CHAPTER I.

THE contrast between the actual proceedings of the Allied armies and the fevered dreams in which the public at home, as represented by the press, soon after the capture of the south side, indulged, was as striking as it was painful. The Russians, so far from flying in discomfort over boundless wastes, calmly strengthened their position on the north side. The face of the country bristled with their cannon and their batteries. Day and night the roar of their guns sounded through our camp, and occasionally equalled the noise of the old cannonades, which we hoped had died into silence for ever. There was no sign of any intention on their part to abandon a position on which they had lavished so much care and labour. They retired from the south side when it became untenable; it had been shaken to pieces by a bombardment which it was impracticable for us to renew. In their new position, they had placed between themselves and us a deep arm of the sea, a river, and the sides of a plateau as steep as a wall. We permitted them to get off at their leisure, and looked on, much as we might have gazed on the mimic representation of such a scene at Astley's, while the Russian battalions filed over the narrow bridge, emerging in unbroken order out of that frightful sea of raging fire and smoke, which was tossed up into billows of flame by the frequent explosion of great fortresses and magazines.

With the aid of a few men the army would have been ready to take the field and to carry provisions and ammunition for our available strength of bayonets detached on a short expedition. As to the French, they had certified their mobility by the rapid demonstration of four divisions on Baidar. Then, why did not the English move? Orders and counter-orders were sent day after day—requisitions on Captain This to know how many mules he had to carry ball cartridge, orders to Captain That to turn out his battery for the purpose of taking the field at daybreak next morning; counter-orders in the evening recountered and retracted at night, till it was hard to say what was to be done; and if the men who gave the commands were in half as confused a state of mind as those who received them, they were indeed in a pitiable plight. Cato with his Plato could not have been at all puzzled like unto them. It was quite evident that the expectations of the people at home were not gratified to the full extent, that we were not in undisputed possession of maritime Sebastopol, that the Russians were not utterly defeated, and that the campaign would have to be renewed the following year by doing what might have been done immediately after the fall of the place.

Large parties of our men went down every day to Sebastopol, and returned with timber, doors, window-frames, joists, slabs of marble and stonework, grates, glass, locks, iron, Stourbridge firebricks, of which a large quantity was found, and various other articles of common use in camp, and the huts which arose on every side were models of ingenuity in the adaptation of Russian property to British and French uses. However, the vast majority of the soldiers were under canvas, and were then likely to be so for a couple of months longer. The trenches—those monuments of patient suffering, of endurance, of courage—were fast disappearing. The guns were withdrawn. The gabions were going fast, for the men received permission to use them for fuel. It was melancholy, amid all these sounds of rejoicing and victory, to think that an army had been all but lost and swallowed up in these narrow dykes, and that it was "done by mistake." The firing into the town was occasionally very heavy, and was returned with spirit by the French mortars, and by a few guns in position.

The number of sick officers anxious to return home was not on the decrease. Many of those whose names appeared in general orders were, however, sufferers in the attack of the 8th of September. The proportion of men invalided on account of ill-health was about equal to the number of officers. Poor fellows! they, however, had no "private urgent affairs" to attend to, and that was the cause assigned for many "leaves of absence." It is curious and interesting to observe how rank and social position carry with them special cares of business and the labour of affairs from which the lowlier classes are exempted. Thus, the officers of the Guards seemed to be harassed to death by "urgent private affairs," which could no how be settled anywhere but in England, and which required their presence in that land of business from October till just the week after Christmas before there was the smallest chance of their satisfactory adjustment. How the gallant fellows could have managed to stay in the army and attend to their regimental duties with such delicate negotiations to conduct, such stupendous arithmetical investigations to make, such a coil of accounts to examine, such interviews to go through, such a constant pressure of affairs to sustain, is inconceivable! Sometimes no less than three of them succumbed on the same day, and appeared in orders as victims to these cruel urgencies. There were some people in camp who maintained that the killing of grouse, partridges, pheasants, and salmon, is a necessary condition of existence, and that when these were combined with the pleasures of society, with a light course of opera, and the claims of the family, they constituted an urgent private affair quite strong enough to draw any man from the Crimea. No one blamed these officers for feeling so strongly that they were citizens. We should all have liked to get home if it had been consistent with our duty, but some of our officers think they have nothing to do when once the fighting is over. After a time, our Allies began to feel their way towards the enemy's position on our rear and on the right.

The position of the armies, with the exception of the movement of the troops towards Baidar, remained unchanged in its larger features. Pelissier seemed inclined to rest upon his bÂton for the time. His gaze was fixed, no doubt, upon the Mackenzie plateau, but his courage failed him; nor did he care to repeat his little proverb, which was in his mouth when slaughter and bloodshed were spoken of in his presence in reference to our grand assaults—"On ne peut pas faire des omelettes sans casser des oeufs." The Marshal gave up the manufacture of omelettes: he had plenty of eggs if he had liked to break them.

After the siege was over, the Mounted Staff Corps and the Ambulance Corps ceased to exist, and the Duke of Newcastle left the camp on a cruise to the coast of Circassia. Of course the Duke of Newcastle's presence had no more to do with the fate of these bodies than it had with the conduct and events of the war, but it was odd enough that the two, which were most lauded at the time of their creation, and at whose birth his Grace presided with parental solicitude, should have come to an end, within the space of a few months, under his very eyes. The service of the ambulance was performed by soldiers detached from the army for that purpose, and officers of the line were employed in command of them at a time when they could be very ill spared from their regiments. Charges of harshness were made by those sent in their charge to Scutari, &c., against some of the old ambulance men; they at all events served as a foil to the allegations that the men were as comfortable as they could be made on all occasions. The stream set the other way, and the authorities vied with one another in providing every accommodation, and even luxury, for the sick and wounded soldier. Dr. Hall at various periods received requisitions for such articles as "Rose water!" "Eau de Cologne!" "Champagne!" Different times these from what the army had the year before, when Sir George Brown, like some great bull of Basan, went bellowing over the camps of the affrighted Light Division, seeking for "medical comforts," that he might devour them in his wrath, and goring and butting Dr. Alexander and Dr. Tice because they would not reduce their store of medicines to that blessed old Peninsular allowance of which Sir George had only the dim recollections of a subaltern, although, with many strange oaths and ancient instances, he affirmed them to be the perfection of pharmaceutical wisdom. Perhaps the public, "the confounded public," as they were sometimes called by certain people, agreed with me in thinking that things might have been, mended when they learned that just two hours before the attack on the Redan the surgeon in the Quarries was "run out" of lint, plaster, and bandages, and could get no one to go up to his principal medical officer for them for a long time, although a great action with the enemy was then just impending, and the Quarries were the very place where a large number of casualties must have been expected. This statement I had on the word of a general officer, to whom the surgeon applied for assistance. Again, some regiments did not take down more litters than on ordinary occasions. This practice, however, would be approved by those who maintain, with considerable strength of argumentation, that no wounded officers or men should be taken off the field at all while an action was going on, inasmuch as every wounded man taken to the rear carries off six or eight combatants, who retire on the pretence of carrying or attending on him, thus affording opportunities for skulking and sneaking away to a few cowardly men who set a bad example to others.

The army was amused by rumours of active service, while in camp there were signs of hybernation. The work of the army was actually that of preparation, not for motion, but for stagnation. The men were engaged on great roads from the ports to the front, which will be permanent marks of the occupation of this portion of the Crimea by the Allied armies for centuries; in fact, with so much labour at their disposal, our authorities were determined, if possible, to atone for the apathy of the autumn before. The roads which we made were almost beyond the requirements of an army of temporary occupation. They were broad and well paved—in some places they had been tunnelled through the rock, which here and there could only be removed by heavy blasting charges. The railway assumed an appearance of great activity. Beside it wound the Central Road, and from the new central depÔt, removed from the Col de Balaklava to an open space in the rear of the Second Division, and between the Guards' Brigade and the Fourth Division, there were divisional roads, which communicated with the divisional depÔts. All these preparations were made to enable the army to exist comfortably in its winter cantonments, to bring up huts, food, clothing, and fuel, and to remove guns, mortars, &c., from the front. For these peaceful labours we were blessed by the most lovely weather. The days were warm, and the air was charmingly fresh and pure. The autumnal or second summer of the Crimea shone upon us with all the delightful influences of repose. The earth teemed again with herbs and flowers of autumn. Numerous bulbous plants sprung up over the steppes, among which the Colchicum Autumnale held a prominent place, and the hill-sides rung with the frequent volleys directed upon innumerable quail, against which our army waged fierce battle.

On the 27th of September, a shell sent by the Russians burst close to the barracks, and a merchant sailor ran to look at the crater which it formed in the ground. He then entered the building itself, and sauntered about, smoking his pipe till he came to some loose gunpowder, on which, being of a scientific and experimentalizing turn of mind, he tried the effects of dropping several sparks from the burning tobacco. The powder, as is not unusual in such cases, exploded with violence, and blew up the sailor and a sentry outside. They were both dreadfully burnt. As the floor was covered with cartridges and loose powder, the fire spread to a large quantity of combustible matter, reached the magazine, and blew out the walls and ceilings of the central barrack. The flames set fire to the dry woodwork, and in a short time the whole pile of buildings, which were of admirable construction, was in a blaze. All that remained of the Imperial Barracks of Sebastopol in an hour more was a mass of charred and blackened stones. The Russians, thinking that the accident had been caused by their own fire, plied their guns with increased vigour, and threw shot and shell around the place, but did no damage. The act destroyed not less than 30,000 cartloads of wood, which might have been made available for hutting and fuel. It was, on the whole, a miracle that more accidents of the kind did not occur, owing to the neglect of the authorities and the carelessness of the men. No one seemed to think it necessary to destroy the great quantities of powder, loose and in cartridges, in all the Russian batteries, and in every nook and corner of the place. It was only a day or two before the accident that a naval officer pointed out to me the danger arising from the number of live shell lying inside the Redan. The fuses were simply open tubes of wood, and had no caps, so that a spark setting fire to one fuse would cause all the shells to explode. These live shells were to be seen in all directions, generally nicely imbedded near small magazines or piles of cartridges.

CHAPTER II.

On the 10th of July, 1855, a treaty was entered into between France and England with respect to the distribution of booty and trophies, which authorized the French and English Governments to form a mixed commission for the purpose of classifying and arranging such articles. In compliance with this provision, immediately after the capture of Sebastopol, Marshal Pelissier named the following officers on behalf of the French army:—General of Division Niel, Aide-de-Camp de l'EmpÉreur, President, and commanding the Engineers; General of Division Thiry, commanding Artillery; Admiral Regault de Genouilly, commanding Marine Artillery; M. Paris, Intendant (Commissary-General); M. Budin, Payeur-GÉnÉral. General Simpson named the following officers for the English army:—Sir G. Dacres, commanding Royal Artillery; Captain Drummond, R.N.; Colonel Chapman, commanding Royal Engineers; Mr. Drake, Assistant-Commissary-General. It will be observed that the English officers were not equal in rank or numbers to the French members of the Commission.

The Commission met on the 15th of September at the quarters of General Niel. Its first act was to order an inventory in detail to be made of everything found in Sebastopol. To effect this the city and forts were divided, and the care of exploring each part devolved upon sub-commissions.

The following is a list of the members of the sub-Commissions:—

French.

Mazure, GÉnÉral d'Artillerie. Feldtrappe, Capitaine du GÉnie. Laurent, Lieutenant de Vaisseau. Cicoza, Capitaine d'Artillerie. Goutier, Adjoint À l'Intendance. De Calac, Capitaine d'Artillerie. Cadurst, Chef de Bataillon du GÉnie. Genoux de la Coche, Capitaine de FrÉgate. La CabriniÈre, Sous-intendant.

English.

Captain Drummond, R.N. Brigadier-General Dupuis, R.A. Major Staunton, R.E. Commander F. Martin, R.N. Assistant-Commissary-General Crookshank. Captain Shaw, R.A. A. Rumble, R.M.A. Lieutenant Buller, R.N. Captain Montagu, R.E. Assistant-Commissary-General Lundy. Captain Dickson, R.A. A. W. Johnson, Secretary to the Commission.

On the 25th of September the Commission held its second sitting, and all the members were present except General Thiry, who was represented by General Mazare. That officer and Brigadier-General Dupuis, as presidents of the sub-commission, then laid on the table a detailed statement of everything found in Sebastopol. The number of cannon in bronze (brass) was 128; that of iron guns, 3,711; total, 3,839. The President read the convention of the 10th of July, and it was then unanimously agreed that the guns should be divided into two equal parts, paying due regard to the different calibres, and that one-half should be sent to France, the other half to Great Britain, with the exception of two brass field-pieces, which should be offered to General della Marmora, with the approbation of the Commanders-in-chief. It was also resolved that these cannon and guns should remain in Sebastopol, and in the redoubts and fortifications of Kamiesch and Balaklava, till such time as they were not required for the defence of the place, when each Government might do what it liked with its own share. These decisions, taken conformably to the first act of the Convention, left the valuation of the pieces out of the question; but by the 4th article of the same Convention it is agreed that the value of the booty, &c., shall be divided between the two Powers proportionally to the number of men employed by each in the siege. The effective strength of the Anglo-Sardinian army on the 8th of September was 63,715 men, and that of the French army on the same day was 126,705 men. The Commission, therefore, decided that France should have two-thirds, and Great Britain one-third of the value of the booty and trophies.

It was declared impossible to fix the value of the guns immediately, in consequence of want of sufficient information and of the necessity of employing the iron guns in the defence of the place. The Commission, therefore, passed on to the partition of the other matÉriel taken, and divided the following into three parts, two for France, and one-third for England, with the understanding that they are to remain for the supply of the defence:—407,314 round shot; shell, 101,755; canister cases, 24,080; gunpowder, 525,000lb.; ball-cartridges for muskets and carbines, 470,000 in good condition, and 160,000 damaged; waggons, 80; yawls, 6; logs of lignum vitÆ, 500; anchors of port moorings, 400; anchors of different sizes, 90; grapplings and small anchors, 50; chains for anchors, 200 yards; old copper for sheathing, 104,000lb.; old ropes, 100,000lb.; water-casks, 300; new ropes of different sizes, 50,000lb.; pulleys, 400; spars, 40; tools, 300; bar iron and steel, l,460,000lb.; iron wire, 400lb.; iron checks, 320lb.; sheet iron, 16,000lb.; tin plate, 14,000lb.; red copper, 120,000lb.; nails, 6,000lb.; firwood, a large quantity; pitch and tar, 200 barrels; barrels of paint, 150; small boilers, weighing 6,000lb.; the remains of a steam-engine of 220-horse power, taken out of a steamer burnt by the Russians; large copper boilers, weighing 100,000lb., 8; old copper, 100,000lb.; copper screws, 10,000lb.; old iron, 160,000lb.; large bells, 6; small bells, 10; hospital beds, 350; iron forges, in great numbers; main tackles, 12; coal, 2,000 tons; steam-engines, of 30-horse power, for the basins, 2; large pumps, for the basins, 3; iron boilers, 3; one high-pressure engine of 16-horse power, for the basins; iron cranes, 17; an engine of 12-horse power in the military bakery; two dredging machines of 30-horse power, unserviceable; a still, a clock, six marble statues, two sphinxes, a large basso-relievo; biscuit, 500 tons; flour, 150; barley, 9; buckwheat, 117; oats, 18; millet, 54; wheat, 20; peas, 1½; salt meat, 60; wheat in the granaries, 500 quarters, &c.

The Commission having examined the quantity and quality of the breadstuffs found in the magazines, declared them unfit for the use of the Allied armies, and decided that they should be sent to Eupatoria for the support of the Tartars, to whom the Allies furnish subsistence. The French Intendance is charged with the duty of transporting these supplies. They consisted of 11,000 sacks, weighing 500 tons, of black bread, 370 sacks or 150 tons of flour, 100 sacks or 9 tons of barley; 1,300 sacks or 117 tons of black barley, 18 tons of hay, 54 tons of millet, 20 tons of barley, 1½ tons of peas, 60 tons of salt meat, and 500 quarters of barley in the granaries. The Commission decided further that the few objects of art found in the place should be placed at the disposal of the Generals-in-Chief, and finished the sitting by nominating as secretary M. de Genoux, Capitaine de FrÉgate, Mr. Johnson, Naval Instructor, being named as English Secretary.

The third sitting took place on the 30th of September, and the subject of their deliberation was the valuation of the guns. As the calibres of the Russian artillery do not correspond with those of the Allies, it was decided unanimously that in the valuation of the guns they should only estimate the value of the metal, which was fixed at 2f. 50c. per kilogramme for brass guns, and at 10c. for iron guns. One of the members observed, that among the brass guns there were two Turkish field-pieces, and it was at once declared to be the wish of the Commanders to put these guns at the disposal of the Ottoman Porte. It was further decided that, as many of the articles could not be divided, such a distribution should take place as might be best arranged, and, accordingly, a high-pressure engine of 20-horse power, a distilling machine, and a clock were comprised in the French list, and in the English a high-pressure engine of 16-horse power and a furnace. As it would be impossible to divide the wood of the houses and buildings to be demolished, the city itself was portioned out, and to the English was allotted the eastern, and to the French the western part.

The following is a part of the English return:—

Guns in Malakoff, Redan, &c.

	Serviceable.	Unserviceable.
8-inch guns	38	23
7 to 7½ inch ditto	76	11
6 to 6½ ditto	846	135
5 to 5½ ditto	310	85
Smaller calibres	449	42
13-inch mortars	17	1
10-inch ditto	8	0
Brass cohorns, 6 to 6½ inch	21	0
Brass field-pieces	16	0
Wall pieces	9	0
Total guns	1,790	297
	297
Total	2,087

The return includes eight 8-inch and two 3?-inch brass guns.

Number of shot.	Shell.	Grape.	Live Shell.	Powder and small Ammunition.
257,314	60,515	13,380	1,240	419,200lb. of powder;	436,000lb. of ammunition.

Three small bells and one large one, of fine tones.
Two marine condensing steam-engines of 30-horse power, in good condition, nearly new	£2,000
Three large pumps for pumping out the docks, in good condition, with gear complete	2,500
Three iron boilers for engines	1,500
Spare gear for the above	700
Blocks, with brass sheaves	10
One 16-horse power engine, for pumping out cofferdam, not complete	800
Three 3 ton cranes, good	1,500
One ditto, not fixed, good	200
One 12-horse power condensing engine, for bakery	200
One 20-horse high pressure engine, incomplete, with gear packed in cases	900
Iron boiler and iron chimney, complete	800
Copper boiler, for steaming plank	336
Pair of 220-horse power marine engines, unfit for use, original value	12,000
Eight copper boilers for ditto, repairable, 50 tons	5,600
Patent ship cradle dredging machine, &c.	3,100
Copper, pumps, forges, hydraulic pump	32,146
Cranes, &c.	13,280
Total	£45,426

This, taken with the French return, gives the total in the list; but there were an immense number of small articles which would swell this inventory to a formidable extent. The KarabelnaÏa, or English side, it will be observed, contained the largest and most valuable portion of the articles captured. The fourteen bells were divided thus—one of 2500·00 kilos. French Parc de SiÉge, one 21 cwt. ditto, one 16 cwt. ditto, one 533·00 kilos. at Right Siege Train, another of 146·00 kilos. at ditto, one 88·00 kilos. at French Parc de SiÉge, one 76·00 kilos. at Right Siege Train, one of 1 cwt. at Parc de SiÉge, one of 3 qrs. 22lb. at ditto, ditto; one of 3 qrs. 17lb. at Parc du Moulin; one of 36·00 kilos. at Right Siege Train; one of 26·45lb. at French Parc de SiÉge; one of 9·00 kilos. at General Mazare's office.

The mixed Commission combined the functions of the three infernal judges with great skill, and was by turns Minos, Æacus, and Rhadamanthus—for, although it condemned no one to death, it consigned many worthless bodies of matÉriel to destruction. Its deliberations were perturbed, if not suspended, by the attentions of the enemy's cannoneers, for the street in which the house of the commissioners was situate was selected with a view to remind them of the value of guns, balls, and gunpowder, as it was completely enfiladed by the fire of one of the batteries. Sometimes a shot bumped against the walls of the mansion, and shook the bodies corporate, though it did not disturb the nerves of the members. Sometimes a shell blurted into the rooms, and routed outlying artists as they sketched the ruins of Sebastopol. But the commissioners pursued and terminated their labours.

It is generally known that Englishmen like to grumble. Is it true that England gives them reason for indulging in their notorious tendencies? Now, for instance, the doctors (in common with nearly every class of officers) were highly indignant at the alleged neglect and indifference of the authorities to their claims. Is it to be understood that English military surgeons are not entitled to any honorary reward? Lord Panmure did not say so, but he let Lord Raglan's shade stand betwixt him and the angry doctors. The case stood thus:—After the publication of the lists of brevets, promotions, and decorations of the Bath, &c., Dr. Hall, urged thereunto by sundry weighty considerations, addressed an energetic and reasonable letter to Dr. Andrew Smith, animadverting upon, or at least pointing distinctly to, the exclusion of the surgeons of the army from the rewards bestowed with no niggard hand upon their comrades of the Staff and of the regiments. Dr. Smith sent that letter to Lord Panmure, and his Lordship, who has not studied polemical divinity for nothing, and is, moreover, a capital hand at finding out a good official excuse, replied to it, and met the case by a plea of confession and avoidance. Nothing would his Lordship be more ready, nothing was he more anxious to do, than to recommend deserving medical officers for promotion, but the fact was, that he was in utter ignorance of the deserts of the gentlemen in question; for, on looking to Lord Raglan's despatches, he found that the Field-Marshal had never said a good word for any of that genus or species of man-militant. They could not even boast of the official damnation of a faint applause from head-quarters, nor was there much solid pudding to compensate for the want of empty praise from which they suffered. Although these officers did not wish to be placed under a system of supervision like that of the French intendance, they felt that such a course would at least relieve them from much responsibility and consequent blame, and that it would secure to them special mention and official recognition of meritorious services or of extraordinary exertion.

In one case, at least, I know for a fact that a General of Division, with many of the oaths which he lavished in enforcing professions of earnestness and sincerity, declared to the principal medical officer of his division that he had intended to mention him specially to Lord Raglan, for his zeal and devotion after the battle of the Alma, but that he had unfortunately forgotten to do so in his despatch. "However, he would. He would, by ——, do so at once—write a despatch," and so on. Did he? If he did, Lord Raglan never paid the least attention to it. The wretched jealousies of our system were contagious. The instant a civilian became connected with the army he was caught at once, and became involved with A, B, or C. The military surgeons were jealous of—well, they did not like—the civil surgeons. The latter thought the former assumed too many airs, and that they despised the civil element, which was fresher from the hospitals, and knew a great deal more about the theories of the day than besworded and bespurred fogies who swore by Lawrence or Larrey. There was an internecine battle of "corps," which was chiefly developed in brisk affairs of outposts. What man of the Line or Guards was not "down" on the Engineers? What Engineer had recovered the mortal wounds inflicted on him by lazy soldiers who would not work in the trenches? Was not that "confounded Naval Brigade, that gets all the praise," an eyesore and a stumbling-block to the ill-used Siege Train? Were not the Infantry tickled with ironical mirth at the notion that the Cavalry had done anything? Were not the Cavalry wroth that they should have been turned into draymen, porters, and hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Infantry during the winter? The Royal Horse Artillery had similar grievances. As to the contests between Commissariat officers and Land Transport officers, if smothered by official forms, they blazed below the paper. The Navvies waged horrida bella with the Commissariat department. The Quartermaster-General's department tried to do as little as it could in the way of complying with the requests of the Army Works Corps. The Railway and the Road-making interest were by no means on the best possible terms. The Ambulance Corps, while it still existed in the body, was savagely tickled up, probed, walked into, reported upon, and attacked by the doctors; and as to higher quarters—

In the first week of October the army was in excellent health. It was almost as numerous as that with which the Duke fought the battle of Vittoria. The infantry numbered 27,000; the cavalry 3,500; the artillery 9,000—in fine, General Simpson had under his command not less than 38,000 effective men. There were few matters of complaint; but an army is insatiable, and its providers must be as thoughtful and foreseeing as ants. Vast piles of stores disappeared in a day. To all commissariat officers at Balaklava it might be well said—"Nulla fronti fides,"—"Have no faith in the front."

Of the condition of the Russian army encamped on the Belbek nothing certain could be known, but now and then one got a glimpse of the world beyond the adverse sentries. There were many races in the Russian army, but none seemed willing to desert except the Poles, and the number of disaffected soldiers who came over to us was very small indeed. The pickets now and then brought in some footsore, ragged, emaciated, sickly-looking deserter, who told a sad tale of want and suffering. Was he a Dolon or not? The last two who arrived at General Simpson's, a Pole and a Russian, were in such a condition as to excite the liveliest compassion among our soldiers. Their clothes were in rags, and the fragments of their boots scarcely clung to their feet. They came from the army near Baidar, and stated that all the men were in the same condition; that all they had to eat was bread or biscuit and barley, that they got no meat, and had only occasional issues of quarter rations of vodka, or spirits; and these two men were observed to laugh and throw up their hands in surprise as they passed the great piles of provisions accumulated at our depÔt on the Col. They said they were laughing at the lies which had been told to them. Their officers said that the Allies were starving, and had no forage for their horses. Colonel Blane sent down Sergeant Gillespie, of the Provost Marshal's department, under whose immediate control all prisoners were placed, to the Russian stores of Sebastopol, to get them greatcoats and clothing, but he could not find any boots; it was observed that there were no boots in store when the place was taken, and that the sixty-two prisoners, who were found drunk and asleep amid the ruins, were badly dressed and ill provided with shoes or boots.

The men taken in affairs of outposts by the Sardinians were in the same state, and it was evident that the Russians were rapidly declining in condition. They got 3lb. of bread or 1½lb. of biscuit a day, and a little barley, which they boiled into a kind of soup; this constituted their rations. They were kept alive by assurances that the Allies must soon go, and then they would have the spoils of the English camp, which was rich in everything but food. Most of these men were exceedingly tractable, and were excellent servants so long as they were not allowed rum. One of them, a Polish non-commissioned officer, was of great use, but he was seized with an unconquerable desire to join the Polish Legion at Varna, and got as far as Odessa, when he was recognized and shot as a deserter.

For some time the actual work of the army consisted in preparations for the winter on the plateau, dismantling the houses of the city for wood, and destroying the trenches for the sake of the gabions, which burned well and saved fuel. Sebastopol gradually came up piecemeal to the camp. Doors, windows, locks, hinges, fireplaces, stoves, pictures, chairs, tables, beams of wood, roofing, ceiling, flooring, sheet-lead, rolled copper, cut stone, crockery, and innumerable articles of every description, were brought up by carts, horses, ponies, and by men, every day in great quantities, and were found most useful in the construction and ornamentation of our huts. There were very few officers who had not got some trophies; arms of various descriptions, greatcoats, and helmets are the most common; but pictures of saints, often embellished by the finders with grotesque adornments of moustachios, short pipes, and eye-glasses, and portraits of the late Czar, which had not quite escaped the spirit of improvement manifested by our soldiery, were very common. Many articles of English workmanship abounded, and canary birds sang and flowers bloomed amid all the murky horrors of these blood-stained casements. All the shot and shell were collected, and the French gave their soldiers about 3½d. or 4d. for each 13-inch shell or large shot which they brought up to certain depÔts indicated for the purpose.

The road made great progress. Upwards of 6,000 men were engaged upon it daily, and if Mr. Doyne could have procured more tools from the Quartermaster-General, the work would have gone on still faster; but he experienced considerable difficulty in getting the authorities to comply with his requisitions, although he handed over the matÉriel of the Corps to them when he arrived in the Crimea. Labour was ample, and was not denied; the tools were, however, worn out and worthless, and we were guilty of the very bad economy, in a country like the Crimea, where skilled labour cost so much, of repairing implements which had been damaged or used up, instead of issuing new ones. Many of these tools belonged to the Engineers' department, and were completely worked up by the Sappers and Miners during the siege. No, we were not perfect even yet. Though Sebastopol was ours, there were little blurs and blotches which might have been removed from our administrative escutcheon by very small labour. We borrowed flour from the French, and from the Sardinians, and, as we had been liberal lenders, they could not complain of our making small requisitions upon them now and then.

Although Forts Alexander and Nicholas were nearly intact, the Russians resolved not to spare them, and the effect of their practice upon them proved that the stone of which they were composed would not resist a lengthened and continuous fire at close quarters. When their shot hit the stones at the angle of the fort, they generally split and broke the outer masonry. The stones were of white freestone, cut in long parallelograms, and if a shot struck the middle of a block it generally split it right through, so that a few projectiles at any one point would speedily destroy all cohesion, and crumble the wall into a breach. Still, the forts were beautifully built, and were of very great strength, notwithstanding the inferior nature of the building material. They were all reared upon capacious vaults of solid masonry, and the casemates, curtains, and parapets were of prodigious thickness, and of very superior finish and workmanship. If a line-of-battle ship could have got alongside, she could soon have destroyed Fort Alexander, or any fort built of similar material. The enemy suspected that the French were making a battery behind Fort Alexander, and they shelled frequently in that direction; and, knowing the position of the mortar battery behind Fort Nicholas, they directed a pretty constant vertical fire on the guard behind that work.

A boat was sent round from Kamiesch to the harbour whenever a flag of truce appeared. Gortschakoff being pleased to consider that the south side of Sebastopol belonged to the Allies, suggested that it would save much time and inconvenience if a boat was kept in the Dockyard Harbour, near Fort Paul, so as to be ready to go out with or for communications in cases of armistice, several of which, relating to prisoners' property, exchange of letters, &c., had then recently taken place. The Russians always came across, in very well-appointed, handsome boats, manned with picked crews of well-dressed, clean-looking sailors, and the officers sent on the duty were generally very accomplished linguists and agreeable men. They were, however, very strict and very sharp in their practice as regards flags of truce, being extremely jealous of the smallest informality, and quick in firing the instant the flag of truce was hauled down. They insisted that the Malakoff had been taken by a surprise, and that all the garrison, except those who could get into the casemates, had gone off to enjoy their siesta when the French rushed in; but they admitted that the town was getting too hot to hold them, and that our fire was too heavy to be much longer withstood. Had they possessed mortars with which to reply to our vertical fire, they say they would have held out for another year at least, "but the army of defence, with a deep seaway in its rear, with one flank menaced by a fleet, and the other by the works at Inkerman, so that in reality its centre was only effective, could not strategically resist an army of attack which had such advantages of position." Our Siege-Train and Artillery and Naval Brigade, according to the Russians, took the town, as by their fire they made its defence impossible. During the last two bombardments from French and English, the garrison "lived in holes like rats," and the telling-off of reliefs and moving of reserves were always attended with danger and certain loss.

Was it old Turenne who said, "More battles were won by the spade than by the musket?" We won all ours by the bayonet and musket alone, and we certainly suffered great loss and were exposed to much disadvantage from not being able to approach within 200 yards of the Redan, whereas the French got up to the abattis of the Malakoff, and within 25 mÈtres of the parapet. Our gallant Allies could, indeed, spare more men to work, and could afford to lose more in the approaches, than we could. That their labours were not light, or their casualties trifling, we may infer from the fact that they lost not less than 64 officers of Engineers in the siege, of whom 30 were killed. As labourers, our soldiers are not equal to the French, and are far inferior to the Russians. Our Engineers complained that the only regiments that worked well were the Guards and some of the Rifle Brigade, and that the Irish and Scotch regiments did not know how to handle the tools used in military works. In fact, only those soldiers who were originally agricultural labourers, and were therefore used to the spade and pick, can get through the labours usually required for the construction of approaches or defences. Herdsmen, gillies, sworddancers, huntsmen, deer-stalkers, mowers, hodmen, mechanics, and town labourers, however strong, active, and willing, and wherever they come from, cannot use the implements which are put into their hands by Sappers and Miners, and it would be exceedingly desirable to teach men who may be employed in such works how to work and what to do with the tools.

General Simpson's despatch respecting the operations on the 8th of September gave considerable satisfaction. It afforded evidence that the Commander-in-Chief could rise above the very dead level of the uninteresting General Orders which will make the records of this army intolerable to the patience and not easy to the digestion of the most resolute and hardy antiquarian in times to come. Who will venture to publish our despatches? And yet we had notable penmen at head-quarters, who were at their vocation night and day, and who injured their tempers and manners by incessant scrivenery, the results of which were buried in the pigeon-holes of Whitehall, never to be seen even in the lively pages of a blue-book. The French authorities entered less into detail and exhibited less penmanship. If an Englishman presented himself at the French head-quarters, or made any application in writing for passes to the trenches, or such slight facilities, he was presented with them at once, in a manner which enhanced the value of the obligation. If he wrote to the Adjutant-General of the English army, the chances were that he would never receive any answer to his letter, although his request were of the smallest kind, unless indeed he happened to belong to the dii minores, or possessed such recommendations as had full consideration in the eyes of that dignitary of the army.

And even now it is not too late to reproduce a despatch of a very different character from those we read of in the London Gazette or in General Orders. It was, indeed, no less applicable to our army than it was when it was written, and the truths it contained were as patent and as pregnant with value and interest as they had been nearly half a century ago. The writer says,—

"I have no hesitation in attributing these evils—of irregularities, of bad cooking, and of want of discipline—to the habitual inattention of the officers of regiments to their duty, as prescribed by the standing regulations of the service and by the orders of this army.

"I am far from questioning the zeal, still less the gallantry and spirit, of the officers of the army; and I am quite certain that if their minds can be convinced of the necessity of minute and constant attention to understand, recollect, and carry into execution the orders which have been issued for the performance of their duty, and that the strict performance of this duty is necessary to enable the army to serve the country as it ought to be served, they will in future give their attention to these points.

"Unfortunately, the inexperience of the officers of the army has induced many to consider that the period during which an army is on service is one of relaxation from all rule, instead of being, as it is, the period during which, of all others, every rule for the regulation and control of the conduct of the soldier, for the inspection and care of his arms, ammunition, accoutrements, necessaries, and field equipments, and his horse and horse appointments—for the receipt, and issue, and care of his provisions, and the regulation of all that belongs to his food and the forage for his horse—must be most strictly attended to by the officers of his company or troop, if it is intended that an army—a British army in particular—shall be brought into the field of battle in a state of efficiency to meet the enemy on the day of trial.

"These are the points, then, to which I most earnestly entreat you to turn your attention and the attention of the officers of the regiments under your command—Portuguese as well as English—during the period in which it may be in my power to leave the troops in their cantonments. The commanding officers of regiments must enforce the orders of the army regarding the constant inspection and superintendence of the officers over the conduct of the men of their companies in their cantonments; and they must endeavour to inspire the non-commissioned officers with the sense of their situation and authority; and the non-commissioned officers must be forced to their duty, by being constantly under the view and superintendence of the officers. By these means, the frequent and discreditable recourse to the authority of the provost, and to punishments by the sentence of courts-martial, will be prevented, and the soldiers will not dare to commit the offences and outrages of which there are too many complaints, when they well know that their officers and their non-commissioned officers have their eyes and attention turned towards them.

"The commanding officers of regiments must likewise enforce the orders of the army regarding the constant, real inspection of the soldiers' arms, ammunition, accoutrements, and necessaries, in order to prevent at all times the shameful waste of ammunition, and the sale of that article and of the soldiers' necessaries. With this view both should be inspected daily.

"In regard to the food of the soldier, I have frequently observed and lamented in the late campaign the facility and celerity with which the French soldiers cooked in comparison with those of our army.

"The cause of this disadvantage is the same with that of every other description—the want of attention of the officers to the orders of the army, and the conduct of their men, and the consequent want of authority over their conduct. Certain men of each company should be appointed to cut and bring in wood; others to fetch water, and others to get the meat, &c., to be cooked; and it will soon be found that, if this practice were daily enforced, and a particular hour for seeing the dinners and for the men dining named, as it ought to be, equally as for parade, the cooking would no longer require the inconvenient length of time which it has lately been found to take, and the soldiers would not be exposed to the privation of their food at the moment at which the army might be engaged in operations with the enemy.

"You will, of course, give your attention to the field exercise and discipline of the troops. It is very desirable that the soldiers should not lose the habits of marching, and the division should march ten or twelve miles twice in each week, if the weather should permit, and the roads in the neighbourhood of the cantonments of the division should be dry."

Now, the writer of this "offensive production" was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and it is an extract of a circular addressed to all commanding officers of divisions and brigades, dated Frenada, Nov. 28, 1812. It was not the Duke's province to inquire into the reason of "this want of attention to the men" of which he complains; but in a service in which there were only two captains in a regiment, and all the other officers except the colonel and major were boys who had seen but a few weeks' service, intent only on champagne, tarts, good grub, dog-hunts, and horse-races, it was not wonderful if the same thing occurred in the Crimea in 1855.

The testimony of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Bentinck to the good conduct and services of the Fourth Division, during the period he commanded it, was read with interest:—

CHAPTER III.

AT last it was determined by the Allied Governments that it was a mere waste of power to keep the armies and fleets inactive, and that "something must be done." The Light Brigade, under Lord George Paget, received orders to hold themselves in readiness to embark for Eupatoria. A small corps of infantry was told off for the expedition which had been organized to make an attack upon Kinburn in conjunction with the French.

The English portion of the expedition was constituted as follows:—

LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIPS.
	Guns.	Captains commanding.	Troops on Board.		Royal Marines.
Royal Albert, Sir E. Lyons, G.C.B. &c., having on board Brigadier-General Spencer commanding	121	W. R. Mends	17th Regiment	800	80
Hannibal, Sir H. Stewart, K.C.B., second in command	90	J. Hay	21st Regiment	670	80
Agamemnon[27]	90	Sir J. Pasley
Algiers	90	C. Talbot	20th Regiment	500	80
St. Jean d'Acre	101	G. King			1030
Princess Royal	91	L. Jones	63rd Regiment	700	80
	583			2670	1350
STEAM FRIGATES, SLOOPS, ETC.
CuraÇoa	30	G. F. Hastings
Dauntless	33	A. P. Ryder
Firebrand	6	E. Inglefield
Furious[27]	16	W. Loring
Gladiator	6	C. Hillyar
Leopard	18	G. Giffard	Left wing, 57th, and reserve ammunition	370
Odin	16	J. Wilcox
Sidon	22	G. Goldsmith	Right wing, 57th, and reserve ammunition	300
Sphinx	6	A. Wilmott
Spiteful	6	F. Shortt
Spitfire	5	T. Spratt
Stromboli	6	R. Hall
Terrible	21	J. M'Cleverty
Tribune	31	J. R. Drummond
Triton	3	A.W.D.Fletcher
Valorous[27]	16	C. Buckle
Vulcan	6	E. Van Donop
Totals	830			3340	1350

THE BRITISH FLOTILLA.
SMALLER VESSELS.
Gun-boats.	Guns.	Commanders.
1. Arrow	4	Lt. W. K. Jolliffe.
2. Clinker	1	Lt. Hudson.
3. Cracker	1	Lt. Marryat.
4. Fancy	1	Lt. Grylls.
5. Moslem	1	——
6. Lynx	4	Lt. C. M. Aynsley.
7. Viper	4	Lt. H. Comber.
8. Wrangler	4	Lt. Burgoyne.
9. Beagle	4	Lt. Howitt.
10. Snake	4	Lt. Buckley.

MORTAR-VESSELS—(CAPTAIN DIGBY COMMANDING.)
1. Firm	Lt. Leet, St. Jean d'Acre	Lt. Hewitt, R.M.A.
2. Hardy	Pierson, Mate, Princess Royal	Lt. Foster, R.M.A.
3. Camel	Vaughan, Mate, ditto	Lt. Starr, R.M.A.
4. Flamer	Lt. Creagh, St. Jean d'Acre	Lt. Brookes, R.M.A.
5. Magnet	Blunt, Mate, Algiers	Lt. Pitman, R.M.A.
6. Raven	Hunt, Mate, Hannibal	Lt. Festing, R.M.A.

STEAM TENDERS, ETC.
Banshee.	Danube.	Brenda.

TRANSPORTS.
	No.	Freight, &c.
Prince Alfred	126	Royal Artillery.
Arabia	83	Royal Artillery, &c.
Orient	78	Medical Staff—Hospital Ship.
Lady Alice Lambton	99	Stores.
Durham	179	Miscellaneous.
Indian	197	Commissariat Staff, &c.
Charity	140	Civil Land Transport Corps and Commissariat Stores.
Colombo		Shot and shell, &c.
Zebra	211	Fuel.
Arthur Gordon	238	Stores.

Dr. Gordon, in medical charge of the expedition, Surgeon Foaker, second in charge, and a number of medical officers, embarked on board the Orient.

Deputy-Commissary-General (in charge of the expedition) Tyrone Power, Assistant-Commissary-General Cumming, Deputy-Assistant-Commissary-General Sutherland, and Commissariat Clerk Robinson; Lieutenant Wardlaw, and twenty Dragoons, Captain Nicholson, R.E., Lieutenant Gordon, R.E., and Lieutenant Scratchley, R.E., in command of the Sappers and Miners, embarked on board the Orient. Major Bent, Royal Engineers, embarked on board the Royal Albert.

The First Brigade of the Fourth Division marched down to Kazatch on the 4th October, and proceeded to embark on board after they had been inspected by Sir Henry Bentinck, K.C.B., commanding the Division. Brigadier-General Spencer commanded the Brigade, which was in very fine order, and formed a body of 3,300 men, many of them tried soldiers.

The embarkation of the artillery and stores continued on October 5th. A large body of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, so long encamped on the heights of Balaklava, were marched down to the water's edge, and embarked on board the St. Jean d'Acre, to which they were conveyed in the Wallace steam-tug. Her Majesty's steamer Triton, Lieutenant A. D. W. Fletcher commanding, received orders to join the expedition, Captain Leopold Heath, R.N., the Superintendent of Transports, shifted his flag to the Bucephalus transport.

On the 7th October, the Allied squadrons, with a large flotilla of gun-boats, bomb-vessels, and small steamers, stretching in two lines in front of Kazatch and Kamiesch, must have displayed to the garrisons of the north side of Sebastopol a spectacle of portentous grandeur. We could see the enemy manning their batteries on the north side, and their troops under arms in front of their camps. It is likely they believed the Allies were about to make a descent in their rear. The French had four line-of-battle ships, several steam frigates, and a number of gun and mortar boats. In addition to that force they had a formidably ugly armament of three floating steam batteries; but England, with all her maritime and mechanical resources, could not aid her ally by even one of these tremendous fortresses! These French floating batteries, called the Devastation, Lave, and Tonnant, curiously unprepossessing in appearance, and painted of a bluish stone colour, as if to increase the gloominess of their aspect, showed eleven or twelve ports a-side, and carried twenty-two fifty-pounders (French) each. They were crowded with men, and were remarkably steady on the water, but the French bomb-vessels and gun-boats rolled heavily on the smallest provocation.

The men-of-war had their ports triced up and guns run in, so as to give air to the soldiers between decks, and presented long lines of kepis and red trousers from stem to stern. The day was very fine, and the wind was scarcely strong enough to blow away the black and white wreaths of smoke and steam from the funnels of the fleet as they slowly got in motion. Each steamer had a mortar-vessel or gun-boat in tow. At 11.15 the Royal Albert set driver and fore and aft canvas, and slowly forged ahead, followed by the Hannibal and the rest of the squadron; the French division, led by the Montebello, moving on in a parallel line with us, on the port or left hand.

As the fleets drew off from the land, leaving behind them the forts of Sebastopol, both north and south, between which the usual daily duel of cannon and mortar was going on, the French went somewhat to the westward, and steered NW. by W., while we kept on a course N. by W. The Admiral made signal to the fleet that "the rendezvous" was to be "five miles S. by E. of Odessa," and it was immediately conjectured that the object of visiting that place was to induce the Russians to take away their forces from Nicholaieff and Cherson, in the expectation of a descent upon them at Odessa. The speed of the squadron was not very great, as most of the vessels had heavy boats in tow, and the signal was made from the Admiral, "Steer four miles an hour—course NW. by N."

The Triton was ordered to keep close to the Admiral, and not to follow the signals of smaller vessels, and at 2.10 the flagship signalled that "the Admiral's course was no longer to be regarded by the fleet," but that they were to keep in their proper direction, as already indicated. At four o'clock the Triton was ordered not to exceed four knots an hour, the Admiral's ship began to press on in front, and before evening was well in advance of the squadron, attended by a despatch gun-boat. The French, detained by their heavy batteries, made the best of their way on our port quarter. The night was fine, and the fleet moved slowly, and in extended order, for fear of collisions, but just before dawn the Stromboli made a slight dint in the huge bulk of the St. Jean d'Acre, and carried away one of the boats.

On Monday, the 8th of October, a hot bright sun lighted up the round mirror of sea of which the fleet formed the centre. The sea gives a poor human creature a curious sense of his own importance. Wherever it is not broken in upon the land, it concedes to the vessel that has the honour of bearing him the position, or at least the sensation, of being the very centre and navel of the universe; if it has not already smitten him down on some cruel deck or wobegone cot, by its own peculiar protest against the arrogance of mankind. Although many big ships were near, and a great flotilla was moving all round the edges of our great circle, Her Majesty's ship Innominata appeared on this fine Monday morning to be the central point on a bright, flickering, shivering mirror, fringed by columns of smoke, or framed in by the masts of the distant fleet, fine as cobwebs on the edge of some ancient cheval glass of Louis Quatorze. The French fleet was away hull down on the port quarter, the grand, showy, big tricolors at the peak just topping the horizon, and the English fleet we could not see, for the reason assigned in the Critic, which I have never heard disputed, and shall therefore give in preference to any other.

About 8.30 something very like a three-decker under full sail, suffering terribly from refraction, came in view—a tall white column standing out of the sea. The haze gradually expanded as we advanced, and at last "land" was reported from the bows, and a hapless wight was despatched up into the clouds, to make any statements which might strike him as to the general configuration and geographical characteristics of the coast we were approaching, and to look out for "the British fleet at anchor," or afloat, as the case might be. I am not aware that his information was important or curious, and he only confirmed the profound observation of Sir Fretful Plagiary, after a lengthened sojourn among the sea-gulls; but, at about nine o'clock, even landsmen could make out "land" with good telescopes, and were obliged to abandon the secret joys in which they had indulged at the disappointment of the Quartermaster, when he found that "a regular fog-bank" had been mistaken by him for terra firma, and to admit that the "cloud," after all, was a "material guarantee" of the Czar, and belonged indeed to Russland. The canvas of the line-of-battle ship gradually resolved itself into a tall, snow-white pillar, some 200 feet above the level of the sea, which marks Cape Fontana, south of Odessa, and by degrees, as we rose the land, a white light-house, a guard-house, a white telegraph-house and station, white farmhouses, white villas embowered in green trees, pagodas, minarets, domes, and church spires appeared in view, and clustered together, till we had a day-dream of Constantinople and Naples together with a dash of Boulogne in it, and Odessa came in sight. As I am neither a voluntary tourist, a universal gazetteer, nor a photographer, I shall not attempt to describe the city, which must, indeed, be well known to Englishmen, though few artists can do justice to it. These barbarous Russians have a rare knack of building graceful, light, cheerful, and clean-looking cities, which even the "Stones of Venice" might not utterly despise; and, if it be distance which lends enchantment to the view, they have at least the satisfaction, denied to more civilized people, of saying there is one point of view from which their cities win the senses.

As we slowly drew up to our inevitable "five miles S. by E. of Odessa," we passed a wonderful creation, which, compared to the slow efforts of our ancient builders, seemed almost the work of enchantment. There stood an extensive city, built on the curve of a high sea-shore, with descending terraces and broad flights of steps, to the beach, which was enclosed by broad quays and the walls of ports and casemated batteries, all shining brightly in the morning sun. Broad esplanades, or boulevards, lined with trees towards the sea-front, ran along the top of the bank, with a background of stately mansions, worthy of the best "rows" near the Regent's Park, and we could see a numerous and gaily-dressed crowd of men and women passing along the promenade, gazing on the dark clouds of smoke which were slowly drifting in on them from the distance. Behind, and in continuation of this esplanade, are splendid residences, with pillared porticoes and ornamented peristyles, magnificent public institutions—the temples erected by Despotism to Civilization, in hope of making peace with her—barracks, palaces, governor's house, prisons, rising in front of a confused but graceful mass of domes, columns, steeples, and spires. One huge dome is of an intense ultramarine blue, and is topped by a gilt cupola; another is of bright green, surmounted by a golden star; here is a Greek temple, there a Tartaresque-looking mosque; there an unmistakable "little Bethel," here a Byzantine church; again, an Eastern minaret-like spire; farther on, an indubitable Sir Christopher Wren steeple; and, next to it, a grand dome and cupola, which at once reminded you of St. Peter's or St. Paul's. This beautiful city is surrounded on the left by woods, bestudded with the houses of Princes and Counts engaged in the corn trade, and of merchants deeply interested in the state of the English barometer. There is one dismantled three-masted vessel inside the port, but the quay at the upper end of the harbour encloses a considerable number of small coasting vessels; and even now we can see some boats creeping down for shelter along the coast under the batteries.

At the distance of about three miles from the town, we found the Valorous and Furious at anchor, and a French steam-squadron beside them of great force, with an Admiral's flag flying from the AsmodÉe; indeed, the French vessels, to the number of four pendants from large steamers, and of ten pendants from gun and mortar vessels, had already arrived, or had preceded us. The esplanade was, as I said, crowded with people. The city was as peaceful as a drop-scene at the theatre, but the operations of war were going on, nevertheless, and little could we tell what alarm, confusion, terror, and dread, dwelt within that beautiful capital on which we gazed so placidly. As the first ship of the English squadron cast anchor, a long line of dust was observed rising over the hilly coast to the north of Odessa and by the beach, which is lined with trees and a thick hedge of bushes, and we soon made out bayonets glistening in the sun, and a strong body of Russian infantry, with field-pieces and baggage, consisting of some five or six thousand men, marching in all haste towards the city. Two small camps could be seen on the hill-side towards the north, and a part of this column halted and encamped outside Odessa. A number of mounted officers accompanied the men, and some of them rode out through the gaps in the hedge, upon the beach, and reconnoitred the fleet, which was drawing up towards the harbour. The eternal Cossacks, in groups of two or three, were standing by their horses as vedettes, beside the numerous signal and telegraph stations which line the coast at intervals, and are in connection with a semaphore in Odessa, which was tossing about its arms like Niobe gone mad. Others were galloping over the fertile steppe, appearing and disappearing over the low lines of hills, and numerous herds of cattle all over the country afforded proof that we had exaggerated the general exhaustion of the enemy's resources, if any were needed in addition to the prosperous appearance of all the white farmhouses and hamlets, with their enormous stacks of hay and corn around the homesteads. Some of the inhabitants seemed to be moving away from the place by the north road, and many waggons and carts were visible going to and fro by the road to the northward.

The French fleet approached towards their anchorage from the south at the moment that the top-gallant masts and smoke-wreaths of the British fleet peered above the horizon, and at 3.30 the Royal Albert, followed at intervals by the rest of the ships, came up with signals flying for the anchoring of all at two cables' length, in order of seniority. This noble vessel let drop her bower in thirteen fathoms water, about three and a half miles from Odessa, soon after four o'clock, P.M. The smaller steamers and gun-boats were then disposed of, the tows cast loose and secured, and with the beams of the bright setting sun lighting up the whole of this tremendous array of batteries, with their polished muzzles grinning from innumerable ports, the people of Odessa saw the fleets of England and France anchor in their bay, and exhibit to them upwards of eighty vessels of war, ready at a moment's notice to lay their homes in the dust. The evening passed quietly; the Admiral made but few signals, but it was known that nothing would be done, and that till the work of sounding off Kinburn and laying down buoys for the fleet had been accomplished, the attack would not come off. The Viper received orders to start at dawn for Kinburn, whither the Spitfire had already proceeded, for the purpose of making the requisite surveys.

On the morning of October 9th, the wind came round from the SSW., and brought with it clouds, fog, and vapours, which quite shut out the sun from us. The shore could not be seen in detail, and the day was so murky that we were unable to ascertain if the inhabitants of Odessa were "flitting," as the more prudent would assuredly do, with such a tremendous armada floating before them. The sky was of a dark leaden grey, and seemed surcharged with rain and storm. Now and then a solitary ray broke through this veil, and lighted up a patch of houses in the stately city, or illuminated bits of the seaboard, displaying for a moment the Cossack pickets and vedettes on the cliffs, and snug farmhouses, surrounded by numerous stacks of hay and corn; small detachments of troops on the march over the steppes, and eilwagen, or lumbering Germanesque-looking diligences, traversing the coast-road, a few stray horsemen riding at full speed across country, and herds dotting the wide-spread plains.

The fleet must have presented a spectacle full of grandeur and menace to the Odessans. It extended for the space of five miles in front of their town,—a dense array of hulls and masts, yards and rigging, which, from shore, looked as if it were one unbroken network of ships resting on the water. The nine line-of-battle ships towered aloft in the centre, and the heavy steamers, gunboats, bomb-vessels, and transports, to the number of sixty, filled up the intervals, and extended along the flanks of the flotilla. The esplanade in front of a magnificent pile of public buildings was covered with a crowd of people, among whom were many officers and soldiers and well-dressed women; and the gunners all ready for action, inside the parapets of the long low batteries which guard this Queen of the Euxine, were visible to us all on board. These glimpses of the city were, however, infrequent, and were soon denied to us altogether, for down came the Black Sea fog, and wrapped us all in its clammy, unctuous, and chill embrace so closely that we could not see much beyond the limits of our own ship. The ever active and indefatigable little Spitfire joined the fleet. She had been away somewhere or other taking soundings and bearings as usual, and her appearance was a sure sign that some place on the enemy's coast was to be favoured by a visit before long. Captain Spratt no doubt had a useful little budget of information for Sir Edmund Lyons when he went on board the Royal Albert. In the forenoon Sir Edmund Lyons left the flagship in his barge, and was towed by the Danube to the French Admiral's ship, where he remained for some time.

Subsequently to the Admiral's return, he signalled to each ship to notify her draught of water. This was done accordingly by signal, and the people of Odessa must have seen dimly a brave show of bunting in our armada, as it required many flags to express the various draughts forward and aft of each ship. In the afternoon the wind freshened and the sea rose a little, causing that peculiar ground swell which distinguishes this part of the Euxine. The fog settled down on the water about three o'clock, slowly descending from the sky above, and distilled itself into drops of rain, which ran down the masts and fell from spars and rigging.

Before it became so very thick, our only amusement had been watching a considerable force of cavalry and horse artillery, drawn up on the cliffs, about six miles from Odessa and three miles from our anchorage. These were evidently intended to act as a flying column of observation, and to march on any part of the coast which might be threatened by our troops. It consisted of four troops of some Lancer regiment, and, from the time I first saw it, at nine in the morning, till it was lost in the fog, it only moved once, and then it was merely to form in squadrons and trot, wheel round, and draw up in double line again. Now a few rockets would have put these gentry to flight at any time, but we did not seek to inflict useless loss or annoyance upon the enemy. A gun-boat might have run in within easy range and shelled them at her leisure with the most complete impunity; nay, more—had the Admirals desired to inflict such a great blow on Russia, who vaunts herself to be invulnerable, and who boasts that, AntÆus-like, she acquires fresh strength from every overthrow, the mortar-vessels, gun-boats, and floating batteries might have gone close enough to pour long-range shot, rockets, and bombs into the town, without the chance of being hit by the enemy, save by great luck. The city could not be missed, but it is very nice practice to hit a long low black line—a snake in the grass, wheeling and twisting about—at a distance of 2,500 yards. Let the world know that Odessa was "spared" once more, and, indeed, no one who looked at the city, which blends the magnificence of the East with the solid and massive grandeur of the West, could feel any desire for its destruction, unless it were absolutely necessary for the success of the war and for the attainment of peace.

When the fleet was off Odessa, the advice of the highest person in France on the project of bombarding the town was sought by the French Admiral, and his reply implied a "radical opposition"[28] to any such proceeding, nor was our Admiral authorized by the home authorities to attack Odessa unless he was certain of success.[29] Sir Edmund Lyons and Admiral Bruat acted all along in the most perfect accord, but there was this difficulty in their mutual relations, that Admiral Lyons was not under the orders of the British Commander-in-Chief of the army, while Admiral Bruat was directly under the control of Marshal Pelissier, and the latter was opposed to any operations which would require large detachments from the French army. It was proposed at one time to send in a flag of truce to Odessa with some such proposition as this to the Governor—"Are you the Governor of a commercial town or of a military station? If you say Odessa is purely a commercial town, destroy your forts, abandon your efforts to fortify it, deliver up your gun-boats, if any, and we promise to respect the place. If you say Odessa is a military station, you must expect to see it treated as such by the Allied fleets." However, in case of the Russians refusing to give up their guns, &c., and setting us at defiance, it would have been necessary for us to attack the town coÛte qui coÛte, and there were many reasons why at that particular time such a course would not have been desirable.

Odessa is built of stone and stucco, and is composed of large open places and squares, offering little combustible matter, and placed at such a distance behind the shore batteries as to be accessible only to mortar-vessels and horizontal fire at a very long, and therefore at a very uncertain, range. The houses are roofed with iron, and in many cases there is no woodwork in the flooring or ceiling of the different stories, but iron girders and tiles and slabs of stone are used instead of planks and rafters. Many of the houses are detached, and stand like so many palazzi in their own grounds. Under these circumstances a general fire would have been almost out of the question, and the damage caused by a bombardment would not have been very decisive or extensive. With all the efforts of friends and foes to destroy it, how much of Sebastopol remained after it had fallen into our hands! The Russians, by the agency of powder, of piles of wood, of tar, of turpentine, and of all sorts of combustibles, tried to get it into a blaze, but they failed, notwithstanding a favourable breeze; and we rained shells on it for months, and never succeeded in creating any conflagration of importance. Well, Sebastopol contained much more wood than Odessa does, and was more accessible to our fire. The inference is, that we could not by any bombardment of the fleet have set the town in a blaze, or have inflicted damage which would have compensated the Allies for the expenditure of all their shell. It is evident that at some period or another our fire would have ceased from exhaustion of means. Even a line-of-battle ship's powder magazines and shot and shell rooms are not illimitable. It is equally clear that a line-of-battle steam-ship could not have come in close enough to the forts to develop her fire, without running the greatest risk of being disabled before she could have got into position. The moment would have eventually arrived when our bomb-vessels and gun-boats and heavy steam-frigates would have been compelled to cease firing, and that probably before much injury had been done to a large, distant, stone-built town like Odessa; and then, if the Russians could have fired even one gun as we retreated, they would have claimed, and with some colouring—which would have seemed very bright and decided in some circles in England and in many cities and towns of despotic Germany and of free America—the credit of having beaten off the Allied fleets!

Sir Howard Douglas declares that a 13-inch mortar ought to hit a large object such as a fort, at the distance of 4,000 yards; but I know that many of our bombs missed Kinburn when fired from a distance of less than 3,000 and 3,600 yards. The whole of the glacis and of the ground before the fort for some hundred yards was burrowed up and pitted by the craters of bombs, which made prodigious holes in the soft sand on which they expended their force. For one shell which would fall through the roof of a house in Odessa, three or four would fall in the public streets, squares, and yards, where they would be comparatively harmless. These large missiles take up great space, and the fleet did not hold enough to lay Odessa in ruins. Had the Admirals been provided with all the appliances for destroying Odessa, they might have caused great damage to property and loss of life by firing on the place during their stay; for, though destruction is difficult, damage and loss may easily be effected, and there can be no doubt that a vigorous fire would have occasioned the enemy a considerable amount of both. The French Admiral, indeed, suggested that a certain number of gun-boats and mortar-vessels should go in every night, and throw shell into the town; but Lord Lyons was of opinion that such a petty measure of warfare was unworthy of us; that we ought either to destroy Odessa, or refrain from a partial attack, which the Russians would say, and not without pretence, had been unsuccessful the moment it was abandoned.

The expedition, however, was never intended to operate against Odessa, but to occupy the forts at the mouth of the Dnieper. These forts were Oczakoff, or Ochakov, on the north, and Kinburn on the south side of the entrance. The former is built upon a small promontory, called Oczakoff Point; the other is situated on a long narrow spit of sand, which may be considered as the north-western termination of the extraordinary spit of Djarilgatch. The distance between Oczakoff and Kinburn, across the entrance to Cherson or Dnieper Bay does not exceed a mile and a quarter, and the passage up the Dnieper to Nicholaieff winds close to Kinburn, and is not more than three-quarters of a mile from the forts. A very extensive and dangerous sandbank, twenty miles long and of varying breadth, lies between Odessa and the entrance to the Bug and Dnieper. This bank commences at the distance of ten miles outside Odessa, and thence runs across to Kinburn. The water on it does not exceed three fathoms, and in some places is even less, but up to the distance of three-quarters of a mile from the shore from Odessa to Oczakoff, there is a belt of deep water, about three miles broad, between the shore and the great sandbank. At a mile from Kinburn the water begins to shoal rapidly from three fathoms in depth to a few feet. The entrance to Cherson Bay is guarded, as it were, by the island of Beresan, and numerous beacons and lights were formerly used to guide the mariner to the channel, which is difficult and tortuous. The coast is well provided with telegraphs.

Nicholaieff (the name of which is spelt by us in six different ways) lies on the east bank of the Bug, at the distance of thirty-five miles from the forts. Cherson Bay, which is formed by the confluence of the Bug and Dnieper, before they flow through the channel between Oczakoff and Kinburn, is very shallow, the navigation is extremely dangerous and intricate, and the mouths of the Dnieper, which resemble on a small scale the debouchments of the Danube, are almost unknown to us. The Bug varies from three miles and a half to two miles in breadth as far upwards as Nicholaieff, below which a sudden bend contracts its course, the passage of which is here defended by formidable works. Its depth is about three fathoms, but there are many sandbanks in the channel, which winds from one side to the other of the river, and a vessel would in any position be under easy rifle range from both sides of the stream at the same time. It is more than thirty miles from Kinburn to the entrance of the Dnieper, and Cherson is fifteen miles above the ill-defined boundary where the extensive marais through which the Dnieper, with many muddy mouths, eats its way to the sea, ceases to become part of the mainland, and is resolved into water. Persons at home endeavouring to connect this expedition with a demonstration against Perekop might well be puzzled when they saw that it was upwards of fifty miles from Cherson to the Isthmus, and that the crow's flight between Kinburn and Perekop, as he passes over the desolate Taurida—bleak, waterless, and lifeless—exceeded ninety miles. Kinburn fort was a regular casemated stone-built work, mounting forty guns, according to the most extreme calculation—some giving only twenty and others thirty-two guns—but north of the fort on the spit running towards Oczakoff the Russians had built two sand batteries. Oczakoff Fort was not very strong, but on the coast between it and the ferry, across the arm of the sea which runs up to Kesandria, the enemy threw up three small batteries, with heavy guns, one near the ferry of three guns, and two of five and three guns respectively to the west of Oczakoff, which bore upon the channel between that place and Kinburn. There was a good road along the spit between Kinburn and Cherson, which, according to the best charts, are about forty-eight or fifty miles apart by this route. The vast importance of retaining possession of this place could not be overrated.

On the 10th of October the fog continued, and was worthy of the best efforts of the London atmosphere in November. It was not so rich in colour, so yellow, or so choky, but it was equally thick and clammy. In colour it was white, and sometimes the sun stamped a moonlike imitation of his orb upon it, and in favourable moments one could see a faint indication of his existence above. Now and then you caught a dark outline of a vessel looming through the mist; you strained your eyes to make out your neighbour, but you might as well have tried to pick out the details of Turner's "blubber boilers" or of his phantom ships, and as you looked the vision disappeared. The water flowed with a heavy oily roll, and the only noise to be heard was the plash of the lazy waves against the paddle-wheels, the bumping of the rudder, and the creak of an odd timber, as he rubbed against his fellows. "But hark! There is a gun!" A dull burst of sound, followed by reverberations like the muttering of distant thunder, which are caused by the echoes of the report against the sides of the ships, denotes that the Admiral wishes to indicate his position, to some straggler, who has not yet joined the fleet. Solemnly, through the silence which intervenes between these signals, comes the full rich boom of the church bells from Odessa. Possibly Papa Nicholas or Papa Daniel is even now persuading a nervous and fashionable congregation that the fog which hides their enemy from view is the result of his own intercession with saint or martyr, and these bells, which chime so sweetly, may be using their metal tongues to call down disaster on our heads, and to invoke the blessing of Heaven on the soldiers of the Czar. As the day advanced the fog darkened, deepened, thickened. The rolling of drums—the beat of paddle-wheels as a solitary steamer changed her berth with caution—the striking of the bells of the ships, and the reports of guns at long intervals, were the only evidence that a great fleet was lying all around us. All communication between the ships ceased, for no one could tell where his next neighbour was; in fact, a philosopher would have found this a charming place for study and reflection. But those who were accustomed to more active existence found the time very heavy on their hands, and the excitement of seeing the men "knock about the guns," of hearing them and the boys say their gunnery catechism, "No. 4,"—"Takes out tompions, bear out the port, worms 'em, sponges, rams 'ome, runs out, and trains,"—of watching the barometer, of seeing the fowls fed, and of inspecting the various dogs, pigs, and birds which constitute the pets of the crew, and the more substantial enjoyments of the officers, palled after a time, and one—even off Odessa, and cheek by jowl with the enemy—was fairly obliged to yawn by General Ennui. What was happening around us no one could see or say, and there was a horrible gloomy misanthropical curiosity seizing upon every one to ascertain the longest time a Black Sea fog was ever known to last, which elicited most startling declarations from morose old tars, that "If it's a riglar out-and-out 'un, with a light breeze from the sutherd and vesterd, it may last for a matter of a fortnight—ay, that it may." Sundry dismal experiences were not wanting to enforce the probability of such a lively event taking place again. "And then the bad weather will set in; and, with sogers aboord, I'd like to know what we can do?"

At 3.30 P.M. the fog began to clear away, and one after another the ships of the fleet appeared in sight, as if coming out in a dissolving view. The Admiral availed himself of the pleasing change in the weather to make signal for a lieutenant from each ship to repair on board the Royal Albert. The change was as great as if one had come out of a dark room into the leading thoroughfare of a large and busy city. The cutters and gigs glided about in all directions, visits were paid from ship to ship, and some boats swept in to have a nearer look at the shore. When the lieutenants went on board they received instructions for the disposition of the respective ships to which they belonged for the following day. The arrangements were simple. The gun-boats were to sweep the beach, if there was any resistance. The following was to be the order of formation on shore:—

The order of formation on shore

It will be seen from this plan that the French formed the left and the English the right of the force.

At 6 o'clock the fog lifted, and the lights of Odessa twinkled in the distance. In order to strengthen the belief of the inhabitants that we were going to attack the place to-morrow, the Admirals made signal "to send down topgallant-masts," the usual preliminary for action in big ships.

All was quiet during the night. On the 11th of October the sun rose unclouded. Odessa looked more beautiful than ever. Clouds of dust were seen rising from its streets, as if large bodies of troops were moving about all over the town. The eternal Cossacks were watching on the cliffs near us, walking up and down to keep themselves warm, or playing with their shaggy little ponies. Wherever there was a good view of the fleet to be had a crowd of people collected, and the esplanades and terraces, and even the housetops and parapets of the batteries, were occupied by spectators. The cavalry on the hill to the north of the town were visible at early dawn, each man dismounted, at the side of his horse. The flagship, at 8.30 A.M., signalled to the fleet to "Prepare three days' provisions for troops to land with." At 11 A.M. the French fleet got up steam, and several of our steamers followed the example. At 11.10 signal was made to gun-boats "to get up steam for slow speed," and officers from each ship, in pursuance of instructions received, repaired on board the Admiral's, where they were made acquainted with the exact duty required of them in connection with the plan of attack, and were subsequently sent in to the Admiral, who examined each of them himself as to their respective tasks. Admiral Bruat went on board the Royal Albert, and remained with Sir E. Lyons for some time. Sir H. Stewart was also present. The following was the plan of attack on Kinburn:—

The evening of the 11th was unsettled—wind from SW. and S. On the 12th the weather was again unfavourable; on the 13th it blew briskly, sending in a heavy sea; but the wind abated towards night, and orders were given to prepare to weigh at dawn next morning. On the morning of Oct. 14, the fleet weighed and stood along shore towards the Liman of the Dnieper. The weather was beautiful, and we could admire at our leisure the numerous clean-looking, snug villages, the immense flocks and herds, and well-filled farmyards, which met the eye along the steppe. The fleet anchored three miles west of Kinburn Fort at three o'clock. On the 15th the troops landed about four miles below the fort, without the smallest opposition, or even the appearance of an enemy, in the order already indicated. The 17th Regiment was the first to land, and the French were, for a wonder, behind us. The weather continuing fine, the troops set to work, intrenching themselves on the sandy spit; only a few Cossacks were visible all that day, but in the afternoon, as a few French troopers were patrolling in front of our lines on the plain towards Cherson, they came upon a picket, which consisted of eight men, hid in some brushwood. They charged the Cossacks at once with great gallantry, killed two, and took two prisoners out of the party.

CHAPTER IV.

THE sea was too rough on the 16th of October to open fire, but every preparation was made for the day following. It was a dull, grey dawn, with the wind off shore, and the sea was quite calm. Early in the morning, the Russians in the Fort of Kinburn, perceiving that the French had crept up to a ruined village during the night, and that they were busily engaged in making their first parallel, under cover of the houses, at about 650 or 700 yards from the place, opened a brisk fire upon them from the guns en barbette in the eastern curtain. They were answered by two French field-pieces from the screen of a broken wall. The fleet at anchor was perfectly still, but the mortar-vessels, floating batteries, and gun-boats were getting up steam, and by nine o'clock they might be seen leaving the rest of the armada, and making towards the south side of the fort. The three French floating batteries took up a position close to the casemates, and the mortar-vessels and gun-boats were drawn up further away, and more to the eastward, so as to attack the angle of the fort, and fight the guns en barbette on the curtains. The floating batteries opened with a magnificent crash, at 9.30 A.M., one in particular distinguished itself by the regularity, precision, and weight of its fire throughout the day. At 10.10 A.M. the bomb ketches opened fire. The enemy replied with alacrity, but his batteries must have been put to a severe test. At 11.10 A.M. a fire broke out in the long barrack inside the fort, and speedily spread from end to end, driving the artillerymen from their guns. Small explosions of ammunition took place from time to time inside the works.

At 11.15 A.M. the Russian Jack was shot away, and was not replaced. The fire in the fort raged more furiously, fed by constant bombs and rockets, and at 12.35 a fresh conflagration burst out. Soon afterwards Admiral Stewart, in the Valorous, and the French Admiral (second in command), in the AsmodÉe, followed by a fleet of eleven steamers, came round the Spit Battery into Cherson Bay, delivering broadsides and engaging the fort and outworks as they passed. They were preceded by the Hannibal, which completely ripped up the sand batteries on the Spit. The Valorous, AsmodÉe, steam frigates, and nine line-of-battle ships took up their position in magnificent style opposite the seaward face of the fort, which was already seriously damaged by the tremendous fire of the floating batteries, gun-boats, and mortar-vessels, and Kinburn was soon entirely in flames. The Russian fire was quite silenced, save from one gun. The second in command, whose name was something like Saranovitzky—a Pole by birth—inflamed by courage and its Dutch ally, declared he would not surrender, and prepared to blow up the magazine before the enemy should enter. In this resolve he was supported by the officer of engineers and by the officer of artillery. Amid the crash of falling buildings, the explosions of shells, the thunder of the fleet, and the smoke and flame of their crumbling houses and batteries, the Russians held a council of war, at which it was put to the vote whether they should surrender or not, and the majority carried the question in the affirmative, on the side of humanity and reason. In vain the fanatic Pole, the artilleryman, and the engineer, tried to persuade the Governor and the majority to persist in the madness of continuing a purely passive resistance, for active opposition was out of their power. "We can hold out for a week," said they.

"What then?" asked the Governor. "You have not been able to fire a shot for three-quarters of an hour. Are you likely to be in a better state two hours hence, and, above all, where are the men to live in the meantime?" Such arguments, enforced by tremendous broadsides and by the knocks of cannon-balls against every wall of the fort, prevailed. The second in command, the artillery officer, and the engineer, finding themselves deserted by officers and men, abandoned their suicidal determinations, and agreed to surrender. The white flag was hoisted, much to the satisfaction of every humane sailor in the Allied fleet, who could feel no pleasure in destroying a brave enemy, and much more to the gratification of those who were allowed to desist from a demonstration of hopeless courage.

Two boats, each bearing a flag of truce, pushed off, one from the English and another from the French Admiral, at the same time. Sir Houston Stewart proceeded to land near the battery, where he found the French General already advancing to parley with the Governor. Major-General Kokonovitch appeared with a sword and pistol in one hand and a pistol in the other. He threw down his sword at the officer's feet, and discharged his pistols into the ground, or at least pulled the triggers with the muzzles pointed downwards, in token of surrender. He was moved to tears, and as he left the fort he turned round and uttered some passionate exclamation in Russian, of which the interpreter could only make out, "Oh, Kinburn! Kinburn! Glory of Suwaroff and my shame, I abandon you," or something to that effect. Kokonovitch wept as he threw down the pen with which he signed the articles of surrender, but he had no reason to be ashamed of his defence.

So Kinburn was ours, as far as the flames and smoke would allow us to occupy it. By the terms of the capitulation the garrison were permitted to retire with everything except their arms, ammunition, and cannon; the officers were allowed to wear their swords, the men to carry knapsacks, clothing, regimental bugles, church property, relics, and pictures. When the Major-General was asked to use his influence, or to give a pledge that no harm should befall such of the Allies as might enter the place, he said he would do so, "but at the same time I must tell you," added he, "that the flames are at this moment very near the grand magazine." This was a friendly caution, which produced, of course, a corresponding effect, and steps were at once taken to prevent any such lamentable losses as were caused after the evacuation of Sebastopol by the rashness of the troops. The defenders of the northern forts on the Spit were not aware for some time of the reduction of the principal battery, or at least paid no attention to it, and hammered away from one gun till a shot from the Terrible utterly destroyed the casemate.

The prisoners sold their kits and all they could dispose of—droschkies, horses, spare clothing, and food, by a rude kind of public auction on the Spit.

As the garrison marched out they were ordered to pile their arms, but many of them, with rage and mortification depicted on their features, threw them on the ground at the feet of the conquerors. On the whole, they seemed "the worst lot" of Muscovite infantry I ever saw, and consisted of either old men or lads—the former fine soldier-like fellows enough, but the latter stupid, loutish, and diminutive. They availed themselves of the license in the fort to fill all their canteens, and in some instances their stomachs also, with "vodka," and many of them were drunk when they marched out, but intoxication had the effect of making them extremely amiable and facetious. The officers bore their misfortune with dignity, but felt it deeply, as was evident from their grave demeanour and stern countenances. Few of them wore decorations, and only one was dressed in full uniform. A Chef de Bataillon or Major, wearing a long light-blue cloak with red collar, who limped along with difficulty, had a good deal of influence over those around him, and kept the drunken soldiers in awe by his look, and a sergeant in a long green frock-coat with yellow facings and stripes, aided him in repressing the mirthful disposition of some of the bacchanalians on the line of march.

Kinburn Fort had fifty-one guns mounted en barbette, inside and in the outworks, six flanking guns in casemates, and twelve mortars, and of these twenty-nine were dismounted, smashed, or disabled in gun or carriage. In the Centre Spit Battery there were ten guns, of which two were disabled; and in the Spit or North Battery there were ten guns, of which three were smashed. We arrived just in time to prevent the latter work from assuming most troublesome dimensions, for the casemates were ready for nine guns more, and the platforms indicated they would be of large calibre. The guns in position were small eighteen and twenty-four pounders, of great weight and thickness, and some of ancient date; inside we found a small park of guns ready for mounting. Some were of the date of 1852, and the piles of shot and shell and stores of ammunition of all kinds were out of all proportion to the size of the place.

At six o'clock, on the 18th, the Russians, with their usual incendiary propensities, set fire to the fort below Oczakoff, and after blowing up the magazines, which went into the air with two heavy explosions, retired. On the 19th, in compliance with the wishes of the French Admiral, Sir Edmund Lyons decided on despatching a squadron, under the orders of Sir Houston Stewart, to co-operate with the French squadron under Rear-Admiral Pellion in protecting the left flank of the Allied troops who set out on a reconnaissance towards Cherson.

Before the squadrons weighed a French boat left the Rear-Admiral's ship with a flag of truce for Oczakoff. She carried a reply to the request sent by the Russian general under a flag of truce the previous day, and informed him that the "major-general who had commanded in Kinburn se porte À merveille, that forty-five wounded Russians were in the French ambulances, and that the French general regretted he could not state the names of the officers who were prisoners," but he did not say whether that was owing to any difficulties in orthography or not. As the boat neared the beach, an officer, followed by two soldiers, came from the town to meet them. One of the men bore a tremendous flag of truce—there could be no Hango mistake about it; he had a large tablecloth suspended from a pole, under the weight of which he staggered as he walked. The boat touched the beach, and, with much formal bowing and martial civilities, the missive was handed to the Russian, who retired with his tablecloth waving behind him up the hill, and was lost to sight amid the houses. Two old priests scrambled down to the ruins of the fort, and, with their flowing robes and long beards, seemed like ancient prophets invoking maledictions—as no doubt they were—upon the fleet.

Early on the 20th, the French Rear-Admiral stood up Cherson Bay with the lighter vessels of his squadron before the English Admiral was aware of his intention. Soon after dawn our smaller gun-boats started in the same direction, and Rear-Admiral Sir Houston Stewart, having sent off his despatches to Sir Edmund Lyons, hoisted the signal for the large gun-boats and steam-sloops under his command to weigh anchor and follow. At nine o'clock A.M. he led the way, with his flag flying in the Stromboli, towards the confluence of the Bug and Dnieper. He was followed by the Gladiator, Spiteful, and Triton steamers, by the Wrangler, Snake, and Viper. A whole shoal of gun-boats, Boxer, Cracker, Clinker, Fancy, Grinder, &c.,—were some miles in advance, in company with the French squadron, threading their way among the intricate shoals which guard the entrance to the Dnieper.

At last, entering the mouth of the Bug, we observed some of the French squadron coming down the river, and the two Admirals met and held a conference on board the Stromboli.

The French Admiral assured Sir Houston Stewart that he had been up the river to the Spit, which extends from the western bank for some distance into the stream, at about seven miles from Ajiojhio Point on its western entrance, and that he had not seen any sign of an enemy. The Admiral resolved to have a look for himself, and proceeded slowly up the river in the Stromboli, which was followed by the small gun-boats. On both sides the banks were high, and the brown steppe, studded with herds and farmhouses, presented no object of interest. About three miles up, on the left-hand bank, we came upon a small village. Five miles up, on the right-hand bank, there was another village, with two pretty churches. There were guard stations and look-out posts on both banks. The river was three or four miles broad up to the Spit, where it narrowed considerably. The cliff was upwards of 100 feet high, and could scarcely be commanded by the guns of a ship. However, it was advisable to ascertain what defences existed on the lower part of the river till it contracted into such dimensions as would bring a ship within range from both banks. The Cracker and Grinder went on ahead, the Stromboli followed with the Admiral's flag flying, examining bearings and farm-yards at our leisure, and the Spitfire came next, engaged in her labour of sounding, and probing, and angling every bit of the earth's face and of the waters under the earth within reach of lead, glass, and compass. They were now near the Spit, and we could see the stream beyond it.

Above the Spit there was a high bank rising to the steppe behind, and at the distance of some hundred yards from the edge there was a tumulus, behind which I fancied I saw artillery. The Cracker had run on ahead, and the Grinder was just drawing on parallel with this high bank—we were all peering at it, and one officer was saying to the other, "Well! I wonder the Russians have not got a battery on that cliff"—when from a seam in its side, parallel with the water, a puff of white smoke spirted out, and the rush of a shot followed, which terminated in a splash in the water close to the side of the Grinder. "Tell Grinder he may give him a shot in reply," cried Admiral Stewart. The little Grinder, with more valour than discretion, at once put down his helm and ran in, drawing across the Stromboli, at which the enemy opened another gun at the moment. This shot fell short. And now light field-pieces, on the top of the cliffs, opened; none of the shot from the Russians had yet fallen closer than twenty yards to us. The drum beat to quarters on board the Stromboli, and the men rushed on deck in a state of high delight to clear for action; berthings were removed, and guns got ready, but Grinder being intent on doing his devoir got in our way, so that his recall was hoisted. The Stromboli slowly craned over towards the bank.

The principal work was a trench in the cliff, half-way up, and when you came to squint along a gun, and saw only four little black eyes staring at you over a parapet of earth which did not seem three inches high, you began to understand the difficulty of striking such objects. "Try 2,500 yards!" The gun was trained. At the words, "Well! Fire!" the iron globe, whose curve you could trace through the air, hurtled with the peculiar hiss of its race, over the parapet, knocking up a black pillar of earth from the crest of the hill, and bounding far away to the rear. "Too high!" The Russians replied at once. The shot flew over Captain Spratt's head, who was at the foretop, and plunged into the water 200 or 300 yards beyond us. The Muscov had been playing the game of firing short, to entice us well under his battery. Stromboli kept edging nearer, the captains of the guns were all intently gazing along their sights. "Try 2,000 yards." Away flew the iron messenger again, but he only told the Russians to bob their heads and keep out of his way, and passed behind them. Aimed "too high" again. The Spitfire, Cracker, and Grinder were now coming into action. The enemy's field-pieces took to shell, and studded the air above us with smoke-clouds, the angry hum of their splinters was heard on all sides. Whiz!—right across our deck comes a shot, and plashes into the water over our counter. Our long gun at the bow sends a shot in reply, at 1,700 yards, which goes right into their battery this time. Whiz! whiz! two shots, one after the other, one dashing up the water close to her sides, the other cutting the jib foot-rope of the Stromboli.

Sir Houston Stewart resolved to return. That there was no intention of going up to Nicholaieff with a steam-sloop, a surveying sloop, and some small gun-boats I need not say, and had the enemy been driven from the Spit ten times a day he could have returned at any time, and have constructed just such another flying defence as that with which we were engaged. Indeed, the Admiral would not have replied to the enemy's fire at all, but that Jack is dissatisfied if not permitted to return a shot whenever one is sent at him. With a parting salute, the Stromboli set her jib, slewed round, and steamed slowly down the river. The enemy continued to fire after us, but the Spitfire, Grinder, and Cracker covered the movement, and a shell from the latter burst in the earthwork, and appeared to do some mischief. As we returned towards the Liman, the Spiteful, Triton, and Arrow, which had remained off the mouth of the Bug—"an unpleasant position," said Sir Houston Stewart, "which will be appreciated by London lodgers"—were seen steaming up to us, as they apprehended that they could help us out of a scrape; but the emulative gunners had not a chance of doing anything.

The little flotilla remained at its anchorage off the Bug, for the night, without any apprehensions that the enemy from Nicholaieff could do any harm. Mr. Brooker, one of the most active and intelligent officers of the Spitfire—and that is indeed saying much, where all were so able and so willing—volunteered to go in the Cracker after dusk, to ascertain the force and position of the enemy's batteries; but it was judged inexpedient to hazard the loss of a gun-boat, which would be made a subject of great rejoicing and triumph to the enemy, while the success of the experiment would not be of much importance, inasmuch as we were not in a position to attack and occupy Nicholaieff. Had Marshal Pelissier listened to the demand of Sir Edmund Lyons for 15,000 or 20,000 men, there would, indeed, have been some utility in a reconnaissance, for the operations of our steam fleet might have mystified the enemy so completely as to enable us to land a force, and by a coup de main to destroy, though not to occupy, Nicholaieff. The town is 5,000 yards from the Spit, on the confluence of the Ingul and Bug, and it would be necessary to force batteries, booms, sunken vessels, gun-boats, in very shoal and difficult water, and get round into the Ingul itself, before the fleet could fire a shot on the place. Every vessel would have to run the gauntlet of high banks lined with riflemen which their guns could not reach.

On Sunday, 21st, in the forenoon, Church pendants were hoisted, and Divine Service according to the Church of England was duly celebrated, for the first time since Christianity blessed the earth, in the confluence of the Bug and Dnieper, within sight of the spires of many Greek orthodox churches. Afterwards, the French had a little missa solennis of their own. At 2.30 P.M., three large and one small gun-boat of their squadron got up steam and weighed. They stood straight up the river, and great was our excitement lest they should silence the battery which we had left with its teeth drawn, if not its tongue tied.

Before they started, Sir Houston Stewart, having signalled for an officer of the Spitfire to come on board, went off in the Cracker, attended by the Grinder, to examine the coast to the SSE., and to ascertain the cause of the numerous fires, indicated by pillars of smoke, in that direction. The Allied troops were supposed to be advancing for forty miles along the Spit, to destroy the forage and provision, so as to make the country waste. However harsh this measure may appear, it was a necessary operation. When Sydney Smith drew his terrible picture of John Bull's afflictions in a probable invasion—corn-ricks blazing on every side—sows of the best breed running about with their throats cut, he must have had a prophetic inkling of the operations of the troops on their way to Cherson.

Our Allies sidled up to the Spit, where we were engaged. Perhaps they had some notion that they might succeed in destroying the battery which their good friends, the English, had not reduced to silence. The day was very dull, and there was immense refraction, so that the end of the cliff appeared to be lifted out of the water, and the vessels to have wavering hulls and quivering masts. At last they arrived off the Spit, and the enemy opened fire upon them at once. The small gun-boat stood bravely on till it was within 1,500 yards of the shore—the others anchored at 1,800, and they then engaged the breastwork very sharply. The French averred that they dismounted one gun at least, and drew down a great body of the enemy before they retired. This they did after half an hour's dalliance, and then they anchored off the mouth of the Bug, close to us once more.

Meantime we had seen a sight which led us to believe that His Majesty the Czar, or one of his Imperial family, was actually honouring our little squadron by a minute inspection. Perhaps he was thinking how much better they would look if they were all assembled to run for a marine Cesarewitch. It might, indeed, have been after all only a Governor of Cherson whom we saw, but there certainly did appear, on the east bank of the Bug, about mid-day, some great man on a big, black horse, followed by ten or twelve mounted officers, and some few orderlies. This august personage rode over to the Cossack post, dismounted, and honoured us, through his glass, by a good look, which he interrupted from time to time by a few words to those around him. Presently a Cossack came galloping across the steppe at full speed, to the group of cavaliers. He dismounted, and walking to the surveyor of our navy, knelt down, and appeared to kiss his feet, as he handed him a despatch. The great man read the missive, mounted his horse, and, followed by his suite, rode off to a neighbouring post. The next time we saw him he was visiting the Cossack post higher up the river, after which he proceeded along the road towards Nicholaieff. Some time after the French boats had returned, the English gun-boats came in sight. They all came back, having disturbed immense quantities of wildfowl, which have frequented the banks of the Borysthenes since remotest history. The vessels anchored in their old place, and Admiral Stewart left the Cracker, and went on board the Stromboli. At night strict watch was kept. Fire-ships are not much to be feared by steamers, but still the wind was strong down from Nicholaieff, and the Russians might attempt something. Look-out men, sentinels, and loaded carronades were placed fore and aft, and with these precautions we went to sleep—in the waters, for the time being, of Her Majesty the Queen and of His Imperial Majesty Louis Napoleon.

On October 22 the wind chopped round and blew up the Bug. At ten o'clock A.M., Admiral Stewart went on board the Spitfire, and proceeded southwards, towards Kinburn Spit, to look out for the expeditionary column. Fires were still blazing along the horizon. As he bore away, a French gun-boat came with a despatch from Admiral Pellion, which politely placed at the disposal of Sir Houston Stewart several chaloupes cannoniÈres lying off the mouth of the Dnieper, in case he felt inclined to destroy certain large boats on the beach below Stanislaff. As the Spitfire was forging ahead, the little Danube, with an admiral's flag, red at the mizen, was seen on the horizon. It could be no other than Sir Edmund Lyons. The echo of the guns, and the distant scent of gunpowder, had enticed him into our waters to see what was going on. Sir Houston Stewart, Captain Spratt, Commander Cowper Coles, went on board the Danube, which, accompanied by the Spitfire, immediately steamed towards Kinburn Spit. They got within half a mile of the marais, which binds the coast with a belt of long deep rushes, but not a soldier was visible, with the exception of one solitary Cossack. There were some traces of the troops at Skadovska, about thirteen miles from Kinburn, for black columns of smoke rose up from the Spit in that direction. But the reconnaissance failed in detecting the line of march of the troops or in opening communications with them.

At 2.30 P.M. the Admirals returned from their cruise, and stood in towards Stanislaff. As they approached, it was clear the enemy thought two British Admirals did not fly their flags together for nothing. A strong body of infantry was drawn up on the heights among the houses, lest the admirals and post-captains should land and take Stanislaff by assault, or the Danube and Spitfire attempt to bombard the place. A very considerable force of field-artillery was stationed in the rear. The Russians had erected a solid, compact-looking sand battery with five embrasures, on the sand-bank below the town, where no trace of such a work existed twenty-four hours previously. The Admirals having taken a good look at the place, now parted company; Sir E. Lyons returned in the Danube to the fleet, and Sir H. Stewart steamed away in the Spitfire to the anchorage of the Bug, and afterwards went on board the Stromboli.

The reconnaissance burned all the stores and houses which could render service to the enemy for seven or eight miles towards Cherson. Ere we left we discovered two large rafts of wood concealed in the rushes off the mouth of the Dnieper.

Sir Edmund Lyons presented one of the rafts to the French—an act of courtesy and consideration which our Allies estimated at its full value. Their dimensions were as follows:—The first 420 feet long by 63 feet wide, and six feet deep. The second, nearly the same length as the first, 54 feet broad; it grounded in eight feet water. At a rough calculation the two rafts contain 90,000 cubic feet of the finest timber, and the present made by the English fleet to the French, through our Commander-in-Chief, cannot be estimated at a lower value than £20,000; at least if the timber was in England, it would be well worth the money, for the majority of the balks, spars, and centre pieces composing it are of the very finest white oak.

The dockyards of Nicholaieff are supplied with timber and wood from the Government of Ligtewski, which contains several large forests of fine trees. These are situated chiefly in the neighbourhood of Minsk, Mohilev, and Vitebsk. The wood is floated down the Dnieper to Cherson in rafts firmly clamped and bound together, with strong and substantial huts upon them for the navigators. Each raft is generally composed of 4,000 large trunks of oak-trees, which are covered with knees and smaller pieces roughly shaped after drawings and instructions sent to the cutters. This is done, that the timber may be made available at once for use in the dockyards. After being floated as far as the current will take them down the Dnieper, they are met by the Government steamers outside or inside the bar off the mouths of that river, and thus towed up to Nicholaieff. Some small steamers must be kept at Nicholaieff, at all events at this moment, but they have never stirred, nor have we seen any traces of them in the Bug. Cherson was the great ship-building and maritime yard for the Black Sea fleet in former days, but the difficulty of building large ships there, or rather of getting them away when once they were built, on account of the shallowness of the water on the bar of the Dnieper, forced the Russian Government to remove their establishments to Nicholaieff, on the confluence of the Bug and of the Ingul. The bar of the Bug has a depth of eighteen or nineteen feet; the bar of the Dnieper has only eight feet water upon it in ordinary seasons. The ships of the line are built at Nicholaieff, but it is not improbable that small vessels and frigates of light draught may still be constructed at Cherson. The arsenal at Nicholaieff is very extensive, but its principal supplies of timber came from the Dnieper, and the loss of these two rafts will be no inconsiderable injury. Fine oak timber such as they contain is very dear and scarce in Russia. The timber in the casemated Spit Battery, and the expense of erecting it, came to no less a sum than 45,000 silver roubles, or £7,500 English currency.

On Sunday, the 28th of October, Captain Paris joined the Allied squadron blockading the Bug and Dnieper, with orders to take the command as soon as Admiral Stewart went; and we left that officer with the Beagle, Viper, Snake, and another English gun-boat, and four French gun-boats, to keep up that dismal duty. Admiral Stewart sailed from the Bug on Tuesday morning, the 30th of October, and joined the fleet at Kinburn. A portion of the fleet which had gun-boats to tow started for Kamiesch the same evening. The Allied fleet, under Sir E. Lyons and Admiral Bruat, Sir H. Stewart and Admiral Pellion, sailed the following day for the same anchorage.

Ere the expeditionary force returned to Kamiesch and Kazatch the most effectual measures which could be adopted were used to put the garrison of Kinburn in safety for the winter. All the curtains of the Fort of Kinburn were rebuilt, the ruins cleared away, the damaged guns removed, and ships' fine guns put in their place; the fosse cleared out and deepened, the palisades repaired, the south-eastern gateway filled up, and its approaches covered by a strong ravelin; the crest of the parapets repaired solidly and well with fascines and earthwork, the Russian guns rendered efficient, the casemates cleared out and filled with stores or adapted as barracks, and the interior buildings in course of reconstruction and renovation. The result proved the defensive preparations were so formidable, that the enemy never attempted to operate against the French troops stationed there, although the sea (a very unusual occurrence) was frozen hard across to Oczakov.

Kinburn having been secured against the attack of any forces the enemy could bring against it, and covered completely by the guns of the formidable flotilla we left to protect it, the greater portion of the fleet sailed for Balaklava and Kamiesch before November.

The blockade of the Bug and the Dnieper was of course raised by the first frost, and the gun-boats engaged in that service had dropped down and joined the flotilla at Kinburn. Before the expedition started, nearly all the smaller gun-boats were despatched to reinforce Captain Sherard Osborne's flotilla in the Sea of Azoff, where that active and energetic officer was harrying the Russians as a hawk perturbs a field of larks.[30]

The Cossacks showed themselves from time to time in the neighbourhood of Kinburn, but the state of the Spit prevented them from establishing a camp or even a grand guard near the fort. Three military and three naval French officers, who went out shooting on the Spit a few days after the sailing of the ships for Kamiesch, were picked up and made prisoners by these lynx-eyed gentry. They surrounded our gallant Allies under cover of a fog, and then lured them one after another into their snares, by shouting in French, and discharging their carbines. They literally used snares, for they had ropes all ready for each man as they caught him, and to bind him if he resisted or tried to give the alarm to his comrades.

CHAPTER V.

DURING the progress of the Kinburn Expedition, General Orders announced the promotion of Colonel Windham to the rank of Major-General "for distinguished services in the field," and his appointment to the command of the Fourth Division, with which he served as Assistant-Quartermaster-General until he was named to the command of that Brigade of the Second Division, at the head of which he fought on the 8th September.

Lord William Paulet assumed the command of the 2nd Brigade of the Fourth Division, and occupied General Bentinck's old quarters on Cathcart's Hill.

The camp before Sebastopol, into which Russian projectiles not unfrequently obtruded, was nevertheless tranquil and laborious, as some new settlement in Australian bush or America's backwoods. The Russians continued to pound away at intervals at the ruins of the town they had been forced to abandon. They did little harm to us, and might as well have saved the ammunition, which they often condescended to expend even on a single soldier, wandering among the broken walls or across the plain. Our old friend Bilboquet, long silent, now opened his mouth, and sent shot at the works by Traktir Bridge, or at anything he saw moving in the valley below his muzzles. The English army, convinced that it was to winter in camp, set seriously to work to guard against the effects of weather from which it suffered so grievously, and to make itself as comfortable as possible. Hutting and road-making were the occupations of the hour, and rapid progress was made in both. Strong wooden huts sprang up on every side, and here and there a solid stone dwelling was in course of construction.

It was a striking contrast between the sufferings of the former winter—exposure, want of clothing, and famine—with the prospect of plenty and comfort, and it was pleasant to observe the cheerfulness and the activity that prevailed. Drainage was not neglected, and, indeed, it was a question whether it was not almost overdone. Some of the ditches, dug along each side of the roads, and around the stores, hospital huts, and other establishments, were of formidable width and depth, and of a dark night proved dangerous to wanderers through the camp, especially if they had been taking "just one more glass" in the quarters of some hospitable friend. But the rain frequently descended in torrents, the water swept down the slopes in sheets and floods, and deep drainage was essential.

Mr. Doyne, the superintendent of the Army Works Corps, proceeded vigorously with his labours. Mr. Doyne divided the road into miles, and at every mile was placed a station-hut and a lamp, with a corporal and two men to act as police. We heard nothing but the clatter of the spade and the thud of the pick, varied by frequent explosions of small mines, with which builders and road-makers got rid of the rock that impeded their work. Besides working at the roads, parties were busy at various small jobs, clearing wells, &c. But the want of proper system and organization, which was so often deplorably shown during this war, was again visible. With different arrangements, half the men, perhaps a quarter of them, could have done the work of the whole 10,000 employed on the roads, and probably have done it better, because they would have been less crowded. Thus, for instance, a regiment of the Third Division, at the farthest extremity of the camp, marched down to work at Balaklava, returning at night, daily performing a distance of nearly fifteen miles. Of course, this was just so much power taken out of the men, and the army was full of boys whose strength was not equal to a good day's work. It could not, in fact, be got out of them, even though they had not to walk long distances.

There were frequent alarms, but many were of opinion—some of them persons whose opinion had weight—that our Muscovite friends had not the remotest idea of attacking us, and that Lord Panmure's information to a contrary effect, derived from Berlin, proceeded, in fact, from St. Petersburg, or, at any rate, from friends of our enemies, who desired to prevent us taking advantage of what little fine weather remained to undertake fresh expeditions against them.

The telegraph brought information that the Russians were about to abandon the north side also. There was no visible sign of such evacuation, nor was there any probable reason to assign for it, excepting that the Russians would find it impossible to supply their army during the winter. On this point opinions differed widely. Some thought that the Russians would experience no difficulty in bringing enough supplies by the road from Perekop; others doubted that the road was sufficient, and were also of opinion that the Russian means of transport would run short. It was pretty certain that no large depÔt of provisions existed, and also that none had ever existed, not even at the commencement of the siege, near at hand. In the previous winter the Russians—who doubtless never contemplated a siege of such duration, and probably never dreamt of an attack by land at all, or made sure of speedily beating off any naval force brought against their great fortress—had a constant stream of supplies pouring into the town. It was urged that they had taken advantage of the summer to lay in stores; but the drought of that season was as unfavourable to such an operation as the wet and cold and heavy roads of winter; and, unless by camels, which could do but little, transport must have been very difficult. The loss of beasts of draught and burden must have been prodigious, and the wear and tear of the ill-made carts proportionately large. The chief motive for retaining the position was, that negotiations would be conducted more favourably that winter, whilst the enemy had a footing in the Crimea, than if they had moved out, leaving us to garrison Sebastopol and Simpheropol.

On the 15th of October, the army was ordered to be under arms at half-past 5 A.M.; working parties, for railways, roads, &c., to come on duty at 9 instead of 8 A.M.: this latter relaxation was granted in order to give the men time to breakfast and refresh themselves after the turn-out.

Late on Wednesday night (October 17th) the reserve ammunition column was warned to be ready early in the morning, as there was every probability of an attack. On Thursday forenoon (October 18th) the French were formed up in the Valley of the Tchernaya, awaiting a foe who came not. About noon, fresh movements of troops were made; and it was reported that large masses of Russians were visible, but the enemy did not show.

On Saturday afternoon, October 20, our Allies treated the Russians to a fine view of the Imperial Guard in the cavalry plain of Balaklava. The day was fine, and ponies were put into requisition, and no end of scarlet jackets, interspersed with the blue frocks of the cavalry, might be seen converging from all points towards the parade-ground. The Grenadiers, Chasseurs, Zouaves, Engineers, and Artillery of the Guard, were drawn up across the plain. General M'Mahon, followed by a numerous staff, to which Sir Colin Campbell and a large number of English officers temporarily attached themselves, minutely inspected them. The Grenadiers looked martial and imposing in their long blue coats and lofty bearskins; the Chasseurs smart and active in their excellent and service-like costume; the Zouaves, as usual, picturesque and effective. The Chasseurs and Zouaves excited the admiration of our officers. They were then probably the most perfect soldiers in the world—I do not mean in respect to fighting merely, but as regards military qualities and dress, equipment, powers of marching and endurance—everything, in short, that constitutes perfection in a soldier.

The Russians meantime continued firing at the town, week after week, with little reply. They fired principally at Sebastopol Proper, but now and then they dropped a shot or shell into the Karabelnaia, and sometimes took the flagstaff on the Malakoff for their mark. Occasionally, some artillery officer, as if suddenly exasperated, jumped up in a fury, and ordered half a dozen mortars to be fired at once. It is difficult to understand why the Allies spared the place, unless it were that we expected them to walk away, and leave us their forts in good condition, which was expecting rather too much. Outside the town the French set hard at work levelling siege works, filling up trenches, &c., though why they took that trouble it was hard to say, unless they contemplated the probability that they, in their turn, might be besieged by the Russians.

In the space comprised between the lines where our batteries once stood and the harbour, the ground was literally paved with shot sunk in the earth: there were ditches and trenches in which they lay thick as apples in a basket. They might be seen of every size, from the great thirteen-inch shell, and 68-pounder, down to the little fellows of pleasant vinous appellation, very nasty to meet passing through the air. Fragments of shell macadamized the roads—jagged, rusty bits of iron, infinitely various in size and form. One thought, how many a stout fellow received his quietus from those rugged splinters. Then one came upon ill-treated cannon, some trunnionless, others with muzzles knocked off, some burst in pieces, and others bearing indentations as from the hammer of Cyclops. You walked up into the Redan or into the Malakoff, marvelled at the dimensions of those famous works, and felt surprised rather at their having ever become ours than at their having so long resisted the utmost efforts of English and French. They were indeed a medley of earthworks, stone, heaps of shot, broken shell, and damaged guns, everything rugged and battered—a work of giants reduced to chaos. And then the gloomy, fetid bomb-proofs, in which for so long a time the stubborn Russians lurked, worse than most dungeons.

Early in November it became known that Sir William J. Codrington would succeed Sir James Simpson in command of the army, with the local rank of General, and that Sir Richard Airey, Quartermaster-General, would be replaced either by Colonel Wetherall or Colonel Herbert.

General Codrington announced his elevation in the following Order:—

General Simpson's farewell appeared the night before, and was as follows:—

The public dissatisfaction caused by the second failure of the English army to take the Redan fell heavily on the aged veteran, who had in the earlier part of his career done service to the State, and gained a high character for gallantry, skill, and ability. No doubt, with an English army only to lead, Sir James Simpson would have acted with vigour, but he was paralyzed by the action of the French. He was ignorant of their language, slow and cautious, and it is no wonder that, where Lord Raglan failed, General Simpson did not meet with success. The courage and activity General Codrington displayed at Alma, at Inkerman, and in command of the Light Division during the trying winter of 1854-5, seemed to have justified his rapid promotion, and although he was in actual charge of the operations of an army on the day of the 8th of September, he was regarded as an administrative rather than a judicial officer, and was rewarded as signally because he failed as he could have been had he succeeded. A French officer said to me, "If General Codrington had taken the Redan, what more could you have done for him than make him General, and give him the command of the army? But he did not take it, and he is made General and Commander-in-Chief!" There was no opportunity of testing the ability of General Codrington as a commander during the subsequent part of the campaign, but he managed, by his despatches, to lower himself in the estimation of the public, although it is certain that a part of his success and elevation was due to his skill in private correspondence.

Sir W. Codrington came out from England on the 23rd of February, 1854, with the rank of Colonel in the Coldstream Guards. He entered the army as an Ensign and Lieutenant on the 22nd of February, 1821; became Lieutenant in April, 1823; Captain in July, 1826; Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel on the 9th of November, 1846; and Major-General on the 20th June, 1854. He commanded a Brigade of the Light Division throughout the early portion of the campaign, and succeeded to the command of that Division on the retirement of Sir George Brown. Possessed of a strong constitution, a spare vigorous frame, quiet in manner, energetic in action, vigilant, and painstaking, Sir William Codrington acquired a high reputation throughout the war, and was often spoken of as the coming man—the General, who was at last to arise out of the dÉbris of old-fogeyism, red-tapery, staffery and Horse-Guardism, of the British army; but the Redan dammed the current which had set so long and so quietly in his favour, because it was supposed that he did not exhibit all the qualities attributed to him in an eminent degree by the army, and his failure produced all the backwater, eddies, and whirlpools usually formed on such occasions. Sir W. Codrington was possibly struggling with the internal conviction that the attack had become hopeless, and consequently felt some hesitation in sacrificing more soldiers when he perceived the failure of our assaults and the confusion of the regiments swarming on the face of the salient; in that supreme hour he did not display that extreme coolness, resource, self-possession and energy which every one had from his antecedents at Alma and Inkerman, and in the trenches, attributed to him. The revulsion of popular feeling either in a nation or an army, is often unjust in proportion to its violence, and there were very many who thought "it would be only fair to give Codrington another chance." Sir W. Codrington received the local rank of Lieutenant-General in Turkey on the 30th July, 1855. Sir Colin Campbell had been gazetted to the same rank on the 23rd January in the same year. The only officers with the army senior to Sir W. Codrington were Lord Rokeby and Lieutenant-General Barnard, Chief of the Staff. The others had all gone home, or were preparing to leave the field in possession of the new General.

Although too active and able a soldier to be neglected in a war like this, it is possible that Sir W. Codrington would not have had a chance of obtaining his distinguished position but for a piece of good fortune. On the 20th of June, 1854, certain promotions took place, more particularly among colonels of the Guards, and among them was that of Colonel Codrington to be a Major-General. Of course the effect of such a promotion would have been to remove him from his regiment and take him home; but the Major-General was most anxious for active service. By the time the Gazette was promulgated the expedition to the Crimea was spoken of, and Major-General Codrington tried hard to evade the necessity of returning home, which to many was by no means disagreeable, if we may judge from the alacrity with which they availed themselves of it. He was lucky enough to succeed in his object, and thus got an opportunity of entering on the career which in a very short period led him to such great honours and to so proud a position. The Acting Quartermaster-General had just died, and Brigadier-General Airey, who commanded a brigade of the Light Division, was selected as his successor. The brigade thus left vacant was given to Major-General Codrington, whose anxiety for active service led him to leave no stone unturned in the search for it; and I well remember that, being then with the Light Division, I heard some expressions of dissatisfaction because the "lucky Guardsman" obtained the command. Only a very short time, however, elapsed before officers and men discovered that he was one of the best soldiers in the army, and his reputation extended beyond the limits of his brigade to every regiment in the field. The Light Division hailed his accession to the command on the second and final retirement of Sir George Brown with the liveliest satisfaction, for he had won the confidence of the men by coolness and unexaggerated intrepidity in the field, and had gained the affection of the officers by his amenity and kind manners.

Although no one regretted that General Simpson had ceased to be Commander-in-Chief of this army, all felt sorrow for the circumstances under which the veteran resigned his command. His simplicity of manners and singleness of mind never failed to conciliate the regard, if not the respect and admiration, of those around him; but he failed in determination and firmness in a matter of vital importance to our army when opposed to a sterner will, greater vehemence, and force of character. Such an error in judgment, or rather such weakness, was especially culpable in the Commander-in-Chief of an army situated as our own has been. The General was a victim to writing, like his predecessor. He was more of a clerk than a General. Now, is it the Horse-Guards which enforces all this scrivenery? If the army cannot be commanded without all these forms and returns, let us have, in future, a writing General, and a fighting General. It certainly was not despatch-writing which consumed our Generals' time hitherto, for those documents were always brief enough.

Again we were suffering from the evils of divided councils, Allied armies, and telegraphic instructions. Sir Edmund Lyons was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet; but one foot he could not move, for he was tied by the leg, just as he was when he in vain opposed the famous flank march on Balaklava, and advocated a rush at the town ere the enemy could have recovered from the effects of their dismay. We were necessitated to act in concert with our Allies, and the rule seemed to be that neither France nor England should act independently of the other, but that they might act as they pleased respecting the Sardinians or the Turks. There is always a want of decision and energy in Allied councils, and even Marlborough and Eugene had to regret that no two men can take precisely the same view of all the parts and accidents of any single matter. General Simpson ever evinced the utmost readiness to accede to Marshal Pelissier's suggestions, or to any proposition made by either generals or admirals of character and experience, so that no obstacle to any energetic steps arose from him, but if he wished to march against the enemy he could not have done so without the co-operation of Marshal Pelissier. It was doubtful if the French much out-numbered us in strength, but they certainly did generally preponderate, and at this time take the lead in military operations, either by land or sea.

A siege is at all times rather demoralizing and destructive to discipline. The siege of Sebastopol was so to a considerable degree, because to the ordinary influences of such operations the effects of a winter's campaign were superadded. Most of the old soldiers were used up; and the bulk of our regiments contained an undue proportion of recruits. To see a body of our soldiers coming back from the roads in the evening—to mark their careless air—listen to their loud voices in the ranks as they tramped through the dust—one would scarcely think them capable of being turned out as a clean, smart regiment at ten minutes' notice. They were often clad on such occasions in coarse and rather dirty fatigue-suits of grey linen, and, but for their forage-caps with the regimental numbers, they would not look, to any lounger in Hyde Park or the Phoenix, like those British soldiers, all kempt and compact as they usually are presented to the public gaze at home, whom they are accustomed to see. The officers, too, often mere boys or young lads not long from England, rode or marched along with the men, without adding much to their martial aspect. The latter either sang a quick march-song in chorus, or whistled some air to keep the step. Such high spirits were pleasant to see, but occasionally the march became too noisy and riotous to suit the notions of a strict disciplinarian; old soldiers did not commit these irregularities, but young recruits who had seen little of military life, and who scarcely knew what drill was, were apt to exceed the bounds of decorum and military rule when they found themselves free from parades, and field-days, and inspections, and put to work on the roads like labourers.

The extraordinary fineness of the weather all this time afforded a daily reproach to the inactivity of our armies. Within one day of the first anniversary of that terrible 14th of November, which will never be forgotten by those who spent it on the plateau of Sebastopol, the air was quite calm. From the time the expedition returned from Kinburn not one drop of rain fell, and each day was cloudless, sunny, and almost too warm. The mornings and nights, however, began to warn us that winter was impending. It is certainly to be regretted that the Admirals could not have undertaken their expedition against Kaffa, for the only ostensible obstacle to the enterprise was the weather, and our experience and traditions of the year before certainly suggested extreme caution ere we ventured upon sending a flotilla, filled with soldiers, on such an awful coast, even for the very short passage to Theodosia.