaten out of their stronghold.
Contrary to these hopes and inspirations, in direct opposition to our prophecies and to our belief, Sebastopol held out against the Allies; and the intelligence conveyed in newspapers which we all thought we should have read in the club-rooms of Sebastopol, was conveyed to the generals of an army which defended its walls, and were given to the leaders of an enemy whom we had considered would be impuissant and defeated, while they were still powerful and unconquered. The enemy knew that we had lost many men from sickness; that we had so many guns here and so many guns there, that our head-quarters were in one place, our principal powder magazines in another, that the camp of such a division had been annoyed by their fire, and that the tents of another had escaped injury from their shot, but it must be recollected that when these details were written it was confidently declared that, ere the news of the actual preliminaries of the siege could reach England, the Allies would have entered Sebastopol, that their batteries would have silenced the fire of their enemy, that the quarters of their generals would have been within the enceinte of the town, that our magazines would have been transferred to its storehouses, and that our divisions would have encamped within its walls.
[Sidenote: MISERABLE STATE OF OUR ARMY.]
How much knowledge of this sort the enemy gleaned through their spies, or by actual observation, it is not needful to inquire; but undoubtedly, without any largely speculative conjecture, it may be inferred that much of the information conveyed to them, or said to have been conveyed to them, by the English press, could have been ascertained through those very ordinary channels of communication, the eye and ear, long ere our letters had been forwarded to Sebastopol, and translated from English in usum superiorum. However, it is quite evident that it was not advisable to acquaint the enemy with our proceeding and movements during a siege which promised to assume the proportions and to emulate the length of those operations of a similar character in which hosts of men conveyed by formidable armadas from distant shores, set down to beleaguer some devoted fortress.
Although it might be dangerous to communicate facts likely to be of service to the Russians, it was certainly hazardous to conceal the truth from the English people. They must have known, sooner or later, that the siege towards the end of November had been for many days practically suspended, that our batteries were used up and silent, and that our army was much exhausted by the effects of excessive labour and watching, to which they have been so incessantly exposed. The Russians knew this soon enough, for a silent battery--to hazard a bull--speaks for itself. The relaxation of our fire was self-evident, but our army, though weakened by sickness, was still equal to hold their position, and to inflict the most signal chastisement upon any assailants who might venture to attack it. In fact, I believe nothing would have so animated our men, deprived as they were of cheering words and of the presence and exhortations of their generals and destitute of all stimulating influences beyond those of their undaunted spirits and glorious courage, as the prospect of meeting the Russians outside their intrenchments. Rain kept pouring down, the wind howled over the staggering tents--the trenches were turned into dikes--in the tents the water was sometimes a foot deep--our men had neither warm nor waterproof clothing--they were out for twelve hours at a time in the trenches--they were plunged into the inevitable miseries of a winter campaign. These were hard truths, which sooner or later must have come to the ears of the people of England. It was right they should know that the beggar who wandered the streets of London led the life of a prince compared with the British soldiers who were fighting for their country, and who, we were complacently assured by the home authorities, were the best appointed army in Europe. They were fed, indeed, but they had no shelter. The tents, so long exposed to the blaze of a Bulgarian sun, and drenched by torrents of rain, let the wet through "like sieves."
On the night of the 20th of November, three companies of the Rifle Brigade (1st battalion), under Lieutenant Tryon, displayed coolness and courage in a very smart affair. In the rocky ground in the ravine towards the left of our left attack, about 300 Russian infantry established themselves in some caverns and old stone huts used by shepherds in days gone by, and annoyed the working and covering parties of the French right attack and of our advances. These caves abounded in all the ravines, and were formed by the decay of the softer portions of the rock between the layers in which it is stratified. It was found expedient to dislodge them, and at seven o'clock this party was sent to drive the Russians out. The Rifles soon forced the enemy to retreat on the main body, but when the Rifles had established themselves for the night in the caves, they were assailed by a strong column. The action ended in the complete repulse of the Russian columns, but we had to deplore the loss of a most promising and excellent officer, Lieutenant Tryon, who was killed by a shot in the head. Seven men killed and eighteen or nineteen wounded.
General Canrobert issued a very flattering ordre du jour, in which he especially eulogized the intrepid bravery and noble energy of the three companies of the 1st battalion of our Rifle Brigade in the action, and Lord Raglan mentioned it in very handsome terms.
Our army was in a strange condition now. The Light Division was provisionally commanded by Codrington, Sir George Brown being on board the "Agamemnon."
The Duke of Cambridge was on board the "Retribution." The Brigade of Guards appeared to be commanded by Colonel Upton.
The Brigade of Highlanders was down at Kadikoi, under the command of Sir Colin Campbell.
The Second Division was commanded by Brigadier-General Pennefather, in the room of Sir De Lacy Evans, who was on his way home unwell.
The First Brigade was under the command of a Lieutenant-Colonel.
The Second Brigade was without a brigadier, General Adams' wound was more serious than was supposed.
The Third Division was under the command of Sir Richard England, and was fortunate in not being much engaged.
The Fourth Division, deprived of all its generals, was commanded by Sir John Campbell.
Brigadier-General Lord Cardigan was unable to leave his yacht. The Artillery was under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Dacres during the absence of Lieutenant-Colonel Gambier, who was wounded, after having succeeded to the command left vacant by the death of Strangways.
Our cattle at Eupatoria were by no means in high condition; they perished from hunger. It may readily be guessed that joints from the survivors were scarcely in such a condition as would justify the least conscientious of London waiters describing them as being in "prime cut."
[Sidenote: COMPANION OF THE GRAND DUKE.]
Early in November a body of Russian cavalry appeared before Eupatoria to attack our stock, and a French colonel, with eighty horse, pushed forward to save his beeves and mutton from the gripe of the hungry Cossacks. The Russian cavalry always screen field guns, and on this occasion, as at the Bouljanak, plumped round shot and shell into the Frenchmen. The colonel was dismounted, seven men were killed or wounded, and, as the French were retiring, a polk of Lancers made a dash at them. Our rocket battery was, however, near at hand, and one of these fiery abominations rushed right through their ranks. The horses reared, and the Lancers "bolted," leaving several dead upon the field.
On the 24th there was a brisk affair between the French and the Russians in front of the Flagstaff Battery, and the Russians dispelled all myths about their want of powder and ball by a most tremendous cannonade. Assaults and counter-assaults continued amid a furious fire, which lighted up the skies with sheets of flame from nine o'clock at night till nearly four in the morning. The French at one time actually penetrated behind the outer intrenchments, and established themselves for a time within the enceinte, but as there was no preparation made for a general assault, they eventually withdrew.
The struggle between French and Russians was renewed on the night of the 25th. The great bone of contention, in addition to the Ovens, was the mud fort at the Quarantine Battery, of which the French had got possession, though, truth to tell, it did not benefit their position very materially.
A Polish deserter came in on the 27th with a strange story. He said that on the 25th the Grand Duke Michael reviewed a strong force of Russians (as he stated, of 12,000 men, but no reliance can be placed on the assertions of men of this class with regard to the numbers of a force), and that he addressed them in a spirited speech, in which he appealed to them to drive the heretics out of Balaklava into the sea. At the conclusion of his harangue the Grand Duke distributed two silver roubles to each private.
A reconnaissance of our lines was made on the 30th of November by Grand Duke Michael and a very large staff, among whom our knowing people said they could see Prince Menschikoff and General Liprandi. The Grand Duke was recognisable by the profound respect paid to him--wherever he went hats were taken off and heads uncovered--and by the presence of a white dog which always accompanies him. While making his inspection, the enormous telescope through which he gazed was propped upon muskets and bayonets, and he made frequent references to a very large chart on a portable table. The Grand Duke rode back up the hills towards Tchergoun.
As the year waned and winter began to close in upon us, the army suffered greatly; worn out by night-work, by vigil in rain and storm, by hard labour in the trenches, they found themselves suddenly reduced to short allowance, and the excellent and ample rations they had been in the habit of receiving cut off or miserably reduced. For nine days, with very few exceptions, no issue of tea, coffee, or sugar, to the troops took place. These, however, are luxuries--not the necessaries of military life. The direct cause of this scarcity was the condition of the country, which caused a difficulty in getting food from Balaklava, and there was besides a want of supplies in the commissariat magazines. But though there was a cause, there was no excuse for the privations to which the men were exposed. We were all told that when the bad weather set in, the country roads would be impassable. The fine weather was allowed to go by, and the roads were left as the Tartar carts had made them, though the whole face of the country was covered thickly with small stones which seem expressly intended for road metal. As I understood, it was suggested by the officers of the Commissariat Department that they should be allowed to form depôts of food, corn, and forage, as a kind of reserve at the head-quarters at the different divisions; but their carts were, after a few days' work in forming those depôts, taken for the siege operations, and were employed in carrying ammunition to the trenches. Consequently, the magazines at headquarters were small, and were speedily exhausted when the daily supplies from Balaklava could no longer be procured. The food, corn, and hay were stowed in sailing vessels outside the harbour, where they had to ride in thirty or forty fathoms of water on a rocky bottom, with a terrible coast of cliff of 1,200 feet in height stretching around the bay: it was notorious that the place was subject to violent storms of wind.
As to the town, words could not describe its filth, its horrors, its hospitals, its burials, its dead and dying Turks, its crowded lanes, its noisome sheds, its beastly purlieus, or its decay. All the pictures ever drawn of plague and pestilence, from the work of the inspired writer who chronicled the woes of infidel Egypt, down to the narratives of Boccacio, De Foe, or Moltke, fall short of individual "bits" of disease and death, which any one might see in half-a-dozen places during half an hour's walk in Balaklava. In spite of all our efforts the dying Turks made of every lane and street a cloaca, and the forms of human suffering which met the eye at every turn, and once were wont to shock us, ceased to attract even passing attention. By raising up the piece of matting or coarse rug which hung across the doorway of some miserable house, from within which you heard wailings and cries of pain and prayers to the Prophet, you saw in one spot and in one instant a mass of accumulated woes that would serve you with nightmares for a lifetime. The dead, laid as they died, were side by side with the living. The commonest accessories were wanting; there was not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness--the stench was appalling--the foetid air could barely struggle out to taint the atmosphere, through the chinks in the walls and roofs. The sick appeared to be tended by the sick, and the dying by the dying.
[Sidenote: MOVEMENTS IN RUSSIAN CAMP.]
Chapter III
A False Alarm--The Russians retire--Skirmishes--Orders to turn out--The French and English make a Reconnaissance in force--A Brush with the Cavalry--Reinforcements--Winter--System of "Requisition," "Orders," and "Memos"--Our friends the Zouaves--Grievances--Christmas and New Year--The Times Commissioner--Arrival of Omar Pasha--First Week in January--Trying Duty of the Fatigue Parties--Terrible State of the Trenches--Louis Napoleon's Presents to the French Army--The Siege--Russian Prospects.
At twelve o'clock, on the night of the 5th of December, there was a great stir down in the valley of Balaklava. The hoarse hum of men was heard by the pickets, and they reported the circumstance to the officers of the French regiments on the heights. Lights were seen moving about in the redoubts occupied by the Russians. It was supposed that the enemy had received reinforcements, or were about to make a dash at our position before Balaklava. The Hospital Guards and the invalid battalion were turned out, the French shrouded in their capotes grimly waited in their lines the first decisive movement of the enemy. The night was cold, but not clear; after a time the noise of wheels and the tramp of men ceased, and the alarm was over. Ere morning, however, we knew the cause. About five o'clock A.M. an outburst of flame from the redoubts in which the Russians had hutted themselves illuminated the sky, and at the same time the fire broke out in Komara. When morning came, the Russians were visible in much-diminished numbers on the higher plateaux of the hills near Tchorgoun and Komara. The faint rays of the morning sun played on the bayonets of another portion of the force as they wound up the road towards Mackenzie's farm, and passed through the wood over the right bank of the Tchernaya. They had abandoned the position they had won on 25th October.
With the exception of the advance of the army in the rear on the 25th October, and the grand sortie on the 5th of November, no movement of any moment was attempted during the latter part of 1854 by the Russians to raise the siege.
On the 20th of December, the Russians succeeded in penetrating our lines where they were in contract with the French. In order to deceive the sentries they commanded in French, which ruse was successful; they killed and wounded sixteen men--among the latter Major Moller, of the 50th--and carried away eleven men and two officers, Captain Frampton and Lieutenant Clarke, as prisoners, but were driven back by the 34th regiment before they could do any further mischief, not without inflicting a loss.
On the 29th December, Sir Colin Campbell made a reconnaissance with a part of his force the 79th and Rifle Brigade. Soon after seven o'clock the French proceeded towards the hills recently occupied by the Russians, with General Bosquet, the Rifles and Highlanders turning to the right and covering the flank of the expedition. As the force approached Komara, the Cossack vedettes came in sight, retiring slowly from the village, which has been in a ruinous state since the storm of the 14th of November. The vedettes fell back on a strong body of Lancers and Light Cavalry, which seemed disposed to await the shock of the French Chasseurs.
Cavalry skirmishers exchanged a few shots before they fell in with their respective squadrons, and when the French had arrived within about 800 yards, they broke from a trot into a gallop, and dashed right at the Russian cavalry. The latter met the shock, but made no attempt to charge the French, who broke them in an instant, and chased them back on the infantry, who were assembled in three small bodies on the hills, close to the village of Tchorgoun. As the French approached Tchorgoun, they were received with a brisk fire of shot and shell from some field-pieces, to which their guns were unable to reply; but they pushed within range, and the Russians again retired, and abandoned the village of Tchorgoun to our allies, as well as the line of cantonments and huts which they had constructed subsequent to Liprandi's advance in October.
The object was to beat up the Russian position and to ascertain the strength of the enemy. Our allies at once burst into the village, but the Cossacks had been there too long to leave anything to plunder, and so the French set it on fire. The whole cantonment was in a blaze, while volumes of white smoke curling up into the air, and spreading in sheets along the crests of the hills, indicated the destruction of the village, and informed the Russians that they could no longer hope for snug quarters there. The huts were very commodious and comfortable. Each was capable of containing twenty or thirty men, and held an oven for baking, which also warmed the room at the end. The object of the reconnaissance having been accomplished, the expedition was halted, and the men set to work at once to avail themselves of the abundance of wood along the hill-sides, and to make enormous fires, which almost obscured the retreat of the Russians. It was ascertained that they did not number more than 5000 or 6000 men. The French remained upon the ground till it was almost dark, and then returned to their camp. The French lost two officers, wounded (one since dead) and about twenty men put hors de combat. They took seventeen of the Russian cavalry and a few infantry prisoners.
[Sidenote: ACTIVITY AND UBIQUITY OF THE ZOUAVES.]
We were cursed by a system of "requisitions," "orders," and "memos," which was enough to depress an army of scriveners, and our captains, theoretically, had almost as much work to do with pen and paper as if they had been special correspondents or bankers' clerks; that is, they ought to have had as much to do, but, thanks to the realities of war, they had no bookkeeping; their accounts being lost, and the captain who once had forty or fifty pounds' weight of books and papers to carry, had not so much as a penny memorandum-book. This fact alone showed the absurdity of our arrangements. In peace, when these accounts were of comparatively little importance, we had plenty and too much of checks and returns, but in time of war the very first thing our army did was to leave all its stationery on board the steamer that carried it to the scene of action.
The cold was developing itself, and efforts to guard against it were attended with mischief. Captain Swinton, the Royal Artillery, was suffocated by the fumes of charcoal from a stove, several officers were half-killed by carbonic acid gas.
We were obliged to apply to the French to place guards over the line of march, for the instant a cart with provisions or spirits broke down it was plundered by our active friends the Zouaves, who really seemed to have the gift of ubiquity. Let an araba once stick, or break a wheel or an axle, and the Zouaves sniffed it out just as vultures detect carrion; in a moment barrels and casks were broken open, the bags of bread were ripped up, the contents were distributed, and the commissary officer, who had gone to seek for help and assistance, on his return found only the tires of the wheels and a few splinters of wood left, for our indefatigable foragers completed their work most effectually, and carried off the cart, body and boxes, to serve as firewood.
They were splendid fellows--our friends the Zouaves--always gay, healthy, and well fed; they carried loads for us, drank for us, ate for us, baked for us, foraged for us, and built our huts for us, and all on the cheapest and most economical terms. But there were some few degenerate wretches who grumbled even among this corps d'élite. An officer commanding a fatigue party, who happened to fall in with a party of Zouaves engaged in a similar duty, brought them all off to the canteen to give them a dram after their day's labour. While he was in the tent a warrior with a splendid face for a grievance came in and joined in the conversation, and our friend, seeing he was not a private, but that he had a chatty talkative aspect, combined with an air of rank, began to talk of the privations to which the allied armies were exposed. This was evidently our ally's champ de bataille. He at once threw himself into an attitude which would have brought down the pit and galleries of the Porte St. Martin to a certainty, and, in a tone which no words can describe, working himself up by degrees to the grand climax, and attuning his body to every nice modulation of phrase and accent, he plunged into his proper woes. Our gallant friend had been expatiating on the various disagreeables of camp life in the Crimea in winter time: "C'est vrai!" quoth he, "mon ami! En effet, nous éprouvons beaucoup de misère!" The idea of any one suffering misery except himself seemed to the Zouave too preposterous not to be disposed of at once. "Mais, mon lieutenant," cried he, "regardez moi---- moi! pr-r-r-r-remier basson 3me Zouaves! élève du Conservatoire de Paris! après avoir sacrificé vingt ans de ma vie pour acquérir un talent--pour me--r-r-ren-dr-r-re agréable a la société--me voici! (with extended arms, and legs) me voici--forcé d'arracher du bois de la terre (with terrible earnestness and sense of indignity), pour me faire de la soupe!"
At the close of the year there were 3500 sick in the British camp before Sebastopol, and it was not too much to say that their illness had, for the most part, been caused by hard work in bad weather, and by exposure to wet without any adequate protection. Think of a tent pitched, as it were, at the bottom of a marsh, into which some twelve or fourteen miserable creatures, drenched to the skin, had to creep for shelter after twelve hours of vigil in a trench like a canal, and then reflect what state these poor fellows must have been in at the end of a night and day spent in such shelter, huddled together without any change of clothing, and lying packed up as close as they could be stowed in saturated blankets. But why were they in tents? Where were the huts which had been sent out to them? The huts were on board ships in the harbour of Balaklava. Some of these huts, of which we heard so much, were floating about the beach; others had been landed, and now and then I met a wretched pony, knee-deep in mud, struggling on beneath the weight of two thin deal planks, a small portion of one of these huts, which were most probably converted into firewood after lying for some time in the camp, or turned into stabling for officers' horses when enough of disjecta membra had been collected. Had central depôts been established, as Mr. Filder proposed, while the fine weather lasted, much, if not all, of the misery and suffering of the men and of the loss of horses would have been averted.
It may be true that the enemy were suffering still more than our own men, but the calculation of equal losses on the part of England and on the part of Russia in the article of soldiery, cannot be regarded as an ingredient in the consideration of our position. Our force was deprived of about 100 men every twenty-four hours. There were between 7000 and 8000 men sick, wounded, and convalescent in the hospitals on the Bosphorus. The 39th Regiment before it had landed was provided with some protection against the severity of the weather--not by government, but by The Times Commissioner at Scutari: and I heard from the best authority that the bounty of the subscribers to the fund intrusted to The Times for distribution was not only well bestowed to the men, but that the officers of the regiments had evinced the greatest satisfaction at the comfort.
When the various articles sent up by The Times Commissioner arrived at the camp, there was a rush made to get them by the regimental medical officers, and no false delicacy was evinced by them in availing themselves of the luxuries and necessaries placed at their disposal, and of which they had been in so much need.
We had rather a dreary Christmas. Where were the offerings of our kind country-men and country-women, and the donations from our ducal parks? The fat bucks which had exhausted the conservative principles of a Gunter; the potted meats, which covered the decks and filled the holds of adventurous yachts; the worsted devices which had employed the fingers and emptied the crotchet-boxes of fair sympathizers at home?
[Sidenote: CRAVING OF THE ARMY FOR ARDENT SPIRITS.]
Omar Pasha arrived on the 4th of January, on board the "Inflexible," and landed at the Ordnance-wharf. A council of war?--was held, at which the French General-in-Chief, the French Admiral, Sir E. Lyons, and Sir John Burgoyne, were present.
Next day, 1600 French were sent down to Balaklava to help us in carrying up provisions and ammunition. Each man received from our commissariat a ration of rum and biscuits.
The scenery of our camping ground and of the adjacent country assumed a wintry aspect. The lofty abrupt peaks and sharp ridges of the mountains which closed up the valley of Balaklava were covered with snow. On the tops of the distant mounds black figures, which appeared of enormous size, denoted the stations of the enemy's pickets and advanced posts.
The 63rd Regiment had only seven men fit for duty; the 46th had only thirty on the 7th. A strong company of the 90th was reduced in a week to fourteen file, and that regiment lost fifty men in a fortnight. The Scots Fusileer Guards, who had 1562 men, mustered 210 on parade. Other regiments suffered in like proportion. The men sought after ardent spirits with great avidity, and in carrying out rum to camp broached the kegs when the eye of the officer in charge was off them.
The duty of the fatigue parties was, indeed, very trying. A cask of rum, biscuit, or beef was slung from a stout pole between two men, and then they went off on a tramp of about five miles from the commissariat stores at Balaklava to head-quarters. As I was coming in from the front one day, I met a lad who could not long have joined in charge of a party of the 38th Regiment. He had taken the place of a tired man, and struggled along under his load, while the man at the other end of the pole exhausted the little breath he had left in appeals to his comrades. "Boys! boys! won't you come and relieve the young officer?" Horses could not do this work, for they could not keep their legs.
Hundreds of men had to go into the trenches at night with no covering but their greatcoats, and no protection for their feet but their regimental shoes. Many when they took off their shoes were unable to get their swollen feet into them again, and they might be seen bare-footed, hopping along about the camp, with the thermometer at twenty degrees, and the snow half a foot deep upon the ground. The trenches were two and three feet deep with mud, snow, and half-frozen slush. Our patent stoves were wretched. They were made of thin sheet iron, which could not stand our fuel--charcoal. Besides, they were mere poison manufactories, and they could not be left alight in the tents at night. They answered well for drying clothes.
I do not know how the French got on, but I know that our people did not get a fair chance for their lives while wintering in the Crimea. Providence had been very good to us. With one exception, which must have done as much mischief to the enemy as to ourselves, we had wonderful weather from the day the expedition landed in the Crimea.
One day as I was passing through the camp of the 5th (French) Regiment of the line, an officer came out and invited me to dismount and take a glass of brandy which had been sent out by the Emperor as a Christmas gift. My host, who had passed through his grades in Africa, showed me with pride the case of good Bordeaux, the box of brandy, and the pile of good tobacco sent to him by Napoleon III.--"le premier ami du soldat." A similar present had been sent to every officer of the French army, and a certain quantity of wine, brandy and tobacco had been forwarded to each company of every regiment in the Crimea. That very day I heard dolorous complaints that the presents sent by the Queen and Prince Albert to our army had miscarried, and that the Guards and Rifles had alone received the royal bounty in the very acceptable shape of a ton of Cavendish.
Although he was living in a tent, the canvass was only a roof for a capacious and warm pit in which there was a bright wood fire sparkling cheerily in a grate of stones. We "trinqued" together and fraternised, as our allies will always do when our officers give them the chance.
It must not be inferred that the French were all healthy while we were all sickly. They had dysentery, fever, diarrhoea, and scurvy, as well as pulmonary complaints, but not to the same extent as ourselves, or to anything like it in proportion to their numbers. On the 8th of January, some of the Guards of Her Majesty Queen Victoria's Household Brigade were walking about in the snow without soles to their shoes. The warm clothing was going up to the front in small detachments.
Chapter IV
Road made for us by the French--Hardships--Wretched Ambulance Corps--Mule Litter--Heroism of the Troops--A speedy Thaw--Russian New Year--A Sortie--Central Depôt for Provisions--Disappearance of the Araba Drivers from Roumelia and Bulgaria--Highlanders and the Kilt--The Indefatigable Cossacks--Frost-bites--Losses in the Campaign--Foraging--Wild Fowl Shooting--The "Arabia" on Fire--The Coffee Question--Variableness of the Crimean Climate--Warm Clothing--Deserters--Their Account of Sebastopol.
[Sidenote: MORE HARDSHIPS, BUT NO DESPAIR.]
The road which the French were making for the English from Kadikoi, by the Cavalry Camp, towards the front progressed, but not rapidly. The weather was so changeable, and was in every change so unfavourable for work, that it was hard to expect our allies to labour for us with their usual energy. However, they did work. They built huts for our officers, when paid for it, with much activity, and their aid in that way was invaluable. Some of the warm coats sent out for the officers were much too small, and I heard a pathetic story from a stout Highlander respecting the defeat of his exertions to get into his much-longed-for and much-wanted garment.
There was only one officer in the whole regiment that the largest of the great coats fitted, and he was certainly not remarkable for bulk or stature. The men were far more lucky, and their coats were of the most liberal dimensions, however eccentric in cut and device they might be.
As the Ambulance Corps were quite hors de combat in weather of this kind--as the men and horses were nearly all gone or unfit for duty, our sick were subjected to much misery in going from the camp to be put on board ship. But for the kindness of the French in lending us their excellent mule-litters, many of our poor fellows would have died in their tents. Captain Grant, at the head of the Ambulance Corps, was a most excellent, intelligent, and active officer, but he had no materials to work with, and this was no place for intelligence and activity to work miracles in. Experience had taught our allies that the mule-litter was the best possible conveyance for a sick or wounded man. A movable jointed frame of iron, with a canvass stretcher, was suspended from a light pack saddle at each side of a mule. If the sick or wounded man was able to sit up, by raising the head of the litter, a support was afforded to his back. If he wished his legs to hang down, the frame was adjusted accordingly, and he rode as if he were in an arm-chair suspended by the side of a mule. When the invalid wished to lie down, he had a long and comfortable couch--comfortable in so far as the pace of a mule was easier than the jog of an ambulance, and he was not crowded with others like hens in a coop. These mules travelled where ambulance carts could not stir; they required no roads nor beaten tracks, and they were readily moved about in the rear when an action was going on.
It was right that England should be made aware of the privations which her soldiers endured in this great winter campaign, that she might reward with her greenest laurels those gallant hearts, who deserved the highest honour--that honour which in ancient Rome was esteemed the highest that a soldier could gain--that in desperate circumstances he had not despaired of the Republic. And no man despaired. The exhausted soldier, before he sank to rest, sighed that he could not share the sure triumph--the certain glories--of the day when our flag was to float from Sebastopol! There was no doubt--no despondency. No one for an instant felt diffident of ultimate success. From his remains, in that cold Crimean soil, the British soldier knew an avenger and a conqueror would arise. If high courage, unflinching bravery--if steady charge--the bayonet-thrust in the breach--the strong arm in the fight--if calm confidence, contempt of death, and love of country could have won Sebastopol, it had long been ours. Let England know her children as the descendants of the starved rabble who fought at Agincourt and Cressy; and let her know, too, that in fighting against a stubborn enemy, her armies had to maintain a struggle with foes still more terrible, and that, as they triumphed over the one, so they vanquished the other.
On the night of the 12th of January the wind changed round to the southward, and the thermometer rose to 34°. A speedy thaw followed, and the roads and camp once more suffered from the ravages of our old enemy--the mud. The Russians who had been very active inside the town during the day, and who had lighted great watchfires on the north side of the place, illuminated the heights over Tchernaya with rows of lights, which shone brilliantly through the darkness of the cold winter's night, and were evidently with all possible pomp and ostentation celebrating the opening of their new year. Lights shone from the windows of the public buildings, and our lonely sentries in the valleys and ravines, and the enfans perdus--the French sharpshooters lying in their lairs with watchful eye on every embrasure before them--might almost fancy that the inhabitants and garrison of the beleaguered city were tantalising them with the aspect of their gaiety. At midnight all the chapel bells of the city began ringing. On our side the sentries and pickets were warned to be on the alert, and the advanced posts were strengthened wherever it was practicable.
About a quarter past one o'clock in the morning the Russians gave a loud cheer. The French replied by opening fire, and the Russians instantly began one of the fiercest cannonades we had ever heard. It reminded one of those tremendous salvoes of artillery which the enemy delivered on two or three occasions before we opened our batteries in October. The earthworks flashed forth uninterrupted floods of flame, which revealed distinctly the outlines of the buildings in the town, and defences swarming with men. The roaring of shot, the screaming and hissing of heavy shell, and the whistling of carcases filled up the intervals between the deafening roll of cannon, which was as rapid and unbroken as quick file-firing. The iron storm passed over our lines uninterruptedly for more than half an hour, and the French, whose works to our left were less protected by the ground than ours, had to shelter themselves closely in the trenches, and could barely reply to the volleys which ploughed up the parapets of their works.
While the firing was going on a strong body of men had been pushed out of the town up the face of the hill towards our works in front, and on the flank of the left attack. As it was expected that some attempt of the kind would be made, a sergeant was posted at this spot with twelve men. Every reliance was placed upon his vigilance, and a strict attention to his duties, but, somehow or other, the enemy crept upon the little party, surprised, and took them prisoners, and then advanced on the covering parties with such rapidity and suddenness that the parties on duty in the trenches were obliged to retire. They rallied, however, and, being supported by the regiments in rear, they advanced, and the Russians were driven back close to the town.
[Sidenote: MORTALITY AMONGST THE TURKS.]
In this little affair one officer and nine men were wounded, six men were killed, and fourteen men taken. The French had to resist a strong sortie nearly at the same time; for a short time the Russians were within the parapet of one of their mortar batteries, and spiked two or three mortars with wooden plugs, but the French drove them back with loss, and in the pursuit got inside the Russian advanced batteries. The soldiers, indeed, say they could have taken the place if they had been permitted to do so. At two o'clock all was silent.
A heavy gale of wind blew nearly all day, but the thermometer rose to 38°, and the snow thawed so rapidly that the tracks to the camp became rivulets of mud. The establishment of a central depôt for provisions had, however, done much to diminish the labours and alleviate the sufferings of the men engaged in the duties of the siege; but the formation of the depôt and the accumulation of the stores wore out and exhausted many of our best men. Out of a batch of 500 or 600 horses brought up from Constantinople, 279 died between the 16th of December and the 16th January. In fact the commissariat consumed and used up horseflesh at the rate of 100 head per week, and each of the animals cost on an average 5_l._ The araba drivers from Roumelia and Bulgaria disappeared likewise--out of the several hundreds there were very few left; and of the Tartars of the Crimea in our employ the majority were unwilling or unfit to work in cold weather, accustomed as they seemed to be to sit all day in close rooms provided with large stoves as soon as winter set in. Disease and sickness of all kinds swept these poor people away very rapidly. The mortality of the Turkish troops, which had, as I before stated, assumed the dimensions of a plague, had now begun to be attended with much of the physical appearances of the same terrible disease, and their sanitary condition excited the liveliest apprehensions of our medical officers in Balaklava, who had, over and over again, represented to the authorities the danger of allowing the Turks to remain in the town.
The Adelaide arrived in Balaklava on the 17th of January, after a splendid passage from England, and the passengers must have been a little astonished at the truly Christmas aspect presented by the Crimea; somewhat more real and less jovial they found it than the pictures which represented florid young gentlemen in gorgeous epaulettes, gloating over imaginary puddings and Christmas presents in snug tents, and ready to partake of the fare that England had sent to her dear boys in the Crimea, but which none of them had then received, and which none of them would ever eat in such comfort and with such appliances of luxury. There was a wind that would have effectually deprived, if wind could do it, any number of rats of their whiskers. Anxious to see what things were like on the heights above Balaklava, I started, with my gun upon my shoulder, through the passes across the hill, knee-deep in snow; and after a shot or two at great, raw-necked vultures, and stately eagles, and some more fortunate cracks at "blue rocks," scraping the snow off the points of the cliffs, I arrived in the camp of the Highlanders, several hundred feet below the elevated position of the Rifles, but quite high enough to induce me to accept a hearty invitation to stop to dinner, and rest for the night. Oh, could "Caledoniensis," "Pictus," "Memor antiquæ virtutis," or any of the high-spirited Celtic gentlemen who are fighting about lions rampant and Scottish rights, and the garb of that respectable person, Auld Gael, but have seen what their countrymen were like as they faced the Crimean winter, how shamed they would have been of their kilt and philibeg and stocking declamation! All such things were clean gone, and if the gallant Highlanders ever wore the kilt 'twas for punishment! Breeks--low-lived breeks--and blanket gaiters, and any kind of leggings over them, were the wear of our Scottish Zouaves, though, in good sooth, they were no more like Zouaves, except in popular modern legends, than they were like Dutchmen, à la Rip Van Winkle.
Over the waste or snow, looking down from the heights towards the valley of the Tchernaya, I saw those indefatigable Cossacks riding about their picket ground, and a few waggons stealing along from Mackenzie's Farm towards the heights of Inkerman. A vedette or two were trotting up and down along a ridge, keeping a bright lookout on our movements, and through the glass we perceived them flapping their hands under their armpits, as London cabmen do on a cold night when waiting for a fare. Towards Baidar, pickets of the same active gentry were moving along to keep themselves warm. We had no cavalry posts advanced towards them. In fact we could not conveniently send any out. Those ragged ruffians, in sheepskin coats and fur caps, mounted on ragged ponies, with deal lances and coarse iron tips, were able in drifting snow and biting winds to hold ground which our cavalry could not face.
In the middle of January there were severe and sudden alterations of temperature. Men were frozen in their tents, and several soldiers on duty in the trenches were removed to hospital with severe frost-bites, but the frost enabled the men to get up considerable supplies of warm clothing, though the means at our disposal did not permit of the wood for huts being sent to the front. When a path had once been trodden through the snow, men and horses could get along much more easily than if they had to wade through mud or across a country in a state of semi-solution. Many thousands of coats, lined with fur, long boots, gloves, mits, and socks were served out, but there were regimental hospitals where they had only one blanket to lie upon.
Our army consisted of officers and regiments almost new to this campaign. The generation of six months before had passed away; generals, brigadiers, colonels, captains, and men, the well-known faces of Gallipoli, of Bulari, of Scutari, of Varna, of Aladyn, of Devno, of Monastir--ay, even of the bivouac of Bouljanak, had changed; and there was scarcely one of the regiments once so familiar to me which I could then recognise save by its well-known number. What a harvest Death had reaped, and yet how many more were ripe for the sickle of the Great Farmer! It was sad to meet an old acquaintance, for all one's reminiscences were of noble hearts now cold for ever, and of friend after friend departed. And then came--"Poor fellow! he might have been saved, if----"
[Sidenote: A NONDESCRIPT ARMY.]
Excepting Lord Raglan, Lord Lucan, and Sir R. England, not one of our generals remained of those who went out originally; the changes among our brigadiers and colonels were almost as great. Sir George Brown, the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of Cardigan, Sir George Cathcart, Sir De Lacy Evans, General Tylden, General Strangways, Brigadier Bentinck, Brigadier Goldie, Brigadier Buller, Brigadier Adams, Brigadier Torrens, Brigadier Cator, Lord de Ros--had all been removed from the army by wounds, by sickness, or by death. And so it was with the men themselves.
On the 16th the thermometer was at 14° in the morning and at 10° on the heights over Balaklava. The snow fell all night, and covered the ground to the depth of three feet; but the cold and violent wind drifted it in places to the depth of five or six feet. In the morning 1200 French soldiers came down to Balaklava for shot and shell, and the agility, good spirits, and energy with which they ploughed through the snow were alike admirable. The wind blew almost a gale, and the native horses refused to face it, but our poor fellows came trudging along in the same dreary string, and there was something mournful in the very aspect of the long lines of black dots moving across the vast expanse of glittering snow between Sebastopol and Balaklava. When these dots came up, you saw they had very red noses and very white faces and very bleared eyes; and as to their clothes Falstaff would have thought his famous levy a corps d'élite if he could have beheld our gallant soldiery. Many of the officers were as ragged and as reckless in dress. The generals made appeals to their subalterns "to wear their swords, as there was no other way of telling them from the men."
It was inexpressibly odd to see Captain Smith, of the----Foot, with a pair of red Russian leather boots up to his middle, a cap probably made out of the tops of his holsters, and a white skin coat tastefully embroidered all down the back with flowers of many-coloured silk, topped by a head-dress à la dustman of London, stalking gravely through the mud of Balaklava, intent on the capture of a pot of jam or marmalade. Does the reader wonder why we were all so fond of jam? Because it was portable and come-at-able, and was a substitute for butter, which was only sent out in casks and giant crocks, one of which would exhaust the transport resources of a regiment. Captain Smith was much more like his great namesake of the Adelphi, when, in times gone by, he made up for a smuggler-burglar-bandit, than the pride of the High-street of Portsmouth, or than that hero of the Phoenix-park, with golden wings like an angel, before the redness of whose presence little boys and young ladies trembled. All this would be rather facetious and laughable, were not poor Captain Smith a famished wretch, with bad chilblains, approximating to frost-bites, a touch of scurvy, and of severe rheumatism.
This cold weather brought great quantities of wild fowl over the camp, but it was rather too busy a spot for them to alight in. They could scarcely recognize their old haunts in the Chersonese, and flew about disconsolately over their much metamorphosed feeding-grounds. Solemn flights of wild geese, noisy streams of barnacles, curlew, duck, and widgeon wheeled over the harbour, and stimulated the sporting propensities of the seamen who kept up a constant fusillade from the decks. Balls and No. 1 shot whistled unpleasantly close to one's ears, and one day a man was startled by receiving a bullet slap through his arm. Huge flocks of larks and finches congregated about the stables and the cavalry camps, and were eagerly sought by our allies, who much admire a petite chasse, which furnished them with such delicate reliefs to the monotony of ration dinners. They were rather reckless in pursuit of their quarry; the enthusiastic Zouave in chase of a fluttering bunting was frequently greeted by sounds which his ignorance of English alone prevented him from considering a teterrima causa belli.
Lord Raglan's visit to Balaklava, on the 18th of January, was a memorable event. Men were set to work throwing stones down into the most Curtius-like gulfs in the streets.
Lord Raglan began to go about frequently and ride through the various camps.
We were astounded, on reading our papers, to find that on the 22nd of December, London believed, the coffee issued to the men was roasted before it was given out! Who could have hoaxed them so cruelly? Around every tent there were to be seen green berries, which the men trampled into the mud, and could not roast. Mr. Murdoch, chief engineer of the Sanspareil mounted some iron oil casks, and adapted them very ingeniously for roasting; and they came into play at Balaklava. I do not believe at the time the statement was made, one ounce of roasted coffee had ever been issued from any commissariat store to any soldier in the Crimea.
The great variableness of the Crimean climate was its peculiarity. In the morning, you got up and found the water frozen in your tent, the ground covered with snow, the thermometer at 20°; put on mufflers, greatcoat, and mits; and went out for a walk, and before evening you returned perspiring under the weight of clothing which you carried at the end of your stick, unable to bear it any longer, the snow turned into slush, the thermometer at 45°. On the 16th the thermometer 10° noon. On the 22nd it stood at 50°--an alternation of 40° in five days; but the character of the weather exhibited a still greater difference. In the southern Crimea the wind riots in the exercise of its prescriptive right to be capricious. It plays about the tops of the cliffs and mountain ridges, lurks round corners in ravines, nearly whips you off your legs when you are expatiating on the calmness of the day, and suddenly yells in gusts at the moment the stillness had tempted you to take out a sketch-book for a memorandum of Sebastopol.
[Sidenote: A GHASTLY PROCESSION.]
Desertions to the enemy, from the French and from our own ranks, took place. The deserters generally belonged to the Foreign Legion, from the young draughts and from regiments just sent out. We received a few deserters in turn from the army in the rear, by scrambling along the cliffs, and one of them told us he was three days coming from Baidar by that route. These men stated that the part of the town built upon the slope to the sea was very little injured by our fire, as our shot and shells did not "top" the hill. To the south faced one steep slope covered with houses and batteries and ruined works and battered suburbs. The other descended to the sea, and was covered by public buildings, fine mansions, warehouses and government edifices. This part had suffered very little. The ships took refuge below this slope when pressed by our fire; the workmen and soldiers and sailors found snug quarters in the buildings.
Chapter V
New Works--A Ghastly Procession--Reinforcements--Havoc amongst Horses--A Reconnaissance of Sebastopol--Russian Defences--Camps--Red Tape and Routine--Changes of Weather--Sickness--Sufferings of the French--Effect of the Author's Statements--Facts--Continual Drain of Men--Affair of Musketry between the Russians and the French--Sharp-shooting--State of our Batteries--Orders with reference to Flags of Truce--A Spy in the Trenches--Good Fellowship at the Outposts.
We gradually relinquished ground to our allies, and the front, which it had cost so much strength and so much health to maintain, was gradually abandoned to the more numerous and less exhausted army. Some of our regiments were reduced below the strength of a company.
The French relieved the Guards of their outpost duties, and gradually extended themselves towards Inkerman. What a difference there was in the relative position of the two armies from that on the evening of the 17th of October, when the French fire had been completely snuffed out, and our own fire still maintained its strength.
There was a white frost on the night of the 22nd of January, the next morning the thermometer was at 42°. A large number of sick were sent into Balaklava on the 23rd on French mule litters and a few of our bât horses. They formed one of the most ghastly processions that ever poet imagined. Many were all but dead. With closed eyes, open mouths, and ghastly faces, they were borne along two and two, the thin stream of breath, visible in the frosty air, alone showing they were still alive. One figure was a horror--a corpse, stone dead, strapped upright in its seat, its legs hanging stiffly down, the eyes staring wide open, the teeth set on the protruding tongue, the head and body nodding with frightful mockery of life at each stride of the mule over the broken road. The man had died on his way down. As the apparition passed, the only remark the soldiers made was,--"There's one poor fellow out of pain, any way!" Another man I saw with the raw flesh and skin hanging from his fingers, the naked bones of which protruded into the cold air. That was a case of frost-bite. Possibly the hand had been dressed, but the bandages might have dropped off.
The French army received important reinforcements. The Eighth Division arrived at Kamiesch; it consisted of 10,000 good troops. The Ninth Division, under General Brunet was expected.
Our allies then would muster upwards of 75,000 bayonets. The Turks did not seem to amount to more than 5000 or 6000. These unfortunate troops received supplies of new clothing and uniforms from Riza Pasha, the War Minister at Constantinople, and were assuming a respectable appearance.
It would have astonished a stranger to have seen the multitudes of dead horses all along the road. In every gully were piles of their remains torn by wild dogs and vultures. On a lone hillside I beheld the remnants of the gallant grey on which Mr. Maxse rode to the mouth of the Katcha, in company with Major Nasmyth, on the eve of the flank march to Balaklava, and many of the equine survivors of the charge at Balaklava lay rotting away by the side of the cavalry camp. Some had dropped down dead, and were frozen still as they fell; others were struggling to rise from their miry graves. The carcases had been skinned, by the Turks and French, to cover their huts; many suspicious-looking gaps, suggestive of horse-steak, were cut out in their flanks.
There was very smart fighting in the trenches and advanced works between the French and Russians on the night of the 23rd and the morning of the 24th.
On the 24th, Lord Raglan, attended by Major-General Airey and a few staff officers, rode over to Balaklava. He went on board the Caradoc and had a long interview with Sir E. Lyons alone, previous to which there was a council of war. Lord Raglan did not return to head-quarters till it was nearly dusk.
I had a long reconnaissance of Sebastopol on the same day, in company with Captain Biddulph, of Artillery. It was a beautifully clear day, and at times it was almost warm. We went up to the hill in advance and on the left of the maison brulée, and swept every inch of ground. The aspect of the place itself had changed very little, considering the hundreds of tons of shot and shell thrown into it; but whitewashed houses, roofed with tiles, and at most two stories high, in the suburbs, were in ruins. The roofs, doors, and windows were off, but puffs of smoke showed that the frames were covers for Russian riflemen. In front and left, lay a most intricate series of covered ways, traverses, zigzags, and parallels from the seaside, close to the Quarantine Battery, over the undulating land to the distance of sixty-five metres from the outer works of the Russians. Swarms of Franctireurs lined the advanced parallel, and kept up a continual pop, pop, pop, in reply to the Russian riflemen behind their advanced works.
[Sidenote: STRENGTH OF EARTHWORKS.]
The works from the Quarantine Fort to the crenelated wall, and thence to the Flagstaff Battery, seemed very much in the same state as the first day I saw them, with the exception, that the guns were withdrawn, and the defence left to riflemen. The Flagstaff parapets had been knocked to atoms long before, and the large buildings around it were all in ruins; but, on looking towards the ridge behind it, from which the streets descend, and which shelters that part of the place, I could see but little difference in its appearance to that which it presented on the 26th of September. People were walking about (relief coming up from the sea-side) carrying baskets. Between the rear of the Flagstaff Battery and this ridge, earthworks could be detected in the openings along the lines of streets, and immediately behind the first Russian intrenchment there was a formidable work armed which at two o'clock convinced us they had pretty good range, by thundering forth an astounding broadside in answer to fire from the French. There was a rattling fire from the enfans perdus at the embrasures, the Russians slackened their fire and replied to the French sharpshooters only. When the smoke cleared away, I could see the enemy and the French carrying away a few bodies on each side to the rear.
At the other side of the harbour, Fort Constantine was shining brightly in the sun, its white walls blackened here and there under the line of embrasures by the smoke of the guns on the 17th of October. Behind it were visible dark walls rising through the snow, and notched like saws by the lines of embrasures. The waters of the harbour, as smooth as glass, were covered with boats, plying from one side to the other, and one full of men came round the head of the Dockyard Creek towards Fort Alexander, with her white flag and blue St. Andrew's cross.
The large pile of Government buildings by the side of the Dockyard Creek was much injured. Close to there was a large two-decker, with a spring upon her cables lying so as to sweep the western slope of the town. A small steamer with her steam up was near at hand, either for the use of the garrison or to carry off the two-decker, in case heavy guns were unmasked upon her. To the right, at the other side of this creek, we could see into the rear of our left attack. The houses near the Redan and Garden Batteries as well as those in front of the Right Attack, and in the rear of Malakoff were in ruins. The part of the city beyond them seemed untouched. To the rear of Malakoff, which was split up, from top to bottom, as it was the first day of our fire, there was a perfect miracle of engineering.
It is impossible to speak too highly of the solidity and finish of the earthworks, thrown up to enfilade our attack, and to defend the key of their works. One line of battery was rivetted with tin boxes, supposed to be empty powder cases. This was the mere wantonness and surplusage of abundant labour. Behind this we could see about 2,000 soldiers and workmen labouring with the greatest zeal at a new line of batteries undisturbedly.
At the rear of Malakoff there was a camp, and another at the other side of the creek, close to the Citadel, on the north side. The men-of-war and steamers were lying with topgallantmasts and yards down, under the spit of land inside Fort Constantine. Our third parallel, which was within a few hundred yards of the enemy's advanced works, was occupied by sharpshooters, who kept up a constant fire, but from my position I could not see so well into our approaches as upon those of the French.
A circumstance occurred in Balaklava on the 25th, which I stated for the consideration of the public at home without one single word of comment. The Charity, an iron screw steamer, was in harbour for the reception of sick under the charge of a British medical officer. That officer went on shore and made an application to the officer in charge of the Government stoves for two or three to put on board the ship to warm the men. "Three of my men," said he, "died last night from choleraic symptoms, brought on from the extreme cold, and I fear more will follow."
"Oh!" said the guardian of stoves, "you must make your requisition in due form, send it up to head-quarters, and get it signed properly, and returned, and then I will let you have the stoves."
"But my men may die meantime."
"I can't help that; I must have the requisition."
"It is my firm belief that there are men now in a dangerous state whom another night's cold will certainly kill."
"I really can do nothing; I must have a requisition properly signed before I can give one of these stoves away."
"For God's sake, then, lend me some; I'll be responsible for their safety."
"I really can do nothing of the kind."
"But, consider, this requisition will take time to be filled up and signed, and meantime these poor fellows will go."
"I cannot help that."
"I'll be responsible for anything you do."
"Oh, no, that can't be done!"
"Will a requisition signed by the P. M. O. of this place be of any use!"
"No."
"Will it answer, if he takes on himself the responsibility?"
"Certainly not."
The surgeon went off in sorrow and disgust.
I appended another special fact for Dr. Smith, the head of the British Army Medical Department. A surgeon of a regiment stationed on the cliffs above Balaklava, who had forty sick out of two hundred, had been applying to the "authorities" in the town for three weeks for medicines, and could not get one of them. The list he sent in was returned with the observation, "We have none of these medicines in store." The surgeon came down with his last appeal:--"Do, I beg you, give me any medicine you have for diarrhoea."
"We haven't any."
"Have you any medicine for fever? Anything you can let me have, I'll take."
"We haven't any."
"I have a good many cases of rheumatism. Can you let me have any medicines?"
"We haven't any."
Thus, for diarrhoea, fever, and rheumatism there were no specifics. Dr. Smith could prove, no doubt, that there were granaries full of the finest and costliest drugs and medicines for fever, rheumatism, and diarrhoea at Scutari, but the knowledge that they were there little availed those dying for want of them at Balaklava.
[Sidenote: EFFECTIVE STRENGTH OF OUR ARMY.]
But with all this, the hand of the plague was not stayed.
Sickness clung to our troops, the soldiers who climbed the bloody steeps of the Alma in the splendour of manly strength, and who defended the heights over the Tchernaya exhausted, and "washed out" by constant fatigue, incessant wet, insufficient food, want of clothing and of cover from the weather, died away in their tents night after night. Doctors, and hospitals, and nurses, came too late, and they sank to rest unmurmuringly, and every week some freshly-formed lines of narrow mounds indicated the formation of a new burial-place.
It must not be inferred that the French escaped sickness and mortality. On the contrary, our allies suffered to a degree which would have been considered excessive, had it not been compared with our own unfortunate standard of disease and death, and to the diminution caused by illness, must be added that from the nightly sorties of the Russians and the heavy fire from the batteries.
According to what I heard from people, I was honoured by a good deal of abuse for telling the truth. I really would have put on my Claude Lorraine glass, if I could. I would have clothed skeletons with flesh, breathed life into the occupants of the charnel-house, subverted the succession of the seasons, and restored the legions which had been lost; but I could not tell lies to "make things pleasant." Any statements I had made I have chapter, and book, and verse, and witness for. Many, very many, that I did not make I could prove to be true with equal ease, and could make public, if the public interest required it. The only thing the partisans of misrule could allege was, that I did not "make things pleasant" to the authorities, and that, amid the filth and starvation, and deadly stagnation of the camp, I did not go about "babbling of green fields," of present abundance, and of prospects of victory.
Suppose we come to "facts." Do people at home know how many bayonets the British army could muster? Do they believe we had 25,000, after all our reinforcements? They might have been told--nay, it might have been proved to them by figures at home--that the British army consisted of 55,000 men. From the 1st of December, 1854, to the 20th of January, 1855, 8,000 sick and wounded were sent down from camp to Balaklava, and thence on shipboard! Shall I state how many returned?
Yet people at home told us it was "croaking" to state the facts, or even to allude to them! The man who could have sat calmly down and written home that our troops were healthy, that there was only an average mortality, that every one was confident of success, that our works were advancing, that we were nearer to the capture of Sebastopol than we were on the 17th of October, that transport was abundant, and the labours of our army light, might be an agreeable correspondent, but assuredly he would not have enabled the public to form a very accurate opinion on the real state of affairs in the camp before Sebastopol. The wretched boys sent out to us were not even fit for powder. They died ere a shot was fired against them. Sometimes a good draught was received; but they could not endure long vigil and exposure in the trenches.
And now for another "fact." The battle of Inkerman was fought on the 5th of November, as the world will remember for ever. About 40 per cent. of the Brigade of Guards were killed or wounded on that occasion. They received reinforcements, and the brigade which mustered about 2,500 men when it left England had received some 1,500 men in various draughts up to the end of the year. What was the strength in the last week of January of the Brigade of Household troops--of that magnificent band who crowned the struggle of the Alma with victory, and beat back the Russian hordes at Inkerman? I think they could have mustered, including servants, about 950 men in the whole brigade. Here is another fact. Since the same battle of Inkerman, at least 1,000 men of the brigade had been "expended," absorbed, used up, and were no more seen. The official returns will show how many of that thousand were killed or wounded by the enemy. Another fact. There were two regiments so shattered and disorganised--so completely destroyed, to tell the truth, that they had to be sent away to be "re-formed." Now, mark, one of these regiments was neither at the Alma nor at Inkerman--the other was engaged in the latter battle only, and did not lose many men.
January 28 was celebrated by an extremely heavy fire between the Russians and the French. The volleys were as heavy as those at the Alma or Inkerman, and from the numbers of Russian infantry thrown into the works, it was evident the enemy intended to dispute the small space of ground between the last French trench and the broken outworks of their late batteries with the greatest vigour. Possibly, indeed, orders had been received to resist any nearer approaches of the French, who had burrowed up, zigzagged, paralleled, and parapetted the country from the Quarantine Fort to the Flagstaff Fort.
It was not to be expected that such an affair could take place without considerable loss on both sides. After daybreak the fire recommenced with great fury, and about eight o'clock a regular battle was raging in the trenches between the French and Russians. There could not have been less than 3,000 men on each side firing as hard as they could, and the lines were marked by thick curling banks of smoke. The fire slackened about nine o'clock.
By general orders dated 29th of January, Lord Raglan communicated that the Russian commanders had entered into an agreement to cease firing whenever a white flag was hoisted to indicate that a burying-party was engaged in front of the batteries. Admiral Boxer arrived to assume the command of the harbour of Balaklava, and by incessant exertions succeeded in carrying out many improvements, and in introducing some order in that focus of feebleness, confusion, and mismanagement.
[Sidenote: INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.]
On the 31st, a spy walked through some of our trenches. He was closely shaven, wore a blue frock-coat buttoned up to the chin, and stopped for some time to look at Mr. Murdoch "bouching" the guns. Some said he was a Frenchman, others that he "looked like a doctor." No one suspected he was a Russian till he bolted towards the Russian pickets, under a sharp fire of musketry, through which he had the good luck to pass unscathed.
Orders were issued, in consequence, to admit no one into the trenches or works without a written permission, and all persons found loitering about the camp were arrested and sent to divisional head-quarters for examination. The French were in the habit of sending out working parties towards the valley of Baidar, to cut wood for gabions and fuel. They frequently came across the Cossack pickets, and as it was our interest not to provoke hostilities, a kind of good-fellowship sprang up between our allies and the outposts. One day the French came upon three cavalry horses tied up to a tree, and the officer in command ordered them not to be touched. On the same day a Chasseur left his belt and accoutrements in a ruined Cossack picket-house, and gave up hope of recovering them, but on his next visit he found them on the wall untouched. To requite this act, a soldier who had taken a Cossack's lance and pistol, which he found against a tree, was ordered to return them. The next time the French went out, one of the men left a biscuit in a cleft stick, beckoning to the Cossack to come and eat it. The following day they found a loaf of excellent bread stuck on a stick in the same place, with a note in Russian to the effect that the Russians had plenty of biscuits, and that, although greatly obliged for that which had been left, they really did not want it; but if the French had bread to spare like the sample left in return, it would be acceptable. One day a Russian called out, as the French were retiring, "Nous nous reverrons, mes amis--Français, Anglais, Russes, nous sommes tous amis." The cannonade before Sebastopol, the echoes of which reached the remote glades distinctly, must have furnished a strange commentary on the assurance.