Chapter VI
Preparations for the Assault--Last and decisive Cannonade--Day of the Assault--Plan of Attack--Position of Generals--French rush into the Malakoff--English charge the Redan--Mistakes--Desperate Struggle--Colonel Windham's Gallantry--Conflict at the Left Face of the Redan--Scene at the Salient--Want of Supports--Colonel Windham goes for Reinforcements--The Russians advance--Failure of the English Attack--Contest in the rear of the Malakoff--Additional Details--Cause of the Repulse--Mistakes--Casualties--Duration of the Attack--Ominous Signs--Losses in the Assault.
The contest on which the eyes of Europe had been turned so long--the event on which the hopes of so many mighty empires depended, was all but determined. On the 9th September, Sebastopol was in flames! The fleet, the object of so much diplomatic controversy and of so many bloody struggles, had disappeared in the deep! One more great act of carnage was added to the tremendous but glorious tragedy, of which the whole world, from the most civilized nations down to the most barbarous hordes of the East, was the anxious and excited audience. Amid shouts of victory and cries of despair--in frantic rejoicing and passionate sorrow--a pall of black smoke, streaked by the fiery flashings of exploding fortresses, descended upon the stage, on which had been depicted so many varied traits of human misery and of human greatness, such high endurance and calm courage, such littleness and weakness--across which had stalked characters which history may hereafter develope as largely as the struggle in which they were engaged, and swell to gigantic proportions, or which she may dwarf into pettiest dimensions, as unworthy of the parts they played. A dull, strange silence, broken at distant intervals by the crash of citadels and palaces as they were blown into dust, succeeded to the incessant dialogue of the cannon which had spoken so loudly and so angrily throughout an entire year. Tired armies, separated from each other by a sea of fires, rested on their arms, and gazed with varied emotions on all that remained of the object of their conflicts. On the 8th we felt that the great success of our valiant Allies was somewhat tarnished by our own failure, and were doubtful whether the Russians would abandon all hope of retaking the Malakoff. On the next day, ere noon, we were walking about the streets of Sebastopol, and gazing upon its ruins.
The weather changed suddenly on the 7th September, and on the morning of the 8th it became bitterly cold. A biting wind right from the north side of Sebastopol blew intolerable clouds of harsh dust into our faces. The sun was obscured; and the sky became of a leaden wintry grey. Early in the morning a strong force of cavalry, under the command of Colonel Hodge, received orders to move up to the front and form a chain of sentries in front of Cathcart's Hill, and all along our lines. No person was allowed to pass this boundary excepting staff officers or those provided with a pass. Another line of sentries in the rear of the camps was intended to stop stragglers and idlers from Balaklava, the object of these arrangements being in all probability to prevent the Russians gathering any intimation of our attack from the unusual accumulation of people on the look-out hills. If so, it would have been better to have kept the cavalry more in the rear, and not to have displayed to the enemy a line of Hussars, Lancers, and Dragoons, along our front. At 11.30 the Highland Brigade, under Brigadier Cameron, marched up from Kamara, and took up its position in reserve at the Right Attack; and the Guards, also in reserve, were posted on the same side of the Woronzoff Road. The first brigade of the Fourth Division served the trenches of the Left Attack the night before, and remained in them. The second brigade of the Fourth Division was in reserve. The Guards, who served the trenches of the Left Attack, and only marched that morning, were turned out again after arriving at their camp, and resumed their place with alacrity. The Third Division, massed on the hill-side before their camp, were also in reserve, in readiness to move down by the Left Attack in case their services were required. General Pelissier, during the night, collected 36,000 men in and about the Mamelon, to form the storming columns for the Malakoff and Little Redan, and to provide the necessary reserves.
[Sidenote: A FEARFUL STRUGGLE.]
The French were reinforced by 5,000 Sardinians, who marched up from the Tchernaya. It was arranged that the French should attack the Malakoff at noon, and, as soon as their attack succeeded, we were to assault the Redan. Strong columns of French were to make a diversion on the left, and menace the line of Bastion du Mât, Centrale and Quarantine Bastions. The cavalry sentries were posted at 8.30 A.M. At 10.30 A.M. the Second and the Light Division moved down to the trenches, and were placed in the advanced parallels as quietly and unostentatiously as possible. About the same hour, General Simpson and Staff repaired to the second parallel of the Green Hill Battery, where the Engineer officers had placed them for the day. Sir Harry Jones, too ill to move hand or foot, nevertheless insisted on being carried down to witness the assault, and was borne to the trenches on a litter, in which he remained till all was over. The Commander-in-Chief, General Simpson, and Sir Richard Airey, the Quartermaster-General, were stationed close to him.[23] The Duke of Newcastle was stationed at Cathcart's Hill in the early part of the day, and afterwards moved off to the right to the Picket-house look-out over the Woronzoff Road.
At 10.45, General Pelissier and his Staff went up to the French Observatory on the right. The French trenches were crowded with men as close as they could be packed, and we could, through the breaks in the clouds of dust, which were most irritating, see our troops all ready in their trenches. The cannonade languished purposely towards noon; but the Russians, catching sight of the cavalry and troops in front, began to shell Cathcart's Hill and the heights, and the bombs and long ranges disturbed the equanimity of some of the spectators by bursting with loud "thuds" right over their heads, and sending "the gunners' pieces" sharply about them. After hours of suspense, the moment came at last.
At five minutes before twelve o'clock, the French issued forth from the trenches close to the Malakoff, crossed the seven mètres of ground which separated them from the enemy at a few bounds--scrambled up its face, and were through the embrasures in the twinkling of an eye. They drifted as lightly and quickly as autumn leaves before the wind, battalion after battalion, and in a minute after the head of their column issued from the ditch the tricolour was floating over the Korniloff Bastion. Our Allies took the Russians by surprise, very few of the latter were in the Malakoff; but they soon recovered themselves, from twelve o'clock till past seven in the evening the French had to meet repeated attempts to regain the work: then, weary of the fearful slaughter, despairing of success, the Muscovite General withdrew his exhausted legions, and prepared, with admirable skill, to evacuate the place. As soon as the tricolour was observed waving through the smoke and dust over the parapet of the Malakoff, four rockets were sent up from Chapman's attack one after another, as a signal for our assault upon the Redan. They were almost borne back by the violence of the wind, and the silvery jets of sparks they threw out on exploding were scarcely visible against the raw grey sky.
Now, it will be observed that, while we attacked the Redan with two divisions only, a portion of each being virtually in reserve and not engaged in the affair at all, the French made their assault on the Malakoff with four divisions of the second Corps d'Armée, the first and fourth divisions forming the storming columns, and the third and fifth being the support, with reserves of 10,000 men. The French had, probably, not less than 30,000 men in the Right Attack on the 7th of September. The divisional orders for the Second Division were very much the same as those for the Light Division.
DIVISION ORDERS.
June 17th, 1855.
1. The Light Division being about to be employed with others in the attack on the Redan, provisions will be issued and cooked this afternoon for to-morrow, and care must be taken that the men's canteens are filled with water this afternoon. Each man will be provided with twenty rounds of additional ammunition, to be carried in his haversack.
2. The whole guard of the trenches will be furnished this evening from the 2nd Brigade, and that portion of the Brigade which is not so employed will be formed in the morning in the first parallel, to the right of the 21-gun Battery, where it will be joined by the reserve of the trenches at daylight.
3. Weakly men and recruits will be selected for the camp guards and general care of the camp, where they are to remain, and will be directed not to show themselves on the high ground in front.
4. The Lieutenant-General having been charged with the columns of attack, the command of the Light Division will for the moment devolve on Major-General Codrington.
5. The officer in command of the guards of the trenches will take care to make such a disposition of his men as shall leave room for the additional troops which it is proposed shall be sent forward to the attack.
6. The right attack will be made by the 1st Brigade, under Colonel Yea, 7th Royal Fusileers, in the following order:--
100 of 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, under Captain Forman, to form the covering party.
The 34th Regiment, consisting of 400 men, under Captain Guilt, the attacking party.
The support, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Lysons--300 men of the 7th Fusileers, 300 of the 33rd Regiment, and 200 of the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusileers.
Working party, under the command of Major Macdonell--400 of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade.
DIVISION ORDERS.
September 7th, 1855.
[Sidenote: DIVISION ORDERS.]
1. The Redan will be assaulted after the French have attacked the Malakoff. The Light and Second Divisions will share this important duty, each finding respectively the half of each party. The 2nd Brigade of the Light Division, with an equal number of the Second Division, will form the first body of attack, each Division furnishing, 1st, a covering party of 100 men, under a field-officer; 2nd, a storming party, carrying ladders, of 160 men, under a field-officer (these men to be selected for this especial duty--they will be the first to storm after they have placed the ladders); 3rd, a storming party of 500 men, with two field-officers; 4th, a working party of 100 men, with a field-officer. The support will consist of the remainder of the Brigade, to be immediately in the rear.
2. The covering party will consist of 100 rank and file of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, under the command of Captain Thyers, and will be formed on the extreme left of the fifth parallel, ready to move out steadily in extended order towards the Redan. Their duty will be to cover the advance of the ladder party, and keep down the fire from the parapet.
3. The first storming party of the Light Division will consist of 160 men of the 97th Regiment, under the command of Major Welsford. This party will carry the ladders and will be the first to storm; they will be formed in the New Boyeau running from the centre of the fifth parallel; they will form immediately in rear of the covering party. They must be good men and true to their difficult duty, which is to arrive at the ditch of the Redan and place the ladders down it, to turn twenty ladders for others to come down by.
4. The next storming party will consist of 200 of the 97th Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. H. Hancock, and 300 of the 90th Regiment, under the command of Captain Grove. This party will be stationed in the fifth parallel, and will assault in columns of Divisions at one place. The Light Division will lead the whole column of attack, which will be formed in divisions of twenty files, and so told off.
5. The supports, consisting of 750 men of the 19th Regiment and 88th Regiment (with part of a Brigade of the Second Division on their left), will be placed as they stand in Brigade in the fourth parallel, from whence they will move into the fifth parallel as soon as the assault is made by those in front of them.
6. The working party of 100 men will be furnished by the 90th Regiment, under command of Captain Perrin, and will be placed in No. 2 and 3 Left Boyeau; they will afterwards receive their instructions from an officer of the Royal Engineers.
7. The remainder of the Light and Second Divisions will form a reserve--the Light Division in the Right Boyeaus between the third and fourth parallels, the Second Division in the Left Boyeaus between the third and fourth parallels.
8. The First and Highland Divisions will be formed in that part of the third parallel in communication with the French Right Attack, and in the Middle Ravine.
9. Two days' rations will be drawn and cooked, and issued to the men before 6 A.M. to-morrow.
10. Ten additional rounds of ammunition will be served out to each man on the private parades of regiments to-morrow morning.
11. The men will parade with red coats and forage caps: water-bottles to be quite full.
12. The covering party and first storming party will assemble at the usual place of meeting for the trenches, at 7 A.M. The next storming party, the working party, the supports, and the reserve, will parade, respectively, at the same place, at intervals of half an hour.
The covering party consisted of 100 men of the 3rd Buffs, under Captain Lewes, and 100 men of the Second Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, under the command of Captain Hammond. The scaling-ladder party consisted of 160 of the 3rd Buffs, under Captain Maude, 160 of the 97th Regiment, under Welsford. The force of the Second Division consisted of 260 of the 3rd Buffs, 300 of the 41st, 200 of the 62nd, and a working party of 100 men of the 41st. The rest of Windham's Brigade, consisting of the 47th and 49th, were in reserve with Warren's Brigade of the same division, of which the 30th and 55th were called into action and suffered severely. Brigadier Shirley was on board ship, but as soon as he heard of the assault he came up to camp. Colonel Unett, of the 19th Regiment, was the senior officer in Shirley's absence, and on him would have devolved the duty of leading the storming column of the Light Division. Colonel Unett tossed with Colonel Windham, and Colonel Unett won. He looked at the shilling, turned it over, and said, "My choice is made; I'll be the first man into the Redan." But he was badly wounded ere he reached the abattis, although he was not leading the column.
It was a few minutes after twelve when our men left the fifth parallel. In less than five minutes the troops, passing over about two hundred and thirty yards from the approach to the parapet of the Redan, had lost a large proportion of their officers. The Riflemen behaved, as usual, admirably; but could not do much to reduce the fire of the guns on the flanks and below the re-entering angles. As they came nearer, the fire became less fatal. They crossed the abattis without difficulty; it was torn to pieces and destroyed by our shot, and the men stepped over and through it with ease. The Light Division made straight for the salient and projecting angle of the Redan, and came to the ditch, at this place about fifteen feet deep. The men, led by their officers, leaped into the ditch, and scrambled up the other side, whence they scaled the parapet almost without opposition; for the few Russians who were in front ran back and got behind their traverses and breastworks, and opened fire upon them as soon as they saw our men on the top.
As the Light Division rushed out into the open, the guns of the Barrack Battery, and on the proper right of the Redan, loaded with grape, caused considerable loss ere they reached the salient.
[Sidenote: A SCALING PARTY.]
Brigadier Shirley, blinded by dust knocked into his eyes by a shot, was obliged to retire; his place was taken by Lieutenant-Colonel Bunbury, of the 23rd Regiment, next in rank to Colonel Unett, already carried to the rear. Brigadier Von Straubenzee received a contusion on the face, and left the field. Colonel Handcock was mortally wounded. Captain Hammond fell dead. Major Welsford was killed as he entered the work through an embrasure.
Captain Grove was severely wounded. Only Colonel Windham, Captain Fyers, Captain Lewes, and Captain Maude got into the Redan scatheless from the volleys of grape and balls which swept the flanks of the work.
One officer told me the Russians visible in the Redan when we got into it did not exceed 150 men, that we could have carried the breastworks at the base with the greatest ease, if we had only made a rush for it. He expressed his belief that they had no field-pieces from one re-entering angle to the other. Another officer positively assured me that when he got on the top of the parapet he saw, about a hundred yards in advance, a breastwork with gaps, through which were the muzzles of field-pieces, and that in rear of it were compact masses of infantry, the front rank kneeling with fixed bayonets as if prepared to receive a charge of cavalry, while the rear ranks kept up a sharp and destructive fire. The only way to reconcile these discrepancies is to suppose that the first spoke of the earliest stage of the assault, and that the latter referred to a later period, when the Russians, having been reinforced by the fugitives from the Malakoff, and by the troops behind the barracks in the rear, may have opened embrasures in the breastwork. Lamentable as it no doubt is, and incredible almost to those who know how well the British soldier generally behaves in presence of the enemy, the men, when they reached the parapet, were seized by some strange infatuation, and began firing, instead of following their officers, who were now falling fast. Most men stand fire much better than the bayonet--they will keep up a fusillade a few paces off much sooner than they will close with an enemy. It is difficult enough sometimes to get cavalry to charge, if they can find any decent excuse to lay by their swords and take to pistol and carabine, with which they are content to pop away for ever; and when cover of any kind is near, a trench-bred infantry-man finds the charms of the cartridge quite irresistible.
The 77th Regiment furnished 160 men for the ladder party, and 200 for the storming party. The former, under the command of Major Welsford, were to proceed to the advanced parallel, and the latter, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Handcock, were to be in the fifth parallel. At 5 A.M. the regiment paraded and marched off. Eight men were told off to each ladder, and they had orders to leave the trench when the appointed signal was made from the Malakoff. They were to be preceded by 100 of the Rifle Brigade, and by some Sappers and Miners to cut down the abattis, and they were to be followed by 160 of the 3rd Buffs, with twenty ladders also. The storming party was to follow the ladder party. A few minutes after twelve, Major Welsford, seeing the signal flying from the Malakoff, gave the word--"Ladders to the front!" The men instantly ran out of the parallel towards the salient of the Redan, and at the same time, Colonel Handcock, with his 200 stormers of the 97th, and 100 of the 90th, left the parallel. The ladders were managed with difficulty, but on entering the place there was little or no resistance. However, the Russians were soon roused out of their casemates, and flocked to the traverses, from which they kept up a heavy fire on the men getting over the parapet or through the embrasures. By a rapidly increasing flanking and direct fire, converging on the salient, the Russians diminished our force; and as we were weakened they were strengthened by parties from both re-entering angles. The leader of the ladder party was killed by a gun fired as he entered the embrasure; Captain Sibthorpe was hit in two places; Lieutenant Fitzgerald and Ensign Hill were wounded; Lieutenant-Colonel Handcock was mortally wounded; M'Gregor fell inside the Redan; Captain Lumley was badly wounded; Lieutenant Goodenough died of his wounds; Captain Woods and Lieutenant Browne were also hit,--so that the 97th Regiment had five officers killed and six wounded, out of a complement of thirteen engaged; and 201 non-commissioned officers and men out of 360. Those officers of the regiment who saw Colonel Windham in the Redan say they were in ten minutes before they observed him. The 3rd Buffs and 41st came in through the embrasures immediately after the 97th and 90th, then the enemy made their rush, and drove the English into the angle, and finally over the parapet to the exterior slope, where men of different regiments of the Light and Second Divisions were packed together firing into the Redan. One hour and a half had elapsed. The Russians had cleared the Redan, but were not in possession of the parapets, when they made a second charge with bayonets under a heavy fire of musketry from the rear, and throwing quantities of stones, grape and round-shot, drove those in front back on the men in the rear, who were precipitated into the ditch. The gabions in the parapets gave way, and rolled down with those upon them; the men in the rear retired precipitately into the fifth parallel. A party of the 30th advanced from this parallel just as Colonel Windham was asking for reinforcements, and ran up to the salient of the Redan, where they suffered severe loss.[24] Captain Rowlands, 41st, made a gallant attempt with a few men, but they were nearly all killed or wounded, and he was obliged to retire. Colonel Legh, Lieutenant Whitehead, Captain Sibthorpe, Lieutenants Browne and Fitzgerald, remained, till only three privates were left in the angle.
[Sidenote: A MOST CRITICAL MOMENT.]
The storming columns of the Second Division issuing out of the fifth parallel rushed up immediately after the Light Division; but when they came close to the apex, Colonel Windham brought them to the right flank of the Light Division, so as to come on the slope of the proper left face of the Redan. The first embrasure to which they came was in flames, but, moving on to the next, the men leaped into the ditch, and, with the aid of ladders and of each other's hands, scrambled up on the other side, climbed the parapet, or poured in through the embrasure, which was undefended. Colonel Windham was the first or one of the first men to enter, and with him, Pat Mahony, a great grenadier of the 41st, Kennelly and Cornellis, privates of the same regiment. As Mahony entered with a cheer, he was shot through the head by a Russian rifleman, and fell dead; at the same moment Kennelly and Cornellis were wounded. (The latter claimed the reward of 5_l._ offered by Colonel Herbert to the first man of his division who entered the Redan.) Running parallel to the faces of the Redan there was an inner parapet, intended to shield the gunners at the embrasures from the splinters of shell. Cuts in the rear enabled the men to retire, and strong and high traverses ran along the sides.
At the base of the Redan, before the re-entering angles, was a breastwork, or, rather, a parapet with an irregular curve, which ran in front of the body of the place to the height of a man's neck. As our men entered through the embrasures, the few Russians who were between the salient and this breastwork retreated behind the latter, or got behind the traverses for protection. From these they poured in a quick fire on the parapet of the salient, which was crowded by the men of the Second and Light Divisions; and they began to return the fire without advancing or charging. There were riflemen behind the lower traverses near the base of the Redan, who kept up a galling fire. The Russians were encouraged to maintain their ground by the immobility of our soldiers and the weakness of a fusillade from the effects of which the enemy were well protected. In vain the officers, by voice and example, urged our soldiers to clear the work. The men, most of whom belonged to regiments which had suffered in the trenches, and were acquainted with the traditions of June 18th, had an impression that the Redan was extensively mined, and that if they advanced they would all be blown up. The officers fell, singled out as a mark for the enemy by their courage. The men of the different regiments got mingled together in inextricable confusion. All the Brigadiers, save Colonel Windham, were wounded, or rendered unfit for the guidance of the attack.
This was going on at the proper left face of the Redan, while nearly the same scene was being repeated at the salient. Every moment our men were diminishing in numbers, while the Russians were arriving from the town, and from the Malakoff, which had been occupied by the French. Thrice did Colonel Windham despatch officers to Sir W. Codrington, who was in the fifth parallel, to entreat him to send up supports in formation; all these three officers were wounded as they passed from the ditch of the Redan to the rear. Supports were, indeed, sent up, but they advanced in disorder, and in driblets, only to increase the confusion and the carnage. The narrow neck of the salient was too close to allow of any formation; and the more the men crowded into it, the worse was the disorder, and the more they suffered from the enemy's fire. This miserable work lasted for an hour. Colonel Windham resolved to go to General Codrington himself. Seeing Captain Crealock, of the 90th, he said,[25] "I must go to the General for supports. Now, mind, let it be known, in case I am killed, why I went away." He succeeded in gaining the fifth parallel, through a storm of grape and bullets, and standing on the top of the parapet he again asked for support. Sir W. Codrington asked him if he thought he really could do anything with such supports as he could afford, and said, if he thought so, "he might take the Royals," who were then in the parallel. "Let the officers come out in front--let us advance in order, and if the men keep their formation the Redan is ours," was the Colonel's reply. But at that moment our men were seen leaping into the ditch, or running down the parapet of the salient, and through the embrasures out of the work into the ditch, the Russians following them with the bayonet, musketry, and throwing stones and grape-shot at them as they lay in the ditch.
But the solid weight of the advancing mass, urged on and fed each moment from the rear by company after company, and battalion after battalion, prevailed at last against the isolated and disjointed band, which had abandoned that protection which unanimity of courage affords, and had lost the advantages of discipline and obedience. As though some giant rock advanced into the sea, and forced back the agitated waters that buffeted it, so did the Russian columns press down against the spray of soldiery which fretted their edge with fire and steel, and contended in vain against their weight. The struggling band was forced back by the enemy, who moved on, crushing friend and foe beneath their solid tramp. Bleeding, panting, and exhausted, our men lay in heaps in the ditch beneath the parapet, sheltered themselves behind stones and in bomb craters in the external slope of the work, or tried to pass back to our advanced parallel and sap, having to run the gauntlet of a tremendous fire.
The scene in the ditch was appalling, although some of the officers assured me that they and the men were laughing at the precipitation with which many fellows plunged headlong upon the mass of bayonets, muskets, and sprawling soldiers, the ladders were all knocked down or broken, so that it was difficult for the men to scale the other side, and the dead, the dying, the wounded, and the uninjured, were all lying in piles together.
[Sidenote: A GALLANT DEFENCE.]
General Pelissier observed the failure of our attack from the rear of the Malakoff, and sent over to General Simpson to ask if he intended to renew it. The English Commander-in-Chief did not feel in a condition to do so. The Guards and Highlanders, the Third and Fourth Divisions, and most of the reserves, had not been engaged. As soon as we abandoned the assault, the firing slackened along our front; but in the rear of the Malakoff there was a fierce contest going on between masses of Russians, released from the Redan, or drawn from the town, and the French inside the work; and the fight for the Little Redan, on the proper left of the Malakoff, was raging furiously. Clouds of smoke and dust obstructed the view, but the rattle of musketry was incessant, and betokened the severe nature of the struggle below. Through the breaks in the smoke there could be seen now and then a tricolour, surmounted by an eagle, fluttering bravely over the inner parapet of the Malakoff. The storm of battle rolled fiercely round it, and beat against it; but it was sustained by strong arms and stout hearts, and all the assaults of the enemy were vain against it. It would be untrue to say that the result of our assault was not the source of deep grief and mortification to us, which all the glorious successes of our Allies could not wholly alleviate. Even those who thought any attack on the Redan useless and unwise, inasmuch as the possession of the Malakoff would, in their opinion, render the Redan untenable, could not but regret bitterly that, having undertaken the assault, we had not achieved a decisive triumph, and that so much blood had been, if not ingloriously, at least fruitlessly, poured forth.
The French, indeed, were generous enough to say that our troops behaved with great bravery, and that they wondered how we kept the Redan so long under such a tremendous fire; but British soldiers are rather accustomed to the nil admirari under such circumstances, and praise like that gives pain as well as pleasure. Many soldiers, entertaining the opinion to which I have alluded, think that we should at once have renewed the attempt. It is but small consolation to them to know that General Simpson intended to attack the Redan the following morning, inasmuch as the Russians by their retreat deprived us of the chance of retrieving our reputation, and at the same time acknowledged the completeness of the success achieved by our Allies, and the tremendous superiority of the fire directed against them.
The Second Brigade, Light Division, stormed at noon. The 97th and 90th, 300 of each, commanded, the former by Major Welsford (whose head was blown off as he was mounting an embrasure--the gun was fired by a Russian officer, who immediately gave himself up as a prisoner to a sergeant of the 97th, that entered the moment after, throwing down his sword and saying, "I am a prisoner of war"), the latter by Captain Grove, the senior officer of the regiment present with the service companies. The salient was carried at once, and the men entered the stronghold, which is a work traced on a most obtuse angle, requiring a large mass of men to assault it, not only at the salient, but at the same moment on both flanks, so as to turn them, and to enable the salient storming party to advance down the interior space of the works at once, taking the defenders in front and flank, and indeed in rear, at the same moment. In consequence of attacking the salient only, no front could be formed, on account of the small interior space at that point; the men were forced to advance by driblets, and at the same moment fired on from traverses on either flank, where they could not see their assailants, an evil at once obviated had the attack on the flanks and salient been simultaneous. The handful of men who assaulted and took the salient most gallantly held it against far superior numbers for a considerable time, until their ammunition being nearly expended, and receiving no flank support, which could alone assist them to any purpose, and being rushed on from these flanks by a vastly superior force, they retreated to the extreme side of the parapet, where they remained, and, being reinforced by some fresh men, kept up a heavy and continuous fire on the Russians in the interior of the work. They held their ground on this fast sinking parapet of loose earth, stones and broken gabions, under a most galling fire from both flanks and in front, and continuous showers of vertical grape, from inside the work, for an hour and a half at least, when a sudden rush, made by the enemy, who had crept up the faces by the traverses, obliged the troops to give way, and step by step, pelting each other with huge stones, they retired, slipping and tumbling into the ditch, where many poor fellows were buried alive, from the scarps giving way. Then came the fearful run for life or death, with men rolling over like rabbits, then tumbling into the English trench, where the men lay four deep on each other. The men once in manned the parapet, and kept up a heavy and continuous fire on the enemy on the parapets of the Redan.
The rest you know. The Rifles behaved nobly, and where they had tried to creep up the ditch to pick off the Russians on the flanks, they lay four and five deep, all together. Colonel Lysons, of the 23rd, as usual, was all energy, and, though severely wounded through the thigh and unable to stand, remained on the ground cheering on the men. Colonel Handcock, of the 97th, was shot through the head on the crest of the Redan, and died soon after arriving in camp. Captain Preston, and Lieutenants Swift and Wilmer, of the 90th, were all killed inside, where their bodies were found the next morning. Captain Vaughan, of the 90th, was shot in both legs, and taken prisoner when we left the place, it being impossible to get him over the ditch. He was found in a Russian hospital and brought to camp to die. Lieutenant and Adjutant Dyneley, of the 23rd Fusileers, was mortally wounded. Individual deeds of daring were too frequent to particularize. The first dead Russian on the extreme salient was a Russian officer shot through the mouth--a singularly handsome man, with hands and feet white and delicate as a woman's.
[Sidenote: THE DANGERS OF DELAY.]
The 41st, which followed the Light Division storming party, whose position in advance was determined, as I have already stated by Colonel Windham and Colonel Unett "tossing up for choice," got into the Redan nearly as soon as the 90th and 97th, who formed the leading column of attack on the salient, and the parties of each division were soon inextricably mixed. I do not know the names of the first soldiers of the 90th and 97th who got in, but several soldiers of these regiments lay dead and wounded in advance near the Russian breastwork on the morning of the 9th. The men of the 41st who rushed into the Redan with Colonel Windham, were, Hartnardy, Kennelly, Cornellis, and Pat Mahony; the last, a fine tall grenadier, fell dead in the embrasure by Colonel Windham's side, shot through the heart as he was shouting, "Come on, boys--come on!" His blood spouted over those near him, but the men rushed on till they became confused among the traverses, and then the scene took place which I have tried to describe. The salient, however favourable to the assailants in one sense, was extremely disadvantageous to them in another, inasmuch as it prevented them getting into any kind of formation. It was, of course, the apex of the triangle, and was very narrow, while the enemy firing from the base poured a concentrated fire upon the point, and felled every man who showed boldly from behind the traverses, and the parapet upon which our soldiers were crowded. At the first rush, had Colonel Windham been able to get a handful of men together to charge at the breastwork, the few Russians there must have been routed, and by the time their reinforcements came up our men would have been able to reverse the face of the breastwork, and to close the Redan to their assailants. But seconds of time generate great events in war. Our delay gave the enemy time both to recover from their panic when they were driven from the salient, and to send up strong bodies of men from their bomb-proofs and the cover at the back of the Redan; and by degrees this accumulating mass, advancing from the angles of the breastwork, moved up along the traverses parallel with the parapets of the Redan, and drove our men into the salient, where, by feeble driblets and incapable of formation, they were shot down in spite of the devotion and courage of their leader and the example of their officers. The salient was held by our men for one hour and fifty-six minutes!
While General Codrington, who seemed (in the opinion of those around him) to have lost for the time the coolness which characterized him, was hesitating about sending up more men, or was unable to send them up in any formation so as to form a nucleus of resistance and attack, the Redan was lost,[26] and our men, pressed by the bayonet, by heavy fusillades, and by some field guns which the enemy had now brought up, were forced over the parapet into the ditch. Colonel Eman, one of the very best officers in the army,--a man of singular calmness and bravery, who was beloved by his regiment, his officers and men, and whose loss was lamented by all who knew him,--was shot through the lungs as he was getting his men into order. His sword arm was uplifted over his head at the time, and it was thought his lungs were uninjured. The surgeon, when he was carried back, told him so, but he knew too well such hopes were vain. "I feel I am bleeding internally," he said, with a sad smile. He died that night. Two Captains of the same regiment fell beside him--Corry and Lockhart. Captain Rowlands, who very much distinguished himself, had the most extraordinary escapes, and was only slightly wounded, though hit in two places. This detachment lost 184 officers and men. The 49th, who were in reserve, lost 1 officer killed, 2 wounded, 2 privates killed, and 23 wounded. For the last thirty minutes of this contest the English, having exhausted their ammunition, threw stones at their opponents, but the Russians retaliated with terrible effect by 'hand-grape' and small cannon-shot, which they hurled at our men. Captain Rowlands was knocked down and stunned by one of these missiles, which hit him right on the eye. As soon as he recovered and got up, he was struck by another grape-shot in the very same place, and knocked down again.
The 30th Regiment was formed in the fourth parallel, left in front, on the right of the 55th; and when the storming party moved out of the fifth parallel the supports occupied it, and were immediately ordered to advance on the salient angle of the Redan, by three companies at a time, from the left. The distance from the place in which they were posted up to the salient considerably exceeded 200 yards; and as the men had to cut across as quickly as they could in order to escape the raking fire of grape, and to support the regiments in front, they were breathless when they arrived at the ditch. When they arrived, all blown by this double, they found only two scaling-ladders at the scarp, and two more at the other side, to climb up to the parapet. They got over, however, and ascended the face of the Redan. By the time the supports got up, the Russians were pushing up their reserves in great force, and had already got some field-pieces up to the breastwork; and the regiment falling into the train of all around them, instead of advancing, began to fire from the parapet and upper traverses till all their ammunition was exhausted, when they commenced pelting the Russians with stones. In this condition no attempts were made to remove the reserves whatever, while the Russians accumulated mass after mass upon them from the open ground in rear of the Redan, and deployed their columns on the breastwork, whence they delivered a severe fire upon us. The whole garrison of the Malakoff and their supports also came down on the left flank of the Redan and added to our assailants; and indeed there was reason to fight, for the possession of the Redan would have destroyed the enemy's chance of escape. In this gallant regiment there were 16 officers, 23 sergeants, &c., and 384 privates. On marching down to the trenches, 1 officer was killed and 10 were wounded, 6 sergeants were wounded, 41 privates were killed and 101 privates were wounded, and 2 officers and 6 privates died of their wounds.
[Sidenote: HEAVY LOSSES OF THE FRENCH.]
The 55th Regiment was the support along with the 30th, and was stationed in the fourth parallel till the assaulting columns had cleared out of the fifth parallel, which it then occupied, and left soon afterwards to mingle in the mélée at the salient of the Redan. Poor Lieut.-Colonel Cuddy, who assumed the command when Lieut.-Colonel Cure was wounded in the right arm, was killed as he led his men up the open to the face of the Redan; and of the remaining ten officers who went out with the regiment, Captain Morgan, Captain Hume, Lieutenant J. R. Hume, and Lieutenant Johnson were wounded. The regiment went out less than 400 strong, and suffered a loss of 140 officers and men killed and wounded.
The 62nd Regiment went into action 245 of all ranks. They were formed into two companies, with four officers to each, and the Colonel, Major, Adjutant, and Acting. Assistant-Surgeon O'Callaghan, and formed part of the storming party. Colonel Tyler was hit in the hand crossing the open space in front of the Redan, and retired. Lieutenant Blakeston was shot in getting through an embrasure of the Redan. Lieutenant Davenport was shot through the nose. On the parapet 2 officers were killed or died of their wounds, and 4 officers were wounded out of a total of 11; 3 sergeants were killed and 4 wounded out of 16; 1 drummer was killed out of 8, and 14 rank and file were killed, and 75 were wounded, out of 210. Such was this heavy day. To show how it fell on our Allies, I give the following fact:--The 15th Regiment, Colonel Garrain, went into action 900 strong against the Little Redan, and came out 310. The 2 Chefs-de-Bataillon were killed, 11 officers were killed, and 19 officers were wounded. It was observed that an immense number of the Russian dead in the front were officers.
Our attack lasted about an hour and three-quarters, and in that time we lost more men than at Inkerman, where the fighting lasted for seven hours. At 1.48 P.M., which was about the time we retired, there was an explosion either of a tumbrel or of a fougasse between the Mamelon and the Malakoff, to the right, which seemed to blow up several Frenchmen, and soon afterwards the artillery of the Imperial Guard swept across from the rear towards the Little Redan, and gave us indication that our Allies had gained a position from which they could operate against the enemy with their field-pieces. From the opening of the attack the French batteries over Careening Bay had not ceased to thunder against the Russian fleet, which lay silently at anchor below; and a lively cannonade was kept up between them and the Inkerman batteries till the evening, which was interrupted every now and then by the intervention of the English redoubt, and the late Selinghinsk and Volhynia redoubts, which engaged the Russian batteries at the extremity of the harbour. At one o'clock wounded men began to crawl up from the batteries to the camp; they could tell us little or nothing. "Are we in the Redan?" "Oh, yes; but a lot of us is killed, and the Russians are mighty strong." Some were cheerful, others desponding; all seemed proud of their wounds. Half an hour more, and the number of wounded increased; they came up by twos and threes, and--what I had observed before as a bad sign--the number of stragglers accompanying them, under the pretence of rendering assistance, became greater also. Then the ambulances and the cacolets (or mule litters) came in sight along the Woronzoff Road filled with wounded. Every ten minutes added to their numbers, and we could see that every effort was made to hurry them down to the front as soon as they were ready for a fresh load. The litter-bearers now added to the length of the melancholy train. We heard that the temporary hospitals in front were full, and that the surgeons were beginning to get anxious about the extent of their accommodation for the wounded.
Another bad sign was, that the enemy never ceased throwing up shell to the front, many of which burst high in the air, over our heads, while the pieces flew with a most unpleasant whir around us. These shells were intended for our reserves; and, although the fusees did not burn long enough for such a range, and they all burst at a considerable elevation, they caused some little injury and annoyance to the troops in the rear, and hit some of our men. The rapidly increasing swarms of wounded men, some of whom had left their arms behind them, at last gave rise to suspicions of the truth; but their answers to many eager questioners were not very decisive or intelligible, and some of them did not even know what they had been attacking. One poor young fellow, who was stumping stiffly up with a broken arm and a ball through his shoulder, carried off his firelock with him, but he made a naïve confession that he had "never fired it off, for he could not." The piece turned out to be in excellent order. It struck one that such men as these, however brave, were scarcely a fit match for the well-drilled soldiers of Russia; and yet we were trusting the honour, reputation, and glory of Great Britain to undisciplined lads from the plough, or the lanes of our towns and villages! As one example of the sort of recruits we received, I may mention that there was a considerable number of men in draughts, which came out to regiments in the Fourth Division, who had only been enlisted a few days, and who had never fired a rifle in their lives!
As I wrote at the time--"It must not be imagined that such rawness can be corrected and turned into military efficiency out here; for the fact is, that this siege has been about the worst possible school for developing the courage and manly self-reliance of a soldier; neither does it teach him the value of discipline and of united action. When he goes into the trenches he learns to dodge behind gabions, and to take pot shots from behind stones and parapets, and at the same time he has no opportunity of testing the value of his comrades, or of proving himself against the enemy in the open field. The natural result follows. Nor can it be considered as aught but ominous of evil that there have been two Courts of Inquiry recently held concerning two most distinguished regiments--one, indeed, belonging to the highest rank of our infantry; and the other a well-tried and gallant regiment, which was engaged in this very attack--in consequence of the alleged misconduct of their young soldiers during night affairs in the trenches."
[Sidenote: LOSSES IN THE ASSAULT.]
The difficulty of obtaining accurate information of the progress of an action cannot be better exemplified than by this fact, that at three o'clock one of our Generals of Division did not know whether we had taken the Redan or not. Towards dusk, the Guards, who had been placed in reserve behind our Right Attack, were marched off to their camp, and a portion of the Highlanders were likewise taken off the ground. The Guards had only arrived from the trenches the very same morning; but, to their great credit be it said, they turned out again without a murmur after a rest of a couple of hours for breakfast, although they had been "on" for forty-eight hours previously. The Third Division and a portion of the Highlanders were sent down to do the trench duties in the evening and night.
From the following statement of the loss sustained by the Light Division, it will be seen that this gallant body, which behaved so well at the Alma, and maintained its reputation at Inkerman, suffered as severely as it did in gaining the former great victory; and an examination of the return will, we fear, show that the winter, the trenches, and careless recruiting did their work, and that the officers furnished a noble example of devotion and gallantry. In the Light Division there were 73 officers and 964 men wounded--total, 1,037.
The loss of this division was 1,001 in killed and wounded at the Alma.
The number of officers killed was 15; of men killed, 94--total, 109. The regiments of the division which furnished storming columns were the 90th (or Perthshire Volunteers) and the 97th (or Earl of Ulster's). In the 90th, Captain Preston and Lieutenants Swift and Wilmer were killed; only 3 men were killed. Lieutenant Swift penetrated the furthest of all those who entered the Redan, and his dead body was discovered far in advance, near the re-entering angle. Captains Grove, Tinling, and Wade, Lieutenants Rattray, Pigott, Deverill, and Sir C. Pigott, and 90 men severely; Captains Perrin and Vaughan, Lieutenants Rous, Graham, and Haydock and 35 men slightly wounded. Total killed, 3 officers, 3 men; wounded, 12 officers, 126 men. In the 97th, Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. H. R. Handcock, Major Welsford, Captain Hutton, and Lieutenant Douglas M'Gregor, and 1 man were killed. Captain Lumley and 10 men dangerously; Captain Sibthorpe, Lieutenant Goodenough, and 38 men severely; Captain Woods, Lieutenants Hill, Fitzgerald, Brown, and 40 men slightly wounded. Total killed, 4 officers, 1 man; wounded, 7 officers, 88 men. The colonel, having been shot through the head, was carried to his tent, but, the ball having lodged in the brain, he was never sensible, and expired that night. Lieutenant M'Gregor, the son of the Inspector-General of Irish Constabulary, was adjutant of the regiment, and as remarkable for his unostentatious piety and Christian virtues as for his bravery and conduct in the field. The rest of the division was engaged in supporting the storming columns.
In the 7th Royal Fusileers, Lieutenants Wright and Colt, and 11 men were killed; Major Turner, Lieutenant-Colonels Heyland and Hibbert, Captain Hickey, and Captain Jones (Alma), were wounded; 67 men were wounded. In the 23rd (Royal Welsh Fusileers), Lieutenants Somerville and Dyneley were killed; Lieutenant-Colonel Lysons was slightly wounded, and the following officers more or less injured by shot, shell, or bayonet:--Captains Vane, Poole, Millett, Holding, Beck, Hall-Dare, Williamson, Tupper, O'Connor, Radcliffe, Perrott, and Beck. Total killed, 2 officers, 1 man; wounded, 13 officers, 130 men. In the 33rd, Lieutenant Donovan, a most promising and dashing officer, lost his life while looking over the parapet at the fight. He went with the regiment as an amateur, in company with his brother, all through Bulgaria, and into action with them at the Alma as a volunteer, where he so much distinguished himself that the colonel recommended him for a commission, which he received without purchase. Lieutenant-Colonel Gough, who was shot through the body at the Alma, was severely wounded; Captain Ellis and Lieutenants Willis and Trent were slightly, and the Adjutant Toseland severely, wounded; 45 men wounded. Total killed, 1 officer; wounded, 5 officers, 45 men. In the 34th, which was in the parallel behind the columns, 3 men were killed. Lieutenants Harris and Laurie were severely wounded, and 62 men were wounded. In the 19th, nearly every officer was touched more or less, 128 men were wounded, and 25 killed. The officers wounded were--Colonel Unett, severely (since dead); Major Warden, slightly; Captain Chippindall, ditto; Lieutenants Godfrey, Goren, and Massey, dangerously; Molesworth severely; Bayley, slightly; Ensign Martin, slightly; and Ensign Young, dangerously. Total killed, 25 men; wounded, 10 officers, 128 men. In the 77th, 42 men were wounded; killed not known; Captain Parker mortally wounded. Wounded, Captain Butts, slightly; Lieutenants Knowles, Leggett, and Watson, ditto. One officer killed; 4 officers, 42 men wounded. In the 88th Regiment, 105 men were wounded. Captain Grogan was killed; Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell, C.B., was wounded twice in the thigh and once in the arm severely. Captains Mauleverer and Beresford, Lieutenants Lambert, Hopton, Scott, and Ensign Walker were wounded severely. Total, 1 officer killed; wounded, 9 officers, 105 men. In the Rifle Brigade, Captain Hammond, who was only three days out from England, and Lieutenant Ryder and 13 men were killed; and Lieutenant Pellew slightly, Lieutenant Eyre severely, Major Woodford slightly, Captain Eccles and Lieutenant Riley severely wounded. Total, 2 officers, 13 men killed; wounded, 8 officers, 125 men. The loss of officers in Windham's Brigade, and in the portion of Warren's Brigade which moved to his support was equally severe.
[Sidenote: LOSSES IN THE ASSAULT.]
The Second Division had on the General Staff 1 officer, Lieutenant Swire, Aide-de-camp, dangerously; 2 officers, Major Rooke and Lieutenant Morgan, Aide-de-camp, severely; 1 officer, Brigadier Warren, slight scratch in head; and 1 officer, Colonel Percy Herbert, a still slighter scratch. Total, 5 officers wounded. In 1st Royals, 2nd Battalion, 1 man was killed; 2 officers, Major Plunkett and Lieutenant Williams, and 3 men, severely; Captain Gillman, and 2 men, dangerously; Lieutenant Keate, and 13 men slightly, wounded. Total killed, 1; wounded, 4 officers, 18 men.
3rd Buffs, 39 men killed, 76 wounded, 7 officers. Brigadier Straubenzee, a scratch over the eye; Captain Wood Dunbar, Lieutenant Cox, Ensigns Letts and Peachey, wounded. In 41st Foot, 2 officers, Captains Lockhart and Every, 2 men, killed; Colonel Eman, C.B., dangerously (since dead); Lieutenant Kingscote, severely; Major Pratt, Captain Rowlands, Lieutenants Maude and Hamilton, slightly wounded. Total killed, 2 officers, 2 men; wounded, 6 officers, 111 men. In 47th Regiment, 3 men killed, 27 men wounded. In 49th Regiment, Captain Rochfort and 2 men killed; Major King, Ensign Mitchell, and 26 men, wounded. In 55th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Cuddy, killed; Major Cure, Captain R. Hume, Captain J. Hume, Captain Richards, Lieutenant Johnson, and 105 men, wounded. In 62nd Regiment, Captains Cox and Blakeston, killed; Lieutenant-Colonel Tyler, Major Daubeney, Captain Hunter, Lieutenants Dirin and Davenport, and 67 men, wounded. In 95th Foot, Captain Sergeant and Lieutenant Packinton, slightly contused, and 3 men slightly wounded.
In the First Division, 2nd Brigade, the 31st Foot lost an excellent officer, Captain Attree, before the assault took place; he was mortally wounded in the trenches. They had two men slightly wounded. In the Scots Fusileer Guards, and 56th Foot, there were only two men slightly wounded--one in each regiment; out of 256 men admitted into the General Hospital, Third Division, camp, 17 died almost immediately. In the Highland Division, the 42nd Foot had 12 men wounded; the 72nd Foot had 1 officer, Quartermaster Maidmont, mortally wounded; 1 man killed, and 17 men wounded; the 79th had 11 men wounded; and the 93rd had 5 men wounded. In the Fourth Division, the 17th Regiment had Lieutenant Thompson and Lieutenant Parker, and 19 men wounded; the 20th Regiment had 6 men wounded; the 21st, 8 men wounded; the 46th Regiment, 1 man wounded; the 48th, 6 men wounded; the 57th, 4 men wounded; the 63rd Regiment, Colonel Lindsay (severely), and 4 men wounded, and 1 killed; the 68th, 1 man wounded; The Rifle Brigade, 1st Battalion, 2 men killed, and 9 men wounded. In the Right Attack of the Royal Artillery Siege Train, Commissary Hayter and 5 men were killed; Captain Fitzroy, Lieutenants Champion and Tyler, and 34 men were wounded. In the Left Attack, Captain Sedley, Major Chapman, Lieutenant Elphinstone, R.E. and 7 Sappers and Miners, were wounded. The regiments in the trenches lost as follows:--Rifle Brigade, 2 wounded; 3rd Foot, 2 ditto; 17th, 1 ditto; 23rd Fusileers, 13 ditto; 41st, 3 ditto; 55th, 1 ditto; 62nd, 2 killed, 3 wounded; 77th, 1 killed, 1 wounded; 88th, 1 wounded; 90th, 1 killed, 11 wounded; 93rd, 1 wounded; 97th, 2 wounded; 19th, 1 killed, 1 wounded. The total given by Sir John Hall was--24 officers, and 129 men killed; 134 officers and 1,897 men wounded.
Chapter VII
Painful Depression--Tremendous Explosions--Retreat of the Russians--Chronicle of Events--General After-Order--Visit to the City--Strength of the Works--Surprise in Camp--Rush to the City--Plunder--Ghastly Sights--The Dead and the Dying--Inside the Works--Value of the Malakoff--Terrible Picture of the Horrors of War--Hospital of Sebastopol--Heart-rending Scene--Chambers of Horrors--The Great Redan--Wreck and Destruction.
There was a feeling of deep depression in camp. We knew the French were in the Malakoff only, and we were painfully aware that our attack had failed. It was an eventful night. The camp was full of wounded men; the hospitals were crowded; sad stories ran from mouth to mouth respecting the losses of the officers and the behaviour of the men.
Fatigued and worn out, I lay down to rest, but scarcely to sleep. At my last walk to the front after sunset, nothing was remarkable except the silence of the batteries on both sides. About seven o'clock, an artillery officer in the Quarries observed the enemy pouring across the bridge to the north side, and sent word to that effect to General Simpson. About eleven o'clock my hut was shaken by a violent shock as of an earthquake, but I was so thoroughly tired, that it did not rouse me for more than an instant; having persuaded myself it was "only a magazine," I was asleep again. In another hour these shocks were repeated in quick succession, so that Morpheus himself could not have slumbered on, and I walked up to Cathcart's Hill. Fires blazed in Sebastopol, but they were obscured with smoke, and by the dust which still blew through the night air. As the night wore on, these fires grew and spread, fed at intervals by tremendous explosions. The Russians were abandoning the city they had defended so gallantly and so long. Their fleet was beneath the waters. A continuous stream of soldiery could be seen marching across the bridge to the north, side. And what were we doing? Just looking on. About half past five o'clock General Bentinck came out of his hut, close to Cathcart's Hill, to "see what the matter was." Of course, that careful officer was not in any way concerned in the arrangements for the attack or for the assault. He was only a divisional officer, and could not in any way direct the action of the troops.
[Sidenote: RETREAT OF THE RUSSIANS.]
At 8 o'clock the night before, the Russians began to withdraw from the town, in which they had stored up combustibles, to render Sebastopol a second Moscow. The general kept up a fire of musketry from his advanced posts, as though he intended to renew his efforts to regain the Malakoff. About 12.30 A.M. the Highland Division on duty in the trenches, surprised at the silence in the Redan, sent some volunteers to creep into it. Nothing could they hear but the breathing and groans of the wounded and dying, who, with the dead, were the sole occupants of the place. As it was thought the Redan was mined, the men came back. By 2 o'clock A.M. the fleet, with the exception of the steamers, had been scuttled and sunk. Flames were observed to break out in different parts of the town. They spread gradually over the principal buildings. At 4 o'clock A.M. a terrible explosion behind the Redan shook the whole camp; it was followed by four other explosions equally startling. The city was enveloped in fire and smoke, and torn asunder by the tremendous shocks of these volcanoes. At 4.45 A.M. the magazine of the Flagstaff and Garden Batteries blew up. At 5.30 A.M. two of the southern forts, the Quarantine and Alexander, went up into the air, and a great number of live shell followed, and burst in all directions. While this was going on, a steady current of infantry was passing to the north side over the bridge. At 6.45 A.M. the last battalion had passed, and the hill-sides opposite the city were alive with Russian troops. At 7.10 A.M. several small explosions took place inside the town. At 7.12 A.M. columns of black smoke began to rise from a steamer in one of the docks. At 7.15 A.M. the connection of the floating-bridge with the south side was severed. At 7.16 A.M. flames began to ascend from Fort Nicholas. At 8.7 A.M. the last part of the bridge was floated off in portions to the north side. At 9 A.M. several violent explosions took place in the works on our left, opposite the French. At 10 A.M. the town was a mass of flames, and the pillar of velvety fat smoke ascending from it seemed to support the very heavens. The French continued to fire, probably to keep out stragglers; but, ere the Russians left the place, the Zouaves and sailors were engaged in plundering. Not a shot was fired to the front and centre. The Russian steamers were very busy towing boats and stores across. His steamers towed his boats across at their leisure, and when every man had been placed in safety, and not till then, the Russians began to dislocate and float off the different portions of their bridge, and to pull it over to the north side.
This Redan cost us more lives than the capture of Badajoz, without including those who fell in its trenches and approaches; and, although the enemy evacuated it, we could scarcely claim the credit of having caused them such loss that they retired owing to their dread of a renewed assault. On the contrary, we must, in fairness, admit that the Russians maintained their hold of the place till the French were established in the Malakoff and the key of the position was torn from their grasp. They might, indeed, have remained in the place longer than they did, as the French were scarcely in a condition to molest them from the Malakoff with artillery; but the Russian general possessed too much genius and experience as a soldier to lose men in defending an untenable position, and his retreat was effected with masterly skill and with perfect ease in the face of a victorious enemy. Covering his rear by the flames of the burning city, and by tremendous explosions, which spoke in tones of portentous warning to those who might have wished to cut off his retreat, he led his battalions in narrow files across a deep arm of the sea, which ought to have been commanded by our guns, and in the face of a most powerful fleet. He actually paraded them in our sight as they crossed, and carried off all his most useful stores and munitions of war. He left us few trophies, and many bitter memories. He sank his ships and blew up his forts without molestation; nothing was done to harass him in his retreat, with the exception of some paltry efforts to break down the bridge by cannon-shot, or to shell the troops as they marched over.
It was clear that the fire of our artillery was searching out every nook and corner in the town, and that it would have soon become utterly impossible for the Russians to keep any body of men to defend their long line of parapet and battery without such murderous loss as would speedily have annihilated an army. Their enormous bomb-proofs, large and numerous as they were, could not hold the requisite force to resist a general concerted attack made all along the line with rapidity and without previous warning. On the other hand, the strength of the works themselves was prodigious. One heard our engineers feebly saying, "They are badly traced," and that kind of thing; but it was quite evident that the Russian, who is no match for the Allies in the open field, had been enabled to sustain the most tremendous bombardments ever known, and a siege of eleven months; that he was rendered capable of repulsing one general assault, and that a subsequent attack upon him at four points was only successful at one, which fortunately happened to be the key of his position; and the inference is, that his engineers possessed consummate ability, and furnished him with artificial strength that made him equal to our best efforts.
It is sufficient to say that of the three or four points attacked--the Little Redan and the Malakoff on the right, and the Bastion Centrale and the re-entering angle of the Flagstaff Work on the left--but one was carried, and that was a closed work. The Great Redan, the Little Redan, and the line of defence on the left were not taken, although the attack was resolute, and the contest obstinate and bloody for both assailants and defenders. Whether we ought to have attacked the Great or Little Redan, or to have touched the left at all, was another question, which was ventilated by many, but which it is not for me to decide. It is certain that the enemy knew his weakness, and was too good a strategist to defend a position of which we held the key.
The surprise throughout the camp on the Sunday morning was beyond description when the news spread that Sebastopol was on fire, and that the enemy were retreating. The tremendous explosions, which shook the very ground like so many earthquakes, failed to disturb many of our wearied soldiers.
[Sidenote: A YOUNG PRISONER OF WAR.]
As the rush from camp became very great, and every one sought to visit the Malakoff and the Redan, which were filled with dead and dying men, a line of English cavalry was posted across the front from our extreme left to the French right. They were stationed in all the ravines and roads to the town and trenches, with orders to keep back all persons except the Generals and Staff, and officers and men on duty, and to stop all our men returning with plunder from the town, and to take it from them. As they did not stop the French, or Turks, or Sardinians, this order gave rise to a good deal of grumbling, particularly when a man, after lugging a heavy chair several miles, or a table, or some such article, was deprived of it by our sentries. The French complained that our Dragoons let English soldiers pass with Russian muskets, and would not permit the French to carry off these trophies; but there was not any foundation for the complaint. There was assuredly no jealousy on one side or the other. It so happened that as the remnants of the French regiments engaged on the left against the Malakoff and Little Redan marched to their tents in the morning, our Second Division was drawn up on the parade-ground in front of their camp, and the French had to pass their lines. The instant the leading regiment of Zouaves came up to the spot where our first regiment was placed, the men, with one spontaneous burst, rent the air with an English cheer. The French officers drew their swords, their men dressed up and marched past as if at a review, while regiment after regiment of the Second Division caught up the cry, and at last our men presented arms to their brave comrades of France, the officers on both sides saluted with their swords, and this continued till the last man had marched by.
Mingled with the plunderers from the front were many wounded men. The ambulances never ceased,--now moving heavily and slowly with their burdens, again rattling at a trot to the front for a fresh cargo,--and the ground between the trenches and the camp was studded with cacolets or mule litters. Already the funeral parties had commenced their labours. The Russians all this time were swarming on the north side, and evinced the liveliest interest in the progress of the explosions and conflagrations. They took up ground in their old camps, and spread all over the face of the hills behind the northern forts. Their steamers cast anchor, or were moored close to the shore among the creeks, on the north side, near Fort Catherine. By degrees the Generals, French and English, and the Staff officers, edged down upon the town, but Fort Paul had not yet gone up, and Fort Nicholas was burning, and our engineers declared the place would be unsafe for forty-eight hours. Moving down, however, on the right flank of our cavalry pickets, a small party of us managed to turn them cleverly, and to get out among the French works between the Mamelon and Malakoff. The ground was here literally paved with shot and shell, and the surface was deeply honeycombed by the explosions of the bombs at every square yard. The road was crowded by Frenchmen returning with paltry plunder from Sebastopol, and with files of Russian prisoners, many of them wounded, and all dejected, with the exception of a fine little boy, in a Cossack's cap and a tiny uniform greatcoat, who seemed rather pleased with his kind captors. There was also one stout Russian soldier, who had evidently been indulging in the popularly credited sources of Dutch courage, and who danced all the way into the camp with a Zouave.
There were ghastly sights on the way, too--Russians who had died, or were dying as they lay, brought so far towards the hospitals from the fatal Malakoff. Passing through a maze of trenches, of gabionades, and of zigzags and parallels, by which the French had worked their sure and deadly way close to the heart of the Russian defence, and treading gently among the heaps of dead, where the ground bore full tokens of the bloody fray, we came at last to the head of the French sap. It was barely ten yards from that to the base of the huge sloping mound of earth which rose full twenty feet in height above the level, and showed in every direction the grinning muzzles of its guns. The tricolour waved placidly from its highest point, and the French were busy constructing a semaphore on the top. There was a ditch at one's feet, some twenty or twenty-two feet deep, and ten feet broad. That was the place where the French crossed--there was their bridge of planks, and here they swarmed in upon the unsuspecting defenders of the Malakoff. They had not ten yards to go. We had two hundred, and the men were then out of breath. Were not planks better than scaling-ladders? This explains how easily the French crossed. On the right hand, as one issued from the head of the French trench, was a line of gabions on the ground running up to this bridge. That was a flying sap, which the French made the instant they got out of the trench into the Malakoff, so that they were enabled to pour a continuous stream of men into the works, with comparative safety from the flank fire of the enemy. In the same way they at once dug a trench across the work inside, to see if there were any galvanic wires to fire mines. Mount the parapet and descend--of what amazing thickness are these embrasures! From the level of the ground inside to the top of the parapet cannot be less than eighteen feet. There were eight rows of gabions piled one above the other, and as each row receded towards the top, it left in the ledge below an excellent banquette for the defenders.
[Sidenote: SICKENING SIGHTS.]
Inside the sight was too terrible to dwell upon. The French were carrying away their own and the Russian wounded, and four distinct piles of dead were formed to clear the way. The ground was marked by pools of blood, and the smell was noisome; swarms of flies settled on dead and dying; broken muskets, torn clothes, caps, shakos, swords, bayonets, bags of bread, canteens, and haversacks, were lying in indescribable confusion all over the place, mingled with heaps of shot, of grape, bits of shell, cartridges, case and canister, loose powder, official papers, and cooking tins. The traverses were so high and deep that it was almost impossible to get a view of the whole of the Malakoff from any one spot, and there was a high mound of earth in the middle of the work, either intended as a kind of shell proof, or the remains of the old White Tower. The guns, which to the number of sixty were found in the work, were all ships' guns, and mounted on ships' carriages, and worked in the same way as ships' guns. There were a few old-fashioned, oddly-shaped mortars. On looking around the work, one might see that the strength of the Russian was his weakness--he fell into his own bomb-proofs. In the parapet of the work might be observed several entrances--very narrow outside, but descending and enlarging downwards, and opening into rooms some four or five feet high, and eight or ten square. These were only lighted from the outside by day, and must have been pitch dark at night, unless the men were allowed lanterns. Here the garrison retired when exposed to a heavy bombardment. The odour of these narrow chambers was villanous, and the air reeked with blood and abominations unutterable. There were several of these places, and they might bid defiance to the heaviest mortars in the world: over the roof was a layer of ships' masts, cut into junks, and deposited carefully; then there was over them a solid layer of earth, and above that a layer of gabions, and above that a pile of earth again.
In one of these dungeons, excavated in the solid rock, and which was probably underneath the old White Tower, the officer commanding seems to have lived. It must have been a dreary residence. The floor and the entrance were littered a foot deep with reports, returns, and perhaps despatches assuring the Czar that the place had sustained no damage. The garrison were in these narrow chambers enjoying their siesta, which they invariably take at twelve o'clock, when the French burst in upon them like a torrent, and, as it were, drowned them in their holes. The Malakoff was a closed work, only open at the rear to the town; and the French having once got in, threw open a passage to their own rear, and closed up the front and the lateral communications with the curtains leading to the Great Redan and to the Little Redan. Thus they were enabled to pour in their supports, in order and without loss, in a continued stream, and to resist the efforts of the Russians, which were desperate and repeated, to retake the place. They brought up their field-guns at once, and swept the Russian reserves and supports, while Strange's batteries from the Quarries carried death through their ranks in every quarter of the Karabelnaïa. With the Malakoff the enemy lost Sebastopol. The ditch outside, towards the north, was full of French and Russians, piled over each other in horrid confusion. On the right, towards the Little Redan, the ground was literally strewn with bodies as thick as they could lie, and in the ditch they were piled over each other. Here the French, victorious in the Malakoff, met with a heavy loss and a series of severe repulses. The Russians lay inside the work in heaps, like carcases in a butcher's cart; and the wounds, the blood--the sight exceeded all I had hitherto witnessed.
Descending from the Malakoff, we came upon a suburb of ruined houses open to the sea--it was filled with dead. The Russians had crept away into holes and corners in every house, to die like poisoned rats; artillery horses, with their entrails torn open by shot, were stretched all over the space at the back of the Malakoff, marking the place where the Russians moved up their last column to retake it under the cover of a heavy field battery. Every house, the church, some public buildings, sentry-boxes--all alike were broken and riddled by cannon and mortar. Turning to the left, we proceeded by a very tall snow-white wall of great length to the dockyard gateway. This wall was pierced and broken through and through with cannon. Inside were the docks, which, naval men say, were unequalled in the world. The steamer was blazing merrily in one of them. Gates and store sides were splintered and pierced by shot. There were the stately dockyard buildings on the right, which used to look so clean and white and spruce. Parts of them were knocked to atoms, and hung together in such shreds and patches that it was only wonderful they cohered. The soft white stone of which they and the walls were made was readily knocked to pieces by a cannon-shot.
Of all the pictures of the horrors of war which have ever been presented to the world, the hospital of Sebastopol offered the most horrible, heartrending, and revolting. How the poor human body could be mutilated, and yet hold its soul within it, when every limb is shattered, and every vein and artery is pouring out the life-stream, one might study there at every step, and at the same time wonder how little will kill! The building used as an hospital was one of the noble piles inside the dockyard wall, and was situated in the centre of the row, at right angles to the line of the Redan. The whole row was peculiarly exposed to the action of shot and shell bounding over the Redan, and to the missiles directed at the Barrack Battery; and it bore in sides, roof, windows, and doors, frequent and distinctive proofs of the severity of the cannonade.
[Sidenote: A PEEP AT THE GREAT REDAN.]
Entering one of these doors, I beheld such a sight as few men, thank God, have ever witnessed. In a long, low room, supported by square pillars arched at the top, and dimly lighted through shattered and unglazed window-frames, lay the wounded Russians, who had been abandoned to our mercies by their General. The wounded, did I say? No, but the dead--the rotten and festering corpses of the soldiers, who were left to die in their extreme agony, untended, uncared for, packed as close as they could be stowed, some on the floor, others on wretched trestles and bedsteads, or pallets of straw, sopped and saturated with blood, which oozed and trickled through upon the floor, mingling with the droppings of corruption. With the roar of exploding fortresses in their ears--with shells and shot pouring through the roof and sides of the rooms in which they lay--with the crackling and hissing of fire around them, these poor fellows, who had served their loving friend and master the Czar but too well, were consigned to their terrible fate. Many might have been saved by ordinary care. Many lay, yet alive, with maggots crawling about in their wounds. Many, nearly mad by the scene around them, or seeking escape from it in their extremest agony, had rolled away under the beds, and glared out on the heart-stricken spectator--oh! with such looks! Many, with legs and arms broken and twisted, the jagged splinters sticking through the raw flesh, implored aid, water, food, or pity, or, deprived of speech by the approach of death, or by dreadful injuries in the head or trunk, pointed to the lethal spot. Many seemed bent alone on making their peace with Heaven.
The attitudes of some were so hideously fantastic as to appal and root one to the ground by a sort of dreadful fascination. Could that bloody mass of clothing and white bones ever have been a human being, or that burnt black mass of flesh have ever held a human soul? It was fearful to think what the answer must be. The bodies of numbers of men were swollen and bloated to an incredible degree; and the features, distended to a gigantic size, with eyes protruding from the sockets, and the blackened tongue lolling out of the mouth, compressed tightly by the teeth, which had set upon it in the death-rattle, made one shudder and reel round.
In the midst of one of these "chambers of horrors"--for there were many of them--were found some dead and some living English soldiers, and among them poor Captain Vaughan, of the 90th, who afterwards died of his wounds. I confess it was impossible for me to stand the sight, which horrified our most experienced surgeons; the deadly, clammy stench, the smell of gangrened wounds, of corrupted blood, of rotting flesh, were intolerable and odious beyond endurance. But what must have the wounded felt, who were obliged to endure all this, and who passed away without a hand to give them a cup of water, or a voice to say one kindly word to them? Most of these men were wounded on Saturday--many, perhaps, on the Friday before--indeed it is impossible to say how long they might have been there. In the hurry of their retreat, the Muscovites seem to have carried in dead men to get them out of the way, and to have put them on pallets in horrid mockery. So that their retreat was secured, the enemy cared but little for their wounded. On Monday only did they receive those whom we sent out to them during a brief armistice for the purpose, which was, I believe, sought by ourselves, as our over-crowded hospitals could not contain, and our over-worked surgeons could not attend to, any more.
The Great Redan was next visited. Such a scene of wreck and ruin!--all the houses behind it a mass of broken stones--a clock turret, with a shot right through the clock; a pagoda in ruins; another clock tower, with all the clock destroyed save the dial, with the words, "Barwise, London," thereon; cook-houses, where human blood was running among the utensils; in one place a shell had lodged in the boiler, and blown it and its contents, and probably its attendants, to pieces. Everywhere wreck and destruction. This evidently was a beau quartier once. The oldest inhabitant could not have recognized it on that fatal day. Climbing up to the Redan, which was fearfully cumbered with the dead, we witnessed the scene of the desperate attack and defence, which cost both sides so much blood. The ditch outside made one sick--it was piled up with English dead, some of them scorched and blackened by the explosion, and others lacerated beyond recognition. The quantity of broken gabions and gun-carriages here was extraordinary; the ground was covered with them. The bomb-proofs were the same as in the Malakoff, and in one of them a music-book was found, with a woman's name in it, and a canary bird and a vase of flowers were outside the entrance.
Chapter VIII
Russian Steamers--Tornado--Destruction of Russian Steamers--Sinope avenged--A Year's Work--Its Effect on the British Army--Destruction of Russian Docks--Opinions of Russian Officers on Prospects of Peace--Medals and Ribands--Celebration of the Alma Anniversary--Honours to French and English Commanders--Encampment of Russian Army--Russian Method of removing Dead and Wounded--Anxiety of British Army and Navy "to do something"--Activity of the Russians--Appearance of Balaklava--What the British Army were doing to kill Time.
As the Russian steamers were intact, notwithstanding the efforts of the French battery at the head of the roads near Inkerman to touch them, it was resolved, on the day after the fall of the place, to construct a battery on the ruins of Fort Paul, within 700 yards of the northern shore, under which they had taken refuge. The steamers lay in three irregular lines to the eastward of Fort Catherine, where the deep creeks in the high cliffs gave them some sort of shelter against the fire of the French. There they had been agents of much mischief and injury to the Allies, from the time of the battle of Inkerman. There was the famous Vladimir, with her two large funnels and elegant clipper hull; the Elboeuf, the steamer which made the celebrated dash into the Black Sea through all our fleet the year before, and burnt some Turkish vessels near Heraclea, just as the Vladimir was seen in Odessa harbour in the month of July, 1854; there was the Gromonossetz, which had caused such an annoyance from the Dockyard Creek; the Chersonese, and Odessa; and there were three others with hard, and to me unknown names, as calmly floating on the water as though no eager eyes were watching from every battery to lay a gun upon them. A number of very capacious dockyard lumps and row-boats were also secured in these creeks, or hung on by the steamers.
[Sidenote: DESTRUCTION OF RUSSIAN VESSELS.]
On the morning of the 11th, about an hour after midnight, an exceedingly violent storm raged over the camp. The wind blew with such fury as to make the hut in which I was writing rock to and fro, at the same time filling it with fine dust. The fires in Sebastopol, fanned by the wind, spread fast, and the glare of the burning city illuminated the whole arch of the sky towards the north-west. At 2 o'clock A.M. the storm increased in strength, and rain fell heavily; the most dazzling flames of lightning shot over the plateau and lighted up the camp; the peals of thunder were so short and startling as to resemble, while they exceeded in noise, the report of cannon. The rain somewhat lessened the intensity of the fire at Sebastopol, but its flames and those of the lightning at times contended for the mastery. There was, indeed, a great battle raging in the skies, and its thunder mocked to scorn our heaviest cannonade. In the whole course of my life I never heard or saw anything like the deluge of rain which fell at 4 o'clock. It beat on the roof with a noise like that of a cataract: it was a veritable waterspout. The lightning at last grew fainter, and the gusts less violent. At 9.45 the tornado passed over the camp once more--hail, storm, and rain. The ground was converted into a mass of mud.
In the course of the afternoon some of the Russian guns in the ruined battery below the Redan were turned on these steamers, and in a few rounds--not more than twelve, I think--succeeded in hulling them eight times. The range was, however, rather long, and it became expedient to move a little nearer. On Tuesday evening, when Lieutenant Gough, of the London--who commanded in the Naval Batteries on the Left Attack--came down with his men, he was ordered to take his relief over to the Right Attack and to accompany Lieutenant Anderson, R.E., down to the town, in order to erect a battery for two 95-cwt. guns on the right of St. Paul's Battery. The site of this battery was about 700 yards from Fort Catherine, on the opposite side. The men, although deprived of the quiet night and undisturbed repose they anticipated, set to work with a will, and began throwing up the parapet and filling gabions; and as it was possible that some interruption of the work might take place from the other side, a covering party of 120 men was ordered down from the trenches. There were French sentries in charge of this portion of the place, and the little party found that their Allies were on the qui vive, and were keeping a sharp look-out on all sides. The men had been working some time, when it was observed that one of the enemy's steamers had left the north side, and was slowly and noiselessly dropping down to the very spot where the sailors and the covering party were at their labours. The night was dark, but they could clearly make out the steamer edging down upon them, and coming closer and closer. Every moment they expected their guns to open upon them with grape and canister. The men, therefore, lay down upon their faces, and kept as near to the ground as they could, and the steamer came over gently till she was within about 100 yards of the very spot where they had been working. They heard her anchor splash into the water, and then the rattle of her cable as it ran through the hawsehole. Now, certainly, they were "going to catch it," but, no--the Russian opened no port and showed no light, but seemed to be making himself comfortable in his new quarters.
Captain Villiers, of the 47th, who commanded the covering party, ordered his men to observe the utmost silence, and the same injunction was given to the seamen. About 2.30 in the morning, when she had been an hour or so in her novel berth, a broad light was perceived in her fore hatchway. The leading steamer on the opposite side in a second afterwards exhibited gleams of equal brightness, and then one! two! three! four! five!--as though from signal guns, the remaining steamers, with one exception, emitted jets of fire. The jets soon became columns of flame and smoke--the wind blew fresh and strong, so the fire soon spread with rapidity, and soon lighted up the whole of the heavens. The masts were speedily licked and warmed into a fiery glow, and the rigging burst out into fitful wavering lines of light, struggling with the wind for life: the yards shed lambent showers of sparks and burning splinters upon the water. The northern works could be readily traced by the light of the conflagration, and the faces of the Russian soldiers and sailors who were scattered about on the face of the cliff shone out now and then, and justified Rembrandt. The vessels were soon nothing but huge arks of blinding light, which hissed and crackled fiercely, and threw up clouds of sparks and embers; the guns, as they became hot, exploded, and shook the crazy hulls to atoms. One after another they went down into the seething waters.
At daybreak only one steamer remained. A boat pushed alongside her from the shore, and after remaining about ten minutes regained the shore. Very speedily the vessel began to be seized with a sort of internal convulsion--first she dipped her bows, then her stern, then gave a few uneasy shakes, and at length, after a short quiver, went down bodily, cleverly scuttled. Thus was Sinope avenged. Of the men who planned, the sailors who executed, and the ships which were engaged on that memorable expedition, no trace remained. Korniloff, Nachimoff, Istomine, and their crews, disappeared: their vessels rest at the bottom of the roadstead of Sebastopol. The Russians preferred being agents of their own destruction, and did not give the conqueror a chance of parading the fruits of his victory. We could not delight the good people of Plymouth or Portsmouth by the sight of Russian liners and steamers. We could only drive the enemy to the option of destroying or of doing the work for him, and he invariably preferred the former.
[Sidenote: DOUBTFUL PROSPECTS OF PEACE.]
In one year we stormed the heights of the Alma, sustained the glorious disaster of Balaklava, fought the great fight of Inkerman, swept the sea of Azoff and its seaboard, wasted Kertch and seized upon Yenikale, witnessed the battle of the Tchernaya, opened seven bombardments upon Sebastopol, held in check every general and every soldier that Russia could spare; and, after the endurance of every ill that an enemy at home and abroad could inflict upon us--after passing through the summer's heat and winter's frost--after being purged in the fire of sickness and death, repulse and disaster, and, above all, in the glow of victory, the British standard floated over Sebastopol! But our army was not the same. Physiologists tell us that we undergo perpetual charge, and that not a bit of the John Smith of 1854 goes into the composition of the same respected individual in 1864; but we had managed to work up tens of hundreds of atoms in our British army between 1854 and 1855, and there were few indeed to be found in the body corporate who landed in the Crimea a twelvemonth before. Some regiments had been thrice renewed, others had been changed twice over. The change was not for the better--the old stuff was better than the new. The old soldiers had disappeared; in some regiments there were not more than fifteen men, in others there were not so many, remaining out of those who moved in magnificent parade to their first bivouac. Those whom the war had swallowed up were not replaced by better men. The Light Division--those steady, noble soldiers of the Rifle Brigade; the gallant Fusileers; the 19th, the 23rd, the 33rd, the 77th, the 88th--the men who drew the teeth of that terrible Russian Battery on the bloody steeps of the Alma--how few of them were then left to think and wonder at the failure in the Redan! The Second Division, old companions of the Light in hard fighting and in hard work, were sadly reduced. The Third Division, though singularly freed from active participation in any of the great battles or sanguinary struggles of the war, had been heavily smitten by sickness, and had borne a large share of the exhausting and harassing duties of the trenches and of the siege, and its old soldiers had been used up, as those of the other corps. The Fourth Division earned for itself a high reputation. In the fierce contest of Inkerman it won imperishable laurels, which few of the winners were left to wear. As to the Guards--those majestic battalions which secured the fluttering wings of victory on the Alma, and with stubborn front withstood the surge of Muscovite infantry which rolled up the ravines of Inkerman--disease and battle had done their work but too surely, notwithstanding the respite from the trenches during our wintry spring-time, which was allowed perforce to their rapidly vanishing columns.
The silence in camp was almost alarming; were it not for a gun now and then between the town and the north side, and across the Tchernaya, it would have been appalling. The Naval Brigade was broken up and sent on board ship. Our batteries were disarmed; the Army Works Corps, assisted by soldiers, engaged in the formation of a new road from Balaklava, parallel with the line of railway. Everything around us indicated an intention on the part of the chiefs of putting the army into winter quarters on the site of their encampment.
The Sappers and Miners sank mines, to destroy the docks that had cost Russia so much anxiety, money, and bloodshed; and, if it were not that they were intended to be, and had been, accessory to violence, one would have regretted that such splendid memorials of human skill should be shattered to atoms. But the fleet of Sinope sailed thence, in them it was repaired on its return; and these vessels were built, not to foster peace and commerce, but to smite and destroy them.
There was an armistice on Tuesday, Sept. 11th, to effect an interchange of letters, for the benefit of the prisoners, and to make inquiries respecting missing officers on both sides. The Russian officer who conducted it, and who was supposed to have been the commander of the Vladimir, expressed the same opinion as the Russian Admiral did on Monday, Sept. 10th--"With this before us," pointing to the ruins of Sebastopol, "peace is farther off than ever." The Russians had very large parks of artillery on the north side of the harbour; and the piles of provisions, matériel, and coal which were visible, showed that they did not want the means of carrying on the war, as far as such things were concerned. Many of the guns found here were cast at Carron, from the letters on their trunnion heads and breeches.
The enemy persisted in casting up formidable earthworks on the north side, and we looked on as we did from September 27 till October 17, 1854, and saw them preparing their defences, with the sure conviction that we should be able to carry them, or sap up to them, or take them in some way or other in a year or two. Meantime, the weather came in with a word of its own, and said to our deliberating Generals, "Stop! as you have waited so long, I won't let you move now."
It was on the 19th of September, twelve months before this was written, that the Allied armies marched from Old Fort, and that the Russians drew first blood at Bouljanak. What an eventful year had elapsed! and how few survived through all our sufferings and our glories!
The medals and ribands issued to commanding officers were distributed on the 20th of September, about ten medals for each company. As to the riband, there was but one opinion,--that it was unbecoming and mesquin to a degree. Men differed as to the merits of the medal; but a large majority abused it, and the clasps were likened generally to the labels on public-house wine-bottles. The proceedings at the distribution were tame and spiritless. A regiment was drawn up, with the commanding officer in front; beside him stood a sergeant, with a big bag. "John Smith" was called.
"Here."
The Colonel dipped his hand into the bag, took out a small parcel, and said, "John Smith, you were Alma, Balaklava, and Inkerman?"
"Yes." The Colonel handed him the parcel, and John Smith retired to his place in the ranks, carrying the said packet in his hand, which he opened at the "dismiss." Perhaps the John Smith alluded to never saw a shot fired except at a distance. He might have been on peaceful guard at Lord Raglan's head-quarters on the 5th of November; yet he wears the clasp for Inkerman. He might have been engaged in no more sanguinary work than that of killing oxen and sheep for the division in the commissariat slaughter-house, and yet he will show on his breast "Crimea," "Alma," "Balaklava," "Inkerman."
This great anniversary was celebrated enthusiastically throughout the army. There were many "Alma dinners" in the regiments, among both officers and men; and music and song kept the camp awake till long after midnight. Many a memory of the dead was revived, many an old wound reopened, at these festive meetings. The French also had their banquets and festivities. They had a grand ceremony early in the morning--a Missa Solennis for the repose of the dead.
General Pelissier was made a Marshal of France, and received from Her Majesty the Grand Cross of the Bath. Of the latter order he seemed exceedingly proud, and he signed his name "Pelissier, G.C.B." General Simpson received the distinction of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.
[Sidenote: RESOURCES OF THE RUSSIANS.]
At daybreak on the morning of the 21st of September, I saw through the mist on the Mackenzie ridge a numerous line of watch-fires, and later in the early light a strong column of the Russian infantry was visible in bivouac to our right of the telegraph station and to the left of the Spur Battery, near the Mackenzie Road. Part of these marched away again in the course of the day; the rest remained in the same place, and hutted themselves with great skill and alacrity. They were encamped in a sort of chapparell, and they converted the branches into the sides and coverings of their huts. Their arms were piled when they first arrived at the bivouac, but three hours later the glistening barrels and bayonets had disappeared, having possibly been placed in some dry and secure place. Having secured their right flank by the very formidable earthworks and batteries which we permitted the enemy to erect, in addition to their former defences and their regular forts, the Russians directed the bulk of their army to protect their centre, resting on the Tchernaya and Mackenzie, and their left at Aitodor, and on the Upper Belbek to Bakschiserai. They prepared to hold this extensive line; and as the Allies could scarcely spare men enough to send to Eupatoria, and thence to march on Simpheropol, or to force the Russian position on the Belbek by a moving corps to operate against them on the north, and as there was no apparent intention of attacking them from Inkerman or the Tchernaya, the dead lock was likely enough not to be relaxed that winter.
The quantity of stores removed by the Russians from the north side to their depôt showed that they were not in want of provisions, unless they took the trouble to carry dummy sacks and fill their carts with "make-believes." It must have been difficult for them to feed their army, but somehow or other they did so. They left considerable quantities of food behind them in the city; large flocks and herds studded the plains near the citadel. The soldiers who fell into the hands of the Sardinians and French on the 16th of August carried abundance of bread and spirits, and they had meat and plenty of everything except water, when they came down to attack the Allies; so that, altogether, I was not so very sanguine as to think the Russians would be forced to abandon their position on the approach of winter. The country around them would supply abundance of wood for fuel, and they were skilled in making comfortable and warm underground huts. The enemy, therefore, would be as well housed as the Allies, supposing the latter succeeded in getting up huts before the winter set in. "Leaving them alone" would never drive a Russian army out of the field; the only thing to do that was the French and English bayonet, and plenty of fighting.
The Muscovite generals cannot be accused of any great regard for their killed and wounded, but they have certainly much respect for the prejudices and feelings of their soldiers. We were over and over again astonished at the wonderful way in which the dead and wounded disappeared after the repulse of a sortie in which there were probably 200 of the enemy put hors de combat. Except the dead and wounded left in our trenches, none were ever to be seen after such contests when day broke. A soldier of the 68th (M'Geevor), who was taken prisoner in a sortie, and who returned to his regiment after a long and (to others) interesting march in Russia, explained the mystery, such as it was. On the night alluded to it could not be ascertained what the Russian loss was, but it was certain that the firing had been very heavy and the work very warm while it lasted. As this man was being carried to the rear after a stout resistance, he observed that there were hundreds of soldiers without weapons between the reserves and the column of sortie, and that these men were employed exclusively in removing the dead and wounded, who would otherwise have been left in the hands of the British. The most extensive provision we make in such cases is sending one, or at most two, litters to a regiment, except when the ambulances go out for a pitched battle. Perhaps we do not calculate on leaving our ground, but the best General is always prepared for retreat as well as for victory, and if ever we should be placed in the same circumstances as the Russians have been, it would be advisable to follow their example.
On the 24th Sir Edmund Lyons and Admiral Stewart, with several post-captains, attended at head-quarters, and it was understood that they, in common with the whole fleet, were most anxious "to do something" ere the season was too far advanced for naval operations. At Eupatoria they found no less than 31,000 Turkish infantry in a fine state of discipline, and in perfect readiness for any military service. These soldiers were all reviewed and inspected on the occasion, and officers of rank, English and French, were alike gratified by the disciplined alertness and efficiency of these neglected and almost useless infantry. It is difficult to imagine that these Turks could not have aided us materially in driving the enemy from Sebastopol if strengthened by an English division and two French divisions, which could have been easily spared from the army before Sebastopol. Moreover, they might have been aided by all our cavalry, which were in very excellent condition, and were of no earthly service at Kadikoi or Baidar. Between French, English, and Sardinians, we could have sent a force of at least 5,500 sabres to the north side of the Alma, which certainly would have had nothing to fear from any Russian cavalry in the Crimea. The Land Transport Corps had more than 10,000 horses and mules. The allied fleet could have embarked and landed the whole force in sixty hours, at any point between Balaklava or Kamiesch and Eupatoria. Army and fleet were alike inactive--the only tokens of military life were displayed on the side of the enemy.
The celerity with which they threw up and finished the most formidable-looking redoubts on the land and sea sides was astonishing. The Russians are admirable diggers, and if Marshal Turenne's maxim, that as many battles were won by the spade as by the musket be true, they are good soldiers. The fire across the roads increased in frequency and severity every day, but the mortars of the French caused some injury and impediment to the Russian workmen, and occasionally damaged their magazines.
[Sidenote: RECREATIONS OF THE ARMY.]
The army, French, English, and Sardinians, as well as the few Turkish troops, prepared for the winter with energy, but no steps were taken to operate against the enemy. Balaklava presented a singular aspect. There were only some dozen of the original houses left scattered amid iron storehouses, mountainous piles of wood, heaps of coal, of corn, of forage, of shot and shell, and of stores multitudinous. The harbour was trenched upon by new quays and landing-places, and two long wooden jetties projected far into its waters at the shallow head of the harbour, and rendered good service in taking the pressure off the quays at the waterside. The quantity of corn issued for horses, mules, and ponies in the English army was 280,000lb. daily.
Many of the officers were hutted, some constructed semi-subterranean residences, and the camp was studded all over with the dingy roofs, which at a distance looked much like an aggregate of molehills. In order to prevent ennui or listlessness after the great excitement of so many months in the trenches, the Generals of Division began to drill our veterans, and to renew the long-forgotten pleasures of parades, field-days, and inspections. In all parts of the open ground about the camps, the visitor might have seen men with Crimean medals and Balaklava and Inkerman clasps, practising goose-step or going through extension movements, learning, in fact, the A B C of their military education, though they had already seen a good deal of fighting and soldiering. Still there were periods when the most inveterate of martinets rested from their labour, and the soldier, having nothing else to do, availed himself of the time and money at his disposal to indulge in the delights of the canteen. Road-making occupied some leisure hours, but the officers had very little to do, and found it difficult to kill time, riding about Sebastopol, visiting Balaklava, foraging at Kamiesch, or hunting for quail, which were occasionally found in swarms all over the steppe, and formed most grateful additions to the mess-table. There was no excitement in front; the Russians remained immovable in their position at Mackenzie's Farm. The principal streets of Sebastopol lost the charm of novelty and possession. Even Cathcart's Hill was deserted, except by the "look-out officer" for the day, or by a few wandering strangers and visitors.
Book VIII
THE ATTITUDE OF THE TWO ARMIES--THE DEMONSTRATIONS FROM BAIDAR--THE RECONNAISSANCE--THE MARCH FROM EUPATORIA--ITS FAILURE--THE EXPEDITION TO KINBURN AND ODESSA.
Chapter I
Strange Inaction--What might have been done--The North Side--Its Fortifications--Sick Officers--French Reconnaissances towards Aitodor--An Ambuscade--The Mounted Staff Corps and the Ambulance Corps disbanded--Comforts for the Sick--Previous Mistakes--Disbandment of the Naval Brigade--Its Services--Rumours of Active Service--Road-making--The Russians Renew the Fire--A Serious Accident--The Sailors' Experiment--An Explosion.
The contrast between the actual proceedings of the Allied armies and the fevered dreams in which the public at home, as represented by the press, soon after the capture of the south side, indulged, was as striking as it was painful. The Russians, so far from flying in discomfort over boundless wastes, calmly strengthened their position on the north side. The face of the country bristled with their cannon and their batteries. Day and night the roar of their guns sounded through our camp, and occasionally equalled the noise of the old cannonades, which we hoped had died into silence for ever. There was no sign of any intention on their part to abandon a position on which they had lavished so much care and labour. They retired from the south side when it became untenable; it had been shaken to pieces by a bombardment which it was impracticable for us to renew. In their new position, they had placed between themselves and us a deep arm of the sea, a river, and the sides of a plateau as steep as a wall. We permitted them to get off at their leisure, and looked on, much as we might have gazed on the mimic representation of such a scene at Astley's, while the Russian battalions filed over the narrow bridge, emerging in unbroken order out of that frightful sea of raging fire and smoke, which was tossed up into billows of flame by the frequent explosion of great fortresses and magazines.
[Sidenote: THE ARMY HUTTED.]
With the aid of a few men the army would have been ready to take the field and to carry provisions and ammunition for our available strength of bayonets detached on a short expedition. As to the French, they had certified their mobility by the rapid demonstration of four divisions on Baidar. Then, why did not the English move? Orders and counter-orders were sent day after day--requisitions on Captain This to know how many mules he had to carry ball cartridge, orders to Captain That to turn out his battery for the purpose of taking the field at daybreak next morning; counter-orders in the evening recountered and retracted at night, till it was hard to say what was to be done; and if the men who gave the commands were in half as confused a state of mind as those who received them, they were indeed in a pitiable plight. Cato with his Plato could not have been at all puzzled like unto them. It was quite evident that the expectations of the people at home were not gratified to the full extent, that we were not in undisputed possession of maritime Sebastopol, that the Russians were not utterly defeated, and that the campaign would have to be renewed the following year by doing what might have been done immediately after the fall of the place.
Large parties of our men went down every day to Sebastopol, and returned with timber, doors, window-frames, joists, slabs of marble and stonework, grates, glass, locks, iron, Stourbridge firebricks, of which a large quantity was found, and various other articles of common use in camp, and the huts which arose on every side were models of ingenuity in the adaptation of Russian property to British and French uses. However, the vast majority of the soldiers were under canvas, and were then likely to be so for a couple of months longer. The trenches--those monuments of patient suffering, of endurance, of courage--were fast disappearing. The guns were withdrawn. The gabions were going fast, for the men received permission to use them for fuel. It was melancholy, amid all these sounds of rejoicing and victory, to think that an army had been all but lost and swallowed up in these narrow dykes, and that it was "done by mistake." The firing into the town was occasionally very heavy, and was returned with spirit by the French mortars, and by a few guns in position.
The number of sick officers anxious to return home was not on the decrease. Many of those whose names appeared in general orders were, however, sufferers in the attack of the 8th of September. The proportion of men invalided on account of ill-health was about equal to the number of officers. Poor fellows! they, however, had no "private urgent affairs" to attend to, and that was the cause assigned for many "leaves of absence." It is curious and interesting to observe how rank and social position carry with them special cares of business and the labour of affairs from which the lowlier classes are exempted. Thus, the officers of the Guards seemed to be harassed to death by "urgent private affairs," which could no how be settled anywhere but in England, and which required their presence in that land of business from October till just the week after Christmas before there was the smallest chance of their satisfactory adjustment. How the gallant fellows could have managed to stay in the army and attend to their regimental duties with such delicate negotiations to conduct, such stupendous arithmetical investigations to make, such a coil of accounts to examine, such interviews to go through, such a constant pressure of affairs to sustain, is inconceivable! Sometimes no less than three of them succumbed on the same day, and appeared in orders as victims to these cruel urgencies. There were some people in camp who maintained that the killing of grouse, partridges, pheasants, and salmon, is a necessary condition of existence, and that when these were combined with the pleasures of society, with a light course of opera, and the claims of the family, they constituted an urgent private affair quite strong enough to draw any man from the Crimea. No one blamed these officers for feeling so strongly that they were citizens. We should all have liked to get home if it had been consistent with our duty, but some of our officers think they have nothing to do when once the fighting is over. After a time, our Allies began to feel their way towards the enemy's position on our rear and on the right.
The position of the armies, with the exception of the movement of the troops towards Baidar, remained unchanged in its larger features. Pelissier seemed inclined to rest upon his bâton for the time. His gaze was fixed, no doubt, upon the Mackenzie plateau, but his courage failed him; nor did he care to repeat his little proverb, which was in his mouth when slaughter and bloodshed were spoken of in his presence in reference to our grand assaults--"On ne peut pas faire des omelettes sans casser des oeufs." The Marshal gave up the manufacture of omelettes: he had plenty of eggs if he had liked to break them.
[Sidenote: PREPARATIONS FOR STAGNATION.]
After the siege was over, the Mounted Staff Corps and the Ambulance Corps ceased to exist, and the Duke of Newcastle left the camp on a cruise to the coast of Circassia. Of course the Duke of Newcastle's presence had no more to do with the fate of these bodies than it had with the conduct and events of the war, but it was odd enough that the two, which were most lauded at the time of their creation, and at whose birth his Grace presided with parental solicitude, should have come to an end, within the space of a few months, under his very eyes. The service of the ambulance was performed by soldiers detached from the army for that purpose, and officers of the line were employed in command of them at a time when they could be very ill spared from their regiments. Charges of harshness were made by those sent in their charge to Scutari, &c., against some of the old ambulance men; they at all events served as a foil to the allegations that the men were as comfortable as they could be made on all occasions. The stream set the other way, and the authorities vied with one another in providing every accommodation, and even luxury, for the sick and wounded soldier. Dr. Hall at various periods received requisitions for such articles as "Rose water!" "Eau de Cologne!" "Champagne!" Different times these from what the army had the year before, when Sir George Brown, like some great bull of Basan, went bellowing over the camps of the affrighted Light Division, seeking for "medical comforts," that he might devour them in his wrath, and goring and butting Dr. Alexander and Dr. Tice because they would not reduce their store of medicines to that blessed old Peninsular allowance of which Sir George had only the dim recollections of a subaltern, although, with many strange oaths and ancient instances, he affirmed them to be the perfection of pharmaceutical wisdom. Perhaps the public, "the confounded public," as they were sometimes called by certain people, agreed with me in thinking that things might have been, mended when they learned that just two hours before the attack on the Redan the surgeon in the Quarries was "run out" of lint, plaster, and bandages, and could get no one to go up to his principal medical officer for them for a long time, although a great action with the enemy was then just impending, and the Quarries were the very place where a large number of casualties must have been expected. This statement I had on the word of a general officer, to whom the surgeon applied for assistance. Again, some regiments did not take down more litters than on ordinary occasions. This practice, however, would be approved by those who maintain, with considerable strength of argumentation, that no wounded officers or men should be taken off the field at all while an action was going on, inasmuch as every wounded man taken to the rear carries off six or eight combatants, who retire on the pretence of carrying or attending on him, thus affording opportunities for skulking and sneaking away to a few cowardly men who set a bad example to others.
The army was amused by rumours of active service, while in camp there were signs of hybernation. The work of the army was actually that of preparation, not for motion, but for stagnation. The men were engaged on great roads from the ports to the front, which will be permanent marks of the occupation of this portion of the Crimea by the Allied armies for centuries; in fact, with so much labour at their disposal, our authorities were determined, if possible, to atone for the apathy of the autumn before. The roads which we made were almost beyond the requirements of an army of temporary occupation. They were broad and well paved--in some places they had been tunnelled through the rock, which here and there could only be removed by heavy blasting charges. The railway assumed an appearance of great activity. Beside it wound the Central Road, and from the new central depôt, removed from the Col de Balaklava to an open space in the rear of the Second Division, and between the Guards' Brigade and the Fourth Division, there were divisional roads, which communicated with the divisional depôts. All these preparations were made to enable the army to exist comfortably in its winter cantonments, to bring up huts, food, clothing, and fuel, and to remove guns, mortars, &c., from the front. For these peaceful labours we were blessed by the most lovely weather. The days were warm, and the air was charmingly fresh and pure. The autumnal or second summer of the Crimea shone upon us with all the delightful influences of repose. The earth teemed again with herbs and flowers of autumn. Numerous bulbous plants sprung up over the steppes, among which the Colchicum Autumnale held a prominent place, and the hill-sides rung with the frequent volleys directed upon innumerable quail, against which our army waged fierce battle.
On the 27th of September, a shell sent by the Russians burst close to the barracks, and a merchant sailor ran to look at the crater which it formed in the ground. He then entered the building itself, and sauntered about, smoking his pipe till he came to some loose gunpowder, on which, being of a scientific and experimentalizing turn of mind, he tried the effects of dropping several sparks from the burning tobacco. The powder, as is not unusual in such cases, exploded with violence, and blew up the sailor and a sentry outside. They were both dreadfully burnt. As the floor was covered with cartridges and loose powder, the fire spread to a large quantity of combustible matter, reached the magazine, and blew out the walls and ceilings of the central barrack. The flames set fire to the dry woodwork, and in a short time the whole pile of buildings, which were of admirable construction, was in a blaze. All that remained of the Imperial Barracks of Sebastopol in an hour more was a mass of charred and blackened stones. The Russians, thinking that the accident had been caused by their own fire, plied their guns with increased vigour, and threw shot and shell around the place, but did no damage. The act destroyed not less than 30,000 cartloads of wood, which might have been made available for hutting and fuel. It was, on the whole, a miracle that more accidents of the kind did not occur, owing to the neglect of the authorities and the carelessness of the men. No one seemed to think it necessary to destroy the great quantities of powder, loose and in cartridges, in all the Russian batteries, and in every nook and corner of the place. It was only a day or two before the accident that a naval officer pointed out to me the danger arising from the number of live shell lying inside the Redan. The fuses were simply open tubes of wood, and had no caps, so that a spark setting fire to one fuse would cause all the shells to explode. These live shells were to be seen in all directions, generally nicely imbedded near small magazines or piles of cartridges.
Chapter II
The Mixed Commission: its Composition and Proceedings--Spoils of War--Doctors in dudgeon--Strength of the Army in October, 1855--State of the Russian Army--The Deserter's Tale--Newspaper Paragraph--Honours to the Commanders--Preparations for an Expedition--Russian Account of the Capture of Sebastopol--General Simpson's Despatch--Wellington's Circular to all Commanding Officers of Divisions and Brigades, dated Frenada, November 28th, 1812.
[Sidenote: THE MIXED COMMISSION.]
On the 10th of July, 1855, a treaty was entered into between France and England with respect to the distribution of booty and trophies, which authorized the French and English Governments to form a mixed commission for the purpose of classifying and arranging such articles. In compliance with this provision, immediately after the capture of Sebastopol, Marshal Pelissier named the following officers on behalf of the French army:--General of Division Niel, Aide-de-Camp de l'Empéreur, President, and commanding the Engineers; General of Division Thiry, commanding Artillery; Admiral Regault de Genouilly, commanding Marine Artillery; M. Paris, Intendant (Commissary-General); M. Budin, Payeur-Général. General Simpson named the following officers for the English army:--Sir G. Dacres, commanding Royal Artillery; Captain Drummond, R.N.; Colonel Chapman, commanding Royal Engineers; Mr. Drake, Assistant-Commissary-General. It will be observed that the English officers were not equal in rank or numbers to the French members of the Commission.
The Commission met on the 15th of September at the quarters of General Niel. Its first act was to order an inventory in detail to be made of everything found in Sebastopol. To effect this the city and forts were divided, and the care of exploring each part devolved upon sub-commissions.
The following is a list of the members of the sub-Commissions:--
FRENCH.
Mazure, Général d'Artillerie. Feldtrappe, Capitaine du Génie. Laurent, Lieutenant de Vaisseau. Cicoza, Capitaine d'Artillerie. Goutier, Adjoint à l'Intendance. De Calac, Capitaine d'Artillerie. Cadurst, Chef de Bataillon du Génie. Genoux de la Coche, Capitaine de Frégate. La Cabrinière, Sous-intendant.
ENGLISH.
Captain Drummond, R.N. Brigadier-General Dupuis, R.A. Major Staunton, R.E. Commander F. Martin, R.N. Assistant-Commissary-General Crookshank. Captain Shaw, R.A. A. Rumble, R.M.A. Lieutenant Buller, R.N. Captain Montagu, R.E. Assistant-Commissary-General Lundy. Captain Dickson, R.A. A. W. Johnson, Secretary to the Commission.
On the 25th of September the Commission held its second sitting, and all the members were present except General Thiry, who was represented by General Mazare. That officer and Brigadier-General Dupuis, as presidents of the sub-commission, then laid on the table a detailed statement of everything found in Sebastopol. The number of cannon in bronze (brass) was 128; that of iron guns, 3,711; total, 3,839. The President read the convention of the 10th of July, and it was then unanimously agreed that the guns should be divided into two equal parts, paying due regard to the different calibres, and that one-half should be sent to France, the other half to Great Britain, with the exception of two brass field-pieces, which should be offered to General della Marmora, with the approbation of the Commanders-in-chief. It was also resolved that these cannon and guns should remain in Sebastopol, and in the redoubts and fortifications of Kamiesch and Balaklava, till such time as they were not required for the defence of the place, when each Government might do what it liked with its own share. These decisions, taken conformably to the first act of the Convention, left the valuation of the pieces out of the question; but by the 4th article of the same Convention it is agreed that the value of the booty, &c., shall be divided between the two Powers proportionally to the number of men employed by each in the siege. The effective strength of the Anglo-Sardinian army on the 8th of September was 63,715 men, and that of the French army on the same day was 126,705 men. The Commission, therefore, decided that France should have two-thirds, and Great Britain one-third of the value of the booty and trophies.
[Sidenote: THE SPOILS OF WAR.]
It was declared impossible to fix the value of the guns immediately, in consequence of want of sufficient information and of the necessity of employing the iron guns in the defence of the place. The Commission, therefore, passed on to the partition of the other matériel taken, and divided the following into three parts, two for France, and one-third for England, with the understanding that they are to remain for the supply of the defence:--407,314 round shot; shell, 101,755; canister cases, 24,080; gunpowder, 525,000lb.; ball-cartridges for muskets and carbines, 470,000 in good condition, and 160,000 damaged; waggons, 80; yawls, 6; logs of lignum vitæ, 500; anchors of port moorings, 400; anchors of different sizes, 90; grapplings and small anchors, 50; chains for anchors, 200 yards; old copper for sheathing, 104,000lb.; old ropes, 100,000lb.; water-casks, 300; new ropes of different sizes, 50,000lb.; pulleys, 400; spars, 40; tools, 300; bar iron and steel, l,460,000lb.; iron wire, 400lb.; iron checks, 320lb.; sheet iron, 16,000lb.; tin plate, 14,000lb.; red copper, 120,000lb.; nails, 6,000lb.; firwood, a large quantity; pitch and tar, 200 barrels; barrels of paint, 150; small boilers, weighing 6,000lb.; the remains of a steam-engine of 220-horse power, taken out of a steamer burnt by the Russians; large copper boilers, weighing 100,000lb., 8; old copper, 100,000lb.; copper screws, 10,000lb.; old iron, 160,000lb.; large bells, 6; small bells, 10; hospital beds, 350; iron forges, in great numbers; main tackles, 12; coal, 2,000 tons; steam-engines, of 30-horse power, for the basins, 2; large pumps, for the basins, 3; iron boilers, 3; one high-pressure engine of 16-horse power, for the basins; iron cranes, 17; an engine of 12-horse power in the military bakery; two dredging machines of 30-horse power, unserviceable; a still, a clock, six marble statues, two sphinxes, a large basso-relievo; biscuit, 500 tons; flour, 150; barley, 9; buckwheat, 117; oats, 18; millet, 54; wheat, 20; peas, 1-1/2; salt meat, 60; wheat in the granaries, 500 quarters, &c.
The Commission having examined the quantity and quality of the breadstuffs found in the magazines, declared them unfit for the use of the Allied armies, and decided that they should be sent to Eupatoria for the support of the Tartars, to whom the Allies furnish subsistence. The French Intendance is charged with the duty of transporting these supplies. They consisted of 11,000 sacks, weighing 500 tons, of black bread, 370 sacks or 150 tons of flour, 100 sacks or 9 tons of barley; 1,300 sacks or 117 tons of black barley, 18 tons of hay, 54 tons of millet, 20 tons of barley, 1-1/2 tons of peas, 60 tons of salt meat, and 500 quarters of barley in the granaries. The Commission decided further that the few objects of art found in the place should be placed at the disposal of the Generals-in-Chief, and finished the sitting by nominating as secretary M. de Genoux, Capitaine de Frégate, Mr. Johnson, Naval Instructor, being named as English Secretary.
The third sitting took place on the 30th of September, and the subject of their deliberation was the valuation of the guns. As the calibres of the Russian artillery do not correspond with those of the Allies, it was decided unanimously that in the valuation of the guns they should only estimate the value of the metal, which was fixed at 2f. 50c. per kilogramme for brass guns, and at 10c. for iron guns. One of the members observed, that among the brass guns there were two Turkish field-pieces, and it was at once declared to be the wish of the Commanders to put these guns at the disposal of the Ottoman Porte. It was further decided that, as many of the articles could not be divided, such a distribution should take place as might be best arranged, and, accordingly, a high-pressure engine of 20-horse power, a distilling machine, and a clock were comprised in the French list, and in the English a high-pressure engine of 16-horse power and a furnace. As it would be impossible to divide the wood of the houses and buildings to be demolished, the city itself was portioned out, and to the English was allotted the eastern, and to the French the western part.
The following is a part of the English return:--
GUNS IN MALAKOFF, REDAN, &c.
Serviceable. Unserviceable. 8-inch guns 38 23 7 to 7-1/2 inch ditto 76 11 6 to 6-1/2 ditto 846 135 5 to 5-1/2 ditto 310 85 Smaller calibres 449 42 13-inch mortars 17 1 10-inch ditto 8 0 Brass cohorns, 6 to 6-1/2 inch 21 0 Brass field-pieces 16 0 Wall pieces 9 0 ----- --- Total guns 1,790 297 297 --- ----- Total 2,087
The return includes eight 8-inch and two 3-7/8-inch brass guns.
Number Live Powder and small of shot. Shell. Grape. Shell. Ammunition.
257,314 60,515 13,380 1,240 419,200lb. of powder; 436,000lb. of ammunition.
Three small bells and one large one, of fine tones. Two marine condensing steam-engines of 30-horse power, in good condition, nearly new £2,000 Three large pumps for pumping out the docks, in good condition, with gear complete 2,500 Three iron boilers for engines 1,500 Spare gear for the above 700 Blocks, with brass sheaves 10 One 16-horse power engine, for pumping out cofferdam, not complete 800 Three 3 ton cranes, good 1,500 One ditto, not fixed, good 200 One 12-horse power condensing engine, for bakery 200 One 20-horse high pressure engine, incomplete, with gear packed in cases 900 Iron boiler and iron chimney, complete 800 Copper boiler, for steaming plank 336 Pair of 220-horse power marine engines, unfit for use, original value 12,000 Eight copper boilers for ditto, repairable, 50 tons 5,600 Patent ship cradle dredging machine, &c. 3,100 ------ Copper, pumps, forges, hydraulic pump 32,146 Cranes, &c. 13,280 ------ Total £45,426
This, taken with the French return, gives the total in the list; but there were an immense number of small articles which would swell this inventory to a formidable extent. The Karabelnaïa, or English side, it will be observed, contained the largest and most valuable portion of the articles captured. The fourteen bells were divided thus--one of 2500·00 kilos. French Parc de Siége, one 21 cwt. ditto, one 16 cwt. ditto, one 533·00 kilos. at Right Siege Train, another of 146·00 kilos. at ditto, one 88·00 kilos. at French Parc de Siége, one 76·00 kilos. at Right Siege Train, one of 1 cwt. at Parc de Siége, one of 3 qrs. 22lb. at ditto, ditto; one of 3 qrs. 17lb. at Parc du Moulin; one of 36·00 kilos. at Right Siege Train; one of 26·45lb. at French Parc de Siége; one of 9·00 kilos. at General Mazare's office.
[Sidenote: ANGRY DOCTORS.]
The mixed Commission combined the functions of the three infernal judges with great skill, and was by turns Minos, Æacus, and Rhadamanthus--for, although it condemned no one to death, it consigned many worthless bodies of matériel to destruction. Its deliberations were perturbed, if not suspended, by the attentions of the enemy's cannoneers, for the street in which the house of the commissioners was situate was selected with a view to remind them of the value of guns, balls, and gunpowder, as it was completely enfiladed by the fire of one of the batteries. Sometimes a shot bumped against the walls of the mansion, and shook the bodies corporate, though it did not disturb the nerves of the members. Sometimes a shell blurted into the rooms, and routed outlying artists as they sketched the ruins of Sebastopol. But the commissioners pursued and terminated their labours.
It is generally known that Englishmen like to grumble. Is it true that England gives them reason for indulging in their notorious tendencies? Now, for instance, the doctors (in common with nearly every class of officers) were highly indignant at the alleged neglect and indifference of the authorities to their claims. Is it to be understood that English military surgeons are not entitled to any honorary reward? Lord Panmure did not say so, but he let Lord Raglan's shade stand betwixt him and the angry doctors. The case stood thus:--After the publication of the lists of brevets, promotions, and decorations of the Bath, &c., Dr. Hall, urged thereunto by sundry weighty considerations, addressed an energetic and reasonable letter to Dr. Andrew Smith, animadverting upon, or at least pointing distinctly to, the exclusion of the surgeons of the army from the rewards bestowed with no niggard hand upon their comrades of the Staff and of the regiments. Dr. Smith sent that letter to Lord Panmure, and his Lordship, who has not studied polemical divinity for nothing, and is, moreover, a capital hand at finding out a good official excuse, replied to it, and met the case by a plea of confession and avoidance. Nothing would his Lordship be more ready, nothing was he more anxious to do, than to recommend deserving medical officers for promotion, but the fact was, that he was in utter ignorance of the deserts of the gentlemen in question; for, on looking to Lord Raglan's despatches, he found that the Field-Marshal had never said a good word for any of that genus or species of man-militant. They could not even boast of the official damnation of a faint applause from head-quarters, nor was there much solid pudding to compensate for the want of empty praise from which they suffered. Although these officers did not wish to be placed under a system of supervision like that of the French intendance, they felt that such a course would at least relieve them from much responsibility and consequent blame, and that it would secure to them special mention and official recognition of meritorious services or of extraordinary exertion.
In one case, at least, I know for a fact that a General of Division, with many of the oaths which he lavished in enforcing professions of earnestness and sincerity, declared to the principal medical officer of his division that he had intended to mention him specially to Lord Raglan, for his zeal and devotion after the battle of the Alma, but that he had unfortunately forgotten to do so in his despatch. "However, he would. He would, by ----, do so at once--write a despatch," and so on. Did he? If he did, Lord Raglan never paid the least attention to it. The wretched jealousies of our system were contagious. The instant a civilian became connected with the army he was caught at once, and became involved with A, B, or C. The military surgeons were jealous of--well, they did not like--the civil surgeons. The latter thought the former assumed too many airs, and that they despised the civil element, which was fresher from the hospitals, and knew a great deal more about the theories of the day than besworded and bespurred fogies who swore by Lawrence or Larrey. There was an internecine battle of "corps," which was chiefly developed in brisk affairs of outposts. What man of the Line or Guards was not "down" on the Engineers? What Engineer had recovered the mortal wounds inflicted on him by lazy soldiers who would not work in the trenches? Was not that "confounded Naval Brigade, that gets all the praise," an eyesore and a stumbling-block to the ill-used Siege Train? Were not the Infantry tickled with ironical mirth at the notion that the Cavalry had done anything? Were not the Cavalry wroth that they should have been turned into draymen, porters, and hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Infantry during the winter? The Royal Horse Artillery had similar grievances. As to the contests between Commissariat officers and Land Transport officers, if smothered by official forms, they blazed below the paper. The Navvies waged horrida bella with the Commissariat department. The Quartermaster-General's department tried to do as little as it could in the way of complying with the requests of the Army Works Corps. The Railway and the Road-making interest were by no means on the best possible terms. The Ambulance Corps, while it still existed in the body, was savagely tickled up, probed, walked into, reported upon, and attacked by the doctors; and as to higher quarters--
"Tantæne animis coelestibus iræ?"
In the first week of October the army was in excellent health. It was almost as numerous as that with which the Duke fought the battle of Vittoria. The infantry numbered 27,000; the cavalry 3,500; the artillery 9,000--in fine, General Simpson had under his command not less than 38,000 effective men. There were few matters of complaint; but an army is insatiable, and its providers must be as thoughtful and foreseeing as ants. Vast piles of stores disappeared in a day. To all commissariat officers at Balaklava it might be well said--"Nulla fronti fides,"--"Have no faith in the front."
[Sidenote: ESPRIT DE CORPS.]
Of the condition of the Russian army encamped on the Belbek nothing certain could be known, but now and then one got a glimpse of the world beyond the adverse sentries. There were many races in the Russian army, but none seemed willing to desert except the Poles, and the number of disaffected soldiers who came over to us was very small indeed. The pickets now and then brought in some footsore, ragged, emaciated, sickly-looking deserter, who told a sad tale of want and suffering. Was he a Dolon or not? The last two who arrived at General Simpson's, a Pole and a Russian, were in such a condition as to excite the liveliest compassion among our soldiers. Their clothes were in rags, and the fragments of their boots scarcely clung to their feet. They came from the army near Baidar, and stated that all the men were in the same condition; that all they had to eat was bread or biscuit and barley, that they got no meat, and had only occasional issues of quarter rations of vodka, or spirits; and these two men were observed to laugh and throw up their hands in surprise as they passed the great piles of provisions accumulated at our depôt on the Col. They said they were laughing at the lies which had been told to them. Their officers said that the Allies were starving, and had no forage for their horses. Colonel Blane sent down Sergeant Gillespie, of the Provost Marshal's department, under whose immediate control all prisoners were placed, to the Russian stores of Sebastopol, to get them greatcoats and clothing, but he could not find any boots; it was observed that there were no boots in store when the place was taken, and that the sixty-two prisoners, who were found drunk and asleep amid the ruins, were badly dressed and ill provided with shoes or boots.
The men taken in affairs of outposts by the Sardinians were in the same state, and it was evident that the Russians were rapidly declining in condition. They got 3lb. of bread or 1-1/2lb. of biscuit a day, and a little barley, which they boiled into a kind of soup; this constituted their rations. They were kept alive by assurances that the Allies must soon go, and then they would have the spoils of the English camp, which was rich in everything but food. Most of these men were exceedingly tractable, and were excellent servants so long as they were not allowed rum. One of them, a Polish non-commissioned officer, was of great use, but he was seized with an unconquerable desire to join the Polish Legion at Varna, and got as far as Odessa, when he was recognized and shot as a deserter.
For some time the actual work of the army consisted in preparations for the winter on the plateau, dismantling the houses of the city for wood, and destroying the trenches for the sake of the gabions, which burned well and saved fuel. Sebastopol gradually came up piecemeal to the camp. Doors, windows, locks, hinges, fireplaces, stoves, pictures, chairs, tables, beams of wood, roofing, ceiling, flooring, sheet-lead, rolled copper, cut stone, crockery, and innumerable articles of every description, were brought up by carts, horses, ponies, and by men, every day in great quantities, and were found most useful in the construction and ornamentation of our huts. There were very few officers who had not got some trophies; arms of various descriptions, greatcoats, and helmets are the most common; but pictures of saints, often embellished by the finders with grotesque adornments of moustachios, short pipes, and eye-glasses, and portraits of the late Czar, which had not quite escaped the spirit of improvement manifested by our soldiery, were very common. Many articles of English workmanship abounded, and canary birds sang and flowers bloomed amid all the murky horrors of these blood-stained casements. All the shot and shell were collected, and the French gave their soldiers about 3-1/2_d._ or 4_d._ for each 13-inch shell or large shot which they brought up to certain depôts indicated for the purpose.
The road made great progress. Upwards of 6,000 men were engaged upon it daily, and if Mr. Doyne could have procured more tools from the Quartermaster-General, the work would have gone on still faster; but he experienced considerable difficulty in getting the authorities to comply with his requisitions, although he handed over the matériel of the Corps to them when he arrived in the Crimea. Labour was ample, and was not denied; the tools were, however, worn out and worthless, and we were guilty of the very bad economy, in a country like the Crimea, where skilled labour cost so much, of repairing implements which had been damaged or used up, instead of issuing new ones. Many of these tools belonged to the Engineers' department, and were completely worked up by the Sappers and Miners during the siege. No, we were not perfect even yet. Though Sebastopol was ours, there were little blurs and blotches which might have been removed from our administrative escutcheon by very small labour. We borrowed flour from the French, and from the Sardinians, and, as we had been liberal lenders, they could not complain of our making small requisitions upon them now and then.
[Sidenote: FLAGS OF TRUCE.]
Although Forts Alexander and Nicholas were nearly intact, the Russians resolved not to spare them, and the effect of their practice upon them proved that the stone of which they were composed would not resist a lengthened and continuous fire at close quarters. When their shot hit the stones at the angle of the fort, they generally split and broke the outer masonry. The stones were of white freestone, cut in long parallelograms, and if a shot struck the middle of a block it generally split it right through, so that a few projectiles at any one point would speedily destroy all cohesion, and crumble the wall into a breach. Still, the forts were beautifully built, and were of very great strength, notwithstanding the inferior nature of the building material. They were all reared upon capacious vaults of solid masonry, and the casemates, curtains, and parapets were of prodigious thickness, and of very superior finish and workmanship. If a line-of-battle ship could have got alongside, she could soon have destroyed Fort Alexander, or any fort built of similar material. The enemy suspected that the French were making a battery behind Fort Alexander, and they shelled frequently in that direction; and, knowing the position of the mortar battery behind Fort Nicholas, they directed a pretty constant vertical fire on the guard behind that work.
A boat was sent round from Kamiesch to the harbour whenever a flag of truce appeared. Gortschakoff being pleased to consider that the south side of Sebastopol belonged to the Allies, suggested that it would save much time and inconvenience if a boat was kept in the Dockyard Harbour, near Fort Paul, so as to be ready to go out with or for communications in cases of armistice, several of which, relating to prisoners' property, exchange of letters, &c., had then recently taken place. The Russians always came across, in very well-appointed, handsome boats, manned with picked crews of well-dressed, clean-looking sailors, and the officers sent on the duty were generally very accomplished linguists and agreeable men. They were, however, very strict and very sharp in their practice as regards flags of truce, being extremely jealous of the smallest informality, and quick in firing the instant the flag of truce was hauled down. They insisted that the Malakoff had been taken by a surprise, and that all the garrison, except those who could get into the casemates, had gone off to enjoy their siesta when the French rushed in; but they admitted that the town was getting too hot to hold them, and that our fire was too heavy to be much longer withstood. Had they possessed mortars with which to reply to our vertical fire, they say they would have held out for another year at least, "but the army of defence, with a deep seaway in its rear, with one flank menaced by a fleet, and the other by the works at Inkerman, so that in reality its centre was only effective, could not strategically resist an army of attack which had such advantages of position." Our Siege-Train and Artillery and Naval Brigade, according to the Russians, took the town, as by their fire they made its defence impossible. During the last two bombardments from French and English, the garrison "lived in holes like rats," and the telling-off of reliefs and moving of reserves were always attended with danger and certain loss.
Was it old Turenne who said, "More battles were won by the spade than by the musket?" We won all ours by the bayonet and musket alone, and we certainly suffered great loss and were exposed to much disadvantage from not being able to approach within 200 yards of the Redan, whereas the French got up to the abattis of the Malakoff, and within 25 mètres of the parapet. Our gallant Allies could, indeed, spare more men to work, and could afford to lose more in the approaches, than we could. That their labours were not light, or their casualties trifling, we may infer from the fact that they lost not less than 64 officers of Engineers in the siege, of whom 30 were killed. As labourers, our soldiers are not equal to the French, and are far inferior to the Russians. Our Engineers complained that the only regiments that worked well were the Guards and some of the Rifle Brigade, and that the Irish and Scotch regiments did not know how to handle the tools used in military works. In fact, only those soldiers who were originally agricultural labourers, and were therefore used to the spade and pick, can get through the labours usually required for the construction of approaches or defences. Herdsmen, gillies, sworddancers, huntsmen, deer-stalkers, mowers, hodmen, mechanics, and town labourers, however strong, active, and willing, and wherever they come from, cannot use the implements which are put into their hands by Sappers and Miners, and it would be exceedingly desirable to teach men who may be employed in such works how to work and what to do with the tools.
General Simpson's despatch respecting the operations on the 8th of September gave considerable satisfaction. It afforded evidence that the Commander-in-Chief could rise above the very dead level of the uninteresting General Orders which will make the records of this army intolerable to the patience and not easy to the digestion of the most resolute and hardy antiquarian in times to come. Who will venture to publish our despatches? And yet we had notable penmen at head-quarters, who were at their vocation night and day, and who injured their tempers and manners by incessant scrivenery, the results of which were buried in the pigeon-holes of Whitehall, never to be seen even in the lively pages of a blue-book. The French authorities entered less into detail and exhibited less penmanship. If an Englishman presented himself at the French head-quarters, or made any application in writing for passes to the trenches, or such slight facilities, he was presented with them at once, in a manner which enhanced the value of the obligation. If he wrote to the Adjutant-General of the English army, the chances were that he would never receive any answer to his letter, although his request were of the smallest kind, unless indeed he happened to belong to the dii minores, or possessed such recommendations as had full consideration in the eyes of that dignitary of the army.
And even now it is not too late to reproduce a despatch of a very different character from those we read of in the London Gazette or in General Orders. It was, indeed, no less applicable to our army than it was when it was written, and the truths it contained were as patent and as pregnant with value and interest as they had been nearly half a century ago. The writer says,--
"I have no hesitation in attributing these evils--of irregularities, of bad cooking, and of want of discipline--to the habitual inattention of the officers of regiments to their duty, as prescribed by the standing regulations of the service and by the orders of this army.
[Sidenote: BRITISH OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS.]
"I am far from questioning the zeal, still less the gallantry and spirit, of the officers of the army; and I am quite certain that if their minds can be convinced of the necessity of minute and constant attention to understand, recollect, and carry into execution the orders which have been issued for the performance of their duty, and that the strict performance of this duty is necessary to enable the army to serve the country as it ought to be served, they will in future give their attention to these points.
"Unfortunately, the inexperience of the officers of the army has induced many to consider that the period during which an army is on service is one of relaxation from all rule, instead of being, as it is, the period during which, of all others, every rule for the regulation and control of the conduct of the soldier, for the inspection and care of his arms, ammunition, accoutrements, necessaries, and field equipments, and his horse and horse appointments--for the receipt, and issue, and care of his provisions, and the regulation of all that belongs to his food and the forage for his horse--must be most strictly attended to by the officers of his company or troop, if it is intended that an army--a British army in particular--shall be brought into the field of battle in a state of efficiency to meet the enemy on the day of trial.
"These are the points, then, to which I most earnestly entreat you to turn your attention and the attention of the officers of the regiments under your command--Portuguese as well as English--during the period in which it may be in my power to leave the troops in their cantonments. The commanding officers of regiments must enforce the orders of the army regarding the constant inspection and superintendence of the officers over the conduct of the men of their companies in their cantonments; and they must endeavour to inspire the non-commissioned officers with the sense of their situation and authority; and the non-commissioned officers must be forced to their duty, by being constantly under the view and superintendence of the officers. By these means, the frequent and discreditable recourse to the authority of the provost, and to punishments by the sentence of courts-martial, will be prevented, and the soldiers will not dare to commit the offences and outrages of which there are too many complaints, when they well know that their officers and their non-commissioned officers have their eyes and attention turned towards them.
"The commanding officers of regiments must likewise enforce the orders of the army regarding the constant, real inspection of the soldiers' arms, ammunition, accoutrements, and necessaries, in order to prevent at all times the shameful waste of ammunition, and the sale of that article and of the soldiers' necessaries. With this view both should be inspected daily.
"In regard to the food of the soldier, I have frequently observed and lamented in the late campaign the facility and celerity with which the French soldiers cooked in comparison with those of our army.
"The cause of this disadvantage is the same with that of every other description--the want of attention of the officers to the orders of the army, and the conduct of their men, and the consequent want of authority over their conduct. Certain men of each company should be appointed to cut and bring in wood; others to fetch water, and others to get the meat, &c., to be cooked; and it will soon be found that, if this practice were daily enforced, and a particular hour for seeing the dinners and for the men dining named, as it ought to be, equally as for parade, the cooking would no longer require the inconvenient length of time which it has lately been found to take, and the soldiers would not be exposed to the privation of their food at the moment at which the army might be engaged in operations with the enemy.
"You will, of course, give your attention to the field exercise and discipline of the troops. It is very desirable that the soldiers should not lose the habits of marching, and the division should march ten or twelve miles twice in each week, if the weather should permit, and the roads in the neighbourhood of the cantonments of the division should be dry."
Now, the writer of this "offensive production" was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and it is an extract of a circular addressed to all commanding officers of divisions and brigades, dated Frenada, Nov. 28, 1812. It was not the Duke's province to inquire into the reason of "this want of attention to the men" of which he complains; but in a service in which there were only two captains in a regiment, and all the other officers except the colonel and major were boys who had seen but a few weeks' service, intent only on champagne, tarts, good grub, dog-hunts, and horse-races, it was not wonderful if the same thing occurred in the Crimea in 1855.
The testimony of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Bentinck to the good conduct and services of the Fourth Division, during the period he commanded it, was read with interest:--
EXTRACT FROM DIVISIONAL ORDERS, DATED October 13.
"Private and important family affairs compelling Lieutenant-General Sir H. Bentinck, K.C.B., to return to England, he cannot relinquish the command of the Fourth Division without expressing the great regret with which he does so.
"Although he has only had the command of it for the short period of little more than four months (but during a very eventful period), he has witnessed with great satisfaction the manner in which all ranks have conducted most difficult, arduous, and dangerous duties, with a spirit, energy, and good humour not to be surpassed.
[Sidenote: EXPEDITION TO ODESSA.]
"Having already expressed to Brigadier-General Garrett on his quitting the division, and to Brigadier-General the Honourable A. Spencer and the First Brigade, on the morning of their departure on another expedition, his opinion of their services, it only remains for Sir Henry Bentinck to thank Colonel Wood, the officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the Royal Artillery, and the commanding officers, officers, and non-commissioned officers and men of the Second Brigade, for the assistance they have at all times rendered him; and he cannot refrain from expressing his high approbation of the manner in which all ranks have done their duty to their Queen and country.
"The Lieutenant-General begs to thank the Staff officers of the division for their zeal and energy in the discharge of their duties, and he cannot conclude without expressing also his satisfaction at the manner in which Dr. Roberts has performed his; to the Commissariat Department and Land Transport Corps of the division, to whom it is indebted for their supplies, and with a regularity seldom equalled, and reflecting great credit on the officers of those departments.
"The Lieutenant-General has only further, in taking leave of the division, to wish it renewed glory, and he will always feel the greatest interest in its proceedings generally, and of the regiments composing it particularly.
"By order,
"G. ELLIOTT,
"Deputy-Acting-Adjutant-General."
Chapter III
Expedition to Kinburn--Off Odessa--Objects of the Expedition--Appearance of the Fleets--The English Portion of the Expedition--Odessa from the Sea--Alarm on Shore--The eternal Cossacks--Clouds, Fog and Vapours--Signal Gun--The Fog thickens--Arrangements for the Attack--Order of Formation--Plan of Attack on Kinburn--Proceedings of the Advanced Squadron for Buoying the Dangers--A Skirmish.
At last it was determined by the Allied Governments that it was a mere waste of power to keep the armies and fleets inactive, and that "something must be done." The Light Brigade, under Lord George Paget, received orders to hold themselves in readiness to embark for Eupatoria. A small corps of infantry was told off for the expedition which had been organized to make an attack upon Kinburn in conjunction with the French.
The English portion of the expedition was constituted as follows:--
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIPS. | | | | Guns. | Captains |Troops on Board. | Royal | | | commanding. | |Marines.| +-------------------------+--------------+------------------+--------+ |Royal Albert, } | | | | | Sir E. Lyons, } | | | | | G.C.B. &c., } | | | | | having on board } | | | | | Brigadier-General } | | | | | Spencer commanding} 121 |W. R. Mends |17th Regiment 800 | 80 | |Hannibal, Sir H. } | | | | | Stewart, K.C.B., } | | | | | second in command } 90 |J. Hay |21st Regiment 670 | 80 | |[A]Agamemnon 90 |Sir J. Pasley | | | |Algiers 90 |C. Talbot |20th Regiment 500 | 80 | |St. Jean d'Acre 101 |G. King | | 1030 | |Princess Royal 91 |L. Jones |63rd Regiment 700 | 80 | | --- | | ---- | ---- | | 583 | | 2670 | 1350 | | | | STEAM FRIGATES, SLOOPS, ETC. | | | |Curaçoa 30 |G. F. Hastings| | | |Dauntless 33 |A. P. Ryder | | | |Firebrand 6 |E. Inglefield | | | |[A]Furious 16 |W. Loring | | | |Gladiator 6 |C. Hillyar | | | | | {|Left wing, 57th, | | |Leopard 18 |G. Giffard {|and reserve | | | | {|ammunition 370| | |Odin 16 |J. Wilcox | | | | | {|Right wing, 57th, | | |Sidon 22 |G. Goldsmith {|and reserve | | | | {|ammunition 300| | |Sphinx 6 |A. Wilmott | | | |Spiteful 6 |F. Shortt | | | |Spitfire 5 |T. Spratt | | | |Stromboli 6 |R. Hall | | | |Terrible 21 |J. M'Cleverty | | | |Tribune 31 |J. R. Drummond| | | |Triton 3 |A.W.D.Fletcher| | | |[27]Valorous 16 |C. Buckle | | | |Vulcan 6 |E. Van Donop | | | | --- | | ----| ---- | | Totals 830 | | 3340| 1350 | +-------------------------+--------------+------------------+--------+
THE BRITISH FLOTILLA.
SMALLER VESSELS.
Gun-boats. Guns. Commanders. 1. Arrow 4 Lt. W. K. Jolliffe. 2. Clinker 1 Lt. Hudson. 3. Cracker 1 Lt. Marryat. 4. Fancy 1 Lt. Grylls. 5. Moslem 1 ---- 6. Lynx 4 Lt. C. M. Aynsley. 7. Viper 4 Lt. H. Comber. 8. Wrangler 4 Lt. Burgoyne. 9. Beagle 4 Lt. Howitt. 10. Snake 4 Lt. Buckley.
MORTAR-VESSELS--(CAPTAIN DIGBY COMMANDING.)
1. Firm Lt. Leet, St. Jean d'Acre Lt. Hewitt, R.M.A. 2. Hardy Pierson, Mate, Princess Royal Lt. Foster, R.M.A. 3. Camel Vaughan, Mate, ditto Lt. Starr, R.M.A. 4. Flamer Lt. Creagh, St. Jean d'Acre Lt. Brookes, R.M.A. 5. Magnet Blunt, Mate, Algiers Lt. Pitman, R.M.A. 6. Raven Hunt, Mate, Hannibal Lt. Festing, R.M.A.
STEAM TENDERS, ETC.
Banshee. Danube. Brenda.
TRANSPORTS.
No. Freight, &c. Prince Alfred 126 Royal Artillery. Arabia 83 Royal Artillery, &c. Orient 78 Medical Staff--Hospital Ship. Lady Alice Lambton 99 Stores. Durham 179 Miscellaneous. Indian 197 Commissariat Staff, &c. Charity 140 Civil Land Transport Corps and Commissariat Stores. Colombo .. Shot and shell, &c. Zebra 211 Fuel. Arthur Gordon 238 Stores.
Dr. Gordon, in medical charge of the expedition, Surgeon Foaker, second in charge, and a number of medical officers, embarked on board the Orient.
Deputy-Commissary-General (in charge of the expedition) Tyrone Power, Assistant-Commissary-General Cumming, Deputy-Assistant-Commissary-General Sutherland, and Commissariat Clerk Robinson; Lieutenant Wardlaw, and twenty Dragoons, Captain Nicholson, R.E., Lieutenant Gordon, R.E., and Lieutenant Scratchley, R.E., in command of the Sappers and Miners, embarked on board the Orient. Major Bent, Royal Engineers, embarked on board the Royal Albert.
The First Brigade of the Fourth Division marched down to Kazatch on the 4th October, and proceeded to embark on board after they had been inspected by Sir Henry Bentinck, K.C.B., commanding the Division. Brigadier-General Spencer commanded the Brigade, which was in very fine order, and formed a body of 3,300 men, many of them tried soldiers.
The embarkation of the artillery and stores continued on October 5th. A large body of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, so long encamped on the heights of Balaklava, were marched down to the water's edge, and embarked on board the St. Jean d'Acre, to which they were conveyed in the Wallace steam-tug. Her Majesty's steamer Triton, Lieutenant A. D. W. Fletcher commanding, received orders to join the expedition, Captain Leopold Heath, R.N., the Superintendent of Transports, shifted his flag to the Bucephalus transport.
On the 7th October, the Allied squadrons, with a large flotilla of gun-boats, bomb-vessels, and small steamers, stretching in two lines in front of Kazatch and Kamiesch, must have displayed to the garrisons of the north side of Sebastopol a spectacle of portentous grandeur. We could see the enemy manning their batteries on the north side, and their troops under arms in front of their camps. It is likely they believed the Allies were about to make a descent in their rear. The French had four line-of-battle ships, several steam frigates, and a number of gun and mortar boats. In addition to that force they had a formidably ugly armament of three floating steam batteries; but England, with all her maritime and mechanical resources, could not aid her ally by even one of these tremendous fortresses! These French floating batteries, called the Devastation, Lave, and Tonnant, curiously unprepossessing in appearance, and painted of a bluish stone colour, as if to increase the gloominess of their aspect, showed eleven or twelve ports a-side, and carried twenty-two fifty-pounders (French) each. They were crowded with men, and were remarkably steady on the water, but the French bomb-vessels and gun-boats rolled heavily on the smallest provocation.
The men-of-war had their ports triced up and guns run in, so as to give air to the soldiers between decks, and presented long lines of kepis and red trousers from stem to stern. The day was very fine, and the wind was scarcely strong enough to blow away the black and white wreaths of smoke and steam from the funnels of the fleet as they slowly got in motion. Each steamer had a mortar-vessel or gun-boat in tow. At 11.15 the Royal Albert set driver and fore and aft canvas, and slowly forged ahead, followed by the Hannibal and the rest of the squadron; the French division, led by the Montebello, moving on in a parallel line with us, on the port or left hand.
[Sidenote: MENACE ODESSA.]
As the fleets drew off from the land, leaving behind them the forts of Sebastopol, both north and south, between which the usual daily duel of cannon and mortar was going on, the French went somewhat to the westward, and steered NW. by W., while we kept on a course N. by W. The Admiral made signal to the fleet that "the rendezvous" was to be "five miles S. by E. of Odessa," and it was immediately conjectured that the object of visiting that place was to induce the Russians to take away their forces from Nicholaieff and Cherson, in the expectation of a descent upon them at Odessa. The speed of the squadron was not very great, as most of the vessels had heavy boats in tow, and the signal was made from the Admiral, "Steer four miles an hour--course NW. by N."
The Triton was ordered to keep close to the Admiral, and not to follow the signals of smaller vessels, and at 2.10 the flagship signalled that "the Admiral's course was no longer to be regarded by the fleet," but that they were to keep in their proper direction, as already indicated. At four o'clock the Triton was ordered not to exceed four knots an hour, the Admiral's ship began to press on in front, and before evening was well in advance of the squadron, attended by a despatch gun-boat. The French, detained by their heavy batteries, made the best of their way on our port quarter. The night was fine, and the fleet moved slowly, and in extended order, for fear of collisions, but just before dawn the Stromboli made a slight dint in the huge bulk of the St. Jean d'Acre, and carried away one of the boats.
On Monday, the 8th of October, a hot bright sun lighted up the round mirror of sea of which the fleet formed the centre. The sea gives a poor human creature a curious sense of his own importance. Wherever it is not broken in upon the land, it concedes to the vessel that has the honour of bearing him the position, or at least the sensation, of being the very centre and navel of the universe; if it has not already smitten him down on some cruel deck or wobegone cot, by its own peculiar protest against the arrogance of mankind. Although many big ships were near, and a great flotilla was moving all round the edges of our great circle, Her Majesty's ship Innominata appeared on this fine Monday morning to be the central point on a bright, flickering, shivering mirror, fringed by columns of smoke, or framed in by the masts of the distant fleet, fine as cobwebs on the edge of some ancient cheval glass of Louis Quatorze. The French fleet was away hull down on the port quarter, the grand, showy, big tricolors at the peak just topping the horizon, and the English fleet we could not see, for the reason assigned in the Critic, which I have never heard disputed, and shall therefore give in preference to any other.
About 8.30 something very like a three-decker under full sail, suffering terribly from refraction, came in view--a tall white column standing out of the sea. The haze gradually expanded as we advanced, and at last "land" was reported from the bows, and a hapless wight was despatched up into the clouds, to make any statements which might strike him as to the general configuration and geographical characteristics of the coast we were approaching, and to look out for "the British fleet at anchor," or afloat, as the case might be. I am not aware that his information was important or curious, and he only confirmed the profound observation of Sir Fretful Plagiary, after a lengthened sojourn among the sea-gulls; but, at about nine o'clock, even landsmen could make out "land" with good telescopes, and were obliged to abandon the secret joys in which they had indulged at the disappointment of the Quartermaster, when he found that "a regular fog-bank" had been mistaken by him for terra firma, and to admit that the "cloud," after all, was a "material guarantee" of the Czar, and belonged indeed to Russland. The canvas of the line-of-battle ship gradually resolved itself into a tall, snow-white pillar, some 200 feet above the level of the sea, which marks Cape Fontana, south of Odessa, and by degrees, as we rose the land, a white light-house, a guard-house, a white telegraph-house and station, white farmhouses, white villas embowered in green trees, pagodas, minarets, domes, and church spires appeared in view, and clustered together, till we had a day-dream of Constantinople and Naples together with a dash of Boulogne in it, and Odessa came in sight. As I am neither a voluntary tourist, a universal gazetteer, nor a photographer, I shall not attempt to describe the city, which must, indeed, be well known to Englishmen, though few artists can do justice to it. These barbarous Russians have a rare knack of building graceful, light, cheerful, and clean-looking cities, which even the "Stones of Venice" might not utterly despise; and, if it be distance which lends enchantment to the view, they have at least the satisfaction, denied to more civilized people, of saying there is one point of view from which their cities win the senses.
[Sidenote: APPEARANCE OFF ODESSA.]
As we slowly drew up to our inevitable "five miles S. by E. of Odessa," we passed a wonderful creation, which, compared to the slow efforts of our ancient builders, seemed almost the work of enchantment. There stood an extensive city, built on the curve of a high sea-shore, with descending terraces and broad flights of steps, to the beach, which was enclosed by broad quays and the walls of ports and casemated batteries, all shining brightly in the morning sun. Broad esplanades, or boulevards, lined with trees towards the sea-front, ran along the top of the bank, with a background of stately mansions, worthy of the best "rows" near the Regent's Park, and we could see a numerous and gaily-dressed crowd of men and women passing along the promenade, gazing on the dark clouds of smoke which were slowly drifting in on them from the distance. Behind, and in continuation of this esplanade, are splendid residences, with pillared porticoes and ornamented peristyles, magnificent public institutions--the temples erected by Despotism to Civilization, in hope of making peace with her--barracks, palaces, governor's house, prisons, rising in front of a confused but graceful mass of domes, columns, steeples, and spires. One huge dome is of an intense ultramarine blue, and is topped by a gilt cupola; another is of bright green, surmounted by a golden star; here is a Greek temple, there a Tartaresque-looking mosque; there an unmistakable "little Bethel," here a Byzantine church; again, an Eastern minaret-like spire; farther on, an indubitable Sir Christopher Wren steeple; and, next to it, a grand dome and cupola, which at once reminded you of St. Peter's or St. Paul's. This beautiful city is surrounded on the left by woods, bestudded with the houses of Princes and Counts engaged in the corn trade, and of merchants deeply interested in the state of the English barometer. There is one dismantled three-masted vessel inside the port, but the quay at the upper end of the harbour encloses a considerable number of small coasting vessels; and even now we can see some boats creeping down for shelter along the coast under the batteries.
At the distance of about three miles from the town, we found the Valorous and Furious at anchor, and a French steam-squadron beside them of great force, with an Admiral's flag flying from the Asmodée; indeed, the French vessels, to the number of four pendants from large steamers, and of ten pendants from gun and mortar vessels, had already arrived, or had preceded us. The esplanade was, as I said, crowded with people. The city was as peaceful as a drop-scene at the theatre, but the operations of war were going on, nevertheless, and little could we tell what alarm, confusion, terror, and dread, dwelt within that beautiful capital on which we gazed so placidly. As the first ship of the English squadron cast anchor, a long line of dust was observed rising over the hilly coast to the north of Odessa and by the beach, which is lined with trees and a thick hedge of bushes, and we soon made out bayonets glistening in the sun, and a strong body of Russian infantry, with field-pieces and baggage, consisting of some five or six thousand men, marching in all haste towards the city. Two small camps could be seen on the hill-side towards the north, and a part of this column halted and encamped outside Odessa. A number of mounted officers accompanied the men, and some of them rode out through the gaps in the hedge, upon the beach, and reconnoitred the fleet, which was drawing up towards the harbour. The eternal Cossacks, in groups of two or three, were standing by their horses as vedettes, beside the numerous signal and telegraph stations which line the coast at intervals, and are in connection with a semaphore in Odessa, which was tossing about its arms like Niobe gone mad. Others were galloping over the fertile steppe, appearing and disappearing over the low lines of hills, and numerous herds of cattle all over the country afforded proof that we had exaggerated the general exhaustion of the enemy's resources, if any were needed in addition to the prosperous appearance of all the white farmhouses and hamlets, with their enormous stacks of hay and corn around the homesteads. Some of the inhabitants seemed to be moving away from the place by the north road, and many waggons and carts were visible going to and fro by the road to the northward.
The French fleet approached towards their anchorage from the south at the moment that the top-gallant masts and smoke-wreaths of the British fleet peered above the horizon, and at 3.30 the Royal Albert, followed at intervals by the rest of the ships, came up with signals flying for the anchoring of all at two cables' length, in order of seniority. This noble vessel let drop her bower in thirteen fathoms water, about three and a half miles from Odessa, soon after four o'clock, P.M. The smaller steamers and gun-boats were then disposed of, the tows cast loose and secured, and with the beams of the bright setting sun lighting up the whole of this tremendous array of batteries, with their polished muzzles grinning from innumerable ports, the people of Odessa saw the fleets of England and France anchor in their bay, and exhibit to them upwards of eighty vessels of war, ready at a moment's notice to lay their homes in the dust. The evening passed quietly; the Admiral made but few signals, but it was known that nothing would be done, and that till the work of sounding off Kinburn and laying down buoys for the fleet had been accomplished, the attack would not come off. The Viper received orders to start at dawn for Kinburn, whither the Spitfire had already proceeded, for the purpose of making the requisite surveys.
On the morning of October 9th, the wind came round from the SSW., and brought with it clouds, fog, and vapours, which quite shut out the sun from us. The shore could not be seen in detail, and the day was so murky that we were unable to ascertain if the inhabitants of Odessa were "flitting," as the more prudent would assuredly do, with such a tremendous armada floating before them. The sky was of a dark leaden grey, and seemed surcharged with rain and storm. Now and then a solitary ray broke through this veil, and lighted up a patch of houses in the stately city, or illuminated bits of the seaboard, displaying for a moment the Cossack pickets and vedettes on the cliffs, and snug farmhouses, surrounded by numerous stacks of hay and corn; small detachments of troops on the march over the steppes, and eilwagen, or lumbering Germanesque-looking diligences, traversing the coast-road, a few stray horsemen riding at full speed across country, and herds dotting the wide-spread plains.
[Sidenote: DIVIDED COUNCILS.]
The fleet must have presented a spectacle full of grandeur and menace to the Odessans. It extended for the space of five miles in front of their town,--a dense array of hulls and masts, yards and rigging, which, from shore, looked as if it were one unbroken network of ships resting on the water. The nine line-of-battle ships towered aloft in the centre, and the heavy steamers, gunboats, bomb-vessels, and transports, to the number of sixty, filled up the intervals, and extended along the flanks of the flotilla. The esplanade in front of a magnificent pile of public buildings was covered with a crowd of people, among whom were many officers and soldiers and well-dressed women; and the gunners all ready for action, inside the parapets of the long low batteries which guard this Queen of the Euxine, were visible to us all on board. These glimpses of the city were, however, infrequent, and were soon denied to us altogether, for down came the Black Sea fog, and wrapped us all in its clammy, unctuous, and chill embrace so closely that we could not see much beyond the limits of our own ship. The ever active and indefatigable little Spitfire joined the fleet. She had been away somewhere or other taking soundings and bearings as usual, and her appearance was a sure sign that some place on the enemy's coast was to be favoured by a visit before long. Captain Spratt no doubt had a useful little budget of information for Sir Edmund Lyons when he went on board the Royal Albert. In the forenoon Sir Edmund Lyons left the flagship in his barge, and was towed by the Danube to the French Admiral's ship, where he remained for some time.
Subsequently to the Admiral's return, he signalled to each ship to notify her draught of water. This was done accordingly by signal, and the people of Odessa must have seen dimly a brave show of bunting in our armada, as it required many flags to express the various draughts forward and aft of each ship. In the afternoon the wind freshened and the sea rose a little, causing that peculiar ground swell which distinguishes this part of the Euxine. The fog settled down on the water about three o'clock, slowly descending from the sky above, and distilled itself into drops of rain, which ran down the masts and fell from spars and rigging.
Before it became so very thick, our only amusement had been watching a considerable force of cavalry and horse artillery, drawn up on the cliffs, about six miles from Odessa and three miles from our anchorage. These were evidently intended to act as a flying column of observation, and to march on any part of the coast which might be threatened by our troops. It consisted of four troops of some Lancer regiment, and, from the time I first saw it, at nine in the morning, till it was lost in the fog, it only moved once, and then it was merely to form in squadrons and trot, wheel round, and draw up in double line again. Now a few rockets would have put these gentry to flight at any time, but we did not seek to inflict useless loss or annoyance upon the enemy. A gun-boat might have run in within easy range and shelled them at her leisure with the most complete impunity; nay, more--had the Admirals desired to inflict such a great blow on Russia, who vaunts herself to be invulnerable, and who boasts that, Antæus-like, she acquires fresh strength from every overthrow, the mortar-vessels, gun-boats, and floating batteries might have gone close enough to pour long-range shot, rockets, and bombs into the town, without the chance of being hit by the enemy, save by great luck. The city could not be missed, but it is very nice practice to hit a long low black line--a snake in the grass, wheeling and twisting about--at a distance of 2,500 yards. Let the world know that Odessa was "spared" once more, and, indeed, no one who looked at the city, which blends the magnificence of the East with the solid and massive grandeur of the West, could feel any desire for its destruction, unless it were absolutely necessary for the success of the war and for the attainment of peace.
When the fleet was off Odessa, the advice of the highest person in France on the project of bombarding the town was sought by the French Admiral, and his reply implied a "radical opposition"[28] to any such proceeding, nor was our Admiral authorized by the home authorities to attack Odessa unless he was certain of success.[29] Sir Edmund Lyons and Admiral Bruat acted all along in the most perfect accord, but there was this difficulty in their mutual relations, that Admiral Lyons was not under the orders of the British Commander-in-Chief of the army, while Admiral Bruat was directly under the control of Marshal Pelissier, and the latter was opposed to any operations which would require large detachments from the French army. It was proposed at one time to send in a flag of truce to Odessa with some such proposition as this to the Governor--"Are you the Governor of a commercial town or of a military station? If you say Odessa is purely a commercial town, destroy your forts, abandon your efforts to fortify it, deliver up your gun-boats, if any, and we promise to respect the place. If you say Odessa is a military station, you must expect to see it treated as such by the Allied fleets." However, in case of the Russians refusing to give up their guns, &c., and setting us at defiance, it would have been necessary for us to attack the town coûte qui coûte, and there were many reasons why at that particular time such a course would not have been desirable.
[Sidenote: DIVIDED COUNCILS.]
Odessa is built of stone and stucco, and is composed of large open places and squares, offering little combustible matter, and placed at such a distance behind the shore batteries as to be accessible only to mortar-vessels and horizontal fire at a very long, and therefore at a very uncertain, range. The houses are roofed with iron, and in many cases there is no woodwork in the flooring or ceiling of the different stories, but iron girders and tiles and slabs of stone are used instead of planks and rafters. Many of the houses are detached, and stand like so many palazzi in their own grounds. Under these circumstances a general fire would have been almost out of the question, and the damage caused by a bombardment would not have been very decisive or extensive. With all the efforts of friends and foes to destroy it, how much of Sebastopol remained after it had fallen into our hands! The Russians, by the agency of powder, of piles of wood, of tar, of turpentine, and of all sorts of combustibles, tried to get it into a blaze, but they failed, notwithstanding a favourable breeze; and we rained shells on it for months, and never succeeded in creating any conflagration of importance. Well, Sebastopol contained much more wood than Odessa does, and was more accessible to our fire. The inference is, that we could not by any bombardment of the fleet have set the town in a blaze, or have inflicted damage which would have compensated the Allies for the expenditure of all their shell. It is evident that at some period or another our fire would have ceased from exhaustion of means. Even a line-of-battle ship's powder magazines and shot and shell rooms are not illimitable. It is equally clear that a line-of-battle steam-ship could not have come in close enough to the forts to develop her fire, without running the greatest risk of being disabled before she could have got into position. The moment would have eventually arrived when our bomb-vessels and gun-boats and heavy steam-frigates would have been compelled to cease firing, and that probably before much injury had been done to a large, distant, stone-built town like Odessa; and then, if the Russians could have fired even one gun as we retreated, they would have claimed, and with some colouring--which would have seemed very bright and decided in some circles in England and in many cities and towns of despotic Germany and of free America--the credit of having beaten off the Allied fleets!
Sir Howard Douglas declares that a 13-inch mortar ought to hit a large object such as a fort, at the distance of 4,000 yards; but I know that many of our bombs missed Kinburn when fired from a distance of less than 3,000 and 3,600 yards. The whole of the glacis and of the ground before the fort for some hundred yards was burrowed up and pitted by the craters of bombs, which made prodigious holes in the soft sand on which they expended their force. For one shell which would fall through the roof of a house in Odessa, three or four would fall in the public streets, squares, and yards, where they would be comparatively harmless. These large missiles take up great space, and the fleet did not hold enough to lay Odessa in ruins. Had the Admirals been provided with all the appliances for destroying Odessa, they might have caused great damage to property and loss of life by firing on the place during their stay; for, though destruction is difficult, damage and loss may easily be effected, and there can be no doubt that a vigorous fire would have occasioned the enemy a considerable amount of both. The French Admiral, indeed, suggested that a certain number of gun-boats and mortar-vessels should go in every night, and throw shell into the town; but Lord Lyons was of opinion that such a petty measure of warfare was unworthy of us; that we ought either to destroy Odessa, or refrain from a partial attack, which the Russians would say, and not without pretence, had been unsuccessful the moment it was abandoned.
The expedition, however, was never intended to operate against Odessa, but to occupy the forts at the mouth of the Dnieper. These forts were Oczakoff, or Ochakov, on the north, and Kinburn on the south side of the entrance. The former is built upon a small promontory, called Oczakoff Point; the other is situated on a long narrow spit of sand, which may be considered as the north-western termination of the extraordinary spit of Djarilgatch. The distance between Oczakoff and Kinburn, across the entrance to Cherson or Dnieper Bay does not exceed a mile and a quarter, and the passage up the Dnieper to Nicholaieff winds close to Kinburn, and is not more than three-quarters of a mile from the forts. A very extensive and dangerous sandbank, twenty miles long and of varying breadth, lies between Odessa and the entrance to the Bug and Dnieper. This bank commences at the distance of ten miles outside Odessa, and thence runs across to Kinburn. The water on it does not exceed three fathoms, and in some places is even less, but up to the distance of three-quarters of a mile from the shore from Odessa to Oczakoff, there is a belt of deep water, about three miles broad, between the shore and the great sandbank. At a mile from Kinburn the water begins to shoal rapidly from three fathoms in depth to a few feet. The entrance to Cherson Bay is guarded, as it were, by the island of Beresan, and numerous beacons and lights were formerly used to guide the mariner to the channel, which is difficult and tortuous. The coast is well provided with telegraphs.
Nicholaieff (the name of which is spelt by us in six different ways) lies on the east bank of the Bug, at the distance of thirty-five miles from the forts. Cherson Bay, which is formed by the confluence of the Bug and Dnieper, before they flow through the channel between Oczakoff and Kinburn, is very shallow, the navigation is extremely dangerous and intricate, and the mouths of the Dnieper, which resemble on a small scale the debouchments of the Danube, are almost unknown to us. The Bug varies from three miles and a half to two miles in breadth as far upwards as Nicholaieff, below which a sudden bend contracts its course, the passage of which is here defended by formidable works. Its depth is about three fathoms, but there are many sandbanks in the channel, which winds from one side to the other of the river, and a vessel would in any position be under easy rifle range from both sides of the stream at the same time. It is more than thirty miles from Kinburn to the entrance of the Dnieper, and Cherson is fifteen miles above the ill-defined boundary where the extensive marais through which the Dnieper, with many muddy mouths, eats its way to the sea, ceases to become part of the mainland, and is resolved into water. Persons at home endeavouring to connect this expedition with a demonstration against Perekop might well be puzzled when they saw that it was upwards of fifty miles from Cherson to the Isthmus, and that the crow's flight between Kinburn and Perekop, as he passes over the desolate Taurida--bleak, waterless, and lifeless--exceeded ninety miles. Kinburn fort was a regular casemated stone-built work, mounting forty guns, according to the most extreme calculation--some giving only twenty and others thirty-two guns--but north of the fort on the spit running towards Oczakoff the Russians had built two sand batteries. Oczakoff Fort was not very strong, but on the coast between it and the ferry, across the arm of the sea which runs up to Kesandria, the enemy threw up three small batteries, with heavy guns, one near the ferry of three guns, and two of five and three guns respectively to the west of Oczakoff, which bore upon the channel between that place and Kinburn. There was a good road along the spit between Kinburn and Cherson, which, according to the best charts, are about forty-eight or fifty miles apart by this route. The vast importance of retaining possession of this place could not be overrated.
[Sidenote: FLEET IN A FOG.]
On the 10th of October the fog continued, and was worthy of the best efforts of the London atmosphere in November. It was not so rich in colour, so yellow, or so choky, but it was equally thick and clammy. In colour it was white, and sometimes the sun stamped a moonlike imitation of his orb upon it, and in favourable moments one could see a faint indication of his existence above. Now and then you caught a dark outline of a vessel looming through the mist; you strained your eyes to make out your neighbour, but you might as well have tried to pick out the details of Turner's "blubber boilers" or of his phantom ships, and as you looked the vision disappeared. The water flowed with a heavy oily roll, and the only noise to be heard was the plash of the lazy waves against the paddle-wheels, the bumping of the rudder, and the creak of an odd timber, as he rubbed against his fellows. "But hark! There is a gun!" A dull burst of sound, followed by reverberations like the muttering of distant thunder, which are caused by the echoes of the report against the sides of the ships, denotes that the Admiral wishes to indicate his position, to some straggler, who has not yet joined the fleet. Solemnly, through the silence which intervenes between these signals, comes the full rich boom of the church bells from Odessa. Possibly Papa Nicholas or Papa Daniel is even now persuading a nervous and fashionable congregation that the fog which hides their enemy from view is the result of his own intercession with saint or martyr, and these bells, which chime so sweetly, may be using their metal tongues to call down disaster on our heads, and to invoke the blessing of Heaven on the soldiers of the Czar. As the day advanced the fog darkened, deepened, thickened. The rolling of drums--the beat of paddle-wheels as a solitary steamer changed her berth with caution--the striking of the bells of the ships, and the reports of guns at long intervals, were the only evidence that a great fleet was lying all around us. All communication between the ships ceased, for no one could tell where his next neighbour was; in fact, a philosopher would have found this a charming place for study and reflection. But those who were accustomed to more active existence found the time very heavy on their hands, and the excitement of seeing the men "knock about the guns," of hearing them and the boys say their gunnery catechism, "No. 4,"--"Takes out tompions, bear out the port, worms 'em, sponges, rams 'ome, runs out, and trains,"--of watching the barometer, of seeing the fowls fed, and of inspecting the various dogs, pigs, and birds which constitute the pets of the crew, and the more substantial enjoyments of the officers, palled after a time, and one--even off Odessa, and cheek by jowl with the enemy--was fairly obliged to yawn by General Ennui. What was happening around us no one could see or say, and there was a horrible gloomy misanthropical curiosity seizing upon every one to ascertain the longest time a Black Sea fog was ever known to last, which elicited most startling declarations from morose old tars, that "If it's a riglar out-and-out 'un, with a light breeze from the sutherd and vesterd, it may last for a matter of a fortnight--ay, that it may." Sundry dismal experiences were not wanting to enforce the probability of such a lively event taking place again. "And then the bad weather will set in; and, with sogers aboord, I'd like to know what we can do?"
At 3.30 P.M. the fog began to clear away, and one after another the ships of the fleet appeared in sight, as if coming out in a dissolving view. The Admiral availed himself of the pleasing change in the weather to make signal for a lieutenant from each ship to repair on board the Royal Albert. The change was as great as if one had come out of a dark room into the leading thoroughfare of a large and busy city. The cutters and gigs glided about in all directions, visits were paid from ship to ship, and some boats swept in to have a nearer look at the shore. When the lieutenants went on board they received instructions for the disposition of the respective ships to which they belonged for the following day. The arrangements were simple. The gun-boats were to sweep the beach, if there was any resistance. The following was to be the order of formation on shore:--
+-------+----------------------------- | | French. | | + Flag. | | | | + Commissariat. | | + Sappers and Miners. | | + Land Transport Corps. | | + Reserve Ammunition. | | + Artillery. | | + Cavalry. | | | BEACH | + 63rd Regiment } Second | | + Royal Marines } Brigade. | | + Royal Marines } | | | | + Staff. | | | | + 20th Regiment } | | + 57th Regiment } First | | + 21st Regiment } Brigade. | | + 17th Regiment } | | | | + Flag. +-------+-----------------------------
It will be seen from this plan that the French formed the left and the English the right of the force.
At 6 o'clock the fog lifted, and the lights of Odessa twinkled in the distance. In order to strengthen the belief of the inhabitants that we were going to attack the place to-morrow, the Admirals made signal "to send down topgallant-masts," the usual preliminary for action in big ships.
All was quiet during the night. On the 11th of October the sun rose unclouded. Odessa looked more beautiful than ever. Clouds of dust were seen rising from its streets, as if large bodies of troops were moving about all over the town. The eternal Cossacks were watching on the cliffs near us, walking up and down to keep themselves warm, or playing with their shaggy little ponies. Wherever there was a good view of the fleet to be had a crowd of people collected, and the esplanades and terraces, and even the housetops and parapets of the batteries, were occupied by spectators. The cavalry on the hill to the north of the town were visible at early dawn, each man dismounted, at the side of his horse. The flagship, at 8.30 A.M., signalled to the fleet to "Prepare three days' provisions for troops to land with." At 11 A.M. the French fleet got up steam, and several of our steamers followed the example. At 11.10 signal was made to gun-boats "to get up steam for slow speed," and officers from each ship, in pursuance of instructions received, repaired on board the Admiral's, where they were made acquainted with the exact duty required of them in connection with the plan of attack, and were subsequently sent in to the Admiral, who examined each of them himself as to their respective tasks. Admiral Bruat went on board the Royal Albert, and remained with Sir E. Lyons for some time. Sir H. Stewart was also present. The following was the plan of attack on Kinburn:--
[Sidenote: DEPARTURE FOR KINBURN.]
"No. 1. The line-of-battle ships to engage the Fort Kinburn and two sand batteries on the point, will anchor in about 30 feet, in a line extending northward from fort, bearing E., and about 1,200 yards distant from it.
"No. 2. The four French line-of-battle ships to form the southern division, so that the Montebello will be the fourth ship from the south, and the Royal Albert, as the fifth ship, will be the southern ship of the English division.
"No. 3. The line-of-battle ships are to weigh together and form a line abreast, north and south, at a cable apart. The southern line-of-battle ship is then to steer so as to bring the south end of Kinburn Fort bearing E. by compass; and to shield her from any danger that may not have been discovered, or from approaching too close to the bank to the S., she is to be preceded by two steamers, the ---- and the ----, each at a cable apart, and in advance, on her starboard bow, and showing their soundings. When the south line-of-battle ship brings the south end of Kinburn to bear E., she is to steer for it. The rest of the ships will then steer the same course, keeping one cable apart, and all anchor together in a line nearly north and south, just without the flag buoys that will be placed during the previous night.
"No. 4. The nine ships will then be in position for the first five or six to engage Fort Kinburn at from 1,200 to 1,400 yards, and perhaps less, and the other three to take the sand batteries in flank and rear at about 1,000 yards.
"No. 5. The three French floating batteries are to be placed on a line NNW. and SSE. of each other, to the SW. of Fort Kinburn, at about 600 yards distant from it.
"No. 6. The mortar vessels are to anchor in a line E. and W., at 2,800 yards distant, with the fort bearing NE. from the outer vessel of the line.
"No. 7. The English mortar boats to be towed by the Odin, on a line E. of the French.
"No. 8. If the outer mortar vessel brings Oczakoff telegraph on with the east end of Fort Kinburn, bearing N. 20 E. (magnetic), and steers for it till the Oczakoff telegraph and Odzah Point subtend an angle of 70 degrees, she will be about the requisite distance, of 2,800 yards from Fort Kinburn; the rest can take their stations at a cable distance east of her.
"No. 9. The Sidon, Curaçoa, Tribune, Dauntless, and Terrible to anchor close off the North Sand Battery on Kinburn Spit, or, when ordered, to join the squadron of gun-boats, &c., that have previously entered within the straits, should any large ships of the enemy from Nicholaieff appear for the relief of Kinburn.
"No. 10. The disposable paddle steamers can find good positions between the line-of-battle ships for directing their fire with steady aim at the embrasures of the casemates or at any position where the enemy maintains his fire, or off the N. and NW. extremity of the Kinburn Spit, to enfilade the batteries and their approaches.
"No. 11. The gun-boats will attend to protect the army during the landing, and those not ordered to remain to cover their flank to take up position between the other ships as opportunity offers, and by a careful attention to the plan of attack are not to fire in the direction of the other ships.
"No. 12. The Admiral holds the captains responsible for there being no firing, unless the men can distinctly see the objects they are directed to fire upon.
"Triton and Beagle to attend St. Jean d'Acre. Each ship's boats to land her own troops. Reserve ammunition for the Marines to be landed with them. Spiteful and Furious, assisted by Triton, to land 21 cavalry horses, 7 staff horses, 27 regimental staff horses from No. 197, and 60 Sappers, with tools, &c.
"The captain of each ship is to be responsible for the disembarkation of his own troops and baggage.
"PROCEEDINGS OF THE ADVANCED SQUADRON FOR BUOYING THE DANGERS.
"The ships denoted in the margin, piloted by the Spitfire, are to start at 1 P.M. and anchor in the following position, as shown in the chart No. 2,201, from Odessa to Knieper Bay:--
A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. No. 2. A. Valorous. B. Dauntless. No. 1. C. Gladiator. D. Furious. E. Spiteful. F. French mortar-boat. G. French mortar-boat. H. French mortar-boat.
[Sidenote: BOMBARDMENT OF KINBURN.]
"The vessels anchored at C, D, and E, on the north side of the passage, are after sunset to show a red light to the west, and those at F, G, and H, are to show green lights in the same direction, as guides for the fleet on passing through during the night. The vessel at A, Valorous, to show lights vertical over the side, screened from NW. round by E. to S., and seen to the W. only. The four gun-boats Clinker, Cracker, Grinder, and Fancy, accompanied by four French gun-boats of shallow draft of water, will proceed, after the former vessels have anchored, to the rendezvous, at 8 P.M., near the Valorous, anchored at A. The four English gun-boats to be provided with buoys (white). The vessel at No. 2 A to provide two boats, that are to be despatched and anchored upon the SW. extremity of Oczakoff Bank, in four fathoms, to be a guide, by showing lights for the French gun-boats to commence buoying the edge of that bank with black buoys. The two boats on their return to the Valorous to place a white buoy on the end of Kinburn Spit, in five fathoms water.
"The Spitfire, assisted by the boats of the Dauntless, at B, will mark the edge of the bank--ere landing--west of Kinburn, with small white flags, placed in five fathoms.
"N.B. All white buoys are to lie on the south side of the channel, and black buoys mark the north edge of it, and are consequently to be left on the port hand in passing to eastward."
The evening of the 11th was unsettled--wind from SW. and S. On the 12th the weather was again unfavourable; on the 13th it blew briskly, sending in a heavy sea; but the wind abated towards night, and orders were given to prepare to weigh at dawn next morning. On the morning of Oct. 14, the fleet weighed and stood along shore towards the Liman of the Dnieper. The weather was beautiful, and we could admire at our leisure the numerous clean-looking, snug villages, the immense flocks and herds, and well-filled farmyards, which met the eye along the steppe. The fleet anchored three miles west of Kinburn Fort at three o'clock. On the 15th the troops landed about four miles below the fort, without the smallest opposition, or even the appearance of an enemy, in the order already indicated. The 17th Regiment was the first to land, and the French were, for a wonder, behind us. The weather continuing fine, the troops set to work, intrenching themselves on the sandy spit; only a few Cossacks were visible all that day, but in the afternoon, as a few French troopers were patrolling in front of our lines on the plain towards Cherson, they came upon a picket, which consisted of eight men, hid in some brushwood. They charged the Cossacks at once with great gallantry, killed two, and took two prisoners out of the party.