active 1835-1883 Thomas Faughnan

CAPTAIN COLTHURST—SIEGE—BOMBARDMENT—ASSAULT—REDAN—THE BATTLE—8TH SEPTEMBER—THE EVACUATION—RUSSIANS—BRITISH IN SEBASTOPOL.

August 25th. Captain Colthurst arrived at camp with a draft of three hundred men, who were posted to the different companies, to fill up the vacancies left by those who fell in battle, or died in hospital, or camp, during the winter. During the month of July and August our loss in the trenches was very heavy, although the achievements were not such as brought great fame and honour to the hard-working army. The outworks had approached so near the Russian batteries that our trenches afforded very insufficient shelter from shot, shell, and rifle-bullets which killed and wounded so many of our working parties, swelling the list of dead and wounded very much every twenty four hours. Every thing was now reported ready by the engineers and artillery officers for one last and desperate assault on the fortifications.

The labour bestowed by the Russians to strengthen the Redan and Malakoff was almost inconceivable—a formidable abatis of sharpened stakes in front, a parapet thirty feet high, ditch twenty feet deep by twenty-four feet wide, with three tiers of heavy guns and mortars rising one above another. Such was the Malakoff and Redan. The plan of assault was, a vigorous fire to open on the enemy's batteries, by the Allies, on the 5th, 6th and 7th; followed on the 8th of September, 1855, by a storming of the Malakoff by the French, and of the Redan by the British. Generals Pellisier and Simpson arranged that at dawn, on the 8th, the French storming columns were to leave the trenches, the British to storm the Redan; the tricolour flag planted on the Malakoff was to be the signal that the French had triumphed, and the British were then to storm the Redan, for unless the Malakoff was captured first, the Redan could not be held, as the former was the key of the position, therefore the Malakoff should be attacked first, and with a very strong force.

Appalling in its severity was the final bombardment of Sebastopol. It began at day-break, as previously arranged by the commanders, the shot and shell shaking the very ground with the tremendous reverberation, raising clouds of earth and overturning batteries along the Russian lines, filling the air with vivid gleams and sparks and trains of fire, burying the horizon in dense clouds of smoke and vapour, and carrying death and destruction into the heart of, and all over the city. After three hours of this tremendous fire, the gunners ceased for a while to cool their guns and rest themselves; then resumed with such effect that the Russian earth-works became awfully cut up, without, however, exhibiting any actual gaps or breaches, which would have befallen stone batteries, under such a storm of shot and shell; proving the defensive power of earth-works. Darkness did not stay this devastation; shell and shot continued to whistle through the air, marking out a line of light to show their flight, and crashing and bursting against the defences and buildings. The Malakoff and Redan, when no longer visible in daylight, were brought out into vivid relief by the bursting of shells and the flashes of guns. One of the ships in the harbour caught fire from a shell, and was burnt to the water's edge. All through the night the fire continued, which prevented the Russians from repairing their parapets and embrasures, and with dawn on the 6th, the roar of cannon was only interrupted by a few intervals to cool the guns. The enemy, seeing that the hour of peril had arrived, used almost superhuman exertions to work their batteries; increased agitation was visible among them, and several movements seemed to indicate the removal from the south to the north side of the harbour of all such persons and valuables as would not be required to render assistance in the defence. Again did a night of intermittent fire ensue. On the 7th, another ship was burnt in the harbour by our shells; flames broke out in the town, and a loud explosion like that of a magazine took place in the evening.

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE, 8th SEPT., 1855.

On the morning of the 8th, a destructive and pitiless storm of shot and shell continued until noon, when the fire of our batteries ceased, and the storming columns of the French issued forth, preceded by riflemen and sappers and miners. The French had bridges as substitutes for ladders; the ditch was crossed by the bridges, and the parapet scaled with surprising celerity. Then commenced the struggle, with guns, rifles, pistols, swords, bayonets, and gun-rammers; but in a quarter of an hour the tricolour flag floated on the Malakoff, announcing that the formidable position was taken.

Although the French had captured it, the Russians so well knew its value, it being the key to the whole position, that they made furious attempts at re-capture. But the French General judiciously sent powerful reserves to the support of McMahon, and these reserves maintained a series of desperate battles against the Russians within the Malakoff, bayonet against bayonet, musket against musket, man against man. The contest continued for several hours; but the French triumphed, and drove the Russians from their stronghold.

Anything more wildly disorderly than the interior of the Malakoff can hardly be imagined. The earth had been torn up by the explosion of shells, and every foot of the ground became a frightful scene of bloody struggles; thousands of dead and wounded men being heaped up within this one fort alone. As soon as the tricolour was seen floating on the Malakoff, two rockets gave the signal for the British columns to storm the Redan. Out rushed the storming party, preceded by the ladder and covering party, a mere handful altogether; indeed it appears astonishing that so few should have been told off for so great a work; every soldier had a perilous duty assigned him. The riflemen were to cover the advance of the ladder party, by shooting down the gunners at the embrasures of the Redan; the ladder party to place the ladders in the ditch. As soon as the storming party rushed from the Quarries, the guns of the Redan opened a fierce fire on them, sweeping them down as they advanced. Col. Unett, of the 19th Regiment, was one of the first officers that fell, and Brigadiers Von Straubenzie and Shirley were both wounded, and scarcely an officer who advanced with the storming party but got either killed or wounded. The distance from the Redan to the Quarries was too great, being over two hundred yards, which gave the enemy a good opportunity to mow the storming party down with a tremendous fire of grape, canister and musketry. The survivors advanced and reached the abatis, the pointed stakes of which, standing outward presented a formidable obstacle to further progress; however the men made gaps through which they crawled. Then came another rush to the ditch, when the ladders were found to be too short. However, our men scrambled down, and climbed up, many falling all the time under the shot of the enemy. Officers and men were emulous for the honour of being among the first to enter this formidable battery; but alas too weak, in the numbers necessary for such an enterprise. Mounting to the parapet, the beseigers saw the interior of the Redan before them filled with masses of soldiers and powerful ranges of guns and mortars; wild and bloody was the scene within the assailed fort. Colonel Wyndham (afterwards Sir Charles) was the first officer to enter; and when fairly within the parapet, he and the other officers and men did all they could to dislodge the Russians from behind the traverse and breast works; but the Russians overpowered our handful of men that were sent to take this stronghold, for we had no support to back up those that got a footing in the Redan. The Russians continued bringing up reinforcements and soon overpowered the few British, who saw they must either retire or remain to be shot down. New supporting parties kept arriving in such driblets and in such confusion as to render impossible any well directed charge against the place. If, for a time a few men were collected in a body, volleys of musketry, grape, canister, and old pieces of iron of every description, fired from their big guns, levelled our men to the dust. The officers and men at last seeing no supports coming to their aid, lost heart and retreated to their trenches.

The embrasures of the parapets, the ditch, and all round the abatis became a harrowing scene of death and wounds; heaps of dead and wounded lay all round the Redan, and piles of them lay at the bottom of the ditch, where they fell by the Russian shot, as they climbed up the scaling ladders. At two o'clock the attack was over, and in these two hours the British loss was very severe. No other day throughout the war recorded so many killed and wounded which amounted to the large number of 2450 in all. The French loss was three times more severe it comprised no less than 7550 killed and wounded.

Next day another attack was to be made on the Redan. Sir Colin Campbell sent down a party cautiously in the night to see how the Redan was occupied; it was found to be vacated, telling plainly of the abandonment, by the Russians, of the south side of the town. It appears that Gortchakoff, when the impossibility of maintaining his position became evident, commenced blowing up the public buildings of the town; the gunners, during the early hours of the night, kept up a sufficient fire to mask their proceedings in the stillness of the night when the allied camps were filled with men, either sleeping or thinking anxiously of the scenes which day-light might bring forth. Lurid flames began to rise in Sebastopol; explosions of great violence shook the earth, and intense commotion was visible to the men in the trenches. The fires began in various parts of the town, and tremendous explosions behind the Redan tore up the ground for a great distance; and other explosions succeeded so rapidly that a thick, murky mass of smoke and flames from burning buildings, imparted an awful grandeur to the scene. Now came a resistless outburst which blew up the Flagstaff battery; then another blew up the Garden battery. As day-light approached, Fort Paul, Fort Nicholas Central, and Quarantine Bastion, were seen surrounded by flames. We could not withhold our admiration of the manner in which Gortchakoff carried out his desperate plan, the last available means of saving the rest of the garrison.

On the morning of the 9th September, when the troops in camp heard the announcement that the mighty city had fallen, the city which, during twelve months, had, day by day, been looked at and studied by our generals and engineers, and in front of which 10,000 of our troops had been killed or wounded on the preceding day,—with difficulty was the announcement credited, so accustomed had all been to the dashing of their hopes, and the non-fulfilment of their predictions. I was one among many who hastened into the town and was astonished at the enormous extent of the batteries, and the manner in which our shot and shell had knocked down and torn up the massive buildings. The French soldiers rushed into the town, peered about the burning houses, and plundered them of chairs, tables, looking-glasses, and countless articles, and carried them up to their camp. The French soldiers always keep a bright look-out for plunder. I must say that our men did not touch a single article, that I ever heard of, except one man, who found a lot of money in a bank. He emptied it into his haversack, and left at once. The bank clerks in their excitement and hurry must have forgotten to take the money in their haste to get out of the city. We had a chain of cavalry all round the town, to keep back stragglers, and stop any person from taking anything out of the town. Thus ended the wondrous Siege of Sebastopol. On the 8th of September, when the allied commanders found that the Russian garrison, together with inhabitants had crossed to the north side of the harbour it became their duty to ascertain whether any traps or explosive mines had been laid by the enemy, before our troops could be allowed to occupy the town, to ward off camp followers, and to divide the spoils of the garrison between the two invading armies; and to take measures for the destruction of the forts and docks.

The appearance of the town, at the time that we entered it, was fearful indeed. Destructive forces had been raging with a violence never before equalled in the history of sieges; and the whole internal area was one vast heap of crumbled earth-work, shattered masonry, shot-pierced buildings, torn-up streets, scorched timbers, broken guns and muskets, and shattered vehicles. The buildings were shattered into forms truly fantastic; some of the lower stories almost shot away and barely able to support the superstructure; some with enormous gaps in the walls. Proofs were manifold that the Russians intended to defend the town street by street, had we forced an entrance for across every street were constructed barricades defended by field pieces. In some of the best houses columns were broken by shot, ceilings falling, which these columns had once supported; elegant furniture crushed beneath broken cornices, beams, and fragments of broken looking-glasses, mingled with the dust on the marble floors. The effect of our 13-inch shells had been extraordinary. These dread missiles, of which so many thousand had been thrown into the town, weigh 200 pounds each, and falling from a great height, have the weight of over sixty tons descending deep below the foundation of the houses, and when they explode, scattering everything around far and wide. Our army still continued to encamp outside the town, sending only as many troops as would suffice to guard it, and take up the principal buildings among the ruins for guard-houses. Now we have plenty of wood, each company sending a fatigue party daily from the camp to Sebastopol for it. These parties could be seen by the Russians from the north side pulling down the houses for the wood, and carrying it to camp. While doing so the Russians invariably fire upon us, from the north side of the harbour, where they have thrown up very strong forts, armed with the heaviest guns. They have placed some of those guns with the breach sunk into the ground, in order to get elevation, and throw shot right into our camp amongst our tents, not unfrequently killing and wounding our men.

We have now regular guards and sentries all over Sebastopol. After posting a sentry one day, I happened to go down some steps which led to the basement of a large building, and there I found to my horror fifteen dead Russians. My sense of smell first detected them in the dark vault; they were in the worst state of putrefaction. It was found on removing them that they had all been wounded, and had crawled in there and died from their wounds. We buried them where thousands of their comrades were buried, in rear of the Redan. The army is now quiet—no firing except an odd shot from the Russians at our fatigue parties in Sebastopol. We have no trench duty to perform—nothing but the regular camp guards; we have plenty of fuel and good rations; any amount of canteens on the ground, so we are making up now in comfort for the hard times we had last winter. The army was now at a stand-still, having nothing to occupy their time.

But the commanders began to look forward to a second wintering in the Crimea as a probability. Invaluable as the railway had become, it was inadequate to the conveyance of the immense bulk and weight of supplies required day by day in the army, and hence it is necessary to do that which, if done in the early part of last winter, would have saved so many valuable lives—to construct a new road from Balaklava to the camp. Therefore the road was laid out and large numbers of our men worked on it daily; but making roads is only child's play compared with making trenches under shot, shell, grape and canister. The whole of the divisions were kept continually at road-making; the road promises to be a splendid one, and we were all anxious to make it. We had no less than 10,000 men working on this road, between Balaklava and the front. By the end of October a most excellent road was constructed, including branch roads to the several divisions. The French at the same time constructed a road across the valley which connects their camp with the main road to Kamiesch; and besides they have improved the old Tartar roads.

Our army suffered much last winter from the want of roads. This excellent road which the British army has constructed, will ever remain as a memento of British occupation. During the three weeks of September which followed the evacuation of the south side of Sebastopol the Russians were quietly but actively strengthening their fortifications on the north side, making all the heights bristle with guns, and firing a shot whenever an opportunity offered to work mischief upon our guards, sentries, and fatigue-parties in the town. We had planted a few guns in position so as to bear on the northern heights; but no disposition was shown to open a regular fire on them, except an odd shot to remind them that we were ready for them at any time.

Camp rumours arose concerning some supposed expedition into the interior of the Crimea, but the securing of the captured city was regarded as the first duty.

On the 20th September, 1855, the anniversary of the battle of the Alma, a distribution of the medals for the Crimea, and clasps for Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman, took place among the troops; these decorations were very much appreciated by the officers and men. The day was commemorated with much festivity and amusement in both camps.