  PREPARATIONS FOR A WINTER CAMPAIGN—THE HURRICANE—THE CONDITION OF THE ARMY—THE TRENCHES IN WINTER—BALAKLAVA—THE COMMISSARIAT AND MEDICAL STAFF.
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| 1 Rota | = | 250 men. | |||
| 16 Rotas | = | 1 polk | = | 4,000 men. | |
| 4 Polks | = | 1 division | = | 16,000 men. | One Division of infantry. |
The men resembled those we met at the Alma, and were clad in the same way. We saw no infantry with helmets, however, and our soldiers were disappointed to find the Russians had, in most cases, come out without their knapsacks. Their persons were very cleanly, and the whiteness of their faces and of their feet were remarkable. Few of them had socks, and the marauders had removed their boots whenever they were worth taking. Our soldiers and sailors, as well as the French, looked out with avidity for a good pair of Russian boots, and were quite adepts in fitting themselves to a nicety by their simple mode of measurement—viz., placing their feet against those of the dead men. Many had medals, "the campaign of 1848-49 in Hungary and Transylvania." They were generally carried inside tin cases about their persons. Officers and men wore the same long grey coats, the former being alone distinguishable by the stripe of gold lace on the shoulder. Their uniform coats, of dark green with white facings and red and yellow trimmings, were put on underneath the great coat.
A considerable number of the LiÈge double-grooved rifles were found on the field. Many of the muskets bore the date of 1841, and had been altered into detonators. I remember a juvenile superstition in my sparrow-killing days, that such guns "shot stronger" than either flint or detonator, pur sang. Every part of the arm was branded most carefully. The word "BAK" occurs on each separate part of it. The Imperial eagle was on the brass heelplate, and on the lock "[Cyrillic: TULA] (Tula), 1841." The bayonets were long, but not well steeled. They bent if rudely handled or struck with force against the ground. The long and polished gun-barrels were made of soft, but tough iron. They could be bent to an acute angle without splitting. From the trigger-guard of each musket a thong depended, fastened to a cap of stout leather, to put over the nipple in wet weather. This seemed a simple and useful expedient. The devotion of the men to their officers was remarkable. How else was it that we seldom found either dead or wounded officers on the ground? It was again asserted—and I fear with truth—that the wounded Russians killed many of our men as they passed. For this reason our soldiers smashed the stock and bent the barrels. Some carried rifles, and heavy, thick swords with a saw-back, which they sold to the captains and sailors of merchantmen. Medals, ribands, the small brass crucifixes, and pictures of saints, and charms found upon the dead, were also in great request.
If it is considered that the soldiers who met these furious
Up to the beginning of this winter Commissary Filder deserved credit for his exertions in supplying our army. No army, I believe, was ever so well fed under such very exceptional circumstances. From Balaklava alone came our daily bread; no man had up to this time been without his pound of biscuit, his pound and a half or a pound of beef or mutton, his quota of coffee, tea, rice, and sugar, his gill of excellent rum, for any one day, excepting through his own neglect. We drew our hay, our corn, our beef, our mutton, our biscuits, spirits, and necessaries of all kinds from beyond sea. Eupatoria supplied us with cattle and sheep to a moderate extent; but the commissariat of the army depended on sea carriage. Nevertheless, large as were our advantages in the excellence and regularity of the supply of food, the officers and men had to undergo great privations.
The oldest soldiers never witnessed a campaign in which Generals were obliged to live in tents in winter, and officers who passed their youth in the Peninsular war, and had seen a good deal of fighting in various parts of the world, were unanimous in declaring that they never knew of a war in which the officers were exposed to such hardships. They landed without anything, marched beside their men, slept by them, fought by them, and died by them. They laid down at night in the clothes which they wore during the day; many delicately-nurtured youths never changed shirts or shoes for weeks together.
"Rank and fashion," under such circumstances, fell a prey to parasitical invasion—an evil to which the other incidents of roughing it are of little moment. The officers were in rags. Guardsmen, who were "the best style of men" in the Parks, turned out in coats and trousers and boots all seams and patches, mended with more vigour than neatness, and our smartest cavalry men were models of ingenious sewing and stitching. The men could not grumble at old coats, boots, or shoes when they saw their officers no better off than themselves. We had "soldiering with the gilding off," and many a young gentleman would be cured of his love of arms if he could but have had one day's experience. Fortunate it is for us that we have youth on which we can rely, and that there are in England men "who delight in war," who will be ever ready to incur privation and danger at her summons. As to young ladies suffering from "scarlet fever,"—who are thinking of heroes and warriors, singing of "crowning conquerors' brows with flowers," and wishing for "Arab steeds and falchions bright"—if they could but for one instant have stood beside me, and gazed into one of the pits where some thirty "clods of the valley,"
It happened that we had a forewarning of what might be expected. On Friday, the 10th of November, just four days ere the fatal catastrophe which caused such disasters occurred, I was on board the Jason Captain Lane, which happened to be lying outside, and as it came on to blow, I could not return to the shore or get to the camp that evening. The ship was a noble steamer, well manned and ably commanded, but ere midnight I would have given a good deal to have been on land; for the gale setting right into the bay, raised a high wild sea, which rushed up the precipices in masses of water and foam, astonishing by their force and fury; and the strain on the cable was so great that the captain had to ease it off by steaming gently a-head against the wind. The luckless Prince, which had lost two anchors and cables on bringing up a day or two before, was riding near the Agamemnon, and adopted the same expedient; and, of the numerous vessels outside, and which in so short a time afterwards were dashed into fragments against those cruel rocks, the aspect of which was calculated to thrill the heart of the boldest seaman with horror, there were few which did not drag their anchors and draw towards the iron coast which lowered with death on its brow upon us. Guns of distress boomed through the storm, and flashes of musketry pointed out for a moment a helpless transport which seemed tossing in the very centre of the creaming foam of those stupendous breakers, the like of which I never beheld, except once, when I saw the Atlantic running riot against the cliffs of Moher. But the gale soon moderated—for that once—and wind and sea went down long before morning. However, Sir Edmund Lyons evidently did not like his berth, for the Agamemnon went round to Kamiesch on Sunday morning, and ordered the Firebrand, which was lying outside, to go up to the fleet at the Katcha. As to the Prince, and the luckless transports, they were allowed, nay, ordered, to stand outside till the hurricane rushed upon them.
On the 14th of November came a new calamity—the hurricane.
I had been in a listless state between waking and sleeping, listening to the pelting of the rain against the fluttering canvas of the tent, or dodging the streams of water which flowed underneath it, saturating blankets, and collecting on the mackintosh sheet in pools, when gradually I became aware that the sound of the rain and the noise of its heavy beating on the earth had been swallowed up by the roar of the wind, and by the flapping of tents outside. Presently the sides of the canvas, tucked in under big stones, began to rise, permitting the wind to enter and drive sheets of rain right into one's face; the pegs indicated painful indecision
The storm-fiend was coming, terrible and strong as when he smote the bark of the Ancient Mariner. The pole of the tent bent like a salmon-rod; the canvas tugged at the ropes, the pegs yielded. A startling crack! I looked at my companions, who seemed determined to shut out all sound by piling as many clothes as they could over their heads. A roar of wind again, the pole bent till the "crack" was heard again. "Get up, Smith! Up with you; Eber! the tent is coming down!" The Doctor rose from beneath his tumulus of clothes. Now, if there was anything in which the Doctor put confidence more than another, it was his tent-pole; he believed that no power of Æolus could ever shake it. There was normally a bend in the middle of it, but he used to argue, on sound anatomical, mathematical, and physical principles, that the bend was an improvement. He looked on the pole, as he looked at all things, blandly, put his hand out, and shook it. "Why, man," said he, reproachfully, "it's all right—that pole would stand for ever," and then he crouched and burrowed under his bed-clothes.
Scarcely had he given that last convulsive heave of the blankets which indicates perfect comfort, when a harsh screaming sound, increasing in vehemence as it approached, struck us with horror. As it neared us, we heard the snapping of tent-poles and the sharp crack of timber. On it came, "a mighty and a strong wind." It struck our tent! The pole broke off short in the middle, as if it were glass; in an instant we were half stifled by the folds of the wet canvas, which beat us about the head with fury. Breathless and half blind, I struggled for the exit, and crept out into the mud. Such a sight met the eye! The whole head-quarters' camp was beaten flat to the earth, and the unhappy occupants of tents were rushing in all directions in chase of their effects, or holding on by the walls, as they strove to make their way to the roofless barns and stables.
Three marquees stood the blast—General Estcourt, Sir John Burgoyne, and Major Pakenham's. The General had built a cunning wall of stones around his marquee, but ere noon it had fallen before the wind; the Major's shared the same fate still earlier in the day. Next to our tent was the marquee of Captain de Morel, aide-de-camp to Adjutant-General Estcourt, fluttering on the ground, and, as I looked, the canvas was animated by some internal convulsion—a mimic volcano appeared to be opening, its folds assumed fantastic shapes, tossing wildly in the storm. The phenomenon was accounted for by the apparition of the owner fighting his way against the wind, which was bent on tearing his scanty covering from his person; at last he succeeded in making a bolt of it and squattered through the mud to the huts. Dr. Hall's tent was levelled, the principal medical officer of the British army might be seen in
Large arabas, or waggons, close to us were overturned; men and horses were rolled over and over; the ambulance waggons were turned topsy-turvy; a large table in Captain Chetwode's was whirled round and round till the leaf flew off, and came to mother earth deprived of a leg and seriously injured. The Marines and Rifles on the cliffs over Balaklava lost everything; the storm hurled them across the bay, and the men had to cling to the earth with all their might to avoid the same fate.
Looking over towards the hill occupied by the Second Division, we saw the ridges, the plains, and undulating tracts between the ravines, so lately smiling in the autumn sun, with row after row of neat white tents, bare and desolate, as black as ink. Right in front the camp of the Chasseurs d'Afrique presented an appearance of equal desolation. Their little tentes d'abri were involved in the common ruin. One-half of our cavalry horses broke loose. The French swarmed in all directions, seeking for protection against the blast. Our men, more sullen and resolute, stood in front of their levelled tents, or collected in groups before their late camps. Woe to the Russians had they come on that day, for, fiercer than the storm and stronger than all its rage, the British soldier would have met and beaten their battalions. The cry was, all throughout this dreadful day, "Let us get at the town; better far that we should have a rush at the batteries and be done with it, than stand here to be beaten by a storm."
Let the reader imagine the bleakest common in all England, the wettest bog in all Ireland, or the dreariest muir in all Scotland, overhung by leaden skies, and lashed by a tornado of sleet, snow, and rain—a few broken stone walls and roofless huts dotting it here and there, roads turned into torrents of mud and water, and then let him think of the condition of men and horses in such a spot on a November morning, suddenly deprived of their frail covering, and exposed to bitter cold, with empty stomachs, without the remotest prospect of obtaining food or shelter. Think of the men in the trenches, the covering parties, the patrols, and outlying pickets and sentries, who had passed the night in storm and darkness, and who returned to their camp only to find fires out and tents gone. These were men on whose vigilance the safety of our position depended, and many of whom had been for eight or ten hours in the rain and
A benighted sportsman caught in a storm thinks he is much to be pitied, as, fagged, drenched and hungry, he plods along the hillside, and stumbles about in the dark towards some uncertain light; but he has no enemy worse than the wind and rain to face, and in the first hut he reaches repose and comfort await him. Our officers and soldiers, after a day like this, had to descend to the trenches again at night, look out for a crafty foe, to labour in the mire and ditches of the works; what fortitude and high courage to do all this without a murmur, and to bear such privations and hardships with unflinching resolution! But meantime—for one's own experience gives the best idea of the suffering of others—our tent was down; one by one we struggled out into the mud, and left behind us all our little household gods, to fly to the lee of a stone wall, behind which were cowering French and British of all arms and conditions.
Major Blane was staggering from the ruins of his marquee, under a press of greatcoat, bearing up for the shelter of Pakenham's hut. The hospital tents were all down, the sick had to share the fate of the robust. On turning towards the ridge on which the imposing wooden structures of the French were erected, a few scattered planks alone met the eye. The wounded of the 5th November, who to the number of several hundred were in these buildings, had to bear the inclemency of the weather as well as they could. Several succumbed to its effects. The guard tents were down, the occupants huddled together under the side of a barn, their arms covered with mud, lying where they had been thrown from the "pile" by wind. The officers had fled to the commissariat stores near Lord Raglan's, and there found partial shelter. Inside, overturned carts, dead horses, and groups of shivering men—not a tent left standing. Mr. Cookesley had to take refuge, and was no doubt glad to find it, amid salt pork and rum puncheons.
With chattering teeth and shivering limbs each man looked at his neighbour. Lord Raglan's house, with the smoke streaming from the chimneys, and its white walls standing out freshly against the black sky, was the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes." Lord Lucan, meditative as Marius amid the ruins of Carthage, was sitting up to his knees in mud, amid the wreck of his establishment. Lord Cardigan was sick on board his yacht in the harbour of Balaklava. Sir George Brown was lying wounded on board the Agamemnon, off Kamiesch Bay; Sir De Lacy Evans, sick and shaken, was on board the Sanspareil, in Balaklava; General Bentinck, wounded, was on board the Caradoc. The Duke of Cambridge was passing a terrible time of it in the Retribution, in all the horrors of that dreadful scene, off Balaklava. Pennefather, England, Campbell, Adams, Buller—in fact all the generals and officers—were as badly off as the meanest private.
The only persons near us whose tents weathered the gale were Mr. Romaine, Deputy Judge-Advocate-General; Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson, Artillery; and Captain Woodford. The first had pitched
Towards ten o'clock matters were looking more hopeless and cheerless than ever, when a welcome invitation came through the storm to go over to the shelter of Romaine's tent. Our first duty was to aid the owner in securing the pole with "a fish" of stout spars. Then we aided in passing out a stay from the top of the pole to the wall in front. A cup of warm tea was set before each of us, provided by some inscrutable chemistry, and with excellent ration biscuit and some butter, a delicious meal, as much needed as it was unexpected, was made by my friends and myself, embittered only by the ever-recurring reflection, "God help us, what will become of the poor fellows in the trenches?" And there we sat, thinking and talking of the soldiers and of the fleet hour after hour, while the wind and rain blew and fell with the full sense of the calamity with which Providence was pleased to visit us.
Towards twelve o'clock the wind, which had been blowing from the south-west, chopped round more to the west, and became colder. Sleet fell first, and then a snow-storm, which clothed the desolate landscape in white, till the tramp of men seamed it with trails of black mud. The mountain ranges assumed their winter garb. French soldiers flocked about head-quarters, and displayed their stock of sorrows to us. Their tents were all down and blown away—no chance of recovering them; their bread was "tout mouillÉ et gÂtÉ," their rations gone to the dogs. The African soldiers seemed particularly miserable. Several of them were found dead next morning outside our cavalry camp. Two men in the 7th Fusileers, one man in the 33rd, and one man of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, were found dead, "starved to death" by the cold. About forty horses died, and many never recovered.
At two o'clock the wind went down a little, and the intervals between the blasts of the gale became more frequent and longer. We took advantage of one of these halcyon moments to trudge to the wreck of my tent, and having borrowed another pole, with the aid of a few men we got it up muddy and wet; but it was evident that no dependence could be placed upon it; the floor was a
What a scene it was! The officers of the escort were crouching over some embers; along the walls were packed some thirty or forty horses and ponies, shivering with cold, and kicking and biting with spite and bad humour. The Hussars, in their long cloaks, stood looking on the flakes of snow, which drifted in at the doorway or through the extensive apertures in the shingle roof. Soldiers of different regiments crowded about the warm corners, and Frenchmen of all arms, and a few Turks, joined in the brotherhood of misery, lighted their pipes at the scanty fire, and sat close for mutual comfort. The wind blew savagely through the roof, and through chinks in the mud walls and window-holes. The building was a mere shell, as dark as pitch, and smelt as it ought to do—an honest, unmistakeable stable—improved by a dense pack of moist and mouldy soldiers. And yet it seemed to us a palace! Life and joy were inside, though melancholy Frenchmen would insist on being pathetic over their own miseries—and, indeed, they were many and great—and after a time the eye made out the figures of men huddled up in blankets, lying along the wall. They were the sick, who had been in the hospital marquee, and who now lay moaning and sighing in the cold; but our men were kind to them, as they are always to the distressed, and not a pang of pain did they feel which care or consideration could dissipate.
A staff officer, Colonel Wetherall, dripping with rain, came in to see if he could get any shelter for draughts of the 33rd and 41st Regiments, which had just been landed at Kamiesch, but he soon ascertained the hopelessness of his mission so far as our quarters were concerned. The men were packed into another shed, "like herrings in a barrel." Having told us, "There is terrible news from Balaklava—seven vessels lost, and a number on shore at the Katcha," and thus made us more gloomy than ever, the officer went on his way, as well as he could, to look after his draughts. In the course of an hour an orderly was sent off to Balaklava with dispatches from head-quarters; but, after being absent for three-quarters of an hour, the man returned, fatigued and beaten, to say he could not get his horse to face the storm. In fact, it would have been all but impossible for man or beast to have made headway through the hurricane.
We sat in the dark till night set in—not a soul could stir out. Nothing could be heard but the howling of the wind, the yelping of wild dogs driven into the enclosures, and the shrill neighings of terrified horses. At length a candle-end was stuck into a horn
Throughout the day there had been very little firing from the Russian batteries—towards evening all was silent except the storm. In the middle of the night, however, we were all awoke by one of the most tremendous cannonades we had ever heard, and, after a time, the report of a rolling fire of musketry was borne upon the wind. Looking eagerly in the direction of the sound, we saw the flashes of the cannon through the chinks in the roof, each distinct by itself, just as a flash of lightning is seen in all its length and breadth through a crevice in a window shutter. It was a sortie on the French lines. The cannonade lasted for half-an-hour, and gradually waxed fainter. In the morning we heard that the Russians had been received with an energy which quickly made them fly to the cover of their guns.
A change for the better—Visit to Balaklava—Devastation—Affair of Pickets—Newspaper Correspondents in the Crimea—Difficulties they had to encounter—False Hopes—A smart affair—Death of Lieutenant Tryon—Flattering Testimonies—Want of Generals—Attack on Oupatoria—Affair between the Chasseurs de Vincennes and the Russian Riflemen—The Ovens—A Deserter's Story—Movements of the Russians—A Reconnaissance—Suffering caused by hard work and scarcity of supplies—Warnings—Cholera—Dreadful Scenes amongst the Turks in Balaklava.
With the morning of the 15th of November, came a bright cold sky, and our men, though ankle deep in mud cheered up when they beheld the sun once more. The peaks of the hills and mountain sides were covered with snow. As rumours of great disasters reached us from Balaklava, I after breakfasting in my stable, made my way there as well as I could. The roads were mere quagmires. Another day's rain would have rendered them utterly impassable, and only for swimming or navigation. Dead horses and cattle were
In coming by the French lines I observed that the whole of the troops were turned out, and were moving about and wheeling in column to keep their blood warm. They had just been mustered, and it was gratifying to learn that the rumours respecting lost men were greatly exaggerated. Our men were engaged in trenching and clearing away mud.
The Russians in the valley were very active, and judging from the state of the ground and the number of loose horses, they must have been very miserable also.
Turning down by Captain Powell's battery, where the sailors were getting their arms in order, I worked through ammunition mules and straggling artillery-wagons towards the town. Balaklava was below—its waters thronged with shipping—not a ripple on their surface. It was almost impossible to believe that but twelve hours before ships were dragging their anchors, drifting, running aground,, and smashing each other to pieces in that placid loch. The whitewashed houses in the distance were as clean-looking as ever, and the old ruined fortress on the crags above frowned upon the sea, and reared its walls and towers aloft, uninjured by the storm.
On approaching the town, however, the signs of the tempest of the day before grew and increased at every step. At the narrow neck of the harbour, high and dry, three large boats were lying, driven inland several yards; the shores were lined with trusses of compressed hay which had floated out of the wrecks outside the harbour, and pieces of timber, beams of wood, masts and spars, formed natural rafts, which were stranded on the beach or floated about among the shipping. The old tree which stood near the guard-house at the entrance to the town was torn up, and in its fall had crushed the house into ruin. The soldiers of the guard were doing their best to make themselves comfortable within the walls. The fall of this tree, which had seen many winters, coupled with the fact that the verandahs and balconies of the houses and a row of very fine acacia trees on the beach were blown down, corroborate the statement so generally made by the inhabitants, that they had never seen or heard of such a hurricane in their life time, although there was a tradition among some that once in thirty or forty years such visitations occurred along this coast. The City of London, Captain Cargill, was the only vessel which succeeded in getting out to sea and gaining a good offing during the hurricane of the 14th, and the Captain told me, in all his experience (and as an old Aberdeen master, he has passed some anxious hours at sea) he never knew so violent a gale.
There was an affair of pickets during the night of the 15th between the French and the Russians, in which a few men were wounded on both sides, and which was finished by the retreat of the Russians to their main body. This took place in the valley of Balaklava, and its most disagreeable result (to those not engaged)
During this winter newspaper correspondents in the Crimea were placed in a rather difficult position. In common with generals and chiefs, and men-at-arms, they wrote home accounts of all we were doing to take Sebastopol, and they joined in the prophetic cries of the leaders of the host, that the fall of the city of the Czar—the centre and navel of his power in those remote regions—would not be deferred for many hours after our batteries had opened upon its defences. In all the inspiration of this universal hope, these poor wretches, who clung to the mantles of the military and engineering Elijahs, did not hesitate to communicate to the world, through the columns of the English press, all they knew of the grand operations which were to eventuate in the speedy fall of this doomed city. They cheered the heart of England with details of the vast armaments prepared against its towers and forts—of the position occupied by her troops—the imbecility of the enemy's fire—of the range of the guns so soon to be silenced—of the stations of our troops on commanding sites; and they described with all their power the grandiose operations which were being taken for the reduction of such a formidable place of arms. They believed, in common with the leaders, whose inspiration and whose faith were breathed through the ranks of our soldiers, that the allied forces were to reduce Sebastopol long ere the lines they penned could meet the expectant gaze of our fellow-countrymen at home; and they stated, under that faith and in accordance with those inspirations, that the operations of war of our armies were undertaken with reference to certain points and with certain hopes of results, the knowledge of which could not have proved of the smallest service to the enemy once beaten out of their stronghold.
Contrary to these hopes and inspirations, in direct opposition to our prophecies and to our belief, Sebastopol held out against the Allies; and the intelligence conveyed in newspapers which we all thought we should have read in the club-rooms of Sebastopol, was conveyed to the generals of an army which defended its walls, and were given to the leaders of an enemy whom we had considered would be impuissant and defeated, while they were still powerful and unconquered. The enemy knew that we had lost many men from sickness; that we had so many guns here and so many guns there, that our head-quarters were in one place, our principal powder magazines in another, that the camp of such a division had been annoyed by their fire, and that the tents of another had escaped injury from their shot, but it must be recollected that when these details were written it was confidently declared that, ere the news of the actual preliminaries of the siege could reach England, the Allies would have entered Sebastopol, that their batteries would have silenced the fire of their enemy, that the quarters of their generals would have been within the enceinte of the town, that our magazines would have been transferred to its storehouses, and that our divisions would have encamped within its walls.
How much knowledge of this sort the enemy gleaned through
Although it might be dangerous to communicate facts likely to be of service to the Russians, it was certainly hazardous to conceal the truth from the English people. They must have known, sooner or later, that the siege towards the end of November had been for many days practically suspended, that our batteries were used up and silent, and that our army was much exhausted by the effects of excessive labour and watching, to which they have been so incessantly exposed. The Russians knew this soon enough, for a silent battery—to hazard a bull—speaks for itself. The relaxation of our fire was self-evident, but our army, though weakened by sickness, was still equal to hold their position, and to inflict the most signal chastisement upon any assailants who might venture to attack it. In fact, I believe nothing would have so animated our men, deprived as they were of cheering words and of the presence and exhortations of their generals and destitute of all stimulating influences beyond those of their undaunted spirits and glorious courage, as the prospect of meeting the Russians outside their intrenchments. Rain kept pouring down, the wind howled over the staggering tents—the trenches were turned into dikes—in the tents the water was sometimes a foot deep—our men had neither warm nor waterproof clothing—they were out for twelve hours at a time in the trenches—they were plunged into the inevitable miseries of a winter campaign. These were hard truths, which sooner or later must have come to the ears of the people of England. It was right they should know that the beggar who wandered the streets of London led the life of a prince compared with the British soldiers who were fighting for their country, and who, we were complacently assured by the home authorities, were the best appointed army in Europe. They were fed, indeed, but they had no shelter. The tents, so long exposed to the blaze of a Bulgarian sun, and drenched by torrents of rain, let the wet through "like sieves."
On the night of the 20th of November, three companies of the Rifle Brigade (1st battalion), under Lieutenant Tryon, displayed coolness and courage in a very smart affair. In the rocky ground in the ravine towards the left of our left attack, about 300 Russian infantry established themselves in some caverns and old stone huts used by shepherds in days gone by, and annoyed the working and covering parties of the French right attack and of our advances.
General Canrobert issued a very flattering ordre du jour, in which he especially eulogized the intrepid bravery and noble energy of the three companies of the 1st battalion of our Rifle Brigade in the action, and Lord Raglan mentioned it in very handsome terms.
Our army was in a strange condition now. The Light Division was provisionally commanded by Codrington, Sir George Brown being on board the "Agamemnon."
The Duke of Cambridge was on board the "Retribution." The Brigade of Guards appeared to be commanded by Colonel Upton.
The Brigade of Highlanders was down at Kadikoi, under the command of Sir Colin Campbell.
The Second Division was commanded by Brigadier-General Pennefather, in the room of Sir De Lacy Evans, who was on his way home unwell.
The First Brigade was under the command of a Lieutenant-Colonel.
The Second Brigade was without a brigadier, General Adams' wound was more serious than was supposed.
The Third Division was under the command of Sir Richard England, and was fortunate in not being much engaged.
The Fourth Division, deprived of all its generals, was commanded by Sir John Campbell.
Brigadier-General Lord Cardigan was unable to leave his yacht. The Artillery was under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Dacres during the absence of Lieutenant-Colonel Gambier, who was wounded, after having succeeded to the command left vacant by the death of Strangways.
Our cattle at Eupatoria were by no means in high condition; they perished from hunger. It may readily be guessed that joints from the survivors were scarcely in such a condition as would justify the least conscientious of London waiters describing them as being in "prime cut."
Early in November a body of Russian cavalry appeared before Eupatoria to attack our stock, and a French colonel, with eighty horse, pushed forward to save his beeves and mutton from the gripe of the hungry Cossacks. The Russian cavalry always screen field guns, and on this occasion, as at the Bouljanak, plumped round shot and shell into the Frenchmen. The colonel was dismounted, seven men were killed or wounded, and, as the French
On the 24th there was a brisk affair between the French and the Russians in front of the Flagstaff Battery, and the Russians dispelled all myths about their want of powder and ball by a most tremendous cannonade. Assaults and counter-assaults continued amid a furious fire, which lighted up the skies with sheets of flame from nine o'clock at night till nearly four in the morning. The French at one time actually penetrated behind the outer intrenchments, and established themselves for a time within the enceinte, but as there was no preparation made for a general assault, they eventually withdrew.
The struggle between French and Russians was renewed on the night of the 25th. The great bone of contention, in addition to the Ovens, was the mud fort at the Quarantine Battery, of which the French had got possession, though, truth to tell, it did not benefit their position very materially.
A Polish deserter came in on the 27th with a strange story. He said that on the 25th the Grand Duke Michael reviewed a strong force of Russians (as he stated, of 12,000 men, but no reliance can be placed on the assertions of men of this class with regard to the numbers of a force), and that he addressed them in a spirited speech, in which he appealed to them to drive the heretics out of Balaklava into the sea. At the conclusion of his harangue the Grand Duke distributed two silver roubles to each private.
A reconnaissance of our lines was made on the 30th of November by Grand Duke Michael and a very large staff, among whom our knowing people said they could see Prince Menschikoff and General Liprandi. The Grand Duke was recognisable by the profound respect paid to him—wherever he went hats were taken off and heads uncovered—and by the presence of a white dog which always accompanies him. While making his inspection, the enormous telescope through which he gazed was propped upon muskets and bayonets, and he made frequent references to a very large chart on a portable table. The Grand Duke rode back up the hills towards Tchergoun.
As the year waned and winter began to close in upon us, the army suffered greatly; worn out by night-work, by vigil in rain and storm, by hard labour in the trenches, they found themselves suddenly reduced to short allowance, and the excellent and ample rations they had been in the habit of receiving cut off or miserably reduced. For nine days, with very few exceptions, no issue of tea, coffee, or sugar, to the troops took place. These, however, are luxuries—not the necessaries of military life. The direct cause of this scarcity was the condition of the country, which caused a difficulty in getting food from Balaklava, and there was besides a want of supplies in the commissariat magazines. But though there was a cause, there was no excuse for the privations to which
As to the town, words could not describe its filth, its horrors, its hospitals, its burials, its dead and dying Turks, its crowded lanes, its noisome sheds, its beastly purlieus, or its decay. All the pictures ever drawn of plague and pestilence, from the work of the inspired writer who chronicled the woes of infidel Egypt, down to the narratives of Boccacio, De Foe, or Moltke, fall short of individual "bits" of disease and death, which any one might see in half-a-dozen places during half an hour's walk in Balaklava. In spite of all our efforts the dying Turks made of every lane and street a cloaca, and the forms of human suffering which met the eye at every turn, and once were wont to shock us, ceased to attract even passing attention. By raising up the piece of matting or coarse rug which hung across the doorway of some miserable house, from within which you heard wailings and cries of pain and prayers to the Prophet, you saw in one spot and in one instant a mass of accumulated woes that would serve you with nightmares for a lifetime. The dead, laid as they died, were side by side with the living. The commonest accessories were wanting; there was not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness—the stench was appalling—the foetid air could barely struggle out to taint the atmosphere, through the chinks in the walls and roofs. The sick appeared to be tended by the sick, and the dying by the dying.
A False Alarm—The Russians retire—Skirmishes—Orders to turn out—The French and English make a Reconnaissance in force—A Brush with the Cavalry—Reinforcements—Winter—System of "Requisition," "Orders," and "Memos"—Our friends the Zouaves—Grievances—Christmas and New Year—The Times Commissioner—Arrival of Omar Pasha—First Week in January—Trying Duty of the Fatigue Parties—Terrible State of the Trenches—Louis Napoleon's Presents to the French Army—The Siege—Russian Prospects.
AT twelve o'clock, on the night of the 5th of December, there was a great stir down in the valley of Balaklava. The hoarse hum of men was heard by the pickets, and they reported the circumstance to the officers of the French regiments on the heights. Lights were seen moving about in the redoubts occupied by the Russians. It was supposed that the enemy had received reinforcements, or were about to make a dash at our position before Balaklava. The Hospital Guards and the invalid battalion were turned out, the French shrouded in their capotes grimly waited in their lines the first decisive movement of the enemy. The night was cold, but not clear; after a time the noise of wheels and the tramp of men ceased, and the alarm was over. Ere morning, however, we knew the cause. About five o'clock A.M. an outburst of flame from the redoubts in which the Russians had hutted themselves illuminated the sky, and at the same time the fire broke out in Komara. When morning came, the Russians were visible in much-diminished numbers on the higher plateaux of the hills near Tchorgoun and Komara. The faint rays of the morning sun played on the bayonets of another portion of the force as they wound up the road towards Mackenzie's farm, and passed through the wood over the right bank of the Tchernaya. They had abandoned the position they had won on 25th October.
With the exception of the advance of the army in the rear on the 25th October, and the grand sortie on the 5th of November, no movement of any moment was attempted during the latter part of 1854 by the Russians to raise the siege.
On the 20th of December, the Russians succeeded in penetrating our lines where they were in contract with the French. In order to deceive the sentries they commanded in French, which ruse was successful; they killed and wounded sixteen men—among the latter Major Moller, of the 50th—and carried away eleven men and two officers, Captain Frampton and Lieutenant Clarke, as prisoners, but were driven back by the 34th regiment before they could do any further mischief, not without inflicting a loss.
On the 29th December, Sir Colin Campbell made a reconnaissance with a part of his force the 79th and Rifle Brigade. Soon after
Cavalry skirmishers exchanged a few shots before they fell in with their respective squadrons, and when the French had arrived within about 800 yards, they broke from a trot into a gallop, and dashed right at the Russian cavalry. The latter met the shock, but made no attempt to charge the French, who broke them in an instant, and chased them back on the infantry, who were assembled in three small bodies on the hills, close to the village of Tchorgoun. As the French approached Tchorgoun, they were received with a brisk fire of shot and shell from some field-pieces, to which their guns were unable to reply; but they pushed within range, and the Russians again retired, and abandoned the village of Tchorgoun to our allies, as well as the line of cantonments and huts which they had constructed subsequent to Liprandi's advance in October.
The object was to beat up the Russian position and to ascertain the strength of the enemy. Our allies at once burst into the village, but the Cossacks had been there too long to leave anything to plunder, and so the French set it on fire. The whole cantonment was in a blaze, while volumes of white smoke curling up into the air, and spreading in sheets along the crests of the hills, indicated the destruction of the village, and informed the Russians that they could no longer hope for snug quarters there. The huts were very commodious and comfortable. Each was capable of containing twenty or thirty men, and held an oven for baking, which also warmed the room at the end. The object of the reconnaissance having been accomplished, the expedition was halted, and the men set to work at once to avail themselves of the abundance of wood along the hill-sides, and to make enormous fires, which almost obscured the retreat of the Russians. It was ascertained that they did not number more than 5000 or 6000 men. The French remained upon the ground till it was almost dark, and then returned to their camp. The French lost two officers, wounded (one since dead) and about twenty men put hors de combat. They took seventeen of the Russian cavalry and a few infantry prisoners.
We were cursed by a system of "requisitions," "orders," and "memos," which was enough to depress an army of scriveners, and our captains, theoretically, had almost as much work to do with pen and paper as if they had been special correspondents or bankers' clerks; that is, they ought to have had as much to do, but, thanks to the realities of war, they had no bookkeeping; their accounts being lost, and the captain who once had forty or fifty pounds' weight of books and papers to carry, had not so much as a penny memorandum-book. This fact alone showed the absurdity of our arrangements. In peace, when these accounts were of com
The cold was developing itself, and efforts to guard against it were attended with mischief. Captain Swinton, the Royal Artillery, was suffocated by the fumes of charcoal from a stove, several officers were half-killed by carbonic acid gas.
We were obliged to apply to the French to place guards over the line of march, for the instant a cart with provisions or spirits broke down it was plundered by our active friends the Zouaves, who really seemed to have the gift of ubiquity. Let an araba once stick, or break a wheel or an axle, and the Zouaves sniffed it out just as vultures detect carrion; in a moment barrels and casks were broken open, the bags of bread were ripped up, the contents were distributed, and the commissary officer, who had gone to seek for help and assistance, on his return found only the tires of the wheels and a few splinters of wood left, for our indefatigable foragers completed their work most effectually, and carried off the cart, body and boxes, to serve as firewood.
They were splendid fellows—our friends the Zouaves—always gay, healthy, and well fed; they carried loads for us, drank for us, ate for us, baked for us, foraged for us, and built our huts for us, and all on the cheapest and most economical terms. But there were some few degenerate wretches who grumbled even among this corps d'Élite. An officer commanding a fatigue party, who happened to fall in with a party of Zouaves engaged in a similar duty, brought them all off to the canteen to give them a dram after their day's labour. While he was in the tent a warrior with a splendid face for a grievance came in and joined in the conversation, and our friend, seeing he was not a private, but that he had a chatty talkative aspect, combined with an air of rank, began to talk of the privations to which the allied armies were exposed. This was evidently our ally's champ de bataille. He at once threw himself into an attitude which would have brought down the pit and galleries of the Porte St. Martin to a certainty, and, in a tone which no words can describe, working himself up by degrees to the grand climax, and attuning his body to every nice modulation of phrase and accent, he plunged into his proper woes. Our gallant friend had been expatiating on the various disagreeables of camp life in the Crimea in winter time: "C'est vrai!" quoth he, "mon ami! En effet, nous Éprouvons beaucoup de misÈre!" The idea of any one suffering misery except himself seemed to the Zouave too preposterous not to be disposed of at once. "Mais, mon lieutenant," cried he, "regardez moi——moi! pr-r-r-r-remier basson 3me Zouaves! ÉlÈve du Conservatoire de Paris! aprÈs avoir sacrificÉ vingt ans de ma vie pour acquÉrir un talent—pour me—r-r-ren-dr-r-re agrÉable a la sociÉtÉ—me voici! (with extended arms, and legs) me voici—forcÉ d'arracher du bois de la terre (with terrible earnestness and sense of indignity), pour me faire de la soupe!"
At the close of the year there were 3500 sick in the British camp before Sebastopol, and it was not too much to say that their illness had, for the most part, been caused by hard work in bad weather, and by exposure to wet without any adequate protection. Think of a tent pitched, as it were, at the bottom of a marsh, into which some twelve or fourteen miserable creatures, drenched to the skin, had to creep for shelter after twelve hours of vigil in a trench like a canal, and then reflect what state these poor fellows must have been in at the end of a night and day spent in such shelter, huddled together without any change of clothing, and lying packed up as close as they could be stowed in saturated blankets. But why were they in tents? Where were the huts which had been sent out to them? The huts were on board ships in the harbour of Balaklava. Some of these huts, of which we heard so much, were floating about the beach; others had been landed, and now and then I met a wretched pony, knee-deep in mud, struggling on beneath the weight of two thin deal planks, a small portion of one of these huts, which were most probably converted into firewood after lying for some time in the camp, or turned into stabling for officers' horses when enough of disjecta membra had been collected. Had central depÔts been established, as Mr. Filder proposed, while the fine weather lasted, much, if not all, of the misery and suffering of the men and of the loss of horses would have been averted.
It may be true that the enemy were suffering still more than our own men, but the calculation of equal losses on the part of England and on the part of Russia in the article of soldiery, cannot be regarded as an ingredient in the consideration of our position. Our force was deprived of about 100 men every twenty-four hours. There were between 7000 and 8000 men sick, wounded, and convalescent in the hospitals on the Bosphorus. The 39th Regiment before it had landed was provided with some protection against the severity of the weather—not by government, but by The Times Commissioner at Scutari: and I heard from the best authority that the bounty of the subscribers to the fund intrusted to The Times for distribution was not only well bestowed to the men, but that the officers of the regiments had evinced the greatest satisfaction at the comfort.
When the various articles sent up by The Times Commissioner arrived at the camp, there was a rush made to get them by the regimental medical officers, and no false delicacy was evinced by them in availing themselves of the luxuries and necessaries placed at their disposal, and of which they had been in so much need.
We had rather a dreary Christmas. Where were the offerings of our kind country-men and country-women, and the donations from our ducal parks? The fat bucks which had exhausted the conservative principles of a Gunter; the potted meats, which covered the decks and filled the holds of adventurous yachts; the worsted devices which had employed the fingers and emptied the crotchet-boxes of fair sympathizers at home?
Omar Pasha arrived on the 4th of January, on board the "Inflexible," and landed at the Ordnance-wharf. A council of war?—was held, at which the French General-in-Chief, the French Admiral, Sir E. Lyons, and Sir John Burgoyne, were present.
Next day, 1600 French were sent down to Balaklava to help us in carrying up provisions and ammunition. Each man received from our commissariat a ration of rum and biscuits.
The scenery of our camping ground and of the adjacent country assumed a wintry aspect. The lofty abrupt peaks and sharp ridges of the mountains which closed up the valley of Balaklava were covered with snow. On the tops of the distant mounds black figures, which appeared of enormous size, denoted the stations of the enemy's pickets and advanced posts.
The 63rd Regiment had only seven men fit for duty; the 46th had only thirty on the 7th. A strong company of the 90th was reduced in a week to fourteen file, and that regiment lost fifty men in a fortnight. The Scots Fusileer Guards, who had 1562 men, mustered 210 on parade. Other regiments suffered in like proportion. The men sought after ardent spirits with great avidity, and in carrying out rum to camp broached the kegs when the eye of the officer in charge was off them.
The duty of the fatigue parties was, indeed, very trying. A cask of rum, biscuit, or beef was slung from a stout pole between two men, and then they went off on a tramp of about five miles from the commissariat stores at Balaklava to head-quarters. As I was coming in from the front one day, I met a lad who could not long have joined in charge of a party of the 38th Regiment. He had taken the place of a tired man, and struggled along under his load, while the man at the other end of the pole exhausted the little breath he had left in appeals to his comrades. "Boys! boys! won't you come and relieve the young officer?" Horses could not do this work, for they could not keep their legs.
Hundreds of men had to go into the trenches at night with no covering but their greatcoats, and no protection for their feet but their regimental shoes. Many when they took off their shoes were unable to get their swollen feet into them again, and they might be seen bare-footed, hopping along about the camp, with the thermometer at twenty degrees, and the snow half a foot deep upon the ground. The trenches were two and three feet deep with mud, snow, and half-frozen slush. Our patent stoves were wretched. They were made of thin sheet iron, which could not stand our fuel—charcoal. Besides, they were mere poison manufactories, and they could not be left alight in the tents at night. They answered well for drying clothes.
I do not know how the French got on, but I know that our people did not get a fair chance for their lives while wintering in the Crimea. Providence had been very good to us. With one exception, which must have done as much mischief to the enemy as to ourselves, we had wonderful weather from the day the expedition landed in the Crimea.
One day as I was passing through the camp of the 5th (French)
Although he was living in a tent, the canvass was only a roof for a capacious and warm pit in which there was a bright wood fire sparkling cheerily in a grate of stones. We "trinqued" together and fraternised, as our allies will always do when our officers give them the chance.
It must not be inferred that the French were all healthy while we were all sickly. They had dysentery, fever, diarrhoea, and scurvy, as well as pulmonary complaints, but not to the same extent as ourselves, or to anything like it in proportion to their numbers. On the 8th of January, some of the Guards of Her Majesty Queen Victoria's Household Brigade were walking about in the snow without soles to their shoes. The warm clothing was going up to the front in small detachments.
Road made for us by the French—Hardships—Wretched Ambulance Corps—Mule Litter—Heroism of the Troops—A speedy Thaw—Russian New Year—A Sortie—Central DepÔt for Provisions—Disappearance of the Araba Drivers from Roumelia and Bulgaria—Highlanders and the Kilt—The Indefatigable Cossacks—Frost-bites—Losses in the Campaign—Foraging—Wild Fowl Shooting—The "Arabia" on Fire—The Coffee Question—Variableness of the Crimean Climate—Warm Clothing—Deserters—Their Account of Sebastopol.
The road which the French were making for the English from Kadikoi, by the Cavalry Camp, towards the front progressed, but not rapidly. The weather was so changeable, and was in every change so unfavourable for work, that it was hard to expect our allies to labour for us with their usual energy. However, they did work. They built huts for our officers, when paid for it, with much activity, and their aid in that way was invaluable. Some of the warm coats sent out for the officers were much too small, and I heard a pathetic story from a stout Highlander respecting the defeat of his exertions to get into his much-longed-for and much-wanted garment.
There was only one officer in the whole regiment that the largest of the great coats fitted, and he was certainly not remarkable for bulk or stature. The men were far more lucky, and their coats were of the most liberal dimensions, however eccentric in cut and device they might be.
As the Ambulance Corps were quite hors de combat in weather of this kind—as the men and horses were nearly all gone or unfit for duty, our sick were subjected to much misery in going from the camp to be put on board ship. But for the kindness of the French in lending us their excellent mule-litters, many of our poor fellows would have died in their tents. Captain Grant, at the head of the Ambulance Corps, was a most excellent, intelligent, and active officer, but he had no materials to work with, and this was no place for intelligence and activity to work miracles in. Experience had taught our allies that the mule-litter was the best possible conveyance for a sick or wounded man. A movable jointed frame of iron, with a canvass stretcher, was suspended from a light pack saddle at each side of a mule. If the sick or wounded man was able to sit up, by raising the head of the litter, a support was afforded to his back. If he wished his legs to hang down, the frame was adjusted accordingly, and he rode as if he were in an arm-chair suspended by the side of a mule. When the invalid wished to lie down, he had a long and comfortable couch—comfortable in so far as the pace of a mule was easier than the jog of an ambulance, and he was not crowded with others like hens in a coop. These mules travelled where ambulance carts could not stir; they required no roads nor beaten tracks, and they were readily moved about in the rear when an action was going on.
It was right that England should be made aware of the privations which her soldiers endured in this great winter campaign, that she might reward with her greenest laurels those gallant hearts, who deserved the highest honour—that honour which in ancient Rome was esteemed the highest that a soldier could gain—that in desperate circumstances he had not despaired of the Republic. And no man despaired. The exhausted soldier, before he sank to rest, sighed that he could not share the sure triumph—the certain glories—of the day when our flag was to float from Sebastopol! There was no doubt—no despondency. No one for an instant felt diffident of ultimate success. From his remains, in that cold Crimean soil, the British soldier knew an avenger and a conqueror would arise. If high courage, unflinching bravery—if steady charge—the bayonet-thrust in the breach—the strong arm in the fight—if calm confidence, contempt of death, and love of country could have won Sebastopol, it had long been ours. Let England know her children as the descendants of the starved rabble who fought at Agincourt and Cressy; and let her know, too, that in fighting against a stubborn enemy, her armies had to maintain a struggle with foes still more terrible, and that, as they triumphed over the one, so they vanquished the other.
On the night of the 12th of January the wind changed round to the southward, and the thermometer rose to 34°. A speedy thaw
About a quarter past one o'clock in the morning the Russians gave a loud cheer. The French replied by opening fire, and the Russians instantly began one of the fiercest cannonades we had ever heard. It reminded one of those tremendous salvoes of artillery which the enemy delivered on two or three occasions before we opened our batteries in October. The earthworks flashed forth uninterrupted floods of flame, which revealed distinctly the outlines of the buildings in the town, and defences swarming with men. The roaring of shot, the screaming and hissing of heavy shell, and the whistling of carcases filled up the intervals between the deafening roll of cannon, which was as rapid and unbroken as quick file-firing. The iron storm passed over our lines uninterruptedly for more than half an hour, and the French, whose works to our left were less protected by the ground than ours, had to shelter themselves closely in the trenches, and could barely reply to the volleys which ploughed up the parapets of their works.
While the firing was going on a strong body of men had been pushed out of the town up the face of the hill towards our works in front, and on the flank of the left attack. As it was expected that some attempt of the kind would be made, a sergeant was posted at this spot with twelve men. Every reliance was placed upon his vigilance, and a strict attention to his duties, but, somehow or other, the enemy crept upon the little party, surprised, and took them prisoners, and then advanced on the covering parties with such rapidity and suddenness that the parties on duty in the trenches were obliged to retire. They rallied, however, and, being supported by the regiments in rear, they advanced, and the Russians were driven back close to the town.
In this little affair one officer and nine men were wounded, six men were killed, and fourteen men taken. The French had to resist a strong sortie nearly at the same time; for a short time the Russians were within the parapet of one of their mortar batteries, and spiked two or three mortars with wooden plugs, but the French drove them back with loss, and in the pursuit got inside the Russian advanced batteries. The soldiers, indeed, say they could
A heavy gale of wind blew nearly all day, but the thermometer rose to 38°, and the snow thawed so rapidly that the tracks to the camp became rivulets of mud. The establishment of a central depÔt for provisions had, however, done much to diminish the labours and alleviate the sufferings of the men engaged in the duties of the siege; but the formation of the depÔt and the accumulation of the stores wore out and exhausted many of our best men. Out of a batch of 500 or 600 horses brought up from Constantinople, 279 died between the 16th of December and the 16th January. In fact the commissariat consumed and used up horseflesh at the rate of 100 head per week, and each of the animals cost on an average 5l. The araba drivers from Roumelia and Bulgaria disappeared likewise—out of the several hundreds there were very few left; and of the Tartars of the Crimea in our employ the majority were unwilling or unfit to work in cold weather, accustomed as they seemed to be to sit all day in close rooms provided with large stoves as soon as winter set in. Disease and sickness of all kinds swept these poor people away very rapidly. The mortality of the Turkish troops, which had, as I before stated, assumed the dimensions of a plague, had now begun to be attended with much of the physical appearances of the same terrible disease, and their sanitary condition excited the liveliest apprehensions of our medical officers in Balaklava, who had, over and over again, represented to the authorities the danger of allowing the Turks to remain in the town.
The Adelaide arrived in Balaklava on the 17th of January, after a splendid passage from England, and the passengers must have been a little astonished at the truly Christmas aspect presented by the Crimea; somewhat more real and less jovial they found it than the pictures which represented florid young gentlemen in gorgeous epaulettes, gloating over imaginary puddings and Christmas presents in snug tents, and ready to partake of the fare that England had sent to her dear boys in the Crimea, but which none of them had then received, and which none of them would ever eat in such comfort and with such appliances of luxury. There was a wind that would have effectually deprived, if wind could do it, any number of rats of their whiskers. Anxious to see what things were like on the heights above Balaklava, I started, with my gun upon my shoulder, through the passes across the hill, knee-deep in snow; and after a shot or two at great, raw-necked vultures, and stately eagles, and some more fortunate cracks at "blue rocks," scraping the snow off the points of the cliffs, I arrived in the camp of the Highlanders, several hundred feet below the elevated position of the Rifles, but quite high enough to induce me to accept a hearty invitation to stop to dinner, and rest for the night. Oh, could "Caledoniensis," "Pictus," "Memor antiquÆ virtutis," or any of the high-spirited Celtic gentlemen who are fighting about lions rampant and Scottish rights, and the garb of that respectable person, Auld Gael, but have seen what their countrymen
Over the waste or snow, looking down from the heights towards the valley of the Tchernaya, I saw those indefatigable Cossacks riding about their picket ground, and a few waggons stealing along from Mackenzie's Farm towards the heights of Inkerman. A vedette or two were trotting up and down along a ridge, keeping a bright lookout on our movements, and through the glass we perceived them flapping their hands under their armpits, as London cabmen do on a cold night when waiting for a fare. Towards Baidar, pickets of the same active gentry were moving along to keep themselves warm. We had no cavalry posts advanced towards them. In fact we could not conveniently send any out. Those ragged ruffians, in sheepskin coats and fur caps, mounted on ragged ponies, with deal lances and coarse iron tips, were able in drifting snow and biting winds to hold ground which our cavalry could not face.
In the middle of January there were severe and sudden alterations of temperature. Men were frozen in their tents, and several soldiers on duty in the trenches were removed to hospital with severe frost-bites, but the frost enabled the men to get up considerable supplies of warm clothing, though the means at our disposal did not permit of the wood for huts being sent to the front. When a path had once been trodden through the snow, men and horses could get along much more easily than if they had to wade through mud or across a country in a state of semi-solution. Many thousands of coats, lined with fur, long boots, gloves, mits, and socks were served out, but there were regimental hospitals where they had only one blanket to lie upon.
Our army consisted of officers and regiments almost new to this campaign. The generation of six months before had passed away; generals, brigadiers, colonels, captains, and men, the well-known faces of Gallipoli, of Bulari, of Scutari, of Varna, of Aladyn, of Devno, of Monastir—ay, even of the bivouac of Bouljanak, had changed; and there was scarcely one of the regiments once so familiar to me which I could then recognise save by its well-known number. What a harvest Death had reaped, and yet how many more were ripe for the sickle of the Great Farmer! It was sad to meet an old acquaintance, for all one's reminiscences were of noble hearts now cold for ever, and of friend after friend departed. And then came—"Poor fellow! he might have been saved, if——"
Excepting Lord Raglan, Lord Lucan, and Sir R. England, not one of our generals remained of those who went out originally; the changes among our brigadiers and colonels were almost as great. Sir George Brown, the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of
On the 16th the thermometer was at 14° in the morning and at 10° on the heights over Balaklava. The snow fell all night, and covered the ground to the depth of three feet; but the cold and violent wind drifted it in places to the depth of five or six feet. In the morning 1200 French soldiers came down to Balaklava for shot and shell, and the agility, good spirits, and energy with which they ploughed through the snow were alike admirable. The wind blew almost a gale, and the native horses refused to face it, but our poor fellows came trudging along in the same dreary string, and there was something mournful in the very aspect of the long lines of black dots moving across the vast expanse of glittering snow between Sebastopol and Balaklava. When these dots came up, you saw they had very red noses and very white faces and very bleared eyes; and as to their clothes Falstaff would have thought his famous levy a corps d'Élite if he could have beheld our gallant soldiery. Many of the officers were as ragged and as reckless in dress. The generals made appeals to their subalterns "to wear their swords, as there was no other way of telling them from the men."
It was inexpressibly odd to see Captain Smith, of the——Foot, with a pair of red Russian leather boots up to his middle, a cap probably made out of the tops of his holsters, and a white skin coat tastefully embroidered all down the back with flowers of many-coloured silk, topped by a head-dress À la dustman of London, stalking gravely through the mud of Balaklava, intent on the capture of a pot of jam or marmalade. Does the reader wonder why we were all so fond of jam? Because it was portable and come-at-able, and was a substitute for butter, which was only sent out in casks and giant crocks, one of which would exhaust the transport resources of a regiment. Captain Smith was much more like his great namesake of the Adelphi, when, in times gone by, he made up for a smuggler-burglar-bandit, than the pride of the High-street of Portsmouth, or than that hero of the Phoenix-park, with golden wings like an angel, before the redness of whose presence little boys and young ladies trembled. All this would be rather facetious and laughable, were not poor Captain Smith a famished wretch, with bad chilblains, approximating to frost-bites, a touch of scurvy, and of severe rheumatism.
This cold weather brought great quantities of wild fowl over the camp, but it was rather too busy a spot for them to alight in. They could scarcely recognize their old haunts in the Chersonese, and flew about disconsolately over their much metamorphosed feeding-grounds. Solemn flights of wild geese, noisy streams of barnacles, curlew, duck, and widgeon wheeled over the harbour, and stimulated the sporting propensities of the seamen who kept up a constant
Lord Raglan's visit to Balaklava, on the 18th of January, was a memorable event. Men were set to work throwing stones down into the most Curtius-like gulfs in the streets.
Lord Raglan began to go about frequently and ride through the various camps.
We were astounded, on reading our papers, to find that on the 22nd of December, London believed, the coffee issued to the men was roasted before it was given out! Who could have hoaxed them so cruelly? Around every tent there were to be seen green berries, which the men trampled into the mud, and could not roast. Mr. Murdoch, chief engineer of the Sanspareil mounted some iron oil casks, and adapted them very ingeniously for roasting; and they came into play at Balaklava. I do not believe at the time the statement was made, one ounce of roasted coffee had ever been issued from any commissariat store to any soldier in the Crimea.
The great variableness of the Crimean climate was its peculiarity. In the morning, you got up and found the water frozen in your tent, the ground covered with snow, the thermometer at 20°; put on mufflers, greatcoat, and mits; and went out for a walk, and before evening you returned perspiring under the weight of clothing which you carried at the end of your stick, unable to bear it any longer, the snow turned into slush, the thermometer at 45°. On the 16th the thermometer 10° noon. On the 22nd it stood at 50°—an alternation of 40° in five days; but the character of the weather exhibited a still greater difference. In the southern Crimea the wind riots in the exercise of its prescriptive right to be capricious. It plays about the tops of the cliffs and mountain ridges, lurks round corners in ravines, nearly whips you off your legs when you are expatiating on the calmness of the day, and suddenly yells in gusts at the moment the stillness had tempted you to take out a sketch-book for a memorandum of Sebastopol.
Desertions to the enemy, from the French and from our own ranks, took place. The deserters generally belonged to the Foreign Legion, from the young draughts and from regiments just sent out. We received a few deserters in turn from the army in the rear, by scrambling along the cliffs, and one of them told us he was three days coming from Baidar by that route. These men stated that the part of the town built upon the slope to the sea was very little injured by our fire, as our shot and shells did not "top" the hill. To the south faced one steep slope covered with houses and batteries and ruined works and battered suburbs. The other descended to the
New Works—A Ghastly Procession—Reinforcements—Havoc amongst Horses—A Reconnaissance of Sebastopol—Russian Defences—Camps—Red Tape and Routine—Changes of Weather—Sickness—Sufferings of the French—Effect of the Author's Statements—Facts—Continual Drain of Men—Affair of Musketry between the Russians and the French—Sharp-shooting—State of our Batteries—Orders with reference to Flags of Truce—A Spy in the Trenches—Good Fellowship at the Outposts.
WE gradually relinquished ground to our allies, and the front, which it had cost so much strength and so much health to maintain, was gradually abandoned to the more numerous and less exhausted army. Some of our regiments were reduced below the strength of a company.
The French relieved the Guards of their outpost duties, and gradually extended themselves towards Inkerman. What a difference there was in the relative position of the two armies from that on the evening of the 17th of October, when the French fire had been completely snuffed out, and our own fire still maintained its strength.
There was a white frost on the night of the 22nd of January, the next morning the thermometer was at 42°. A large number of sick were sent into Balaklava on the 23rd on French mule litters and a few of our bÂt horses. They formed one of the most ghastly processions that ever poet imagined. Many were all but dead. With closed eyes, open mouths, and ghastly faces, they were borne along two and two, the thin stream of breath, visible in the frosty air, alone showing they were still alive. One figure was a horror—a corpse, stone dead, strapped upright in its seat, its legs hanging stiffly down, the eyes staring wide open, the teeth set on the protruding tongue, the head and body nodding with frightful mockery of life at each stride of the mule over the broken road. The man had died on his way down. As the apparition passed, the only remark the soldiers made was,—"There's one poor fellow out of pain, any way!" Another man I saw with the raw flesh and skin hanging from his fingers, the naked bones of which protruded into the cold air. That was a case of frost-bite. Possibly the hand had been dressed, but the bandages might have dropped off.
The French army received important reinforcements. The Eighth Division arrived at Kamiesch; it consisted of 10,000 good troops. The Ninth Division, under General Brunet was expected.
Our allies then would muster upwards of 75,000 bayonets. The Turks did not seem to amount to more than 5000 or 6000. These unfortunate troops received supplies of new clothing and uniforms from Riza Pasha, the War Minister at Constantinople, and were assuming a respectable appearance.
It would have astonished a stranger to have seen the multitudes of dead horses all along the road. In every gully were piles of their remains torn by wild dogs and vultures. On a lone hillside I beheld the remnants of the gallant grey on which Mr. Maxse rode to the mouth of the Katcha, in company with Major Nasmyth, on the eve of the flank march to Balaklava, and many of the equine survivors of the charge at Balaklava lay rotting away by the side of the cavalry camp. Some had dropped down dead, and were frozen still as they fell; others were struggling to rise from their miry graves. The carcases had been skinned, by the Turks and French, to cover their huts; many suspicious-looking gaps, suggestive of horse-steak, were cut out in their flanks.
There was very smart fighting in the trenches and advanced works between the French and Russians on the night of the 23rd and the morning of the 24th.
On the 24th, Lord Raglan, attended by Major-General Airey and a few staff officers, rode over to Balaklava. He went on board the Caradoc and had a long interview with Sir E. Lyons alone, previous to which there was a council of war. Lord Raglan did not return to head-quarters till it was nearly dusk.
I had a long reconnaissance of Sebastopol on the same day, in company with Captain Biddulph, of Artillery. It was a beautifully clear day, and at times it was almost warm. We went up to the hill in advance and on the left of the maison brulÉe, and swept every inch of ground. The aspect of the place itself had changed very little, considering the hundreds of tons of shot and shell thrown into it; but whitewashed houses, roofed with tiles, and at most two stories high, in the suburbs, were in ruins. The roofs, doors, and windows were off, but puffs of smoke showed that the frames were covers for Russian riflemen. In front and left, lay a most intricate series of covered ways, traverses, zigzags, and parallels from the seaside, close to the Quarantine Battery, over the undulating land to the distance of sixty-five metres from the outer works of the Russians. Swarms of Franctireurs lined the advanced parallel, and kept up a continual pop, pop, pop, in reply to the Russian riflemen behind their advanced works.
The works from the Quarantine Fort to the crenelated wall, and thence to the Flagstaff Battery, seemed very much in the same state as the first day I saw them, with the exception, that the guns were withdrawn, and the defence left to riflemen. The Flagstaff parapets had been knocked to atoms long before, and the large buildings around it were all in ruins; but, on looking towards the ridge behind it, from which the streets descend, and which shelters that part of the place, I could see but little difference in its appearance to that which it presented on the 26th of September. People were walking about (relief coming up from
At the other side of the harbour, Fort Constantine was shining brightly in the sun, its white walls blackened here and there under the line of embrasures by the smoke of the guns on the 17th of October. Behind it were visible dark walls rising through the snow, and notched like saws by the lines of embrasures. The waters of the harbour, as smooth as glass, were covered with boats, plying from one side to the other, and one full of men came round the head of the Dockyard Creek towards Fort Alexander, with her white flag and blue St. Andrew's cross.
The large pile of Government buildings by the side of the Dockyard Creek was much injured. Close to there was a large two-decker, with a spring upon her cables lying so as to sweep the western slope of the town. A small steamer with her steam up was near at hand, either for the use of the garrison or to carry off the two-decker, in case heavy guns were unmasked upon her. To the right, at the other side of this creek, we could see into the rear of our left attack. The houses near the Redan and Garden Batteries as well as those in front of the Right Attack, and in the rear of Malakoff were in ruins. The part of the city beyond them seemed untouched. To the rear of Malakoff, which was split up, from top to bottom, as it was the first day of our fire, there was a perfect miracle of engineering.
It is impossible to speak too highly of the solidity and finish of the earthworks, thrown up to enfilade our attack, and to defend the key of their works. One line of battery was rivetted with tin boxes, supposed to be empty powder cases. This was the mere wantonness and surplusage of abundant labour. Behind this we could see about 2,000 soldiers and workmen labouring with the greatest zeal at a new line of batteries undisturbedly.
At the rear of Malakoff there was a camp, and another at the other side of the creek, close to the Citadel, on the north side. The men-of-war and steamers were lying with topgallantmasts and yards down, under the spit of land inside Fort Constantine. Our third parallel, which was within a few hundred yards of the enemy's advanced works, was occupied by sharpshooters, who kept up a constant fire, but from my position I could not see so well into our approaches as upon those of the French.
A circumstance occurred in Balaklava on the 25th, which I stated for the consideration of the public at home without one single word of comment. The Charity, an iron screw steamer, was in
"Oh!" said the guardian of stoves, "you must make your requisition in due form, send it up to head-quarters, and get it signed properly, and returned, and then I will let you have the stoves."
"But my men may die meantime."
"I can't help that; I must have the requisition."
"It is my firm belief that there are men now in a dangerous state whom another night's cold will certainly kill."
"I really can do nothing; I must have a requisition properly signed before I can give one of these stoves away."
"For God's sake, then, lend me some; I'll be responsible for their safety."
"I really can do nothing of the kind."
"But, consider, this requisition will take time to be filled up and signed, and meantime these poor fellows will go."
"I cannot help that."
"I'll be responsible for anything you do."
"Oh, no, that can't be done!"
"Will a requisition signed by the P. M. O. of this place be of any use!"
"No."
"Will it answer, if he takes on himself the responsibility?"
"Certainly not."
The surgeon went off in sorrow and disgust.
I appended another special fact for Dr. Smith, the head of the British Army Medical Department. A surgeon of a regiment stationed on the cliffs above Balaklava, who had forty sick out of two hundred, had been applying to the "authorities" in the town for three weeks for medicines, and could not get one of them. The list he sent in was returned with the observation, "We have none of these medicines in store." The surgeon came down with his last appeal:—"Do, I beg you, give me any medicine you have for diarrhoea."
"We haven't any."
"Have you any medicine for fever? Anything you can let me have, I'll take."
"We haven't any."
"I have a good many cases of rheumatism. Can you let me have any medicines?"
"We haven't any."
Thus, for diarrhoea, fever, and rheumatism there were no specifics. Dr. Smith could prove, no doubt, that there were granaries full of the finest and costliest drugs and medicines for fever, rheumatism, and diarrhoea at Scutari, but the knowledge that they were there little availed those dying for want of them at Balaklava.
But with all this, the hand of the plague was not stayed.
Sickness clung to our troops, the soldiers who climbed the bloody steeps of the Alma in the splendour of manly strength, and who defended the heights over the Tchernaya exhausted, and "washed out" by constant fatigue, incessant wet, insufficient food, want of clothing and of cover from the weather, died away in their tents night after night. Doctors, and hospitals, and nurses, came too late, and they sank to rest unmurmuringly, and every week some freshly-formed lines of narrow mounds indicated the formation of a new burial-place.
It must not be inferred that the French escaped sickness and mortality. On the contrary, our allies suffered to a degree which would have been considered excessive, had it not been compared with our own unfortunate standard of disease and death, and to the diminution caused by illness, must be added that from the nightly sorties of the Russians and the heavy fire from the batteries.
According to what I heard from people, I was honoured by a good deal of abuse for telling the truth. I really would have put on my Claude Lorraine glass, if I could. I would have clothed skeletons with flesh, breathed life into the occupants of the charnel-house, subverted the succession of the seasons, and restored the legions which had been lost; but I could not tell lies to "make things pleasant." Any statements I had made I have chapter, and book, and verse, and witness for. Many, very many, that I did not make I could prove to be true with equal ease, and could make public, if the public interest required it. The only thing the partisans of misrule could allege was, that I did not "make things pleasant" to the authorities, and that, amid the filth and starvation, and deadly stagnation of the camp, I did not go about "babbling of green fields," of present abundance, and of prospects of victory.
Suppose we come to "facts." Do people at home know how many bayonets the British army could muster? Do they believe we had 25,000, after all our reinforcements? They might have been told—nay, it might have been proved to them by figures at home—that the British army consisted of 55,000 men. From the 1st of December, 1854, to the 20th of January, 1855, 8,000 sick and wounded were sent down from camp to Balaklava, and thence on shipboard! Shall I state how many returned?
Yet people at home told us it was "croaking" to state the facts, or even to allude to them! The man who could have sat calmly down and written home that our troops were healthy, that there was only an average mortality, that every one was confident of success, that our works were advancing, that we were nearer to the capture of Sebastopol than we were on the 17th of October, that transport was abundant, and the labours of our army light, might be an agreeable correspondent, but assuredly he would not have enabled the public to form a very accurate opinion on the real state of affairs in the camp before Sebastopol. The wretched boys sent out to us were not even fit for powder. They died ere a shot was fired against them. Sometimes a good draught was received;
And now for another "fact." The battle of Inkerman was fought on the 5th of November, as the world will remember for ever. About 40 per cent. of the Brigade of Guards were killed or wounded on that occasion. They received reinforcements, and the brigade which mustered about 2,500 men when it left England had received some 1,500 men in various draughts up to the end of the year. What was the strength in the last week of January of the Brigade of Household troops—of that magnificent band who crowned the struggle of the Alma with victory, and beat back the Russian hordes at Inkerman? I think they could have mustered, including servants, about 950 men in the whole brigade. Here is another fact. Since the same battle of Inkerman, at least 1,000 men of the brigade had been "expended," absorbed, used up, and were no more seen. The official returns will show how many of that thousand were killed or wounded by the enemy. Another fact. There were two regiments so shattered and disorganised—so completely destroyed, to tell the truth, that they had to be sent away to be "re-formed." Now, mark, one of these regiments was neither at the Alma nor at Inkerman—the other was engaged in the latter battle only, and did not lose many men.
January 28 was celebrated by an extremely heavy fire between the Russians and the French. The volleys were as heavy as those at the Alma or Inkerman, and from the numbers of Russian infantry thrown into the works, it was evident the enemy intended to dispute the small space of ground between the last French trench and the broken outworks of their late batteries with the greatest vigour. Possibly, indeed, orders had been received to resist any nearer approaches of the French, who had burrowed up, zigzagged, paralleled, and parapetted the country from the Quarantine Fort to the Flagstaff Fort.
It was not to be expected that such an affair could take place without considerable loss on both sides. After daybreak the fire recommenced with great fury, and about eight o'clock a regular battle was raging in the trenches between the French and Russians. There could not have been less than 3,000 men on each side firing as hard as they could, and the lines were marked by thick curling banks of smoke. The fire slackened about nine o'clock.
By general orders dated 29th of January, Lord Raglan communicated that the Russian commanders had entered into an agreement to cease firing whenever a white flag was hoisted to indicate that a burying-party was engaged in front of the batteries. Admiral Boxer arrived to assume the command of the harbour of Balaklava, and by incessant exertions succeeded in carrying out many improvements, and in introducing some order in that focus of feebleness, confusion, and mismanagement.
On the 31st, a spy walked through some of our trenches. He was closely shaven, wore a blue frock-coat buttoned up to the chin, and stopped for some time to look at Mr. Murdoch "bouching" the guns. Some said he was a Frenchman, others that he "looked like
Orders were issued, in consequence, to admit no one into the trenches or works without a written permission, and all persons found loitering about the camp were arrested and sent to divisional head-quarters for examination. The French were in the habit of sending out working parties towards the valley of Baidar, to cut wood for gabions and fuel. They frequently came across the Cossack pickets, and as it was our interest not to provoke hostilities, a kind of good-fellowship sprang up between our allies and the outposts. One day the French came upon three cavalry horses tied up to a tree, and the officer in command ordered them not to be touched. On the same day a Chasseur left his belt and accoutrements in a ruined Cossack picket-house, and gave up hope of recovering them, but on his next visit he found them on the wall untouched. To requite this act, a soldier who had taken a Cossack's lance and pistol, which he found against a tree, was ordered to return them. The next time the French went out, one of the men left a biscuit in a cleft stick, beckoning to the Cossack to come and eat it. The following day they found a loaf of excellent bread stuck on a stick in the same place, with a note in Russian to the effect that the Russians had plenty of biscuits, and that, although greatly obliged for that which had been left, they really did not want it; but if the French had bread to spare like the sample left in return, it would be acceptable. One day a Russian called out, as the French were retiring, "Nous nous reverrons, mes amis—FranÇais, Anglais, Russes, nous sommes tous amis." The cannonade before Sebastopol, the echoes of which reached the remote glades distinctly, must have furnished a strange commentary on the assurance.
French Demonstration—Opinions on the Siege—Suffering and Succour—The Cunning Cossack—The Navy's Barrow—Appearance of Balaklava—Supply of Water—Struggle between the French and the Russians—General Niel—Canards—A Spy—Omar Pash's Visit—The Bono Johnnies—Doing nothing—Change in the Temperature.
ON the 1st of February the French made a demonstration on our right and two divisions were marched down towards Inkerman, consisting of about 16,000 men; but the Russians who had been cheering loudly all along our front, did not meet them.
Every day strengthened the correctness of Sir John Burgoyne's homely saying about Sebastopol—"The more you look at it, the less you will like it." Three months before, that officer declared
The thermometer on the 4th of February stood at 22°. In the afternoon a party of Cossacks with two light field-pieces, were observed crossing the head of the valley towards Inkerman, but the Russians mustered over the heights and on the ridges between the Belbek and the south side of Sebastopol. They must have suffered very severely during these cold nights, for they were less able to bear the severity of the climate than our own soldiers, being accustomed to spend their winters in hot close barracks. The Cossacks alone are employed in the open country during frost and snow.
As the spring advanced, all kinds of aid began to arrive, and even luxuries were distributed. The Government sent out stores to be sold at cost price. The Crimean Army Fund opened their magazines, and sold excellent articles of all kinds. Our parcels and boxes and Christmas presents turned up slowly in the chaos of Balaklava. The presents sent by the Queen and Prince to the Guards, in the St. Jean d'Acre, were after a time delivered to the men. Lord Rokeby was affected to tears when the three regiments paraded, on his taking the command. He communicated a most gratifying letter from the Queen to the officers, in which Her Majesty expressed her admiration of the conduct of "her beloved Guards."
Lord Raglan rode into Balaklava on the 5th, and remained some time, inspecting the arrangements. A harbour was assigned for French ships to unload stores for regiments which were nearer to Balaklava than to Kamiesch.
As I was riding out on the same day towards the camp from Balaklava with an officer of the Scots Fusileer Guards, I witnessed a refreshing instance of vigilance. We rode towards the Woronzoff road, and kept a little too much to our right, so that, happening to look towards the top of a mound about 300 yards distant, the first thing that struck us was the head of a Cossack as he crouched down to escape observation. A little in advance was an English soldier, behind him, at the distance of some 400 yards, another soldier was running, shouting, with his firelock at the present. The first man kept walking rapidly on. The other halted and fired. Still the fellow kept on, and we were riding up to see what he was, when a Dragoon dashed at a gallop from the cavalry picket, and rode between the man and the hill. The soldier turned back with the Dragoon, who marched him to the picket-house, and then went up to the other who was a sentry in front of the Highland Battery, and had run after the would-be deserter, whom he had seen edging up towards the Russian Lines along the plain. It was amusing to watch the Cossack. Nothing could be seen of him for the time but his little bullet head over the bank. He evidently imagined that by lying close he might get one of us, but he was disappointed.
It is strange that the first use—perhaps the only use—the Crim-Tartar
A new wooden world arose in a few days in early February along the hill-side over the road to Balaklava. A little town was erected on the right-hand side of the path, about three-quarters of a mile outside Balaklava, for the sutlers expelled from the town, in which fires had been suspiciously frequent; and, from the din and clamour, one might imagine he was approaching some well-frequented English fair. A swarm of men, in all sorts of grotesque uniforms, French, English, and Turks, thronged the narrow lines between the huts and tents, and carried on bargains in all the languages of Babel, with Greek, Italian, Algerine, Spaniard, Maltese, Armenian, Jew and Egyptian, for all sorts of merchandize. Here I beheld a runaway servant of mine—a vagabond Italian—selling small loaves of bread for 2s. each, which he had purchased from a French baker in Balaklava for 1s. 6d. As the authorities did not interfere in such cases, I was left to solace myself with the poor revenge of seeing him break his shins over a tent-stick as he ran away to escape my horsewhip.
In the camp all the scoundrels of the Levant who could get across the Black Sea, were making little fortunes by the sale, at the most enormous prices, of the vilest articles of consumption, which necessity alone forced us to use: and a few honest traders might also be seen sitting moodily in their stalls and mourning over their fast-departing probity. There was not then one Englishman, so far as I know, among these sutlers of the British army, though the greatest vein of nuggets that ever charmed multitudes to a desert was as dross and dirt to the wealth to be realized in this festering crowd. Camel-drivers, arabajees, wild-eyed, strange-looking savages from out-of the-way corners of Asia Minor, dressed apparently in the spoils of the chorus of "Nabucco" or "Semiramide," stalked curiously through the soldiery, much perplexed by the conflicting emotions of fear of the Provost-Marshal and love of plunder. Then there was an odd-looking acre or two of ground, with a low wall round it, which looked as if all the moles in the world lived beneath it, and were labouring night and day—so covered was it with mounds of earth, through which peered rags and bones. This was the Turkish burying-ground, and full well frequented was it. Little parties might be seen flocking to it down the hill-sides all day, and returning with the empty litters gravely back again. They also turned one or two vineyards into graveyards, and they also selected a quiet nook up among the hills for the same purpose. Our own more decent graveyard was situated outside the town, in
If Birnam Wood had been formed of deal boards, Macbeth might have seen his worst suspicions realized. He would have beheld literally miles of men, and of mules and ponies, all struggling through the mud with boards—nothing but boards. In calm weather they got on well enough, but a puff of wind put an end to progress, and a strong gust laid men and horses in the mire. However, they were slowly working up towards the camp, but how hard it was to take up even one hut, and what a great quantity of timber had to be moved ere the building was complete.
The cold and frost had almost disappeared; but the inhabitants warned us not to be misled; March was still to be endured, and we heard that he roared right royally, and came in, and remained in, with bitter cold and very strong winds, and heavy falls of rain, sleet, and snow. March was, in truth, like November. The climate, was beyond all conception fickle. A bird might be singing under the impression that he had done with foul weather, and think of getting ready his nest, and shortly afterwards be knocked down by a blow on the head from a hailstone.
An order was issued to supply charcoal in the trenches; but the commissariat could not furnish either the charcoal or transport. In default, the men were obliged to grub out the roots of brushwood or of vines, and were often obliged to go down the hill-sides under the enemy's fire, to gather enough to cook their meals.
The "navvies" worked away heartily, pulling down the rickety houses and fragments of houses near the post-office of Balaklava, to form the terminus of the first bit of the Grand Crimean Central Railway (with branch line to Sebastopol). The frail houses dissolved into heaps of rubbish under their vigorous blows, and the more friable remains were carted off and shot into and over the ineffable horrors and nastiness of the Turkish plague and charnel-houses. They landed a large quantity of barrows, beams, rails, spades, shovels, picks, and other materials.
There was an extremely hot contest on the night of the 6th, between the French and Russians: the cannonade, which sounded all over the camp, lasted about an hour. The enemy, were labouring hard at the works in the rear of the Malakoff (or the Round Tower), and at three o'clock on the 6th I saw they had about 1200 men employed on the earth slopes and parapets of the batteries. While I was examining the place there was scarcely a shot fired for two hours. The small steamers and boats were particularly active, running across the creek and to and fro in the harbour, and everything seemed to go on in the town much the same as usual. One portion of the place containing some fine buildings, and a large church with a cupola, as seen from the picket-house, put one in mind of the view of Greenwich from the Park Observatory through a diminishing glass. Lord Raglan ordered ten of our 13-inch mortars to be lent to the French from the Firefly.
General Niel, expressed a decided opinion that the batteries were
On the 7th of February, the French took charge of the whole of the Malakoff Attack—the key of the position,—and constructed two batteries on our right, under the direction of M. St. Laurent. It was said that Lord Raglan objected to this movement on the part of the French, and suggested that the British should move towards the right, and that the French should take our left attack; but his lordship failed to persuade our allies to accede to his propositions, and they were permitted to overlap and surround the English army.
"General Rumour" is a very efficient officer in the management of "alertes." He is never surprised, and errs rather on the safe side of caution than otherwise. On the morning of the 8th of February he turned out all the troops in and about Balaklava, manned his guns, roused up Admiral Boxer, awakened Captain Christie, landed the seamen, mercantile and naval, and taking Sir Colin Campbell and his staff out on the hills, awaited an attack which never was made, but which, no doubt, would have been repelled with signal energy and success. It appeared that a spy passing through the lines of the Rifle Brigade on his way to the head-quarters of the French army, on being interrogated by a young officer, informed him that the Russians had about a sotnia, or demi-troop, in several of the villages towards the eastward of Balaklava, such as Tchorgoun, and a large body, whom he estimated at 35,000 men, in their rear, removing round to the south-east of Baidar, so as to approach our right on the heights over Balaklava. The rifleman, imparted the result of his inquiries to an officer in a Highland regiment. There is no place in the world like a camp for the hatching and development of "canards." The egg thus laid was very soon matured, and the young bird stalked forth and went from tent to tent, getting here a feather and there a feather, till it assumed prodigious dimensions and importance. How it became "official" did not come to my knowledge, but at half-past ten o'clock at night orders were sent from Sir Colin Campbell to the regiments along the entrenchments up the heights to hold themselves in readiness for an attack, and the 71st regiment was marched up to strengthen the bold crest occupied by the Rifles and Marines. Later at night, or early next morning, Colonel Harding, the Commandant of Balaklava, roused up the Quartermaster-General, Major Mackenzie, who at once repaired into Sir Colin Campbell's quarters, and learned that this attack was fixed to come off at half-past four or five o'clock A.M.
The alarm spread. Captain Christie sent orders to the large merchant steamers to be in readiness to render all the aid in their power; Admiral Boxer ordered the men of the Vesuvius to be landed, and the sailors of the transports to be armed and in readiness for service.
The Wasp and Diamond cleared for action and moored so as to command the approach of the harbour from the land side. At four o'clock Sir Colin Campbell and his staff mounted the heights up to the Rifle camp. It was bright moonlight. A deep blue sky sparkling with stars was streaked here and there by light fleecy clouds of snowy whiteness, which swept slowly across the mountain crags, or darkened the ravines and valleys with their shadows, like masses of infantry on march. Scarcely a sound was audible near us, except at long intervals the monotonous cry of the sentries, "Number one, and all's well," or the bells striking the hours on board the ships; but artillery and incessant volleys of musketry from the front, told that the French and Russians had availed themselves of the moonlight to continue their contest. The roar of the heavy mortars which came booming upon the ear twice or thrice every minute bespoke the deadly use which our allies were making against the city of the beauty of the morning.
In the rear, around the deep valleys and on the giant crags towards the sea, all was silent. The men behind the trench which defended our position from Balaklava to the seaboard scarcely spoke above a whisper, and were almost lost to sight, but the moonlight played on long lines of bright barrels and sparkling bayonets, which just crested, as it were, the dark outlines of the breastwork, beneath which English, French, and Turk were lying in readiness for the enemy. The guns in the redoubts and earthwork batteries were prepared for instant service. All the batteries were fully manned, and, had the enemy come on at that time, he would have met with an astonishingly warm reception. I had been roused out before four o'clock in the morning, but, being rather incredulous in the matter of alertes, I had contented myself with getting on my clothes and having the horses saddled. The firing from Sebastopol became so very heavy that the echoes sounded as if there was really a conflict taking place, and I went out to the heights. An hour and a half of anxious vigil brought the dawn. All eyes peered through the strange compound of light, formed by the rays of the rising sun and the beams of his fast-declining satellite, to discover the columns of the enemy, but there were none in sight. Just as the sun rose, the eternal Cossack vedettes came in view on the hill-tops to the east, each figure standing out sharp and black against the glowing background. A few Russians were seen about Kamara, but it was evident there was no preparation for an attack, and Sir Colin Campbell gave orders for the men to return to their tents.
The events of the day, however, proved that the spy brought trustworthy intelligence. The Russians returned to the heights over the valley of Balaklava towards the left of the Tchernaya, and reoccupied the hills and ravines about Kamara and Tchorgoun in force.
Omar Pasha arrived at Kamiesch on the 8th, in the Colombo; and next day visited General Canrobert and Lord Raglan. These interviews constituted a council of war, and it is reasonable to suppose that the operations of the campaign were finally determined upon and arranged between the allied Generals.
It rained heavily all night on the 9th, and the ground was reduced to such a state that the reconnaissance which Sir Colin Campbell, aided by the French, intended to have made was postponed. The atmosphere was so obscure, that it was all but impossible to catch a glimpse of the enemy's movements; but a break in the rain and a lift in the haze now and then enabled us to see them working at some earthworks on the brow of the hills before Kamara. They pushed vedettes up to the top of Canrobert's Hill (formerly the site of Redoubt No. 1, held by the Turks previous to the 25th of October). About the middle of the day three columns, estimated at 3,000 men, were observed moving round from their right by the back of Kamara towards the hills over Baidar with guns. There was a swarm of Cossacks between Kamara and the road to Mackenzie's farm, and their vedettes were posted along the heights over the Woronzoff-road. Our vedettes on the mound over that road nearest to our lines had also been doubled. Some of the Cossacks came so close to our front that a shell was fired at them from No. 4 Battery, near Kadekeeva (Kadikoi).
An English artilleryman, for some fancied slight, set upon a Turk, gave him a beating, and attacked "outrageously" a Turkish officer who came to his countryman's assistance. He was found guilty of the double offence by general court-martial, and sentenced to fifty lashes. Osman Pasha, the commander of the Turkish troops, and the officer who had been struck, interceded with Lord Raglan for the remission of the man's punishment, and his lordship, in general orders, rescinded the sentence of the court-martial.
A considerable number of sick men (217) were sent down on the 10th from the camp to Balaklava. There were many bad cases of scurvy and of scorbutic dysentery among the men; and yet vegetables of all sorts, and lemons and oranges, were to be found in abundance, or could have been purchased in any quantities, all along the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora. No one could say there were no ships to bring them. Balaklava contained ships which had been lying here for weeks—ay, for months—doing nothing. The splendid screw steamer Jason fitted up especially as a horse transport, came in many days before from Ismed laden with a cargo of wood for fuel. The expenses of such a large vessel must have been enormous, and yet she had been in harbour for nearly a fortnight doing nothing.
The 11th was a day quite worthy of "General FÉvrier's" gratitude—bleak, raw, and stormy; the wind raging furiously between intervals of profound calm—the sky invisible in a murky sheet, from which fell incessant showers of rain, sleet, or snow alternately, or altogether—and the landscape shut out of sight at a few yards' distance by the grey walls of drizzling clouds and vapour. It
Sickness in the French Camp—Their System of Cooking—Ingenuity—A Crimean Dinner—Recipes—Cost of a Soldier—Lord Lucan's Recal—A Reconnaissance—Disappointment—An Adventure—Lose the Way—Russian Attack—Activity in The Harbour—Good View of Sebastopol—General Appearance—A Furious Cannonade—An Armistice—Pen-and-ink Work.
THERE was a good deal of sickness in the French camp, and one regiment was said to have suffered as much from scorbutic diseases as any of our own, and to have ceased to exist, like the 63rd Regiment. But the French had no large steamers which they could send to forage in all the ports of Asia Minor; and, with their deficient transport, they had less sickness and less loss of life from disease cent. per cent. than our troops, while they were better provided with food and soldiers' luxuries. Had the French army undergone the same amount of vigil, labour, and fatigue to which our army was exposed, I am convinced it would have been in as bad a plight, and that it would have suffered very nearly the same losses. Their system of cooking was better; their system of hutting was better; instead of having twelve or fourteen miserable, gloomy fellows, sitting moodily together in one tent, where each man ate his meal, cooked or uncooked, as best he could, they had four men together in a tent, who were neither miserable nor gloomy as a general rule, because they had a good dish of soup and bouilli well made at the mess fire, and carried away "piping hot" in the camp kettle of the tent. The canvass of the tente was in bad weather only a roof to a deep pit in the shape of the parallelogram formed by the flaps of the canvass. This pit was dug out of the earth; it contained a little fireplace at one end, with a mud chimney outside, and was entered by a flight of two or three steps, which descended to the dry floor. Our men rarely dug out the earth, and their tents were generally pitched on the surface of the ground. They had no time to do any better.
In cooking, our neighbours beat us hollow. I partook of a sumptuous banquet in the tent of an officer of the Guards one night, the staple of which was a goose, purchased for a golden egg in Balaklava, but which assumed so many forms, and was so good and strange in all—coming upon one as a piÈce de rÉsistance, again assuming the shape of a giblotte that would have done credit to Philippe, and again turning up as a delicate little plat with a flavour of woodcocks, that the name of the artist was at once demanded.
He was a grisly-headed Zouave, who stood at the door of the tent, prouder of the compliments which were paid to him than of the few francs he was to get for his services, "lent," as he was, by the captain of his company for the day.
A few days after—these were Christmas times, or were meant to be so—there was a dinner in another friendly tent. A Samaritan sea-captain had presented a mess with a leg of English mutton, a case of preserved turnips, and a wild duck. Hungry as hunters, the little party assembled at the appointed hour, full of anticipated pleasure and good fare from the fatherland. "Bankes, bring in dinner," said the host, proudly, to his chef de cuisine. The guests were seated—the cover was placed on the table—it was removed with enthusiasm, and, lo! there lay the duck, burnt black, and dry as charcoal, in the centre of a mound of turnips. "I thout vowls wor always ate vurst," was the defence of the wretched criminal, as he removed the sacrifice for the time. Then he brought in the soup, which was excellent, especially the bouilli, but we could not eat soup all night, especially when the mutton was waiting. "Now then, Bankes, bring in the leg of mutton." "The wawt, zur?" "The leg of mutton, and look sharp, do you hear? I hope you have not spoiled that too." "Woy, zur, thee's been 'atin oo't!" The miserable being had actually boiled down the leg of mutton in the soup, having cut large slices off it to make it fit the pot!
We had great fun with the recipes for cooking rations which appeared in the papers. M. Soyer's were good and simple, but every one of them had been found out by experiment months before, and were familiar, however little successful, to every camp cook. The recipes which taught the men how to make rations palatable by the help of a "sliced turkey," nutmegs, butter, flour, spices, and suet, were cruel mockeries. Can any one tell us why the army was compelled to eat salt pork? Why was this the only meat except beef that was served out? The lean was always very hard and tough, and required great care and trouble in cooking to make it masticable—the fat was ever in undue proportion to the lean, and was far too "rich" for a debilitated stomach. Are "pigs" a national institution, to be maintained at any cost? Is the flesh of the bull a part of the constitution? A soldier is a very dear animal. A crop of them is most difficult to raise, and once they have been fully grown, and have become ripe soldiers, they are beyond all price. Had we not abundance of meals in our warehouses, of vegetables, of all kinds of nutritious preparations, to bestow on those who were left to us, and who were really "veterans," for in the narrow limits of one campaign they had epitomized all the horrors, the dangers, and the triumphs of war? The ration, with its accessories of sugar, tea or coffee, tobacco and rice, was sufficient, as long as it was unfailing, and while the army was in full health; but it was not sufficient, or, rather, it was not suitable, when the men were debilitated from excessive labour.
What was the cost to the country of the men of the Brigade of Guards who died in their tents or in hospital of exhaustion, overwork, and deficient of improper nutriment? The brigade mustered
Sir George Brown arrived on the 12th, and Lord Raglan went down to meet him, and returned with him to head-quarters. The gallant old officer seemed to have quite recovered from the effects of his Inkerman wound, and was well received by his Division.
On the 14th the great topic of conversation was the recall of the Earl of Lucan. On the previous forenoon Lord Raglan sent the noble Lord a dispatch which he had received from the Duke of Newcastle, who stated that as he had thought fit to find fault with the terms used in his General's despatch respecting his conduct on the 25th of October, the Government had resolved on recalling him. The impression was that Lord Lucan was harshly and unjustly dealt with.
On February 19th, preparations were made for a reconnaissance by Sir Colin Campbell and Vinoy against the enemy between the Tchernaya and Kamara. The weather had been unfavourable, but the few fine days from the 15th to the 19th had made the country in tolerable order for the movements of artillery and cavalry. The French were to furnish 11,600 men; Sir Colin Campbell's force was to consist of the 42nd, 79th, 93rd Highlanders, the 14th and 71st Regts. detachments of cavalry, and two batteries. Soon after dark the French began to get ready, and the hum of men betrayed the movement. By degrees the rumour spread from one confidant to the other, and by midnight a good number of outriders and amateurs were aware of what was going on, and strict orders were issued for early calls and saddling of horses "to-morrow morning at dawn."
Nothing excites such interest as a reconnaissance. Our army was deprived of the peculiar attractions of most wars in Europe. There was none of the romance of the Peninsular campaigns about it. We were all shut up in one dirty little angle of land, with Cossacks barring the approaches to the heavenly valley around us. There were no pleasant marches, no halts in town or village, no strange scenes or change of position; nothing but the drudgery of the trenches and of fatigue parties, and the everlasting houses and works of Sebastopol, and the same bleak savage landscape around. The hardest-worked officer was glad, therefore, to get away on a reconnaissance, which gave him an excitement, and varied the monotony of his life; it was a sort of holiday for him—a hunt at Epping, if there be such a thing, to cockney existence.
Before midnight the wind changed, and began to blow, and the stars were overcast. About one o'clock the rain began to fall heavily, and continued to descend in torrents for an hour. Then the wind chopped round to the north and became intensely cold, the rain crystallized and fell in hail, the gale rose higher and increased in severity every moment. Then came down a heavy snow fall. It was evident that no good could come of exposing the men, and that the attack would be a failure; it certainly would not have enabled us to form any accurate conception of the numbers or position of the enemy, inasmuch as it was impossible for a man to see a yard before him. Major Foley was despatched by General Canrobert to inform Sir Colin Campbell that the French would not move, the regiments under arms were ordered back to their tents, which they found with difficulty. When Major Foley arrived after many wanderings, at head-quarters, one of Lord Raglan's aides-de-camp was dispatched to Sir Colin Campbell to desire him to postpone any movement. This officer set out about six o'clock in the morning for the heights over Balaklava. On passing through the French camp he called upon General Vinoy to inform him of the change which the weather had effected in the plans agreed upon, but the General said he thought it would be better to move down his men to support Sir Colin in case the latter should have advanced before the counter-orders reached him. When our aide-de-camp, after a struggle with the darkness, reached Sir Colin's quarters, the General was gone. Another ride enabled him to overtake the General, who was waiting for the French, and had his troops drawn up near Kamara.
It may be imagined the news was not very pleasing to one who was all on fire, cold as he was, for a brush with the enemy, but Vinoy's promise put him into excellent spirits. It was four o'clock when the troops moved towards the plain, through the snow-storm, which increased in violence as the morning dawned. The Rifles preceded the advance, with the Highland Light Infantry, in skirmishing order. Strict orders had been given that there was to be no firing, it was hoped that we might surprise the enemy, but the falling snow prevented our men from seeing more than a few yards, and after daylight it was impossible to make out an object six feet in advance. However, the skirmishers managed to get hold of three sentries, belonging probably to the picket at Kamara, but their comrades gave the alarm. As our troops advanced, the Cossacks and vedettes fell back, firing their carbines and muskets into the darkness. The drums of the enemy were heard beating, and through rifts in the veil of snow their columns could be observed moving towards the heights over the Tchernaya.
By this time our men had begun to suffer greatly. Their fingers were so cold they could not "fix bayonets" when the word was given, and could scarcely keep their rifles in their hands. The cavalry horses almost refused to face the snow. The Highlanders, who had been ordered to take off their comfortable fur caps, and to put on their becoming but less suitable Scotch bonnets, suffered especially, and some of them were severely frostbitten in the ears—
Sir Collin very unwillingly gave the order to return, and the men arrived at their quarters about ten o'clock A.M., very much fatigued.
Being anxious to get a letter off by the post ere it started from Kamiesch, and not being aware that the expedition had been countermanded, I started early in the morning for the post-office marquee through a blinding storm of snow. The wind howled fiercely over the plain; it was so laden with snow that it was quite palpable, and had a strange solid feel about it as it drifted in endless wreaths of fine small flakes, which penetrated the interstices of the clothing, and blinded horse and man. For some time I managed to get on very well, for the track was beaten and familiar. I joined a convoy of artillerymen, but at last the drifts became so thick that it was utterly impossible to see to the right or left for a horse's length. I bore away a little, and soon after met a solitary pedestrian, who wanted to know the way to Balaklava. I sincerely trust he got there by my directions. As he was coming from Lord Raglan's he confirmed me in the justice of my views concerning the route, and I rode off to warn my friends, the artillerymen of their mistake. They were not to be found. I had only left them three or four minutes, and yet they had passed away as completely as if the earth had swallowed them up. So I turned on my way, as I thought, and, riding right into the wind's eye, made at the best pace I could force the horse to put forth, for my destination.
It was not above an hour's ride on a bad day, and yet at the end of two hours I had not only not arrived, but I could not make out one of the landmarks which denoted an approach to it. Tents, and hill-sides, and jutting rocks, all had disappeared, and nothing was visible above, around, below, but one white sheet drawn, as it were, close around me. This was decidedly unpleasant, but there was no help for it but to ride on, and trust to Providence. The sea or the lines would soon bring one up. Still the horse went on snorting out the snow from his nostrils, and tossing his head to clear the drift from his eyes and ears; and yet no tent, no man—not a soul to be seen in this peninsula, swarming with myriads of soldiery.
Three hours passed!—Where on earth can I be? Is this enchantment? Has the army here, the lines of trenches, and Sebastopol itself, gone clean off the face of the earth? Every instant the snow fell thicker and thicker. The horse stopped at last, and refused to go on against the storm. A dark form rushed by with a quick snarling bark—it is a wolf or a wild dog, and the horse rushed on afrighted. The cold pierced my bones as he faced the gale, now and then he plunged above the knees into snow-drifts, which were rapidly forming at every hillock and furrow in the ground; a good deep fallow—a well or pit—might have put a speedy termination to one's fears and anxiety at a moment's notice.
My eyes were bleared and sore striving to catch a glimpse of tent or man, and to avoid the dangers in our path. Suddenly I plunged in amongst a quantity of brushwood—sure and certain signs that I had gone far astray indeed, and that I was removed from the camp and the wood-cutter. The notion flashed across me that the wind might have changed, and that in riding against it I might have shaped my course for the Tchernaya and the Russian lines. The idea of becoming the property of a Cossack picket was by no means a pleasant ingredient in one's thoughts at such a moment. Still what was to be done? My hands and feet were becoming insensible from the cold, and my face and eyes were exceedingly painful.
There was no help for it but to push on before nightfall. That would indeed have been a serious evil. There was a break in the snowdrift, and I saw to my astonishment a church dome and spires which vanished in a moment. I must either be close to Kamara or to Sebastopol, and that the church was in either of those widely separated localities. The only thing to do was to bear to the left to regain our lines, though I could not help wondering where on earth the French works were, if it was indeed Sebastopol. I had not ridden very far when, through the ravings of the wind, I heard a hoarse roar, and could just make out a great black wall rising up through the snow. The position was clear at once. I was on the edge of the tremendous precipices which overhang the sea near Cape Fiolente! I was close to the Monastery of St. George. Dismounting, and leading my horse carefully, I felt my way through the storm, and at last arrived at the monastery. A Zouave was shooting larks out of a sentry-box; he took my horse to the stable, and showed me the way to the guardhouse, where his comrades were enjoying the comforts of a blazing fire.
Having restored circulation to my blood, and got the ice out of my hair, I set out once more, and a Zouave undertook to show me the way to head-quarters; but he soon got tired of his undertaking, and having first adroitly abstracted my Colt's revolver out of my holster, deserted me on the edge of a ravine, with some very mysterious instructions as to going on always "tout droit," which, seeing that one could not see, would have been very difficult to follow. By the greatest good fortune I managed to strike upon the French wagon train, and halting at every outburst of the tempest, and pushing on when the storm cleared a little, I continued to work my way from camp to camp, and at last arrived at Head-Quarters, somewhat before four o'clock in the afternoon, covered with ice, and very nearly "done up." It was some consolation to find that officers had lost themselves in the very vineyard, close to the house, and that aides-de-camp and orderlies had become completely bewildered in their passage from one divisional camp to another.
The Russians during the night made a slight demonstration against us, thinking that the sentries and advanced posts might be caught sleeping or away from their posts. Their usual mode of conducting a sortie was to send on some thirty men in advance of
Next day the sun came out, the aspect of the camps changed, and our French neighbours filled the air with their many-oathed dialogues and snatches of song. A cold Frenchman is rather a morose and miserable being, but his spirits always rise with sunshine, like the mercury of a thermometer. In company with two officers from the head-quarters camp, I had a long inspection of Sebastopol from the ground behind the French position, and I must say the result was by no means gratifying. We went up to the French picket-house first (la Maison d'Eau or Maison Blanche of the plans), and had a view of the left of the town, looking down towards the end of the ravine which ran down to the Dockyard-creek, the buildings of the Admiralty, the north side of the harbour, and the plateaux towards the Belbek and behind Inkerman. As the day was clear one could see very well through a good glass, in spite of the dazzling effect of the snow and the bitter wind, which chilled the hands so as to render it impossible to retain the glass very long in one position. The little bridge of boats from the Admiralty buildings across to the French side of the town was covered with men, who were busily engaged passing across supplies, and rolling barrels and cases to the other side of the creek, showing that there was a centre of supply or some kind of depÔt in the Government stores behind the Redan, and opposite to the fire of our batteries.
Several large lighters, under sail and full of men, were standing over from side to side of the harbour, and dockyard galleys, manned with large crews of rowers all dressed in white jackets, were engaged in tugging flats laden with stores to the south-western side of the town. A tug steamer was also very active, and spluttered about in all directions, furrowing the surface of the
The inner part of the town itself seemed perfectly untouched, the white houses shone brightly and freshly in the sun, and the bells of a Gothic chapel were ringing out lustily in the frosty air. Its tall houses running up the hill sides, its solid look of masonry, gave Sebastopol a resemblance to parts of Bath, or at least put one in mind of that city as seen from the declivity which overhangs the river. There was, however, a remarkable change in the look of the city since I first saw it—there were no idlers and no women visible in the streets, and, indeed, there was scarcely a person to be seen who looked like a civilian. There was, however, abundance of soldiers, and to spare in the streets. They could be seen in all directions, sauntering in pairs down desolate-looking streets, chatting at the corners or running across the open space, from one battery to another; again in large parties on fatigue duty, or relieving guards, or drawn up in well-known grey masses in the barrack-squares. Among those who were working on the open space, carrying stores, I thought I could make out two French soldiers. At all events, the men wore long blue coats and red trousers, and, as we worked our prisoners and made them useful at Balaklava, where I had seen them aiding in making the railway, I suppose the Muscovite commanders adopted the same plan.
Outside the city, at the verge of the good houses, the eye rested on great walls of earth piled up some ten or twelve feet, and eighteen or twenty feet thick, indented at regular intervals with embrasures in which the black dots which are throats of cannon might be detected. These works were of tremendous strength. For the most part there was a very deep and broad ditch in front of them, and wherever the ground allowed of it, there were angles and flÈches which admitted of flanking fires along the front, and of cross fires on centre points of each line of attack or approach. In front of most of the works on both the French and English sides of the town, a suburb of broken-down white-washed cottages, the roofs gone, the doors off, and the windows out, had been left standing in detached masses at a certain distance from the batteries, but gaps had been made in them so that they might not block the fire of the guns. The image of misery presented by these suburbs was very striking—in some instances the havoc had been committed by our shot, and the houses all round to the rear of the Flagstaff Battery, opposite the French, had been blown into rubbish and mounds of beams and mortar. The advanced works which the Russians left on the advance of our allies still remained
They threw up their new earthworks behind the cover of the suburb; when they were finished, they withdrew their men from the outer line, blew down and destroyed the cover of the houses, and opened fire from their second line of batteries. Their supply of gabions seemed inexhaustible—indeed, they had got all the brushwood of the hills of the South Crimea at their disposal. In front of the huge mounds thrown up by the Russians, foreshortened by the distance, so as to appear part of them, were the French trenches—mounds of earth lined with gabions which looked like fine matting. These lines ran parallel to those of the enemy. The nearest parallel was not "armed" with cannon, but was lined with riflemen. Zigzags led down from trench to trench. The troops inside walked about securely, if not comfortably. The covering parties, with their arms piled, sat round their little fires, and smoked and enjoyed their coffee, while the working parties, spade in hand, continued the never-ending labours of the siege—filling gabions here, sloping and thickening the parapets there, repairing embrasures, and clearing out the fosses. Where we should have had a thin sergeant's guard at this work, the French could afford a strong company.
It was rather an unpleasant reflection, whenever one was discussing the range of a missile, and was perhaps in the act of exclaiming "There's a splendid shot," that it might have carried misery and sorrow into some happy household. The smoke cleared away—the men got up—they gathered round one who moved not, or who was racked with mortal agony; they bore him away, a mere black speck, and a few shovelsful of mud marked for a little time the resting-place of the poor soldier, whose wife, or mother, or children, or sisters, were left destitute of all solace, save memory and the sympathy of their country. One such little speck I watched that day, and saw quietly deposited on the ground inside the trench. Who would let the inmates of that desolate cottage in Picardy, or Gascony, or Anjou, know of their bereavement?
We descended the hill slope towards Upton's house, then occupied by a strong picket of the French, under the command of a couple of officers. From the front of this position one could see the heights over Inkerman, the plateau towards the Belbek, the north side, the flank of the military town opposite the English, our own left attack, and the rear of the redoubtable Tower of Malakoff. The first thing that struck one was the enormous preparations on the north side, extending from the sea behind Fort Constantine far away to the right behind Inkerman towards the Belbek. The trenches, batteries, earthworks, and redoubts all about the citadel (the North Fort) were on an astonishing scale, and indicated an
About three o'clock three strong bodies of cavalry came down towards the fort, as if they had been in the direction of the Alma or the Katcha. They halted for a time, and then resumed their march to the camp over Inkerman. In this direction also the enemy were busily working, and their cantonments were easily perceptible, with the men moving about in them. At the rear of the Round Tower, however, the greatest energy was displayed, and a strong party of men were at work on new batteries between it and the ruined suburb on the commanding hill on which the Malakoff stood.
Our own men in the left attack seemed snug enough, and well covered by their works; in front of them, on the slopes, were men, French and English, scattered all over the hill side, grubbing for roots for fuel; and further on, in front, little puffs of smoke marked the pits of the Riflemen on both sides, from which the ceaseless crack of the MiniÉ and LiÈge smote the ear; but the great guns were all silent, and scarcely one was fired on the right during the day; even Inkerman and its spiteful batteries being voiceless for a wonder. As one of the officers began to rub his nose and ears with snow, and to swear they were frostbitten, and as we all felt very cold, we discontinued our reconnaissance, and returned to camp. The wind blew keenly, and at night the thermometer was at 16°. There were few cases of illness in the trenches; but sickness kept on increasing. Typhus fever, thank God! nearly disappeared.
Major-General Jones declared the position was not so strong as he expected to find it from the accounts he had heard, but it was only to the eye of a practised engineer that any signs of weakness presented themselves. The heights over the sea bristled with low batteries, with the guns couchant and just peering over the face of the cliffs. Vast as these works were, the Russians were busy at strengthening them. Not less than 3,000 men could have been employed on the day in question on the ground about the citadel. One could see the staff-officers riding about and directing the labours of the men, or forming into groups, and warming themselves round the camp fires.
I was woke up shortly after two o'clock on the morning of the 24th of February by the commencement of one of the most furious cannonades since the siege began. The whole line of the Russian batteries from our left opened with inconceivable force and noise, and the Inkerman batteries began playing on our right; the weight of this most terrible fire, which shook the very earth, and lighted up the skies with incessant lightning flashes for an hour and a half, was directed against the French.
The cannonade lasted from a quarter-past two to half-past three A.M. When first I heard it, I thought it was a sortie, and rode in the moonlight towards the fire; but ere I could get over
The Zouaves were exceedingly irritated against the marine infantry, whom they threatened in detail with exceedingly unpleasant "quarters of an-hour" at some time to come for their alleged retreat on the morning of the 24th. The Zouaves got it into their heads not only that the marines bolted, but that they fired into those before them, who were the Zouaves aforesaid. In their excessive anger and energy they were as unjust to their comrades, perhaps, as they were complimentary to ourselves, and I heard more than two of them exclaim, "Ah, if we had had a few hundred of your English we should have done the trick; but these marines—bah!"
On the night after this contest the enemy sunk four or five ships inside the booms, so as to present a fourth barrier across the roads.
An armistice took place for an hour on the 27th. In the orders for the day, Lord Raglan notified that at the request of General Osten-Sacken, an armistice was granted from twelve till one o'clock to enable the Russians to bury their dead. At twelve o'clock precisely, white flags were run up on the battery flagstaffs on both sides, and immediately afterwards a body of Russians issued from their new work near the Malakoff, which had been the object of the French attack of the 24th, and proceeded to search for their dead. The French were sent down from Inkerman on a similar errand. A few Russian officers advanced about half-way up towards our lines, where they were met by some of the officers of the allies, and extreme courtesy, the interchange of profound salutations, and enormous bowing, marked the interview. The officers sauntered up and down, and shakos were raised and caps doffed politely as each came near an enemy.
The exact object of the armistice it would have been hard to say, for neither French nor Russians seemed to find any bodies unburied. Shortly before one o'clock, the Russians retired inside their earthwork. At one o'clock the white flags were all hauled down in an instant, and the last fluttering bit of white bunting had scarcely disappeared over the parapet, when the flash, and roar of a gun
From the top of Canrobert's Hill their vedette could see everything that went on in the plains, from the entrance to Balaklava to the ridges on which the French right rested. Not a horse, cart, or man, could go in or out of the town which this sentinel could not see if he had good eyesight, for he was quite visible to any person who gazed on the top of Canrobert's Hill. The works of the railway must have caused this Cossack very serious discomposure. What on earth could he think of them? Gradually he saw villages of white huts rise up on the hill-sides and in the recesses of the valleys, and from the Cavalry Camp to the heights of Balaklava, he could behold line after line of snug angular wooden buildings, each with its chimney at work, and he could discern the tumult and bustle of Vanity Fair. This might have been all very puzzling, but it could have been nothing to the excitement of looking at a long line of black trucks rushing round and under the hill at Kadikoi, and running down the incline to the town at the rate of twenty miles an hour. A number of the Cossacks did gallop up to the top of the hill to look at a phenomenon of that kind, and they went capering about, and shaking their lances, in immense wonderment and excitation of spirits when it had disappeared.
In addition to the old lines thrown up by Liprandi close to the Woronzoff road, the Russians erected, to the rear and north of it, a very large hexagonal work, capable of containing a large number of men, and of being converted into a kind of intrenched camp. The lines of these works were very plain as they were marked out by the snow, which lay in the trench after that which fell on the ground outside and inside had melted. There were, however, no infantry in sight, nor did any movement of troops take place over the valley of the Tchernaya. Emboldened by the success of the 24th, the Russians were apparently preparing to throw up another work on the right of the new trenches, as if they had made up their minds to besiege the French at Inkerman, and assail their right attack. They sent up two steamers to the head of the harbour, which greatly annoyed the right attack, and it occurred to Captain Peel, of the Diamond, that it would be quite possible to
