THE
B R I T I S H   E X P E D I T I O N
TO THE
C R I M E A

BY
WILLIAM   HOWARD   RUSSELL,   LL.D.


NEW AND REVISED EDITION


WITH MAPS AND PLANS


LONDON
G E O R G E   R O U T L E D G E   A N D   S O N S
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE
NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET
1877

NOTICE TO THE READER.

EDITION OF 1858.

THE interest excited by the events of the Campaign in the Crimea has not died away. Many years, indeed, must elapse ere the recital of the details of that great struggle, its glories, and its disasters, cease to revive the emotions of joy or grief with which a contemporary generation regarded the sublime efforts of their countrymen. As records on which the future history of the war must be founded, none can be more valuable than letters written from the scene, read by the light documents, such as those which will shortly be made public, can throw upon them.[1] There may be misconception respecting the nature of the motives by which statesmen and leaders of armies are governed, but there can be no mistake as to what they do; and, although one cannot always ascertain the reasons which determine their outward conduct, their acts are recorded in historical memoranda not to be disputed or denied. For the first time in modern days the commanders of armies have been compelled to give to the world an exposition of the considerations by which they were actuated during a war, in which much of the sufferings of our troops was imputed to their ignorance, mismanagement, and apathy. They were not obliged to adopt that course by the orders of their superiors, but by the pressure of public opinion; and that pressure became so great that each, as he felt himself subjected to its influence, endeavoured to escape from it by throwing the blame on the shoulders of his colleagues, or on a military scapegoat, known as "the system." As each in self-defence flourished his pen or his tongue against his brother, he made sad rents in the mantle of official responsibility and secrecy. Even in Russia the press, to its own astonishment, was called on to expound the merits of captains and explain grand strategical operations; and the public there, read in the official organs of their Government very much the same kind of matter as our British public in the evidence given before the Chelsea Commissioners. Much of what was hidden has been revealed. We know more than we did; but we never shall know all.

I avail myself of a brief leisure to revise, for the first time, letters written under very difficult circumstances, and to re-write those portions of them which relate to the most critical actions of the war. From the day the Guards landed in Malta down to the fall of Sebastopol, and the virtual conclusion of the war, I had but one short interval of repose. I was with the first detachment of the British army which set foot on Turkish soil, and it was my good fortune to land with the first at Scutari, at Varna, and at Old Fort, to be present at Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, to accompany the Kertch and the Kinburn expeditions, and to witness every great event of the siege—the assaults on Sebastopol, and the battle of the Tchernaya. It was my still greater good fortune to be able to leave the Crimea with the last detachment of our army. My sincere desire is, to tell the truth, as far as I knew it, respecting all I have witnessed. I had no alternative but to write fully, freely, fearlessly, for that was my duty, and to the best of my knowledge and ability it was fulfilled. There have been many emendations, and many versions of incidents in the war, sent to me from various hands—many now cold forever—of which I have made use, but the work is chiefly based on the letters which, by permission of the proprietors of the Times, I was allowed to place in a new form before the public.

W. H. RUSSELL.

July, 1858.

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1876.

For several years the "History of the British Expedition to the Crimea," founded on the "Letters from the Crimea of the Times Correspondent," has been out of print, and the publishers have been unable to execute orders continually arriving for copies of the work. At the present moment the interest of the public in what is called the Eastern Question has been revived very forcibly, and the policy of this country in entering upon the war of 1854, has been much discussed in the Press and in Parliament. "Bulgaria,"[2] in which the allied armies failed to discover the misery or discontent which might, at the time, have been found in Ireland or Italy, is now the scene of "atrocities," the accounts of which are exercising a powerful influence on the passions and the judgment of the country, and the balance of public opinion is fast inclining against the Turk, for whom we made so many sacrifices, and who proved that he was a valiant soldier and a faithful and patient ally. The Treaty of Paris has been torn up, the pieces have been thrown in our faces, and a powerful party in England is taking, in 1876, energetic action to promote the objects which we so strenuously resisted in 1854. "Qui facit per alium facit per se." Prince Gortschakoff must be very grateful for effective help where Count Nesselrode encountered the most intense hostility. He finds "sympathy" as strong as gunpowder, and sees a chance of securing the spoils of war without the cost of fighting for them. Since 1854-6 the map of Europe has undergone changes almost as great as those temporary alterations which endured with the success of the First French Empire, and these apparently are but the signs and tokens of changes to come, of which no man can forecast the extent and importance.

The British fleet is once more in Besika Bay, but there is now no allied squadron by its side. No British minister ventures to say that our fleet is stationed there to protect the integrity of Turkey. If the record of what Great Britain did in her haste twenty-two years ago be of any use in causing her to reflect on the consequences of a violent reaction now, the publication of this revised edition of the "History of the Expedition to the Crimea," may not be quite inopportune.

W. H. RUSSELL.

Temple, August, 1876.

CONTENTS.

{1}

THE BRITISH EXPEDITION TO THE
CRIMEA.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

THE causes of the last war with Russia, overwhelmed by verbiage, and wrapped up in coatings of protocols and dispatches, at the time are now patent to the world. The independence of Turkey was menaced by the Czar, but France and England would have cared little if Turkey had been a power whose fate could affect in no degree the commerce or the reputation of the allies. France, ever jealous of her prestige, was anxious to uphold the power of a nation and a name which, to the oriental, represents the force, intelligence, and civilization of Europe. England, with a growing commerce in the Levant, and with a prodigious empire nearer to the rising sun, could not permit the one to be absorbed and the other to be threatened by a most aggressive and ambitious state. With Russia, and France by her side, she had not hesitated to inflict a wound on the independence of Turkey which had been growing deeper every day. But when insatiable Russia, impatient of the slowness of the process, sought to rend the wounds of the dying man, England felt bound to stay her hands, and to prop the falling throne of the Sultan.

Although England had nothing to do with the quarrels of the Greek and Latin Churches, she could not be indifferent to the results of the struggle. If Russia had been permitted to exercise a protectorate over the Greek subjects of the Porte, and to hold as material guarantee the provinces of the Danube, she would be the mistress of the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, and even the Mediterranean. France would have seen her moral weight in the East destroyed. England would have been severed from her Indian Empire, and menaced in the outposts of her naval power. All Christian{2} States have now a right to protect the Christian subjects of the Porte; and in proportion as the latter increase in intelligence, wealth, and numbers, the hold of the Osmanli on Europe will relax. The sick man is not yet dead, but his heirs and administrators are counting their share of his worldly goods, and are preparing for the suit which must follow his demise. Whatever might have been the considerations and pretences which actuated our statesmen, the people of England entered, with honesty of purpose and singleness of heart, upon the conflict with the sole object of averting a blow aimed at an old friend. To that end they devoted their treasure, and in that cause they freely shed their blood.

Conscious of their integrity, the nation began the war with as much spirit and energy as they continued it with calm resolution and manly self-reliance. Their rulers were lifted up by the popular wave, and carried further than they listed. The vessel of the State was nearly dashed to pieces by the great surge, and our dislocated battalions, swept together and called an army, were suddenly plunged into the realities of war. But the British soldier is ready to meet mortal foes. What he cannot resist are the cruel strokes of neglect and mal-administration. In the excitement caused by the news of victory the heart's pulse of the nation was almost frozen by a bitter cry of distress from the heights of Sebastopol. Then followed accounts of horrors which revived the memories of the most disgraceful episodes in our military history. Men who remembered Walcheren sought in vain for a parallel to the wretchedness and mortality in our army. The press, faithful to its mission, threw a full light on scenes three thousand miles from our shores, and sustained the nation by its counsels. "Had it not been for the English press," said an Austrian officer of high rank, "I know not what would have become of the English army. Ministers in Parliament denied that it suffered, and therefore Parliament would not have helped it. The French papers represented it as suffering, but neither hoping nor enduring. Europe heard that Marshal St. Arnaud won the Alma, and that the English, aided by French guns, late in the day, swarmed up the heights when their allies had won the battle. We should have known only of Inkerman as a victory gained by the French coming to the aid of surprised and discomfited Englishmen, and of the assaults on Sebastopol as disgraceful and abortive, but your press, in a thousand translations, told us the truth all over Europe, and enabled us to appreciate your valour, your discipline, your élan, your courage and patience, and taught us to feel that even in misfortune the English army was noble and magnificent."

The press upheld the Ministry in its efforts to remedy the effects of an unwise and unreasoning parsimony, prepared the public mind for the subversion of an effete system, encouraged the nation in the moment of depression by recitals of the deeds of our countrymen, elevated the condition and self-respect of the soldiery, and whilst celebrating with myriad tongues the feats of the combatants in the ranks, with all the fire of Tyrtæus, but with greater power and happier results, denounced the men responsible for huge disasters{3}—"told the truth and feared not"—carried the people to the battlefield—placed them beside their bleeding comrades—spoke of fame to the dying and of hope to those who lived—and by its magic power spanned great seas and continents, and bade England and her army in the Crimea endure, fight, and conquer together.

The army saved, resuscitated, and raised to a place which it never occupied till recently in the estimation of the country, has much for which to thank the press. Had its deeds and sufferings never been known except through the medium of frigid dispatches, it would have stood in a very different position this day, not only abroad but at home. But gratitude is not a virtue of corporations. It is rare enough to find it in individuals; and, although the press has permission to exhaust laudation and flattery, its censure is resented as impertinence. From the departure of our first battalions till the close of the war, there were occasions on which the shortcomings of great departments and the inefficiency of extemporary arrangements were exposed beyond denial or explanation; and if the optimist is satisfied they were the inevitable consequences of all human organization, the mass of mankind will seek to provide against their recurrence and to obviate their results. With all their hopes, the people at the outset were little prepared for the costs and disasters of war. They fondly believed they were a military power, because they possessed invincible battalions of brave men, officered by gallant, high-spirited gentlemen, who, for the most part, regarded with dislike the calling, and disdained the knowledge, of the mere "professional" soldier. There were no reserves to take the place of those dauntless legions which melted in the crucible of battle, and left a void which time alone could fill. When the Guards[3] left London, on 22nd February, 1854, those who saw them march off to the railway station, unaccustomed to the sight of large bodies of men, and impressed by the bearing of those stalwart soldiers, might be pardoned if they supposed the household troops could encounter a world in arms. As they were the first British regiments which left England for the East, as they bore a grand part worthy of their name in the earlier, most trying, and most glorious period of our struggles, their voyage possesses a certain interest which entitles it to be retained in this revised history; and with some few alterations, it is presented to the reader.

Their cheers—re-echoed from Alma and Inkerman—bear now a glorious significance, the "morituri te salutant" of devoted soldiers addressed to their sorrowing country.

"They will never go farther than Malta!"—Such was the general feeling and expression at the time. It was supposed that the very news of their arrival in Malta would check the hordes of Russia, and shake the iron will which broke ere it would bend. To that march, in less than one year, there was a terrible antithesis. A handful of weary men—wasted and worn and ragged—crept slowly down from the plateau of Inkerman where their comrades lay thick{4} in frequent graves, and sought the cheerless shelter of the hills of Balaklava. They had fought and had sickened and died till that proud brigade had nearly ceased to exist.

The swarm of red-coats which after a day of marching, of excitement, of leave-taking, and cheering, buzzed over the Orinoco, Ripon, Manilla, in Southampton Docks, was hived at last in hammock or blanket, while the vessels rode quietly in the waters of the Solent. Fourteen inches is man-of-war allowance, but eighteen inches were allowed for the Guards. On the following morning, February 23rd, the steamers weighed and sailed. The Ripon was off by 7 o'clock A.M., followed by the Manilla and the Orinoco. They were soon bowling along with a fresh N.W. breeze in the channel.

Good domestic beef, sea-pudding, and excellent bread, with pea-soup every second day, formed substantial pieces of resistance to the best appetites. Half a gill of rum to two of water was served out once a day to each man. On the first day Tom Firelock was rather too liberal to his brother Jack Tar. On the next occasion, the ponderous Sergeant-Major of the Grenadiers presided over the grog-tub, and delivered the order, "Men served—two steps to the front, and swallow!" The men were not insubordinate.

The second day the long swell of Biscay began to tell on the Guards. The figure-heads of the ships plunged deep, and the heads of the soldiers hung despondingly over gunwale, portsill, stay, and mess-tin, as their bodies bobbed to and fro. At night they brightened up, and when the bugle sounded at nine o'clock, nearly all were able to crawl into their hammocks for sleep. On Saturday the speed of the vessels was increased from nine-and-a-half to ten knots per hour; and the little Manilla was left by the large paddle-wheel steamers far away. On Sunday all the men had recovered; and when, at half-past ten, the ship's company and troops were mustered for prayers, they looked as fresh as could be expected under the circumstances;—in fact, as the day advanced, they became lively, and the sense of joyfulness for release from the clutches of their enemy was so strong that in reply to a stentorian demand for "three cheers for the jolly old whale!" they cheered a grampus which blew alongside.

On Tuesday the Ripon passed Tarifa, at fifty minutes past five A.M., and anchored in the quarantine ground of Gibraltar to coal half-an-hour afterwards. In consequence of the quarantine regulations there was no communication with the shore, but the soldiers lined the walls, H.M.S. Cruiser manned yards, and as the Ripon steamed off at half-past three P.M., after taking on board coals, tents and tent-poles, they gave three hearty cheers, which were replied to with goodwill. On Thursday a target painted like a Russian soldier was run up for practice. The Orinoco reached Malta on Sunday morning at ten A.M., and the Ripon on Saturday night soon after twelve o'clock. The Coldstreams were disembarked in the course of the day, and the Grenadiers were all ashore ere Monday evening, to the delight of the Maltese, who made a harvest from the excursions of the "plenty big men" to and from the town.{5}

The Manilla arrived at Malta on the morning of March 7th, after a run of eighteen days from Southampton. The men left their floating prisons only to relinquish comfort and to "rough it." One regiment was left without coals, another had no lights or candles, another suffered from cold under canvas, in some cases short commons tried the patience of the men, and forage was not to be had for the officers' horses. Acting on the old formula when transports took eight weeks to Malta, the Admiralty supplied steamers which make the passage in as many days with eight weeks' "medical comforts." By a rigid order, the officers were debarred from bringing more than 90lb. weight of baggage. Many of them omitted beds, canteen and mess traps, and were horror-stricken when they were politely invited to pitch their tents and "make themselves comfortable" on the ravelins, outside Valetta.

The arrival of the Himalaya before midnight on the same day, after a run of seven days and three hours from Plymouth, with upwards of 1,500 men on board, afforded good proof of our transport resources. Ordinary troop-ships would have taken at least six weeks, and of course it would have cost the Government a proportionate sum for their maintenance, while they were wasting precious moments, fighting against head winds. The only inconvenience attendant on this great celerity is, that many human creatures, with the usual appetites of the species, are rapidly collected upon one spot, and supplies can scarcely be procured to meet the demand. The increase of meat-consuming animals at Malta nearly produced the effects of a famine; there were only four hundred head of cattle left in the island and its dependencies, and with a population of 120,000—with the Brigade of Guards and 11 Regiments in garrison, and three frigates to feed, it may easily be imagined that the Commissariat were severely taxed to provide for this influx.

The Simoom, with the Scots Fusileer Guards, sixteen days from Portsmouth, reached Malta on the 18th of March. The troops were disembarked the following day, in excellent order. A pile of low buildings running along the edge of the Quarantine Harbour, with abundance of casements, sheltered terraces, piazzas, and large arched rooms, was soon completely filled. The men in spite of the local derangements caused on their arrival by "liberty" carousing in acid wine and fiery brandy, enjoyed good health, though the average of disease was rather augmented by the results of an imprudent use of the time allowed to them in London, to bid good-bye to their friends.

For the three last weeks in March, Valetta was like a fair. Money circulated briskly. Every tradesman was busy, and the pressure of demand raised the cost of supply. Saddlers, tinmen, outfitters, tailors, shoemakers, cutlers, increased their charges till they attained the West-End scale. Boatmen and the amphibious harpies who prey upon the traveller reaped a copper and silver harvest of great weight. It must, however, be said of Malta boatmen, that they are a hardworking, patient, and honest race; the latter adjective is applied comparatively, and not{6} absolutely. They would set our Portsmouth or Southampton boatmen an example rather to be wondered at than followed. The vendors of oranges, dates, olives, apples, and street luxuries of all kinds, enjoyed a full share of public favour; and (a proof of the fine digestive apparatus of our soldiery) their lavish enjoyment of these delicacies was unattended by physical suffering. A thirsty private, after munching the ends of Minié cartridges for an hour on the hot rocks at the seaside, would send to the rear and buy four or five oranges for a penny. He ate them all, trifled with an apple or two afterwards, and, duty over, rushed across the harbour or strutted off to Valetta. A cool café, shining out on the street with its tarnished gilding and mirrors more radiant than all the taps of all our country inns put together, invited him to enter, and a quantity of alcoholic stimulus was supplied, at the small charge of one penny, quite sufficient to encourage him to spend two-pence more on the same stuff, till he was rendered insensible to all sublunary cares, and brought to a state which was certain to induce him to the attention of the guard and to a raging headache. "I can live like a duke here—I can smoke my cigar, and drink my glass of wine, and what could a duke do more?" But the cigar made by very dirty manufacturers, who might be seen sitting out in the streets compounding them of the leaves of plants and saliva was villanous; and the wine endured much after it had left Sicily. As to the brandy and spirits, they were simply abominable, but the men were soon "choked off" when they found that indulgence in them was followed by punishment worse than that of the black hole or barrack confinement. The biscuit mills were baking 30,000lb. of biscuit per day. Bills posted in every street for "parties desirous of joining the commissariat department, under the orders of Commissary-General Filder, about to proceed with the force to the East, as temporary clerks, assistant store-keepers, interpreters," to "freely apply to Assistant Commissary-General Strickland;" had this significant addition,—"those conversant with English, Italian, modern Greek, and Turkish languages, or the Lingua-Franca of the East will be preferred." Warlike mechanics, armourers, farriers, wheelwrights, waggon-equipment and harness-makers, were in request.

As might naturally be expected where so great a demand, horses were scarcely to be obtained. To Tunis the contagion of high prices spread from Malta, and the Moors asked £25 and £30 for the veriest bundles of skin and bone that were ever fastened together by muscle and pluck. Our allies began to show themselves. The Christophe Colomb, steam-sloop, towing the Mistral, a small sailing transport, laden with 27 soldiers' and 40 officers' horses arrived in Malta Harbour on the night of the 7th, and ran into the Grand Harbour at six A.M. the following morning. On board were Lieutenant-General Canrobert, and his Chef d'État; Major Lieutenant-General Martimprey, 45 officers, 800 soldiers, 150 horses. Their reception was most enthusiastic. The French Generals were lodged at the Palace, and their soldiers were fêted in every tavern. Reviews{7} were held in their honour, and the air rang with the friendly shouts and answering cheers of "natural enemies".

In a few days after the arrival of the Guards, it became plain that the Allies were to proceed to Turkey, and that hostilities were inevitable. On the 28th March war was declared, but the preparations for it showed that the Government had looked upon war as certain some time previously.

Every exertion was made by the authorities to enable the expedition to take the field. General Ferguson and Admiral Houston Stewart received the expression of the Duke of Newcastle's satisfaction at the manner in which they co-operated in making "the extensive preparations for the reception of the expeditionary force, which could only have been successfully carried on by the absence of needless departmental etiquette,"—a virtue which has been expected to become more common after this official laudation. This expression of satisfaction was well deserved by both these gallant officers, and Sir W. Reid emulated them in his exertions to secure the comfort of the troops. The Admiral early and late worked with his usual energy. He had a modus operandi of making the conditional mood mean the imperative. Soldiers were stowed away in sailors' barracks and penned up in hammocks under its potent influence; and ships were cleared of their freight, or laden with a fresh one, with extraordinary facility.

It was at this time that in a letter to the Times I wrote as follows:—"With our men well clothed, well fed, well housed (whether in camp or town does not much matter), and well attended to, there is little to fear. They were all in the best possible spirits, and fit to go anywhere, and perhaps to do anything. But inaction might bring listlessness and despondency, and in their train follows disease. What is most to be feared in an encampment is an enemy that musket and bayonet cannot meet or repel. Of this the records of the Russo-Turkish campaign of 1828-9, in which 80,000 men perished by 'plague, pestilence, and famine,' afford a fearful lesson, and let those who have the interests of the army at heart just turn to Moltke's history of that miserable invasion, and they will grudge no expense, and spare no precaution, to avoid, as far as human skill can do it, a repetition of such horrors. Let us have plenty of doctors. Let us have an overwhelming army of medical men to combat disease. Let us have a staff—full and strong—of young and active and experienced men. Do not suffer our soldiers to be killed by antiquated imbecility. Do not hand them over to the mercies of ignorant etiquette and effete seniority, but give the sick every chance which skill, energy, and abundance of the best specifics can afford them. The heads of departments may rest assured that the country will grudge no expense on this point, nor on any other connected with the interest and efficiency of the corps d'élite which England has sent from her shores.[4] There were three first-class staff-surgeons at Constantinople—Messrs. Dumbreck{8} Linton, and Mitchell. At Malta there were—Dr. Burrell, at the head of the department; Dr. Alexander, Dr. Tice, Mr. Smith, and a great accession was expected every day."

The commissariat department appeared to be daily more efficient, and every possible effort was made to secure proper supplies for the troops. This, however, was a matter that could be best tested in the field.

On Tuesday, the 28th of March, the Montezuma, and the Albatross with Chasseurs, Zouaves, and horses, arrived in the Great Harbour. The Zouave was then an object of curiosity. The quarters of the men were not by any means so good as our own. A considerable number had to sleep on deck, and in rain or sea-way they must have been wet. Their kit seemed very light. The officers did not carry many necessaries, and the average weight of their luggage was not more than 50lb. They were all in the highest spirits, and looked forward eagerly to their first brush in company with the English.

Sir George Brown and staff arrived on the 29th in the Valetta. The 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, the advance of the Light Division, which Sir George Brown was to command, embarked on board the Golden Fleece. On the 30th, Sir John Burgoyne arrived from Constantinople in the Caradoc.

The Pluton and another vessel arrived with Zouaves and the usual freight of horses the same day, and the streets were full of scarlet and blue uniforms walking arm and arm together in uncommunicative friendliness, their conversation being carried on by signs, such as pointing to their throats and stomachs, to express the primitive sensations of hunger and thirst. The French sailed the following day for Gallipoli.

When the declaration of war reached Malta, the excitement was indescribable. Crowds assembled on the shores of the harbours and lined the quays and landing-places, the crash of music drowned in the enthusiastic cheers of the soldiers cheering their comrades as the vessels glided along, the cheers from one fort being taken up by the troops in the others, and as joyously responded to from those on board.

CHAPTER II.

Whilst the French were rapidly moving to Gallipoli, the English were losing the prestige which might have been earned by a first appearance on the stage, as well as the substantial advantages of an occupation of the town. But on 30th March Sir George Brown and Staff, the 2nd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, under Lt. Colonel{9} Lawrence, Colonel Victor, R.E., Captain Gibb, R.E., and two companies of Sappers, embarked in the Golden Fleece, and a cabin having been placed at my disposal, I embarked and sailed with them for Gallipoli, at five A.M. on 31st.

An early fisherman, a boatman in the Great Harbour, solitary sentinels perched here and there on the long lines of white bastions, were the only persons who saw the departure of the advanced guard of the only British expedition that has ever sailed to the land of the Moslem since the days of the great Plantagenet. The morning was dark and overcast. The Mediterranean assumed an indigo colour, stippled with patches of white foam, as heavy squalls of wind and drenching rain flew over its surface. The showers were tropical in their vehemence and suddenness. Nothing was visible except some wretched-looking gulls flapping in our wake hour after hour in the hope of unintentional contributions from the ship, and two or three dilapidated coasters running as hard as they could for the dangerous shelter of the land. Jason himself and his crew could scarcely have looked more uncomfortable than the men, though there was small resemblance indeed between the cruiser in which he took his passage and the Golden Fleece. "It all comes of sailing on a Friday," said a grumbling forecastle Jack.

The anticipations of the tarry prophet were not fully justified. Towards evening the sky cleared, the fine sharp edge of the great circle of waters of which we were the black murky centre, revealed itself, and the sun rushed out of his coat of cumuli, all bright and fervent, and sank to rest in a sea of fire. Even the gulls brightened up and began to look comfortable, and the sails of the flying craft, far away on the verge of the landscape, shone white. The soldiers dried their coats, and tried to forget sloppy decks and limited exercise ground, and night closed round the ship with peace and hilarity on her wings. As the moon rose a wonder appeared in the heavens—"a blazing comet with a fiery tail," which covered five or six degrees of the horizon, and shone through the deep blue above. Here was the old world-known omen of war and troubles! Many as they gazed felt the influence of ancient tales and associated the lurid apparition with the convulsion impending over Europe, though Mr. Hind and Professor Airy and Sir J. South might have proved to demonstration that the comet aforesaid was born or baptized in space hundreds of centuries before Prince Menschikoff was thought of.

At last the comet was lost in the moon's light, and the gazers put out their cigars, forgot their philosophy and their fears, and went to bed. The next day, Saturday (1st April), passed as most days do at sea in smooth weather. The men ate and drank, and walked on deck till they were able to eat and drink again, and so on till bed time. Curious little brown owls, as if determined to keep up the traditions of the neighbourhood, flew on board, and were caught in the rigging. They seemed to come right from the land of Minerva. In the course of the day small birds fluttered on the yards, masts, and bulwarks, plumed their jaded wings, and after a short rest launched themselves once more across{10} the bosom of the deep. Some were common titlarks, others greyish buntings, others yellow and black fellows. Three of the owls and a titlark were at once introduced to each other in a cage, and the ship's cat was thrown in by way of making an impromptu "happy family." The result rather increased one's admiration for the itinerant zoologist of Trafalgar-square and Waterloo Bridge, inasmuch as pussy obstinately refused to hold any communication with the owls—they seemed in turn to hate each other—and all evinced determined animosity towards the unfortunate titlark, which speedily languished and died.

This and the following day there was a head wind. No land appeared, and the only object to be seen was a French paddle-wheel steamer with troops on board and a transport in tow, which was conjectured to be one of those that had left Malta some days previously. After dinner, when the band had ceased playing, the Sappers assembled on the quarter-deck, and sang glees excellently well, while the Rifles had a select band of vocal performers of their own of comic and sentimental songs. Some of these, à propos of the expedition, were rather hard on the Guards and their bearskins. At daylight the coast was visible N. by E.—a heavy cloudlike line resting on the grey water. It was the Morea—the old land of the Messenians. If not greatly changed, it is wonderful what attractions it could have had for the Spartans. A more barren-looking coast one need not wish to see. It is like a section of the west coast of Sutherland in winter. The mountains—cold, rocky, barren ridges of land—culminate in snow-covered peaks, and the numerous villages of white cabins or houses dotting the declivity towards the sea did not relieve the place of an air of savage primitiveness, which little consorted with its ancient fame. About 9.40 A.M. we passed Cape Matapan, which concentrated in itself all the rude characteristics of the surrounding coast. We passed between the Morea and Cerigo. One could not help wondering what on earth could have possessed Venus to select such a wretched rock for her island home. Verily the poets have much to answer for. Not the boldest would have dared to fly into ecstasies about the terrestrial landing-place of Venus had he once beheld the same. The fact is, the place is like Ireland's Eye, pulled out and expanded. Although the whole reputation of the Cape was not sustained by our annihilation, the sea showed every inclination to be troublesome, and the wind began to rise.

After breakfast the men were mustered, and the captain read prayers. When prayers were over, we had a proof that the Greeks were tolerably right about the weather. Even bolder boatmen than the ancients might fear the heavy squalls off these snowy headlands, which gave a bad idea of sunny Greece in early spring. Their writers represented the performance of a voyage round Capes Matapan and Malea as attended with danger; and, if the best of triremes was caught in the breeze encountered by the Golden Fleece hereabouts, the crew would never have been troubled to hang up a votive tablet to their preserving deity.

From 10 o'clock till 3.30 P.M. the ship ran along the diameter of{11} the semicircle between the two Capes which mark the southern extremities of Greece. Cape Malea, or St. Angelo, is just such another bluff, mountainous, and desolate headland as Cape Matapan, and is not so civilized-looking, for there are no villages visible near it. However, in a hole on its south-east face resides a Greek hermit, who must have enormous opportunities for improving his mind, if Zimmerman be at all trustworthy. He is not quite lost to the calls of nature, and has a great tenderness for ships' biscuit. He generally hoists a little flag when a vessel passes near, and is often gratified by a supply of hard-bake. Had we wished to administer to his luxuries we could not have done so, for the wind off this angle rushed at us with fury, and the instant we rounded it we saw the sea broken into crests of foam making right at our bows. The old mariners were not without warranty when they advised "him who doubled Cape Malea to forget his home." We had got right into the Etesian wind—one of those violent Levanters which the learned among us said ought to be the Euroclydon which drove St. Paul to Malta. Sheltered as we were to eastward by clusters of little islands, the sea got up and rolled in confused wedges towards the ship. She behaved nobly, but with her small auxiliary steam power she could scarcely hold her own. We were driven away to leeward, and did not make much headway. The gusts came down furiously between all kinds of classical islands, which we could not make out, for our Maltese pilot got frightened, and revealed the important secret that he did not know one of them from the other. The men bore up well against their Euroclydon, and emulated the conduct of the ship. Night came upon us, labouring in black jolting seas, dashing them into white spray, and running away into dangerous unknown parts. It passed songless, dark, and uncomfortable: much was the suffering in the hermetically sealed cells in which our officers "reposed" and grumbled at fortune.

At daylight next morning, Falconero was north, and Milo south. The clouds were black and low, the sea white and high, and the junction between them on the far horizon of a broken and promiscuous character. The good steamer had run thirty miles to leeward of her course, making not the smallest progress. Grey islets with foam flying over them lay around indistinctly seen through the driving vapour from the Ægean. To mistrust of the pilot fear of accident was added, so the helm was put up, and we wore ship at 6.30 A.M. in a heavy sea-way. A screw-steamer was seen on our port quarter plunging through the heavy sea, and we made her out to be the Cape of Good Hope. She followed our example. The gale increased till 8 A.M.; the sailors considered it deserved to be called "stormy, with heavy squalls." The heavy sea on our starboard quarter, as we approached Malea, caused the ship to roll heavily; the men could only hold on by tight grip, and they and their officers were well drenched by great lumbering water louts, who tossed themselves in over the bulwarks. At 3.30 P.M., the ship cast anchor in Vatika Bay, in twenty fathoms. A French steamer and brig lay close in the shore. We cheered them vigorously,{12} but the men could not hear us. Some time afterwards the Cape of Good Hope and a French screw-steamer also ran in and anchored near us. This little flotilla alarmed the inhabitants, for the few who were fishing in boats fled to shore, and we saw a great effervescence at a distant village. No doubt the apparition in the bay of a force flying the tricolor and the union-jack frightened the people. They could be seen running to and fro along the shore like ants when their nest is stirred.

At dusk our bands played, and the mountains of the Morea, for the first time since they rose from the sea, echoed the strains of "God save the Queen." Our vocalists assembled, and sang glees or vigorous choruses, and the night passed pleasantly in smooth water on an even keel. The people lighted bonfires upon the hills, but the lights soon died out. At six o'clock on Tuesday morning the Golden Fleece left Vatika Bay, and passed Poulo Bello at 10.45 A.M. The Greek coast trending away to the left, showed in rugged masses of mountains capped by snowy peaks, and occasionally the towns—clusters of white specks on the dark purple of the hills—were visible; and before evening, the ship having run safely through all the terrors of the Ægean and its islands, bore away for the entrance to the Dardanelles. At 2 A.M. on Wednesday morning, however, it began to blow furiously again, the wind springing up as if "Æolus had just opened and put on fresh hands at the bellows," to use the nautical simile. The breeze, however, went down in a few hours, with the same rapidity with which it rose. Smooth seas greeted the ship as she steamed by Mitylene. On the left lay the entrance to the Gulf of Athens—Eubœa was on our left hand—Tenedos was before us—on our right rose the snowy heights of Mount Ida—and the Troad (atrociously and unforgivably like the "Bog of Allen!") lay stretching its brown folds, dotted with rare tumuli, from the sea to the mountain side for leagues away. Athos (said to be ninety miles distant) stood between us and the setting sun—a pyramid of purple cloud bathed in golden light; and the Leander frigate showed her number and went right away in the very waters that lay between Sestos and Abydos, past the shadow of the giant mountain, stretching away on our port beam. As the vessel entered the portals of the Dardanelles, and rushed swiftly up between its dark banks, the sentinels on the forts and along the ridges challenged loudly—shouting to each other to be on the alert—the band of the Rifles all the while playing the latest fashionable polkas, or making the rocks acquainted with "Rule Britannia," and "God save the Queen."

At 9.30 P.M., our ship passed the Castles of the Dardanelles. She was not stopped nor fired at, but the sentinels screeched horribly and showed lights, and seemed to execute a convulsive pas of fright or valour on the rocks. The only reply was the calm sounding of second post on the bugles—the first time that the blast of English light infantry trumpets broke the silence of those antique shores.[5]

{13}

After midnight we arrived at Gallipoli, and anchored. No one took the slightest notice of us, nor was any communication made with shore. When the Golden Fleece arrived there was no pilot to show her where to anchor, and it was nearly an hour ere she ran out her cable in nineteen fathoms water. No one came off, for it was after midnight, and there was something depressing in this silent reception of the first British army that ever landed on the shores of these straits.

When morning came we only felt sorry that nature had made Gallipoli, a desirable place for us to land at. The tricolor was floating right and left, and the blue coats of the French were well marked on shore, the long lines of bullock-carts stealing along the strand towards their camp making it evident that they were taking care of themselves.

Take some hundreds of dilapidated farms, outhouses, a lot of rickety tenements of Holywell-street, Wych-street, and the Borough—catch up, wherever you can, any of the seedy, cracked, shutterless structures of planks and tiles to be seen in our cathedral towns—carry off odd sheds and stalls from Billingsgate, add to them a selection of the huts along the Thames between London-bridge and Greenwich—bring them, then, all together to the European side of the Straits of the Dardanelles, and having pitched on a bare round hill sloping away to the water's edge, on the most exposed portion of the coast, with scarcely tree or shrub, tumble them "higgledy piggledy" on its declivity, in such wise that the lines of the streets may follow on a large scale the lines of a bookworm through some old tome—let the roadways be very narrow, of irregular breadth, varying according to the bulgings and projections of the houses, and paved with large round slippery stones, painful and hazardous to walk upon—here and there borrow a dirty gutter from a back street in Boulogne—let the houses lean across to each other so that the tiles meet, or a plank thrown across forms a sort of "passage" or arcade—steal some of the popular monuments of London, the shafts of national testimonials, a half dozen of Irish Round Towers—surround these with a light gallery about twelve feet from the top, put on a large extinguisher-shaped roof, paint them white, and having thus made them into minarets, clap them down into the maze of buildings—then let fall big stones all over the place—plant little windmills with odd-looking sails on the crests of the hill over the town—transport the ruins of a feudal fortress from Northern Italy, and put it into the centre of the town, with a flanking tower at the water's edge—erect a few wooden cribs by the waterside to serve as café, custom-house, and government stores—and, when you have done this, you have to all appearance imitated the process by which Gallipoli was created. The receipt, if tried, will be found to answer beyond belief.

To fill up the scene, however, you must catch a number of the biggest breeched, longest bearded, dirtiest, and stateliest old Turks to be had at any price in the Ottoman empire; provide them with pipes, keep them smoking all day on wooden stages or platforms about two feet from the ground, everywhere by the water's edge or up the main streets, in the shops of the bazaar which is one of the "passages"{14} or arcades already described; see that they have no slippers on, nothing but stout woollen hose, their foot gear being left on the ground, shawl turbans (one or two being green, for the real descendant of the Prophet), flowing fur-lined coats, and bright-hued sashes, in which are to be stuck silver-sheathed yataghans and ornamented Damascus pistols; don't let them move more than their eyes, or express any emotion at the sight of anything except an English lady; then gather a noisy crowd of fez-capped Greeks in baggy blue breeches, smart jackets, sashes, and rich vests—of soberly-dressed Armenians—of keen-looking Jews, with flashing eyes—of Chasseurs de Vincennes, Zouaves, British riflemen, vivandières, Sappers and Miners, Nubian slaves, Camel-drivers, Commissaries and Sailors, and direct them in streams round the little islets on which the smoking Turks are harboured, and you will populate the place.

It will be observed that women are not mentioned in this description, but children were not by any means wanting—on the contrary, there was a glut of them, in the Greek quarter particularly, and now and then a bundle of clothes, in yellow leather boots, covered at the top with a piece of white linen, might be seen moving about, which you will do well to believe contained a woman neither young nor pretty. Dogs, so large, savage, tailless, hairy, and curiously-shaped, that Wombwell could make a fortune out of them if aided by any clever zoological nomenclator, prowled along the shore and walked through the shallow water, in which stood bullocks and buffaloes, French steamers and transports, with the tricolor flying, and the paddlebox boats full of troops on their way to land—a solitary English steamer, with the red ensign, at anchor in the bay—and Greek polaccas, with their beautiful white sails and trim rig, flying down the straits, which are here about three and a half miles broad, so that the villages on the rich swelling hills of the Asia Minor side are plainly visible,—must be added, and then the picture will be tolerably complete.

In truth, Gallipoli is a wretched place—picturesque to a degree, but, like all picturesque things or places, horribly uncomfortable. The breadth of the Dardanelles is about five miles opposite the town, but the Asiatic and the European coasts run towards each other just ere the Straits expand into the Sea of Marmora. The country behind the town is hilly, and at the time of our arrival had not recovered from the effects of the late very severe weather, being covered with patches of snow. Gallipoli is situated on the narrowest portion of the tongue of land or peninsula which, running between the Gulf of Saros on the west and the Dardanelles on the east, forms the western side of the strait. An army encamped here commands the Ægean and the Sea of Marmora, and can be marched northwards to the Balkan, or sent across to Asia or up to Constantinople with equal facility.

As the crow flies, it is about 120 miles from Constantinople across the Sea of Marmora. If the capital were in danger, troops could be sent there in a few days, and our army and fleet effectually commanded the Dardanelles and the entrance to the Sea of Marmora,{15} and made it a mare clausum. Enos, a small town, on a spit of land opposite the mouth of the Maritza, on the coast of Turkey to the north-east of Samothrace, was surveyed and examined for an encampment by French and English engineers. It is obvious that if some daring Muscovite general forcing the passage across the Danube were to beat the Turks and cross the western ridges of the Balkans, he might advance southwards with very little hindrance to the Ægean; and a dashing march to the south-east would bring his troops to the western shore of the Dardanelles. An army at Gallipoli could check such a movement, if it ever entered into the head of any one to attempt to put it in practice.

Early on the morning after the arrival of the Golden Fleece a boat came off with two commissariat officers, Turner and Bartlett, and an interpreter. The consul had gone up the Dardanelles to look for us. The General desired to send for the Consul, but the only vessel available was a small Turkish Imperial steamer. The Consul's dragoman, a grand-looking Israelite, was ready to go, but the engineer had just managed to break his leg. He requested the loan of our engineer, as no one could be found to undertake the care of the steamer's engines.

After breakfast, Lieutenant-General Brown, Colonel Sullivan, Captain Hallewell, and Captain Whitmore, started to visit the Pasha of Adrianople (Rustum Pasha), who was sent here to facilitate the arrangements and debarkation of the troops. On their return, about half-past two o'clock, Lieutenant-General Canrobert came on board the vessel, and was received by the Lieutenant-General. The visit lasted an hour, and was marked at its close with greater cordiality, if possible, than at the commencement.

In the evening the Consul, Mr. Calvert, came on board, when it turned out that no instructions whatever had been sent to prepare for the reception of the force, except that two commissariat officers, without interpreters or staff, had been dispatched to the town a few days before the troops landed. These officers could not speak the language. However, the English Consul was a man of energy. Mr. Calvert went to the Turkish Governor, and succeeded in having half of the quarters in the town reserved. Next day he visited and marked off the houses; but the French authorities said they had made a mistake as to the portion of the town they had handed over to him. They had the Turkish part of the town close to the water, with an honest and favourable population; the English had the Greek quarter, further up the hill, and perhaps the healthier, and a population which hated them bitterly.

Sir George Brown arrived on Wednesday, the 5th of April, but it was midday on Saturday the 8th, ere the troops were landed and sent to their quarters. The force consisted of only some thousand and odd men, and it had to lie idle for two days and a half watching the seagulls, or with half averted eye regarding the ceaseless activity of the French, the daily arrival of their steamers, the rapid transmission of their men to shore. On our side not a British pendant was afloat in the harbour! Well might a Turkish boatman ask,{16} "Oh, why is this? Oh, why is this, Chelebee? By the beard of the Prophet, for the sake of your father's father, tell me, O English Lord, how is it? The French infidels have got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven ships, with fierce little soldiers; the English infidels, who say they can defile the graves of these French (may Heaven avert it!), and who are big as the giants of Asli, have only one big ship. Do they tell lies?" (Such was the translation given to me of my interesting waterman's address.)

The troops were disembarked in the course of the day, and marched out to encamp, eight miles and a half north of Gallipoli, at a place called Bulair. The camp was occupied by the Rifles and Sappers and Miners, within three miles of the village. It was seated on a gentle slope of the ridge which runs along the isthmus, and commanded a view of the Gulf of Saros, but the Sea of Marmora was not visible. Sanitary and certain other considerations may have rendered it advisable not to select this village itself, or some point closer to it, as the position for the camp; but the isthmus was narrower at Bulair, could be more easily defended, would not have required so much time or labour to put it into a good state of defence, and appeared to be better adapted for an army as regards shelter and water than the position chosen. Bulair is ten and a half miles from Gallipoli, so the camp was about seven and a half from the port at which its supplies were landed, and where its reinforcements arrived.

On Thursday there was a general hunt for quarters through the town. The General got a very fine place in a beau quartier, with a view of an old Turk on a counter looking at his toes in perpetual perspective. The consul, attended by the dragoman and a train of lodging seekers, went from house to house; but it was not till the eye had got accustomed to the general style of the buildings and fittings that any of them seemed willing to accept the places offered them. The hall door, which is an antiquated concern—not affording any particular resistance to the air to speak of—opens on an apartment with clay walls about ten feet high, and of the length and breadth of the whole house. It is garnished with the odds and ends of the domestic deity—empty barrels, casks of home-made wine, buckets, baskets, &c. At one side a rough staircase, creaking at every step, conducts one to a saloon on the first floor. This is of the plainest possible appearance. On the sides are stuck prints of the "Nicolaus ho basileus," of the Virgin and Child, and engravings from Jerusalem. The Greeks are iconoclasts, and hate images, but they adore pictures. A yellow Jonah in a crimson whale with fiery entrails is a favourite subject, and doubtless bears some allegorical meaning to their own position in Turkey. From this saloon open the two or three rooms of the house—the kitchen, the divan, and the principal bedroom. There is no furniture. The floors are covered with matting, but with the exception of the cushions on the raised platform round the wall of the room (about eighteen inches from the floor), there is nothing else in the rooms offered for general competition to the public. Above are dark attics. In such a lodging as this, in{17} the house of the widow Papadoulos, was I at last established to do the best I could without servant or equipment.

Water was some way off, and I might have been seen stalking up the street with as much dignity as was compatible with carrying a sheep's liver on a stick in one hand, some lard in the other, and a loaf of black bread under my arm back from market. There was not a pound of butter in the whole country, meat was very scarce, fowls impossible; but the country wine was fair enough, and eggs were not so rare as might be imagined from the want of poultry.

While our sick men had not a mattress to lie down upon, and were without blankets, the French were well provided for. No medical comforts were forwarded from Malta,—and so when a poor fellow was sinking the doctor had to go to the General's and get a bottle of wine for him. The hospital sergeant was sent out with a sovereign to buy coffee, sugar, and other things of the kind for the sick, but he could not get them, as no change was to be had in the place. In the French hospital everything requisite was nicely made up in small packages and marked with labels, so that what was wanted might be procured in a minute.

The French Commandant de Place posted a tariff of all articles which the men were likely to want on the walls of the town, and regulated the exchanges like a local Rothschild. A Zouave wanted a fowl; he saw one in the hand of an itinerant poultry merchant, and he at once seized the bird, and giving the proprietor a franc—the tariff price—walked off with the prize. The Englishman, on the contrary, more considerate and less protected, was left to make hard bargains, and generally paid twenty or twenty-five per cent. more than his ally. These Zouaves were first-rate foragers. They might be seen in all directions, laden with eggs, meat, fish, vegetables (onions), and other good things, while our fellows could get nothing. Sometimes a servant was sent out to cater for breakfast or dinner: he returned with the usual "Me and the Colonel's servant has been all over the town, and can get nothing but eggs and onions, Sir;" and lo! round the corner appeared a red-breeched Zouave or Chasseur, a bottle of wine under his left arm, half a lamb under the other, and poultry, fish, and other luxuries dangling round him. "I'm sure I don't know how these French manages it, Sir," said the crestfallen Mercury, retiring to cook the eggs.

The French established a restaurant for their officers, and at the "Auberge de l'Armée Expeditionnaire," close to General Bosquet's quarters, one could get a dinner which, after the black bread and eggs of the domestic hearth, appeared worthy of Philippe.

There seemed to be a general impression among the French soldiers that it would be some time ere they left Gallipoli or the Chersonese. They were in military occupation of the place. The tricolor floated from the old tower of Gallipoli. The café had been turned into an office—Direction du Port et Commissariat de la Marine. French soldiers patrolled the town at night, and kept the soldiery of both armies in order; of course, we sent out a patrol also, but the regulations of the place were directly organized at the French head-quarters, and even the miser{18}able house which served as our Trois Frères, or London Tavern, and where one could get a morsel of meat and a draught of country wine for dinner, was under their control. A notice on the walls of this Restaurant de l'Armée Auxiliaire informed the public that, par ordre de la police Française, no person would be admitted after seven o'clock in the evening. In spite of their strict regulations there was a good deal of drunkenness among the French soldiery, though perhaps it was not in excess of our proportion, considering the numbers of both armies. They had fourgons for the commissariat, and all through their quarter of the town one might see the best houses occupied by their officers. On one door was inscribed Magasin des Liquides, on another Magasin des Distributions. M. l'Aumonier de l'Armée Française resides on one side of the street; l'Intendant Général, &c., on the other. Opposite the commissariat stores a score or two of sturdy Turks worked away at neat little hand-mills marked Moulin de Café—Subsistence Militaire. No. A., Compagnie B., &c., and roasting the beans in large rotatory ovens; the place selected for the operation being a burial-ground, the turbaned tombstones of which seemed to frown severely on the degenerate posterity of the Osmanli. In fact, the French appear to have acted uniformly on the sentiment conveyed in the phrase of one of their officers, in reply to a remark about the veneration in which the Turks hold the remains of the dead—"Mais il faut rectifier tous ces préjuges et barbarismes!"

The greatest cordiality existed between the chiefs of the armies. Sir George Brown and some of his staff dined one day with General Canrobert; another day with General Martimprey; another day the drowsy shores of the Dardanelles were awakened by the thunders of the French cannon saluting him as he went on board Admiral Bruat's flagship to accept the hospitalities of the naval commander; and then on alternate days the dull old alleys of Gallipoli were brightened up by an apparition of these officers and their staffs in full uniform, clanking their spurs and jingling their sabres over the excruciating rocks which form the pavement as they proceeded on their way to the humble quarters of "Sir Brown," to sit at return banquets.

The natives preferred the French uniform to ours. In their sight there can be no more effeminate object than a warrior in a shell jacket, with closely-shaven chin and lip and cropped whiskers. He looks, in fact, like one of their dancing troops, and cuts a sorry figure beside a great Gaul in his blazing red pantaloons and padded frock, epaulettes, beard d'Afrique, and well-twisted moustache. The pashas think much of our men, but they are not struck with our officers. The French made an impression quite the reverse. The Turks could see nothing in the men, except that they thought the Zouaves and Chasseurs Indigènes dashing-looking fellows; but they considered their officers superior to ours in all but exact discipline. One day, as a man of the 4th was standing quietly before the door of the English Consulate, with a horse belonging to an officer of his regiment, some drunken French soldiers came reeling up the street; one of them kicked the horse, and caused it to rear violently; and,{19} not content with doing so, struck it on the head as he passed. Several French officers witnessed this scene, and one of them exclaimed, "Why did not you cut the brigand over the head with your whip when he struck the horse?" The Englishman was not a master of languages, and did not understand the question. When it was explained to him, he said with the most sovereign contempt, "Lord forbid I'd touch sich a poor drunken little baste of a crayture as that!"

The Turkish Commission had a troublesome time of it. All kinds of impossible requisitions were made to them every moment. Osman Bey, Eman Bey, and Kabouli Effendi, formed the martyred triumvirate, who were kept in a state of unnatural activity and excitement by the constant demands of the officers of the allied armies for all conceivable stores, luxuries, and necessaries for the troops, as well as for other things over which they had no control. One man had a complaint against an unknown Frenchman for beating his servant—another wanted them to get lodgings for him—a third wished them to send a cavass with self and friends on a shooting excursion—in fact, very unreasonable and absurd requests were made to these poor gentlemen, who could scarcely get through their legitimate work, in spite of the aid of numberless pipes and cups of coffee. One of the medical officers went to make a requisition for hospital accommodation, and got through the business very well. When it was over, the President descended from the divan. In the height of his delusions respecting Oriental magnificence and splendour, led away by reminiscences of "Tales of the Genii" and the "Arabian Nights," the reader must not imagine that this divan was covered with cloth of gold, or glittering with precious stones. It was clad in a garb of honest Manchester print, with those remarkable birds of prey or pleasure, in green and yellow plumage, depicted thereupon, familiar to us from our earliest days. The council chamber was a room of lath and plaster, with whitewashed walls; its sole furniture a carpet in the centre, the raised platform or divan round its sides, and a few chairs for the Franks. The President advanced gravely to the great Hakim, and through the interpreter made him acquainted with particulars of a toothache, for which he desired a remedy. The doctor insinuated that His Highness must have had a cold in the head, from which the symptoms had arisen, and the diagnosis was thought so wonderful it was communicated to the other members of the Council, and produced a marked sensation. When he had ordered a simple prescription he was consulted by the other members in turn: one had a sore chin, the other had weak eyes; and the knowledge evinced by the doctor of these complaints excited great admiration and confidence, so that he departed, after giving some simple prescriptions, amid marks of much esteem and respect.

Djemel Pasha, who commanded the pashalic of the Dardanelles, was a very enlightened Turk, and possessed a fund of information and a grasp of intellect not at all common among his countrymen, even in the most exalted stations. He was busily engaged on a work on the constitution of Turkey, in which he proposed to{20} remodel the existing state of things completely. He had been much struck by the notion of an hereditary aristocracy, which he considered very suitable for Turkey, and was fascinated by our armorial bearings and mottoes, as he thought them calculated to make members of a family act in such a way as to sustain the reputation of their ancestors. Talking of the intended visit of the Sultan to Adrianople, he said, one day, that it was mere folly. If the Sultan went as his martial ancestors—surrounded by his generals—to take the command of his armies and share the privations of his soldiers, he granted it would be productive of good, and inflame the ardour of his soldiery; but it would produce no beneficial result to visit Adrianople with a crowded Court, and would only lead to a vast outlay of money in repairing the old palace for his reception, and in conveying his officers of State, his harem, and his horses and carriages to a city which had ceased to be fit for an imperial residence. He was very much of the opinion of General Canrobert, who, at the close of a splendid reception by the pashas, at Constantinople, in which pipes mounted with diamonds and begemmed coffee-cups were handed about by a numerous retinue, said, "I am much obliged by your attention, but you will forgive me for saying I should be much better pleased if all these diamonds and gold were turned into money to pay your troops, and if you sent away all these servants of yours, except two or three, to fight against your enemy!" Djemel Pasha declared there could be no good in tanzimats or in new laws, unless steps were taken to carry them out and administer them. The pashas in distant provinces would never give them effect until they were forced to do so, and therefore it will be necessary, in his opinion, to have the ambassadors of the great Powers admitted as members of the Turkish Council of State for some years, in order that these reforms may be productive of good. The Koran he considered as little suitable to be the basis and textbook of civil law now in Turkey, as the Old Testament would be in England. It will be long indeed ere the doctrines of this enlightened Turk prevail among his countrymen, and when they do the Osmanlis will have ceased to be a nation. The prejudices of the true believers were but little shaken by these events. The genuine old green-turbaned Turk viewed our intervention with suspicion, and attributed our polluting presence on his soil to interested motives, which aim at the overthrow of the Faith. This was seen in their leaden eyes as they fell on one through the clouds of tobacco-smoke from the khans or cafés. You are still a giaour, whom Mahomet has forced into his service, but care must be taken that you do not gain any advantage at the hands of the faithful.

In the English general orders the greatest stress was laid on treating the Turks with proper respect, and both officers and men were strictly enjoined to pay every deference to "the most ancient and faithful of our allies." The soldiers appeared to act in strict conformity with the spirit of these instructions. They bought everything they wanted, but on going for a walk into the country one might see the fields dotted by stragglers from the French camp, tearing up hedgestakes, vines, and sticks for fuel, and looking out generally with eyes wide open for the pot à feu.{21}

With the exception of the vivandières, the French brought no women whatever with them. The Malta authorities had the egregious folly to send out ninety-seven women in the "Georgiana" to this desolate and miserable place, where men were hard set to live. This indiscretion was not repeated.

The camps in the neighbourhood of Gallipoli extended every day, and with the augmentation of the allied forces, the privations to which the men were exposed became greater, the inefficiency of our arrangements more evident, and the comparative excellence of the French commissariat administration more striking. Amid the multitude of complaints which met the ear from every side, the most prominent were charges against the British commissariat; but the officers at Gallipoli were not to blame. The persons really culpable were those who sent them out without a proper staff, and without the smallest foresight. Early and late these officers might be seen toiling amid a set of apathetic Turks and stupid araba drivers, trying in vain to make bargains and give orders in the language of signs, or aided by interpreters who understood neither the language of the contractor nor contractee. And then the officers of a newly-arrived regiment rushed on shore, demanded bullock-carts for the luggage, guides, interpreters, rations, &c., till the unfortunate commissary became quite bewildered. There were only four commissary officers, Turner, Bartlett, Thompson, and Smith, and they were obliged to get on as well as they could with the natives.

The worst thing was the want of comforts for the sick. Many of the men labouring under diseases contracted at Malta were obliged to camp in the cold, with only one blanket, as there was no provision for them at the temporary hospital. Mr. Alexander succeeded in getting hold of some hundreds of blankets by taking on himself the responsibility of giving a receipt for them, and taking them off the hands of the commanding officer of one of the regiments from Malta. This responsibility is a horrid bugbear, but no man is worth his salt who does not boldly incur it whenever he thinks the service is to be benefited thereby. It would be lucky if more people had a supply of desirable recklessness, and things would have gone on much better.

Regiments arrived daily, and encamped near the town. The 4th, 28th, 50th, 93rd, and 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade were stationed between Bulair and Gallipoli. The 33rd, 41st, 49th, 77th, and 88th, lay in Scutari or in the adjoining barracks.

The French poured in their troops. Towards the end of April they had 22,000 men in the neighbourhood of Gallipoli, and the narrow streets were almost impassable. The Zouaves, from their picturesque costume, quite threw our men in the shade—all but their heads and shoulders, which rose in unmistakable broadness above the fez caps of their Gallic allies. Even the Zouaves yielded the prize of effectiveness to the Chasseurs Indigènes, or French Sepoys. These troops wore a white turban, loose powder-blue jackets, faced and slashed with yellow, embroidered vests with red sashes, and blue breeches extremely wide and loose, so that they looked like kilts,{22} falling to the knees, where they were confined by a band; the calf of the leg encased in greaves of yellow leather with black stripes; and white gaiters, falling from the ankle over the shoe.

Long strings of camels laden with skins of wine, raki, and corn, might be seen stalking along the dusty roads and filing through the dingy bazaar, and wild-looking countrymen with droves of little shaggy ponies trooped in hour after hour to sell the produce they carried and the beasts that bore it. Instead of piastres, they began to demand lire, shillings, pounds, and Napoleons, and displayed ingenuity in the art of selling horses and doctoring them that would have done honour to Yorkshiremen. The coarse brown bread of the country was to be had at the bakers' shops early in the morning by those who were not so fortunate as to have rations, and after a little preparatory disgust was not quite uneatable. Wine, formerly two or three piastres (4d. or 5d.) a bottle, soon sold for 1s. 6d. or 2s. Meat was bad and dear, the beef being very like coarse mahogany; the mutton was rather better, but very lean. Eggs were becoming scarce and dear, in consequence of the razzias of the army on the producing powers. Milk was an article of the highest luxury, and only to be seen on the tables of the great; and the sole attempt at butter was rancid lard packed in strong-smelling camel's-hair bags. It was really wonderful that no Englishman had sufficient enterprise to go out to Gallipoli with a stock of creature comforts and camp necessaries. One man set up a shop, at which bad foreign beer was sold as English ale at 1s. 6d. a bottle; a hard little old Yankee ham fetched about 20s.; brandy was very dear, scarce, and bad; bacon was not to be had, except by great good fortune and large outlay; and Dutch cheeses were selling at 8s. each. A stock of saddlery would have been at once bought up at very remunerating rates to the importer; and there was scarcely an article of common use in England which could not have been disposed of at a very considerable profit.

As change was very scarce, there was great difficulty in obtaining articles of small value, and a sum of 19s. was occasionally made up in piastres, half-piastres, gold pieces of 5, 10, 20, and 50 piastres each, francs, soldi, lire, halfpence, sixpences, and zwanzigers, collected at several shops up and down the street. Let the reader imagine Mr. John Robinson, Patrick Casey, or Saunders Macpherson of Her Majesty's 50th Regiment, suddenly plunged into such a mass of cheats and sharpers, who combine the avidity of the Jew with the subtlety of the Greek, and trying to purchase some little article of necessity or luxury with his well-saved sovereign, and he can guess how he would suffer. "I expect at last they'll give me a handful of wafers for a sovereign," said a disconsolate sapper one day, as he gazed on the dirty equivalent for a piece of English gold which he had received from an Israelite. Towards evening, when raki and wine had done their work, the crowds became more social and turbulent, and English and French might be seen engaged in assisting each other to preserve the perpendicular, or toiling off to their camps laden with bags of coffee, sugar, and rice, and large bottles of wine. At sunset patrols{23} cleared the streets, taking up any intoxicated stragglers they might find there or in the cafés, and when the brief twilight had passed away the whole town was left in silence and in darkness, except when the barking and yelping of the innumerable dogs which infested it woke up the echoes, and now and then the challenge of a distant sentry or the trumpet-calls of the camp fell on the ear.

The Lieutenant-General was determined to secure efficiency according to the light that was in him. If Sir George Brown had his way, Rowland, Oldridge, and the whole race of bears'-grease manufacturers and pomade merchants would have scant grace and no profit. His hatred of hair amounted to almost a mania. "Where there is hair there is dirt, and where there is dirt there will be disease." That was an axiom on which was founded a vigorous war against all capillary adornments. Stocks were ordered to be kept up, stiff as ever. The General would not allow the little black pouches hitherto worn on the belt by officers. They are supposed to carry no pockets, and are not to open their shell jackets; and the question they ask is, "Does the General think we are to have no money?" But the order which gave the greatest dissatisfaction was that each officer must carry his own tent. They were warned to provide mules for that purpose, and to carry their baggage, but mules were not to be had at any price. For close shaving, tight stocking, and light marching, Lieut.-General Sir George Brown was not to be excelled. A kinder man to the soldiers, or one who looked more to their rights, never lived, and no "but" need be added to this praise.

CHAPTER III.

WHILST part of the army was engaged on the works at Bulair, arrangements were made for the reception of English regiments in the Bosphorus. On the 13th of April the Himalaya arrived with the 33rd Regiment (Colonel Blake) and the 41st Regiment (Colonel Adams) on board, and anchored off Gallipoli; Sir George Brown ordered her off to Scutari after a short delay, and as I was miserably lodged at Gallipoli, I took a passage on board. On the 15th (Good Friday) she arrived in the midst of a snow-storm, and moored at the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. These regiments were the first that landed at Scutari—a place about to acquire a sad notoriety as the head-quarters of death and sickness, and a happier interest as the scene of the labours{24} of Florence Nightingale and her sisters. The day was bitterly cold; Constantinople and Pera, black-looking and desolate, contrasted with the white hills behind them, covered with deep snow; and the Asiatic mountains in the distance had an Alpine wintry aspect, which gave a shock to our notions of an Oriental spring. The barracks were given up to the men just as they had been left by the Turkish troops, and were inhabited by legions of fleas, and less active but more nauseous insects. It was late in the day when the regiment arrived at quarters, and several officers lay for the night in the guard-room, which had an open brasier of charcoal to keep warmth in it. All night we could scarcely sleep, and at dawn we began to receive visits from Turks, who were kind enough to see if they could relieve us of anything they thought we did not want.

A fire broke out at Gallipoli on the morning of Saturday, the 22nd of April. The previous Friday was the Good Friday of the Greeks, and they kept it as is their wont on a great festival, staying up late and feasting and revelling. It was late, therefore—about 9 o'clock in the morning—when, in the middle of a comfortable sleep, we were awakened by Assistant-Surgeon Irwin, of the 28th, who slept in a den in the next room with Captain Mansell, of the same regiment, rushing in and exclaiming—"Get up! get up! Alexander's house is on fire!" The house in which the principal medical officer lived was on the other side of the street, about three houses lower down. Flames were issuing through the windows of Papa Zonani's residence, and the Greek population were gazing idly on while those who lived on either side were removing their effects as rapidly as possible. The Turks stroked their beards, and considered that the will of God was directly concerned in the destruction of the premises, while the Greeks wrung their hands, and did nothing further. The Major in his excitement dashed his hand through a pane of glass, and shouted out, "Get up and bundle out your things, or we're done for." A jump out of bed and a rush at the few spare articles of clothing lying about followed, and then commenced a rapid flight down stairs into a garden of onions and garlic at the rear of the house, which seemed especially formed as a refuge for us. There were in the house Mr. Irwin, of the 28th, Captain Mansell, of the 28th, Major Collingwood Dickson, R.A., two soldiers of the 28th, servants of the officers, an old woman, several children, cocks, hens, &c., immediately a secession of lares and penates to this land of refuge began; beds, coats, trunks, portmanteaus, boxes, were hurled down the stairs, and fierce struggles took place for precedence in the narrow passage, while the old lady and the children howled dismally as they flew about with pipkins and spinning-reels and inexplicable chattels.

In the midst of all our confusion a heavy tramp was heard in the street—the door of our house was burst open, and in rushed a body of French infantry, shouting out, "Cassez tous, cassez tous; il faut abattre la maison!" However, it was explained to them that this necessity was not absolute, and that it would be much better for them to devote themselves to saving our property. They{25} at once assented, and rushing on the various things in the room, transported them with incredible rapidity into the garden. Their comrades outside were as energetic as demons. They mounted on the roofs of the houses next to the burning mansion, smashed in the tiles, destroyed the walls, and left them a mass of ruins in as little time as it takes me to write these lines. They saved the quarter of the town, for there was but little water, and the few small hand-engines were of no service. The marines and sailors of the Jean Bart and Montebello were landed very speedily.

The Doctor's house and two others, as well as the greater part of the hospital, were destroyed. Several of the French soldiers were hurt severely, but no lives were lost. There was no pillage, owing to the vigilance of the French guards. The only mischief, beyond the destruction of property in the houses, the loss of twenty pounds' worth of Dr. Alexander's effects, and the fright, was that we were compelled to take refuge in a tent pitched in the onion-garden at the back of the cabin, which would have formed a very agreeable residence for an enthusiastic entomologist, but was by no means agreeable, on those cold and windy nights, to unscientific individuals.

On the same day Sir De Lacy Evans and staff, in the City of London, passed, after a short delay, on their way to Scutari, to form the Second Division. On the 23rd the Emperor Nicholas passed Gallipoli early in the morning, with Sir Richard England on board, on his way to Constantinople, to take the command of the Third Division. Later in the day the Trent, with the 23rd Regiment; the Tonning, with Brigadiers Sir C. Campbell and Pennefather; and the Medway, with the 95th Regiment, arrived, and after a short delay proceeded northwards to Scutari. Eyre, who arrived in the Tonning, was at once secured by Sir George Brown, who had been anxiously waiting to catch a brigadier. He set to work to drill his men with energy a day or two after his arrival. The 44th (to whom the General paid a compliment on their efficient condition), the 28th, and 4th, were under arms daily at 5½ A.M., and they thought themselves lucky if they got released after three hours' drill and marching. The Brigadier was always at the camp soon after dawn.

Æolus must have taken his abode somewhere in the neighbourhood of Gallipoli since he removed his Court from Lipari. The unseasonable rapidity with which he opens his bags, and the violence with which he sends forth the sharpest and most truculent of all the winds to sweep over the hills around this miserable spot, would satisfy Juno in her most indignant mood if the place were a Trojan colony. The extraordinary suddenness of these changes and the excessive variations of temperature were very trying to the men in camp, but the average of illness and disease was rather below that of most camps in ordinary circumstances. The sun rises, perchance, from behind the hills of Asia Minor without a cloud to mar his splendour; the Sea of Marmora, bounded by the faint blue lines of the highlands of Asia and the distinctive sweep of the European coast, spreads out towards the north-west like a sheet of{26} burnished silver; the Dardanelles flows swiftly between the contracted channel as smoothly as the Thames in summer time by the pleasant meads of Chertsey. There is a rich sylvan look about the scenery, for at a distance the hills around Lampsaki, across the straits, appear to be dotted with verdant lawns and plantations; and the outline of the high grounds, rising tier after tier till they are capped by the lofty range which stretches along the background from Ida in the Troad, is subdued and regular.

The villages built in the recesses of the hills and in the little bays and creeks of the straits, surrounded by all the enchantment of distance, look clean and picturesque, the dark groves of cypress casting into bright relief the whitewash of the houses and the tall shafts of minarets standing out gracefully from the confused mass of roofs, gables, masts, yards, and sails by the seaside. Further south the coasts close in abruptly, and the straits are like a long Highland loch. The land around Gallipoli on the European side of the straits is more bleak and more level. Indeed, for miles around the town (except towards the south, where there is a very small table-land with patches of trees), and all the way across to the Gulf of Saros, the country very much resembles the downs about Brighton. It is nearly as destitute of wood or plantations. The soil, which is light, but deep and rather sandy, produces excellent crops, but bears no trees, except a few figs and olives. The vines, which are planted in rows, not trailed as in Italy, are abundant, and the grape yields a rich, full, and generous wine, which is highly esteemed. Into the soil, which is just scratched up by ploughs rather inferior to those described by Virgil 1800 years ago, the dejected rayahs are busied throwing the corn and barley seed; and as the slow steers or huge lumbering buffaloes pace along the furrows, they are followed by a stately army of storks, which march gravely at the very heels of beast and ploughman, and engage themselves busily in destroying the grubs and larvæ. On all the heights around glisten the white tents of French or English, and here and there the eye rests upon their serrated lines on the slope of some pleasant valley, or lights on the encampment of some detached party posted in a recess of the hills. Faint clouds of dust, through which may be seen the glistening of steel and dark masses of uniform, blur the landscape here and there, and betray the march of troops along the sandy roads, which are exactly like those worn by the tramp of men and horses through Chobham-common, and had neither fence, boundary-metal, nor drainage.

In a moment the whole scene changes. A violent storm of wind rushes over the face of the sea and straits, lashing them into fury, and sending the Turkish boats flying with drooping peaks to the shelter of the shore—the coast is obscured by masses of black clouds, which burst into torrents of rain resembling tropical water-spouts. The French men-of-war in the bay send down top masts, the merchantmen run out cable and let go another anchor; the rayahs plod across the fields, and crouch in holes and corners till the storm abates; and the luckless troops on their march are covered with mud by the action of the rain. In such{27} times as these canvas is a sorry shelter—the pegs draw from the loose soil, and let in wind and rain. On Saturday, the 29th of April, tents were blown down by such a storm in all directions. In the two English camps about twenty were down at the same time, and exposed the men to all the drenching rain. Lady Errol, who was living with her husband in the Rifle Camp, had to crawl from under the dripping canvas in most sorry plight.

Prince Jerome Napoleon arrived on the 30th. The town was shaken by the Imperial salute of 101 guns from each of the five French line-of-battle ships. He left the ship for the shore in a storm of wind, under a similar salute, which frightened the Greeks out of their lives. Next Sunday, Prince Napoleon, General Canrobert, and the état major reviewed the French troops, and the English General and staff attended upon the occasion.

Lord Raglan, accompanied by Lord de Ros, Quartermaster-General, and staff, Mr. Burrell, Dr. Tice, &c., arrived May 2nd, at noon, on board the Emeu. He proceeded to General Brown's quarters, and they had a long interview. Lord Raglan visited Admiral Bruat on board his flag-ship, and sailed the same night for the Bosphorus and for Scutari.

The works at the intrenched camp at Bulair progressed with such speed that our portion of them was at this time expected to be finished by the middle of May. The emulation between the French and English troops at the diggings was immense, and at the same time most good-humoured. The lines were about seven miles long, and about two and three-quarters or three miles were executed by our men. They were simple field works, running along the crest of a natural ridge, from the Gulf of Saros to the Sea of Marmora. They consisted of a trench seven feet deep; the bottom, from scarp to counterscarp, six feet broad; the top thirteen feet broad. There was then a berm of three feet wide, above which was the parapet of earthwork (to be revetted in due course) of five feet thick, a banquette three feet six inches broad, and a slope inside of one in two.

The spectator who selects a high point of land on the undulating country round Brighton, and looks across the valley below, might form a tolerable idea of the terrain around Gallipoli. Crossing the hills in all directions, and piercing the ravines between them, the dark masses of French infantry advancing from their numerous encampments might at the period referred to be seen formed for miles around on every sloping plateau. The shrill trumpets of the Zouaves were frequently heard sounding a wild and eccentric march, and these fierce-looking soldiers of Africa, burnt brown by constant exposure to the sun, with beards which easily distinguish them from the native Arabs, came rushing past, for their pace is so quick that it fully justifies the term. The open collars of their coats allow free play to the lungs; the easy jacket, the loose trouser, and the well-supported ankle, constitute the beau ideal of a soldier's dress; their firelocks and the brasses of their swords and bayonets are polished to a nicety. Each man was then fully equipped for the field, with great-coat strapped over his knapsack, canteen by{28} his side, a billhook, hatchet, or cooking-tin fastened over all. In the rear, mounted on a packhorse, followed a vivandière, in the uniform of the regiment, with natty little panniers and neatly-polished barrels of diminutive size dangling over the saddle; and then came a sumpter-mule, with two wooden boxes fastened to the pack, containing small creature comforts for the officers. The word was given to halt—stand at ease—pile arms. In a moment the whole regiment seemed disorganized. The men scattered far and wide over the fields collecting sticks and brushwood, and it appeared incredible that they could have gathered all the piles of brambles and dried wood and leaves which they deposited in the rear of the lines from the country that looked so bare. The officers gathered in groups, lighted cigars, chatted and laughed, or sat on the ground while their coffee was being boiled.

The moment the halt took place, off came the boxes from the mule—a little portable table was set up—knives, forks, glasses and cups were laid out—a capacious coffee-tin was put upon three stones over a heap of bramble, and in three minutes each officer could take a cup of this refreshing drink after his hot march, with a biscuit and morsel of cheese, and a chasse of brandy afterwards. The men were equally alert in providing themselves with their favourite beverage. In a very short space of time two or three hundred little camp-fires were lighted, sending up tiny columns of smoke, and coffee-tins were boiling, and the busy brisk vivandière, with a smile for every one, and a joke or box on the ear for a favourite vieux moustache, passed along through the blaze, and filled out tiny cups of Cognac to the thirsty soldiers. Pipes of every conceivable variety of shape were lighted, and a hum and bustle rose up from the animated scene, so rich in ever-shifting combinations of form and colour that Maclise might have looked on it with wonder and despair. Regiment after regiment came up on the flanks of the Zouaves, halted, and repeated the process, the only remarkable corps being the Indigènes, or native Zouaves, dressed exactly the same as the French, except that jackets, trousers, and vest are of a bright powder blue, trimmed with yellow, and their turbans, or the folds of linen round the fez, are of pure white.

In an hour or so the crest of the hill, which extended in undulating folds for two or three miles, was covered by battalions of infantry, and they might be seen toiling up the opposite ridge, till nothing was visible from one extremity to the other but the broken lines of these stalwart battalions. There was a ready, dashing, serviceable look about the men that justified the remark of one of the captains—"We are ready as we stand to go on to St. Petersburg this instant." There was a vivacity, so to speak, about the appearance of the troops which caught the eye at once. The air of reality about this review distinguished it from sham fights and field-days, and all holiday demonstrations of the kind. Before twelve o'clock there were about 20,000 troops on the opposite ridges of hills—an excellently-appointed train of artillery of nine-pounder guns, with appointments complete, being stationed in the valley below. The columns, taken lineally, extended upwards of eight{29} miles. Strange as such a spectacle must have been to Turks and Greeks, there was scarcely a native on the ground. Whether fear or apathy kept them away, it is impossible to say; but Gallipoli, with its 15,000 inhabitants, sent not a soul to gaze upon the splendid spectacle. If Horace be right, the Gallipolitans have indeed discovered the secret of the only true happiness. They absolutely revel in the most voluptuous indulgence of the nil admirari. While six or seven French men-of-war were anchored in their waters, while frigates and steamers and line-of-battle ships kept passing up and down in continuous streams, waking the echoes of the Dardanelles with endless salutes, not a being ever came down to glance at the scene. The old crones sat knitting in their dingy hovels; the men, i.e., the Greeks, slouched about the corners in their baggy breeches, and the pretty and dirty little children continued their games without showing the smallest sign of curiosity, though a whole fleet was blazing away its thunder in an Imperial welcome within a few yards of them.

As for the Turks, they sat so obstinately on their shelves and smoked their apathetic pipes so pertinaciously—they were so determined in resenting the impulses of curiosity—that one's fingers were perpetually itching to indulge in the luxury of giving them a slap in the face, and it was all but impossible to resist the impulse of trying what effect a kick would have had in disturbing such irritating equanimity. There were no Chobham crowds to break the uniformity of the lines of military, but great numbers of the English soldiery, in their Sunday costume, turned out and "assisted" at the ceremony. Shortly before twelve o'clock, a brilliant staff—it did indeed literally blaze in gold and silver, brass and polished steel, as the hot sun played on rich uniforms and accoutrements—was visible coming up the valley from the direction of the town. They were preceded by four vedettes, French dragoons with brazen helmets and leopard-skin mountings; the various staff officers in advance; then Prince Napoleon, in the uniform of a Lieutenant-General, and General Canrobert, in full dress and covered with orders, on one side, and Sir George Brown on the other, both somewhat in the rear. The effect of the cortége as it swept past, the vision of prancing horses and gorgeous caparisons, of dancing plumes, of gold and silver lace, of hussar, dragoon, artillery, rifle, Zouave, spahi, lancer, of officers of all arms, dressed with that eye to effect which in France is very just as long as men are on horseback, was wonderful. It flashed by like some grand procession of the stage, if one can so degrade its power and reality by the comparison. It was not gratifying to an Englishman to observe the red coatee and cocked hat; the gold epaulettes and twist of the British officers looked very ill amid all the variety of costume in which the French indulged, nor was it without reason that the latter complained they could not tell which was the general or which the captain by their uniforms.

As the vedettes came in view the drums of each regiment rolled, the trumpets and bugles sounded, and all the men who had been scattered over the ground in disorderly multitudes came running in{30} from all sides, and dressed up, unpiled arms, and with great celerity fell into lines three deep, with bands, vivandières, mules, and smoking fires hastily extinguished in the rear. When General Canrobert reached the first regiment he raised his cocked hat, and shouted lustily, "Vive l'Empereur." The officers repeated the cry, and three times it ran along the line of the regiment. The band struck up, the men presented arms, and the Prince rode past bowing and raising his hat in acknowledgment, and again the band, out of compliment to the English General, played "God save the Queen."

Soon after daybreak on the 6th of May, the Rifle Brigade, the 50th Regiment, and the 93rd Regiment, forming the working brigade of Bulair, struck tents. At the same time the 4th, 28th, and 44th Regiments, at the Soulari encampment, about two miles from the town of Gallipoli, proceeded towards Bulair, to take up the quarters vacated by the other brigade. The mass of baggage was enormous. The trains of buffalo and bullock carts, of pack-horses, and mules, and of led horses, which filed along the road to Gallipoli, seemed sufficient for the army of Xerxes. For seven or eight miles the teams of country carts, piled up with beds and trunks, and soldiers' wives and tents, were almost unbroken; now and then an overladen mule tumbled down, or a wheel came off, and the whole line of march became a confused struggle of angry men and goaded cattle. It so happened that two French battalions were moving out to fresh quarters (they change their camps once a fortnight), and it became perceptible at a glance that, pro rata, they carried much less impedimenta than our regiments. There is considerable difficulty in accounting for this; because without a complete knowledge of the internal economy of both armies comparison would be difficult; but the absence of women—the small kit of the officers, as well as the size of the tents, went far to account for it. Frenchmen live in uniform, while no British soldier is quite happy without mufti. He must have his wide-awake and shooting jacket, and dressing gown, and evening dress, and a tub of some sort or other, a variety of gay shirting, pictorial and figurative, while the Gaul does very well without them.

CHAPTER IV.

The Duke of Cambridge arrived in the Caradoc at 3 P.M. on Tuesday, the 6th. Marshal St. Arnaud arrived at Gallipoli on Sunday, the 7th of May. On May 9th, the Rifle Brigade and 93rd Regiment left Gallipoli for Scutari. Sir George Brown and staff also departed, leaving the force encamped under the command of Sir Richard England, with Brigadiers Sir J. Campbell and Eyre;{31} Major Colborne and Captain Hallewell, Deputy Assistant Quarter-Master-Generals; Colonel Doyle, Assistant Adjutant-General; Brigade-Major Hope; Brigade-Major Wood, &c. In a few days I bade good-bye to Gallipoli, and proceeded to Scutari, where I remained in quarters for some days, but finally took up my abode at Messurir Hotel, in Pera, and awaited the course of events.

In a book called "Letters from Head-Quarters," newspaper correspondents are censured because they had the audacity to ask the commissariat for tents and rations. Concerning the application to head-quarters, it may be as well to state that it was made in consequence of directions from home, for the Government ordered that the accommodation which is seldom refused to gentlemen who may accompany in any recognized capacity the course of armies in the field should be afforded to the correspondents of the London journals. I called on Lord Raglan before he left Scutari, because I was requested to do so. Whilst waiting till his lordship could see me, the correspondent of a London morning journal came into the ante-room, and told me he was on the same errand as myself. "Lord Raglan being very much engaged," I was asked by one of the officers in waiting to see Colonel Steele, and on stating the object of my visit to the military secretary, he assured me that it could not be acceded to, whereupon I made my bow and withdrew without any further observation. A few days afterwards I received permission to draw rations from the commissariat, by order of the Secretary of State.

On a slope rising up from the water's edge, close to Lord Raglan's quarters, the camp of the brigade of Guards was pitched; a kind of ravine, about a quarter of a mile wide, divided it from the plateau and valley at the back of the barracks, in which were pitched the camps of the other regiments, and of the Light Division. Clumps of tall shady trees were scattered here and there down towards the water's edge, under which a horde of sutlers had erected sheds of canvas and plank for the sale of provisions, spirits, and wines, combined with a more wholesome traffic in cakes, Turkish sweetmeats, lemonade, and sherbet. The proprietors were nearly all Smyrniotes or Greeks from Pera, not bearing the highest character in the world. The regular canteens established within the lines were kept by a better class of people, under the surveillance of the military authorities.

Syces, with horses for sale, rode about at full speed through the lanes and pathways leading to the camp; the steeds they bestrode were bony animals with mouths like a vice, stuffed out with grass and green food, and not worth a tithe of the prices asked for them. All this scene, so full of picturesque animation—these files of snowy tents sweeping away tier after tier over hillock and meadow, till they were bounded by the solemn black outlines of the forest of cypress—these patches of men at drill here and there all over the plain—these steadier and larger columns at parade—this constant play and glitter of bayonet and accoutrement as the numerous sentries wheeled on their beaten tracks—this confused crowd of araba drivers, match-sellers, fruit and cigar and tobacco vendors, of{32} hamals or porters, of horse-dealers and gaily-dressed rogues, and rapparees of all nations, disappeared in a few hours, and left no trace behind, except the barren circle which marked where the tent once stood, and the plain all seared and scorched by the camp-fires. What became of the mushroom tribe which had started as it were from the ground to supply the wants of the soldiery it would be difficult to say, and not very interesting to inquire.

Among the most amusing specimens of the race must be reckoned the Jew and Armenian money-changers—squalid, lean, and hungry-looking fellows—whose turbans and ragged gabardines were ostentatiously dirty and poverty-stricken,—who prowled about the camp with an eternal raven-croak of "I say, John, change de monnish—change de monnish," relieved occasionally by a sly tinkle of a leathern purse well filled with dollars and small Turkish coin. They evaded the vigilance of the sentries, and startled officers half asleep in the heat of the sun, by the apparition of their skinny hands and yellow visages within the tent, and the cuckoo-cry, "I say, John, change de monnish." Their appearance was the greatest compliment that could be paid to the national character. The oldest Turk had never seen one of them near a native camp, and the tradition of ages affirmed that where soldiers come the race disappeared. Indeed, they only showed at the English camp in the sun-time. They were a sort of day-ghost which vanished at the approach of darkness, and the croak and the jingle were silent, and they spirited themselves gently away ere twilight, and where they lived no man could tell. Any one who has seen Vernet's picture, at Versailles, of the taking of Abd-el-Kader's Smala, will at once recognize the type of these people in the wonderful figure of the Jew who is flying with his treasure from the grasp of the French swordsman.

A fleet of thirty transports was anchored off the barracks. The Sappers were engaged fitting up horse-boxes on board the transports. The Sea of Marmora was covered with the white sails of transports and store-ships, making way against the current, and the little wharf and landing-place at Scutari were alive with men loading boats with provisions or munitions of war.

In strange contrast to all this life and activity, the natives idled on the shore, scarcely raising their heads to look at what was passing around them; or taking a very unobtrusive and contemplative interest in the labours of the soldiery, as they watched them from their smoking-perches in front of the cafés of the town, or of the sutlers' booths pitched along the shore. Lord Raglan's quarters seemed to be an especial resort for them. The house, a low wooden building two stories high, very clean, and neatly painted and matted within, was situated on the beach, about three-quarters of a mile from the barrack. In front was a tolerably spacious courtyard, with high walls, well provided with little stone boxes for the sparrows and swallows to build in, and inside this court led horses and chargers, belonging to the aides and officers on duty, might be seen pacing about. Directly opposite to the entrance of the court was a wooded knoll, with a few gravestones peering{33} above the rich grass; and a Turkish fountain, in front of a group of pine-trees, usually surrounded by water-carriers, was in the foreground.

Groups of Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, each distinct, were to be seen reclining at the foot of these trees, gazing listlessly into the courtyard, while they carried on monosyllabic conversations at long intervals between puffs of smoke. The beach, which somewhat resembled that at Folkestone at high water, was bounded by a tolerable road, a favourite walk of the women and children of Chalcedon and the suburbs beyond it; but these animated bundles of bright-coloured clothing scarcely deigned to look at the men in uniforms, or to turn their heads at the jingle of sword and spur. In the stagnant water which ripples almost imperceptibly on the shore there floated all forms of nastiness and corruption, which the prowling dogs, standing leg-deep as they wade about in search of offal, cannot destroy. The smell from the shore was noisome, but a few yards out from the fringe of buoyant cats, dogs, birds, straw, sticks—in fact, of all sorts of abominable flotsam and jetsam, which bob about on the pebbles unceasingly—the water is exquisitely clear. The slaughter-houses for the troops, erected by the seaside, did not contribute, as may readily be imagined, to the cleanliness of this filthy beach, or the wholesomeness of the atmosphere.

The disposition of the British army was as follows:—At Scutari, the Guards, three battalions, the 7th, 19th, 23rd, 30th, 33rd, 41st, 47th, 49th, 77th, 88th, 93rd, 95th, and Rifle Brigade; at Gallipoli the 1st Royals, 4th, 29th, 38th, 44th and 50th; in all about 22,000 men. Our cavalry consisted of Lord Lucan, his aides-de-camp, and a few staff officers, who were awaiting the arrival of the force to which they were attached. The artillery which had arrived was not in a very efficient condition, owing to the loss of horses on the passage out. It was while our army was in this state that we heard of the march of the Russians upon Silistria, and their advance from the Dobrudscha along the banks of the Danube. Lord de Ros was dispatched to Varna, and had an interview with Omar Pasha, who impressed upon him the necessity of an advance on the part of the allies into Bulgaria. The Russian army on the right bank of the Danube, with their left resting on Kostendje, and their right on Rassova, covering their front with clouds of Cossack plunderers, were within twelve miles of Silistria, and their light cavalry swept all the northern portions of Bulgaria, and threatened to cut off the communications.

On the 17th of May, a state dinner was given to the Duke of Cambridge by the Sultan, at which it was said that Marshal St. Arnaud made an allusion to a third Power which would join France and England in the struggle. The Austrian Ambassador, who was present, did not utter any expression of opinion upon the subject.

A tremendous storm broke over the camp on the night of the 18th of May. Two officers of the 93rd, Lieutenant W. L. Macnish and Ensign R. Crowe, set out from the barracks, about nine o'clock, to go to the encampment of their regiments. The distance was{34} about a third of a mile. Just outside the barrack-wall was a small gully, at the bottom of which there is usually a few inches of water, so narrow that a child might step across. As they were groping along they suddenly plunged into the current, now far beyond their depth. Mr. Crowe managed to scramble up the bank, but his calls to his companion were unanswered. Mr. Macnish's body was discovered in the ditch a few days later, and was interred by the regiment.

On the same night Lord Raglan, in the Caradoc, Marshal St. Arnaud and staff, in the Berthollet, and Riza Pasha, Minister of War, and Mehemet Kiprisli Pasha, Minister of the Interior, in the steam-frigate Cheh-Per, sailed for Varna to hold a council of war with Omar Pasha, Admirals Hamelin and Dundas. Omar Pasha was anxious for the arrival of an Anglo-French army to occupy the country between Varna and Shumla, and to feel their way in advance of that line, so as to menace the Russians from Chernavoda to Kostendje, while he endangered their right flank by pushing a large force on Bucharest. He placed great reliance on the position of Varna. A general at the head of a large army, who kept his own counsel, could, according to the ideas he then expressed, paralyse the whole Russian invasion, when once he had got his men into the neighbourhood of this place, aided, as he must be, by the fleets. Omar Pasha declared that his plans were known to the Russians in twenty-four hours after he mentioned them. Presuming that the officer in command had a close mouth, according to Omar Pasha, a moral and physical strength might be found in the position almost irresistible. He might from that point move on Shumla, and on the passes of the Balkan, with equal ease; he could attack the right flank or the left flank of the Russians, or, by landing in their rear, covered by the fleet, he might break up their position in front of the Danube, and frustrate all their plans of campaign. With similar facility he could have sent an army across to the Asiatic shores of the Black Sea, to aid the Turkish army, or to attack the forces of the Caucasus, or could direct his attention to the Crimea, so as to make an attempt on Sebastopol.

The allied Generals visited Pravadi and Shumla, and inspected the Turkish army, which numbered about 40,000 men, many of whom were sick. On the evening of their visit, Omar Pasha received dispatches announcing that 70,000 Russians, under Paskiewitch, had commenced the bombardment of Silistria.

On the 23rd Lord Raglan returned from Varna to Scutari. It would appear that Omar Pasha had succeeded in convincing the allied generals that it would be desirable to effect a concentration of their forces between Varna and Shumla.

It was decided that Omar Pasha should concentrate in front of Shumla, and that the English and French should move their disposable forces to his assistance. On the return of the Generals arrangements for moving from Scutari were pushed forward with great vigour.

On the 23rd of May, the generals of brigade received instructions to prepare for active operations; and transports were detached from{35} the fleet to proceed up the Black Sea with stores on the evening of the same day.

At a quarter to eleven o'clock on the 24th of May, all the regiments in barrack and camp were paraded separately, and afterwards marched to the ridge which bounded one side of the shallow but broad ravine that separated the Brigade of Guards from the other brigades. The total force on the ground consisted of about 15,000 men.

The Guards were ordered to appear on parade without—Muskets?—No. Coatees?—No. Epaulettes?—No. Cartouch-boxes?—No. Boots?—No. In fact, Her Majesty's Guards were actually commanded to parade "WITHOUT STOCKS!" to celebrate Her Majesty's birthday.

At twelve o'clock, Lord Raglan and staff, to the number of thirty or forty, appeared on the ground. Lord Raglan having ridden slowly along the line, wheeled round and took his post in front of the centre regiment. After a short pause, just as the guns of the Niger were heard thundering out a royal salute from the Bosphorus, the bands struck up the national air again, and down at once fell the colours of every regiment drooping to the ground. The thing was well done, and the effect of these thirty-two masses of richly dyed silk encrusted with the names of great victories, falling so suddenly to the earth as if struck down by one blow, was very fine. In another minute a shout of "God save the Queen" ran from the Rifles on the left to the Guards on the right, and three tremendous cheers, gathering force as they rolled on with accumulated strength from regiment after regiment, made the very air ring, the ears tingle, and the heart throb.

After the cheering died away the march past began. The Guards marched magnificently. The Highlanders were scarcely a whit inferior, and their pipes and dress created a sensation among the Greeks, who are fond of calling them Scotch Albanians, and comparing them to the Klephtic tribes, among whom pipes and kilts still flourish.

Games—racing in sacks, leaping, running, &c., and cricket, and other manly sports—occupied the men in the afternoon, in spite of the heat of the day. In the evening, a handsome obelisk, erected in the centre of the Guards' camp, and crowned with laurel, was surrounded by fireworks.

The apathy of the Turks was astonishing. Though Scutari, with its population of 100,000 souls, was within a mile and a half, it did not appear that half a dozen people had been added to the usual crowd of camp followers who attend on such occasions. The Greeks were more numerous; Pera sent over a fair share of foreigners, all dressed in the newest Paris fashions.

Vessels were sent up to Varna daily with stores; but we were not prepared to take the field. There was great want of saddlery, pack-saddles, saddle-bags, and matters of that kind, and the officers found that their portmanteaus were utterly useless. If John Bull could only have seen the evil effects of strangling the services in times of peace by ill-judged parsimony, he would not for the future{36} listen so readily to the counsellors who tell him that it is economy to tighten his purse-strings round the neck of army and navy. Who was the wise man who warned us in time of peace that we should pay dearly for shutting our eyes to the possibility of war, and who preached in vain to us about our want of baggage, and pontoon trains, and our locomotive deficiencies? No outlay, however prodigal, can atone for the effects of a griping penuriousness, and all the gold in the Treasury cannot produce at command those great qualities in administrative and executive departments which are the fruits of experience alone. A soldier, an artilleryman, a commissariat officer, cannot be created suddenly, not even with profuse expenditure in the attempt. It would be a great national blessing if all our political economists could, at this time, have been caught and enlisted in the army at Scutari for a month or so, or even if they could have been provided with temporary commissions, till they had obtained some practical knowledge of the results of their system.

CHAPTER V.

On Sunday, the 28th of May, Sir George Brown left the barracks at Scutari, and proceeded to Varna in the Banshee. Before his departure orders were issued that the men belonging to the Light Division under his command should embark early the following morning—the baggage to be on board at six o'clock, the men at nine o'clock. At daylight on the 29th of May the réveillé woke up the camp of the Light Division, and the regiments were ready for inspection at five o'clock. The Light Division, which was destined to play an important part in this campaign, and whose highest glory was to emulate the successes of the famous legion of the Peninsula whose name they bore, consisted of the following regiments:—The 7th Fusileers, the 23rd Fusileers, the 19th Foot, the 33rd or Wellington's Regiment, the 77th Foot, the 88th Connaught Rangers, and the Rifle Brigade, 2nd Battalion. They formed in front of their tents, and after a rapid inspection were ordered to strike tents. In a moment or two file after file of canvas cones collapsed and fell to the earth, the poles were unspliced and packed up, the canvas rolled up and placed in layers on bullock carts, the various articles of regimental baggage collected into the same vehicles,—ants in a swarm could not have been more active and bustling than the men; they formed into masses, broke up again, moved in single files in little companies, in broken groups all over the ground, while the araba drivers looked stupidly on, exhibiting the most perfect indifference to the appropriation of their carts, and evidently regard{37}ing the Giaours as unpleasant demons, by whose preternatural energies they were to be agitated and perturbed as punishment for their sins. It would seem, indeed, very difficult to re-form this shifting, diffusive crowd of red-coats into the steady columns which were drawn up so rigidly a short time previously along the canvas walls, now fluttering in the dust or packed helplessly in bales. Their labours were, however, decisive, and in some half-hour or so they had transformed the scene completely, and had left nothing behind them but the bare circles of baked earth, marking where tents had stood, the blackened spot where once the camp-fires blazed, tethering sticks, and a curious débris of jam-pots, preserved meat cases, bottles, sweetmeat boxes, sardine tins, broken delf, bones of fowl and ham, pomatum pots, and tobacco pipes.

A few words of command running through the toiling crowd—some blasts on the bugle—and the regiments got together, steady and solid, with long lines of bullock carts and buffalo arabas drawn up between them, and commenced their march over the sandy slopes which led to the sea. There lay the fleet of transports, anchored with their attendant steamers in long lines, as close inshore as they could approach with safety. The Vesuvius, steam sloop, Commander Powell, the Simoom and the Megæra troop ships (screw-steamers), sent in their boats to aid those of the merchantmen and steamers in embarking the men and baggage, and Admiral Boxer, aided by Captain Christie, Commander Powell, and Lieutenant Rundle, R.N., superintended the arrangements for stowing away and getting on board the little army, which consisted of about 6,500 men. The morning was fine, but hot. The men were in excellent spirits, and as they marched over the dusty plain to the landing-places, they were greeted with repeated peals of cheering from the regiments of the other division. The order and regularity with which they were got on board the boats, and the safety and celerity with which they were embarked—baggage, horses, women, and stores—were creditable to the authorities, and to the discipline and good order of the men themselves, both officers and privates.

No voyager or artist can do justice to the scenery of the Bosphorus. It has much the character of a Norwegian fiord. Perhaps the rounded outline of the hills, the light rich green of the vegetation, the luxuriance of tree and flower and herbage, make it resemble more closely the banks of Killarney or Windermere. The waters escaping from the Black Sea, in one part compressed by swelling hillocks to a breadth of little more than a mile, at another expanding into a sheet of four times that breadth, run for thirteen miles in a blue flood, like the Rhone as it issues from the Lake of Geneva, till they mingle with the Sea of Marmora, passing in their course beautiful groupings of wood and dale, ravine and hill-side, covered with the profusest carpeting of leaf and blade. Kiosk and pleasure-ground, embrasured bastion and loopholed curtain, gay garden, villa, mosque, and mansion, decorate the banks in unbroken lines from the foot of the forts which command the entrance up to the crowning glory of the scene, where the imperial city of Constantine, rising in many-coloured terraces from the verge of the Golden{38} Horn, confuses the eye with masses of foliage, red roofs, divers-hued walls, and gables, surmounted by a frieze of snow-white minarets with golden summits, and by the symmetrical sweep of St. Sophia. The hills strike abruptly upwards to heights varying from 200 feet to 600 feet, and are bounded at the foot by quays, which run along the European side, almost without interruption, from Pera to Bujukderé, about five miles from the Black Sea. These quays are also very numerous on the Asiatic side.

The villages by the water-side are so close together, that Pera may be said to extend from Tophané to the forts beyond Bujukderé. The residences of the pashas, the imperial palaces of the Sultan, and the retreats of opulence, lined these favoured shores; and as the stranger passes on, in steamer or caique, he may catch a view of some hoary pasha or ex-governor sitting cross-legged in his garden or verandah, smoking away, and each looking so like the other that they might all pass for brothers. The windows of one portion of these houses are mostly closely latticed and fastened, but here and there a bright flash of a yellow or red robe shows the harem is not untenanted. These dwellings succeed each other the whole length of the Bosphorus, quite as numerously as the houses on the road from Hyde Park Corner to Hammersmith; and at places such as Therapia and Bujukderé they are dense enough to form large villages, provided with hotels, shops, cafés, and lodging-houses. The Turks delight in going up in their caiques to some of these places, and sitting out on the platforms over the water, while the chibouque or narghile confers on them a zoophytic happiness; and the greatest object of Turkish ambition is to enjoy the pleasures of a kiosk on the Bosphorus. The waters abound in fish, and droves of porpoises and dolphins disport in myriads on its surface, plashing and playing about, as with easy roll they cleave their way against its rapid flood, or gambolling about in the plenitude of their strength and security, till a sword-fish takes a dig at them, and sets them off curvetting and snorting like sea-horses. Hawks, kites, buzzards, and sea eagles are numerous, and large flocks of a kind of gregarious petrel of a dusky hue, with whitish breasts, called by the French âmes damneés, which are believed never to rest, keep flying up and down close to the water.

Amidst such scenery the expeditionary flotilla began its voyage at eleven o'clock. It consisted of two steamers for staff officers and horses, seven steamers for troops and chargers, one for 300 pack horses, four sailing transports for horse artillery, and two transports for commissariat animals. Off Tophané, frigates, some of them double-banked, displayed the red flag with the silver crescent moon and star of the Ottoman Porte. They were lying idly at rest there, and might have been much better employed, if not at Kavarna Bay, certainly in cruising about the Greek Archipelago.

It was five o'clock ere the last steamer which had to wait for the transports got under weigh again, and night had set in before they reached the entrance of the Black Sea. As they passed the forts (which are pretty frequent towards the Euxine), the sentries yelled out strange challenges and burned blue lights, and blue lights{39} answered from our vessels in return; so that at times the whole of the scene put one in mind of a grand fairy spectacle; and it did not require any great stretch of the imagination to believe that the trees were the work of Grieve—that Stanfield had dashed in the waters and ships—that the forts were of pasteboard, and the clouds of gauze lighted up by a property man—while those moustachioed soldiers, with red fez caps or tarbouches, eccentric blue coats and breeches, and white belts, might fairly pass for Surrey supernumeraries. Out went the blue lights!—we were all left as blind as owls at noontide; but our eyes recovered, the stars at last began to twinkle, two lights shone, or rather bleared hazily on either bow—they marked the opening of the Bosphorus into the Euxine. We shot past them, and a farewell challenge and another blue halo showed the sentries were wide-awake. We were in the Black Sea, and, lo! sea and sky and land were at once shut out from us! A fog, a drifting, clammy, nasty mist, bluish-white, and cold and raw, fell down upon us like a shroud, obscured the stars and all the lights of heaven, and stole with a slug-like pace down yard and mast and stays, stuck to the face and beard, rendered the deck dark as a graveyard, and forced us all down to a rubber and coffee. This was genuine Black Sea weather.

Later in the night we passed through a fleet which we took to be Turkish men-of-war, but it was impossible to make them out, and but for the blockade of their ports these vessels might have been Russians.[6] In the morning the same haze continued drifting about and hugging the land; but once it rose and disclosed a steamer in shore, with a transport cast off hovering about it, just as a hen watches a chicken. The Vesuvius fired a gun, and after some time the steamer managed to take the transport in tow again, and proceeded to rejoin the squadron. We subsequently found it was the Megæra. The line of land was marked by a bank of white clouds, and the edge of the sea horizon was equally obscured.

The bulk of the convoy arrived and cast anchor in Varna Bay before the evening, and the disembarkation of the troops was conducted with such admirable celerity, that they were landed as fast as the vessels came in. Large boats had been provided for the purpose, and the French and English men-of-war lent their launches and cutters to tow and carry, in addition to those furnished by the merchantmen. The Rifles marched off to their temporary camp under canvas, about a mile away. The 88th Connaught Rangers followed, and on our arrival, the bay was alive with boats full of red-coats. The various regiments cheered tremendously as vessel after vessel arrived, but they met with no response from the Turkish troops.

With difficulty I succeeded in getting a very poor lodging in the house of an Armenian dragoman, who forces himself on the staff of the English consulate, and, in company with several officers, re{40}mained there for several days, living and eating after the Armenian fashion by day, and "pigging" in some very lively "divans" at night, till my horses and servants arrived, when I proceeded to Aladyn. In consequence of instructions from home, Mr. Filder gave orders for the issue of rations for self, servants, and horses.

Varna is such a town as only could have been devised by a nomadic race aping the habits of civilized nations. If the lanes are not so ill-paved, so rugged, and so painful to the pedestrian as those of Gallipoli; if they are not so crooked and jagged and tortuous; if they are not so complicated and fantastically devious, it is only because nature has set the efforts of man at defiance, and has forbidden the Turk to render a town built upon a surface nearly level as unpleasant to perambulate as one founded on a hill-side. After a course of 100 miles,—by shores which remind you, when they can be seen through fogs and vapours, of the coast of Devonshire, and which stretch away on the western side of the Black Sea in undulating folds of greensward rising one above the other, or swell into hilly peaks, all covered with fine verdure, and natural plantations of the densest foliage, so that the scenery has a park-like and cultivated air, which is only belied by the search of the telescope,—the vessel bound to Varna rounds a promontory of moderate height on the left, and passing by an earthen fort perched on the summit, anchors in a semicircular bay about a mile and a half in length and two miles across, on the northern side of which is situated the town, so well known by its important relations with the history of the struggles between Russia and the Porte, and by its siege in 1829. The bay shoals up to the beach, at the apex of the semicircle formed by its shores, and the land is so low at that point that the fresh waters from the neighbouring hills form a large lake, which extends for many miles through the marsh lands and plains which run westward towards Shumla. Varna is built on a slightly elevated bank of sand on the verge of the sea, of such varying height that in some places the base of the wall around it is on a level with the water, and at others stand twenty or thirty feet above it. Below this bank are a series of plains inland, which spread all round the town till they are lost in the hills, which, dipping into the sea in an abrupt promontory on the north-east side, rise in terraces to the height of 700 or 800 feet at the distance of three miles from the town, and stretch away to the westward to meet the corresponding chain of hills on the southern extremities of the bay, thus enclosing the lake and plains between in a sort of natural wall, which is like all the rest of the country, covered with brushwood and small trees. A stone wall of ten feet high, painted white, and loopholed, is built all round the place; and some detached batteries, well provided with heavy guns, but not of much pretension as works of defence, have been erected in advance of the walls on the land side. On the sea-face four batteries are erected provided with heavy guns also—two of them of earthwork and gabions, the other two built with stone parapets and embrasures. Peering above these walls, in an irregular jungle of red-tiled roofs, are the houses{41} of the place, with a few minarets towering from the mosques above them. The angles of the work are irregular, but in most instances the walls are so constructed as to admit of a fair amount of flanking fire on an assaulting force. Nevertheless, a portion of the inner side of the bay, and other parts are equally accessible to the fire of batteries on the trifling hillocks around the town. The houses of the town are built of wood; it contains about 12,000 or 14,000 inhabitants, but there is more bustle, and animation, and life in the smallest hamlet in Dorsetshire, than here, unless one goes down to the landing place, or visits the bazaar, where the inhabitants flock for pleasure or business.

General Canrobert and staff reached Varna on the morning of the 2nd of June. He landed about mid-day, and after an extempore levee of the French officers on the beach, proceeded to call on Sir George Brown. The first thing they did when their Sappers arrived at Varna, before the English came up, was to break a gateway through the town wall, on its sea-face, to allow troops and provisions to be landed and sent off without a long detour. This proceeding drove the Pasha of the place almost deranged, and he died soon afterwards.

The cavalry sent by Omar Pasha was of infinite service in transporting provisions, horses, and cattle. The latter were wretchedly small and lean. A strong man could lift one of the beasts, and there was not so much meat on one of them as on a good English sheep. Food was good enough, and plentiful; a fowl could be had for seven piastres—1s. 2d.; bread and meat were about the same price as in London; a turkey could be procured for half-a-crown; wine was dear, and not good; spirits as cheap as they were bad. Omar Pasha prohibited the export of grain from all the ports of Roumelia.

Owing to the exertions of Omar Pasha, and the activity of the commissariat, the quantity of open and covered arabas, or bullock and buffalo carts, which had been collected, was nearly sufficient for the wants of the First Division. There was a small army of hairy, wild-looking drivers stalking about the place, admiring the beauties of Varna, spear or buffalo goad in hand.

The British camp was at first pitched on a plain, covered with scrub and clumps of sweet-brier, about a mile from the town, and half a mile from the fresh-water lake. The water of the lake, however, was not good for drinking—it abounded in animalculæ, not to mention enormous leeches—and the men had to go to the fountains and wells near the town to fill their canteens and cooking-tins.

Admirals Dundas and Hamelin came into the bay in order that they might assist at the conferences. A new pasha also arrived, who was supposed to be better fitted to the exigencies of the times than his predecessor.

At three o'clock on Monday, June 5th, the Light Division of the army, consisting of the 7th, 19th, 23rd, 33rd, 77th and 88th Regiments, and the Second Battalion of Rifle Brigade, with part of the 8th Hussars, the 17th Lancers, and four guns attached, commenced its march from the encampment at Varna, on their{42} way to their new encampment at Aladyn between Kojuk and Devna (called in some of the maps Dewnos). The infantry halted on a plain about nine miles and a half from the town of Varna, close to a fresh-water lake, but the cavalry and artillery continued their march, and pitched tents about eighteen miles from Varna, the route being through a rich and fertile country, perfectly deserted and lifeless—not a house, not a human creature to be seen along the whole line of march.

When once the traveller left the sandy plain and flat meadow lands which sweep westward for two or three miles from Varna, he passed through a succession of fine landscapes, with a waving outline of hills, which he could see on all sides above the thick mass of scrub or cover, pierced by the road, or rather the track, made by horsemen and araba drivers. Never were tents pitched in a more lovely spot. When the morning sun had risen it was scarcely possible for one to imagine himself far from England. At the other side of the lake which waters the meadows beneath the hill on which the camp was placed, was a range of high ground, so finely wooded, with such verdant sheets of short crisp grass between the clumps of forest timber, that every one who saw it at once exclaimed, "Surely there must be a fine mansion somewhere among those trees!"

The camp was pitched on a dry, sandy table-land. On the right-hand side the artillery (Captain Levinge's troop), the small-arm and ammunition train (Captain Anderson), and the rocket carriages, caissons, artillery horses, &c., had their quarters. The valley between them and the table-land on which the camp was situated was unoccupied. On the left-hand side, on a beautiful spot overlooking the lake, at a considerable elevation, was the little camp of the commissariat, surrounded by carts and araba drivers, flocks of sheep and goats, and cattle, and vast piles of bread and corn. The Rifle camp was placed at the distance of 300 yards from the commissariat camp, on the slope of the table-land, and commanded a beautiful view of the lakes and of the surrounding country; and the 7th, 19th, 23rd, 33rd, 77th, and 88th Regiments were encamped close together, so that the lines of canvas were almost unbroken, from one extremity to the other. Brigadier-General Airey and staff, and Drs. Alexander, Tice, and Jameson, had pitched their tents in a meadow close by some trees at the upper end of the encampment. Brigadier Buller's marquee was close to the lines of his brigade. Captain Gordon, R.E., the Rev. Mr. Egan, and Captain Halliwell, had formed a little encampment of their own in a valley a little further on, which is formed by two spurs of land, covered with the thickest foliage and brushwood—hazels, clematis, wild vines, birch, and creeper,—and near at hand were the tents of the Sappers and Miners. The cavalry were stationed about nine miles further on, close to the village of Devna.

In front of the Rifle camp was a rural burial-ground, long abandoned, probably because there were not many people left to die in the district. It was of the rudest kind. No sculptured stone, not even a scratch of a chisel, distinguished one resting-place from{43} another, but a block of unhewn granite was placed at each grave, and the Sappers and Miners, who were a most utilitarian corps, selected some of the largest and best of them to serve in the construction of their bridge over one of the narrow channels which join lake to lake. These same Sappers had hard work of it in building this bridge. The 10th company who laboured at it, worked entirely naked and up to their breasts in water for one whole day. It is no wonder that a few of them suffered from fever in consequence.

The open country was finely diversified, with abundance of wood and water all around, within easy distance of the route. Long lines of storks flew overhead or held solemn reviews among the frogs in the meadows. As for the latter, they were innumerable, and their concerts by day and night would delight the classical scholar who remembered his Aristophanes, and who could test the accuracy of the chorus. Eagles soared overhead, looking out for dead horses; and vultures, kites, and huge buzzards scoured the plains in quest of vermin, hares, or partridges. Beautiful orioles, a blaze of green and yellow, gaudy woodpeckers, apiasters, jays, and grosbeaks, shrieked and chattered among the bushes, while the nightingale poured forth a flood of plaintive melody, aided by a lovely little warbler in a black cap and red waistcoat with bluish facings, who darted about after the flies, and who, when he had caught and eaten one, lighted on a twig and expressed his satisfaction in a gush of exquisite music. Blackbirds and thrushes joined in the chorus, and birds of all sorts flitted around in multitudes. The commonest bird of all was the dove, and he was found so good to eat, that his cooing was often abruptly terminated by a dose of No. 6.

On the first morning of my visit, as I rode from the camp, a large snake, about eight feet long and as thick as my arm, wriggled across the path; my horse plunged violently when he saw him, but the snake went leisurely and with great difficulty across the sandy road; when he gained the grass, however, he turned his head round, and darted out a little spiteful-looking tongue with great quickness. A Turk behind drew a long barrelled pistol, and was adjusting his aim, when with the quickness of lightning the snake darted into the thicket, and though four of us rode our horses through the cover, we could not find him. He was of a dark green, mottled with white, had a large head of a lighter hue, and protuberant, bright eyes. Jackals were said to abound, but probably the wild dogs were mistaken for them. There were traditions in camp concerning roe deer in the hill forests, and the sportsmen found out the tracks of wild boars through the neighbouring hills. Huge carp abounded in the lake; and very fine perch, enormous bream, and pike might be had for the taking, but tackle, rods and lines were very scarce in camp. There were no trout in these waters, but perch and pike took large flies very freely, whenever the angler could get through the weeds and marshy borders to take a cast for them.

But where are the natives all this time?—come, here is one driving an araba—let us stop and look at him. He is a stout, well-made, and handsome man, with finely-shaped features and large{44} dark eyes; but for all this there is a dull, dejected look about him which rivets the attention. There is no speculation in the orbs which gaze on you, half in dread half in wonder; and if there should be a cavass or armed Turk with you, the poor wretch dare not take his look away for a moment, lest he should meet the ready lash, or provoke some arbitrary act of violence. His head is covered with a cap of black sheepskin, with the wool on, beneath which falls a mass of tangled hair, which unites with beard, and whisker, and moustache in forming a rugged mat about the lower part of the face. A jacket made of coarse brown cloth hangs loosely from the shoulders, leaving visible the breast, burnt almost black by exposure to the sun. Underneath the jacket is a kind of vest, which is confined round the waist by several folds of a shawl or sash, in which are stuck a yataghan or knife, and a reed pipe-stick. The breeches are made of very rudely-manufactured cloth, wide above and gathered in at the knee; and the lower part of the leg is protected by rags, tied round with bits of old string, which put one in mind of the Italian bandit, à la Wallack, in a state of extreme dilapidation and poverty.

If you could speak with this poor Bulgarian, you would find his mind as waste as the land around you. He is a Christian after a fashion, but he puts far more faith in charms, in amulets, and in an uncleanly priest and a certain saint of his village, than in prayer or works. He believes the Turks are his natural masters; that he must endure meekly what they please to inflict, and that between him and Heaven there is only one power and one man strong enough to save him from the most cruel outrages, or to withstand the sovereign sway of the Osmanli—and that power is Russia, and that man is the Czar. His whole fortune is that wretched cart, which he regards as a triumph of construction; and he has driven those lean, fierce-eyed buffaloes many a mile, from some distant village, in the hope of being employed by the commissariat, who offer him what seems to him to be the most munificent remuneration of 3s. 4d. a day for the services of himself, his beasts, and araba. His food is coarse brown bread, or a mess of rice and grease, flavoured with garlic, the odour of which has penetrated his very bones, and spreads in vapour around him. His drink is water, and now and then an intoxicating draught of bad raki or sour country wine. In that abject figure you look in vain for the dash of Thracian blood, or seek the descendant of the Roman legionary. From whatever race he springs, the Bulgarian peasant hereabouts is the veriest slave that ever tyranny created, and as he walks slowly away with downcast eyes and stooping head, by the side of his cart, the hardest heart must be touched with pity at his mute dejection, and hate the people and the rule that have ground him to the dust.

Let the reader imagine he is riding in Bulgaria any hot eventide in June, 1854; he will pass many a group of such poor fellows as these. A few miles before him, after leaving Varna, he will catch glimpses of English hill-tents through the trees on a beautiful knoll, running down towards the rich marshes at the head of the{45} lake, which he has kept on his left all the way. Let us water our horses, for the place is yet some way off. Now and then encountering English travellers going to pester Omar Pasha at Shumla, or returning proudly from having done so, we at last draw towards the camp. The report of a gun rings through the woods and covers, and an honest English shout of "What have you hit, Jack?" or, "By Jove, he's off!" from among the bushes, shows that Ensign Brown or Captain Johnson is busy in the pursuit of the sports of the field. Private Smith, of the Rifle Brigade, with a goose in each hand, is stalking homewards from the hamlet by the lake-side. Mr. Flynn, of the Connaught Rangers, a little the worse for raki, is carrying a lamb on his shoulders, which he is soothing with sentimental ditties; and Sergeant Macgregor, of the 7th, and Sergeant Aprice, of the 23rd Welsh Fusileers, are gravely discussing a difficult point of theology on a knoll in front of you. Men in fatigue-frocks laden with bundles of sticks or corn, or swathes of fresh grass, are met at every step; and by the stream-side, half hidden by the bushes, there is a rural laundry, whence come snatches of song, mingled with the familiar sounds of washing and lines of fluttering linen, attesting the energies of the British laundress under the most unfavourable circumstances. In a short time the stranger arrives at a mass of araba carts drawn up along the road, through which he threads his way with difficulty, and just as he tops the last hill the tents of the Light Division, stretching their snowy canvas in regular lines up the slope of the opposite side, come into view.

The people of England, who had looked with complacency on the reduction of expenditure in all branches of our warlike establishments, ought not to have been surprised at finding the movements of our army hampered by the results of an injudicious economy. A commissariat officer is not made in a day, nor can the most lavish expenditure effect the work of years, or atone for the want of experience. The hardest-working treasury clerk had necessarily much to learn ere he could become an efficient commissariat officer, in a country which our old campaigners declare to be the most difficult they ever were in for procuring supplies. Let those who have any recollections of Chobham, just imagine that famous encampment to be placed about ten miles from the sea, in the midst of a country utterly deserted by the inhabitants, the railways from London stopped up, the supplies by the cart or wagon cut off, corn scarcely procurable, carriages impossible, and the only communication between the camp and port carried on by means of buffalo and bullock arabas, travelling about one mile and a half an hour, and they will be able to form some faint idea of the difficulties experienced by those who had to procure the requisite necessaries for the expeditionary forces. To give the reader a notion of the requirements of such a body as an expeditionary army of 25,000 men, it may be stated that not less than 13,000 horses and mules would be required for the conveyance of their ammunition, baggage, and stores in the field.

The movements of the troops were often delayed on account of{46} want of transport. Buffalo and bullock carts, and their drivers, vanished into thin air in the space of a night. A Bulgarian is a human being after all. A Pasha's cavass might tear him away from "his young barbarians all at play;" but when he had received a few three-and-eightpences a day, off he started the moment the eye of the guard was removed, and, taking unknown paths and mountain roadways, sought again the miserable home from which he had been taken.

The people were so shy, it was impossible to establish friendly relations with them. The inhabitants of the Bulgarian village of Aladyn, close to the camp at the borders of the lake, abandoned their houses altogether. Not one living creature remained out of the 350 or 400 people who were there on our arrival. Their houses were left wide open, and such of their household goods as they could not remove, and a few cocks and hens that could not be caught, were all that was left behind. The cause generally assigned for this exodus was the violence of a few ruffians on two or three occasions, coupled with groundless apprehension of further outrages—others said it was because we established our slaughter-houses there. Certainly the smell was abominable. Diarrhoea broke out in the camp soon after my arrival, and continued to haunt us all during the summer. Much of this increase of disease must be attributed to the use of the red wine of the country, sold at the canteens of the camp; but, as the men could get nothing else, they thought it was better to drink than the water of the place. There were loud complaints from officers and men from this score, and especially on account of the porter and ale they were promised not being dealt out to them; and the blame was laid, as a matter of course, on the shoulders of Sir George Brown. While the men of the light division lay outside Varna they were furnished with porter; but on moving further off they were deprived of it, and the reasons given for the deprivation were various, but the result was manifest. The men heard that the soldiers of the other divisions near Varna got their pint of porter a day, and that they should be dissatisfied at this distinction is not surprising. A draught of good porter, with the thermometer at 93° or 95° in the shade, would be a luxury which a "thirsty soul" in London could never understand. It was evident that some wholesome drink ought to have been provided for the men, to preserve them from the attacks of sickness in a climate where the heat was so great and the supply of pure water inadequate. Many of the officers rode into Varna, bought salt, tobacco, tea, and spirits, and brought it out in the saddle-bags, either to distribute gratuitously or at cost price to their men. This was an immense boon, particularly as the men, except servants on leave, were not allowed to go into Varna. A small stock of preserved potatoes was sent out, but it was soon exhausted.

After I had been a few days at Aladyn, I rode down to Varna, and was astonished at the change which the place had undergone. Old blind side walls had been broken down, and shops opened, in which not only necessaries, but even luxuries, could be purchased;{47} the streets, once so dull and silent, re-echoed the laughter and rattle of dominoes in the newly-established cafés. Wine merchants and sutlers from Algiers, Oran, Constantine, Marseilles, Toulon, had set up booths and shops, at which liqueurs, spirits, and French and country wines, could be purchased at prices not intolerably high. The natives had followed the example. Strings of German sausages, of dried tongues, of wiry hams, of bottles of pickles, hung from the rafters of an old Turkish khan, which but a few days before was the abode of nothing but unseemly insects; and an empty storehouse was turned into a nicely whitewashed and gaily painted "Restaurant de l'Armée d'Orient pour Messieurs les Officiers et Sous-officiers." The names of the streets, according to a Gallic nomenclature, printed in black on neat deal slips, were fixed to the walls, so that one could find his way from place to place without going through the erratic wanderings which generally mark the stranger's progress through a Turkish town. One lane was named the Rue Ibrahim, another Rue de l'Hôpital, a third Rue Yusuf; the principal lane was termed the Corso, the next was Rue des Postes Françaises; and, as all these names were very convenient, and had a meaning attached to them, no sneering ought to deter one from confessing that the French manage these things better than we do. Did any one want to find General Canrobert? He had but to ask the first Frenchman he met and he would tell him to go up the Corso, turn to the right, by the end of the Rue de l'Hôpital, and there was the name of the General painted in large letters over the door of his quarters. The French post-office and the French hospital were sufficiently indicated by the names of the streets. Where at this period was the English post-office? No one knew. Where did the English general live? No one knew. Where was the hospital for sick soldiers? No one knew.

On the 12th, the 5th Dragoon Guards, which left Cork on the 28th of May, were landed from the Himalaya. The French from Gallipoli had already approached the lower Balkans. Lord Raglan was confined for some days to his quarters at Scutari by illness. The Duke of Cambridge and his staff landed on the 14th of June, and with him came the Brigade of Guards.

The disembarkation of the Guards was effected, and with a rapidity and comfort which conferred great credit on the officers. The French assisted with the most hearty goodwill. Of their own accord the men of the Artillery and the Chasseurs came down to the beach, helped to load buffalo carts, and to thump the drivers, to push the natives out of the way, to show the road, and, in fact, to make themselves generally useful.{48}

CHAPTER VI.

THE fraternity established between the French and English troops became daily more affectionate, and individual friendships soon sprang up, all the closer, perhaps, for a squabble now and then, which ended in the redintegratio amoris; but it was evident that it did not answer to let the troops of the two nations mingle indiscriminately in crowded market-places, and we were well satisfied that we were in advance towards the Danube. From all I could see, I was convinced of the sagacity of the opinion of Marshal St. Arnaud, who objected to the march of the English Dragoons through France on their way to the East.

On Saturday, the 24th of June, a Tatar with an escort rode past the camp by the Shumla road, at full speed for Varna, and, on arriving there, repaired to the quarters of Marshal St. Arnaud and Lord Raglan, with dispatches from Omar Pasha. The two commanders-in-chief held a conference, at which several of the French and English generals were present, and on the same evening two steamers left the port of Varna with dispatches, one for Constantinople, and the other for the Admirals at Baltschik. On the previous Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday the noise of a distant cannonade had been heard at intervals by the outlying pickets in the direction of Silistria, and hypothesis and conjecture were busy hatching canards, which flew about the tents in ever-varying plumage and form. But on Saturday the great fact was known in Varna, and soon travelled out here, that the siege of Silistra was raised, and that the Russians were in full retreat from the scene of their discomfiture—so precipitately that their route could not be ascertained. A reconnaissance was ordered to be undertaken by Lord Cardigan by Yeni Bazaar and to the eastward of Shumla, towards Hadschi Oghlu, to ascertain if the enemy had retreated across the Danube.

On the 24th Prince Napoleon arrived, to take the command of his division, and was received with the usual salute of 101 guns from each French man-of-war in harbour. Our vessels paid him the more modest compliment of one royal salute, and hoisting the French imperial ensign. On the same day a part of the 50th Regiment, and detachments of the rest of the Gallipoli division, under Sir R. England, arrived in Varna, and some of the baggage of Adams's brigade, as well as detachments of the 41st, 55th, and 95th Regiments. Portions of several French regiments also{49} landed. The plain round Varna, for three miles, was covered with tents. Grass, herbage, and shrubs disappeared, and the fields were turned into an expanse of sand, ploughed up by araba wheels, and the feet of oxen and horses, and covered with towns of canvas. There could not have been less than 40,000 men encamped around the place, including French, English, Egyptians, and Turks, and the town itself was choked in every street with soldiery. More than 300 vessels were at anchor in the bay, in readiness to sail at a moment's notice. Upwards of 500 carts came in from the Turkish army to carry stores and provisions towards Shumla and the Danube.

A review of about 8,000 Turco-Egyptian troops was held on the plain behind Varna, on the day the Tatar brought the news of the raising of the Siege of Silistria. The men, who were dressed in clean white trousers, blue frocks, and green jackets, looked well, in spite of their ill-shod feet and ragged jerkins; but their manœuvres were carelessly performed and done in a listless manner. Physically the soldiers were square-built, bow-legged men, of fair average height, with fierce, eager eyes, and handsome features. A number of negroes, of savage aspect, were among the Egyptian contingent, and some of their best regiments did not disdain the command of Nubian eunuchs. Some of these Egyptians were mutilated in the hands, and had deprived themselves of their thumbs or fore-fingers—a useless attempt to escape conscription altogether. The French and English officers did not form a high opinion of anything but the raw material of which the troops were composed,—a raw material which, like everything else in Turkey, had been spoilt as much as possible by the genius of mal-administration. Behind stone walls, defending a breach, or in a sortie, the Osmanli, with his courage, fanaticism, and disregard of death, which he considers indeed as his passport to heaven, may repel organized European troops; but no one who sees the slow, cautious, and confused evolutions of the Turks, their straggling advance and march, their shaky squares and wavering columns, can believe they could long stand against a regular army in the open field.

Their file firing was anything but good, and a spattering of musketry was kept up from rank to rank long after the general discharge had ceased. The men had all polished musket-barrels, in imitation of the French, and their arms appeared to be kept in a most creditable order. The Egyptian field-pieces, six and nine-pounder guns of brass, were beautifully clean and neat, and the carriages, though rather heavy, were, perhaps, well suited to the country. The gunners seemed to understand their business thoroughly, and the carriages shone with scrubbing, varnish, and fresh paint; the men alone were dirty. They retired to their tents very little fatigued, and partook of very excellent rations, beef and mutton made into pilaff, and lard or grease in lieu of butter. Their tents were just as commodious and as good as our own, but they put more men into each than we were in the habit of doing.

On the 30th of June the bulk of the British troops quitted their original position at Varna. The Light Division, under Sir George Brown, left their quarters on the plateau near Aladyn, and marched{50} to Devna, about eight and a half or nine miles off; on that day, and on Saturday morning, the First Division, under his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, marched from their encampment outside Varna, and pitched their tents on the plateau of Aladyn, with their left flank resting on the ground which had just been abandoned by the Rifle Brigade, and their right extending to the plains lately used by the Light Division as parading and drill ground.

Sickness and diarrhœa in the camp were greatly on the decline; sore lips were common, principally from exposure to the sun. The Duke's Division seemed to grow beards with impunity. His Royal Highness, who lived out close to his division under canvas, having abandoned his quarters in Varna within a few days after he got into them, had his men's parades and field-days before nine o'clock. The brigadiers preferred the hours between nine and noon, under the impression that the sun was not so powerful then, on account of the forenoon breezes, as it was earlier in the morning. We had a thunderstorm almost every day, and very grateful it was, for the temperature was always lowered ten or twelve degrees by the rain and electrical discharges. The commissariat were doing their duty manfully. The quality of the meat was really very good, though the doctors thought a pound a day was not enough for each man in such a climate, especially as the meat was rather deficient in nutritious quality.

On the 3rd of July, news arrived that Omar Pasha was on his way from Silistria to Varna, and might be expected in an hour. The Turkish infantry on the plains below were observed to fall in, and draw up in front of their tents. About two o'clock a faint streak of dust rose over the white lines of the road winding far in the distance over the hills which lie towards Shumla, and through the glass could be discerned two travelling carriages, with a small escort of horse, moving rapidly towards the village of Devna, and the whole of the staff hastened to pay their respects to Omar Pasha, who mounted his horse, and attended by his suite and followers, rode up the hill towards the camp, in the front of which the division was drawn up in line. The coup d'œil was magnificent. The blue outlines of the distant hills, over which played the heavy shadows of rapidly-gathering thunder-clouds—the green sweep of the valley below dotted with tents, and marked here and there with black masses of Turkish infantry—the arid banks of sand, and grey cliffs, displaying every variety of light and shadow—and then the crest of the hill, along which for a mile shone the bayonets of the British infantry, topped by the canvas walls behind them—formed a spectacle worth coming far to see. Omar Pasha was dressed with neatness and simplicity—no order but the Star of the Medjidji glittered on his breast, and his close-fitting blue frock-coat displayed no ornament beyond a plain gold shoulder-strap and gilt buttons. He wore the fez cap, which showed to advantage the clear, well-marked lines of his calm and resolute face, embrowned by exposure to wind and weather for many a year of a soldier's life, and the hue of which was well contrasted with his snow-white whiskers. In the rude and rather{51} sensual mouth, with compressed thick lips, were traceable, if physiognomy have truth, enormous firmness and resolution. The chin, full and square, evinced the same qualities, which might also be discerned in the general form of the head. Those who remember the statue of Radetsky, at the Great Exhibition, will understand what this means. All the rougher features, the coarse nose, and the slight prominence of the cheek-bones, were more than redeemed by the quick, penetrating, and expressive eye, full of quiet courage and genius, and by the calm though rather stubborn brow, marked by lines of thought, rising above the thick shaggy eyebrow. In person he appeared to be rather below than above the ordinary height; but his horse, a well-trained grey, was not so tall as the English chargers beside him, and he may really be more than five feet seven or eight. His figure was light, spare, and active, and his seat on horseback, though too Turkish for our notions of equestrian propriety, was firm and easy. He wore white gloves and neat boots, and altogether would have passed muster very well in the ring at Hyde-park as a well-appointed quiet gentleman. His staff were by no means so well turned out, but the few hussars of the escort were stout, soldierlike-looking fellows. One of them led a strong chestnut Arab, which was the Pasha's battle charger.

As he rode by the troops presented arms, and when he had reached the end of the line they broke into column, advanced and performed some simple field-day manœuvres, to the great delight of the Pasha. As the men moved off after exercising for about three-quarters of an hour, the cavalry came up at full trot, and at once riveted the attention of the Pasha. There were one and a half squadron of the 17th Lancers, a troop of the 8th, and a troop of the 11th Hussars. The artillery horses and dragoon horses were out at water. About six o'clock, after reviewing the Turks in the plain, he drove on to Varna. Sir George Brown returned soon after from a forty-mile ride through the rain, and rode over to see the Brigadier. He was much disappointed at not being in time to receive Omar Pasha.

For some days 3,000 Bashi-Bazouks and Militia were encamped close to our cavalry camp, and every day performed irregular evolutions in the plains below, and made the night hideous with their yells and challenges. On Wednesday, the 5th of July, to the great relief of all their neighbours, our friends moved off to Varna, with great flourishing of lances, swords, and trumpets, headed by ragged red banners, there to be placed under the mild rule of General Yusuf, the famous Algerine commander, who had tamed so many of the wild tribes of the desert to the French yoke. In all the villages about tales were told of the violence of these ruffians—they were true types of the Mussulman "soldiery" as they are yet to be found in Asia, and as they would have been, perhaps, even in the camp, if the eye of Europe had not been upon them. A common practice among them during their march through this very district was to take away the sons and young children of the miserable Bulgarians, and demand a ransom. A poor widow's only son was carried off by them. They put a price on his head she{52} could not pay. She told the chief of the party so, and offered all she had to give to the scoundrel, but he would not accept the sum; and she had never seen her son since. One would have thought that General Yusuf was the very man to get these gentry into order; but the result proved that he was unable to subdue their settled habits of irregularity. Omar Pasha did great good by a little wholesome severity. He seized on whole hordes of them, took their horses and accoutrements, and sent them off to be enlisted by compulsory levy into the armies of the faithful as foot soldiers.

Their camp, just outside the town, was worth a journey to see. Their tents were all pitched regularly, instead of being thrown down higgledy-piggledy all over the ground, and their horses (nearly all stallions—such neighing and kicking, and biting and fighting as goes on among them all day!) were neatly tethered in lines, like those of regular cavalry. There were about 3,000 of these wild cavaliers, and it would have been difficult to find more picturesque-looking scoundrels, if the world was picked for them from Scinde to Mexico. Many of them were splendid-looking fellows, with fine sinewy legs, beautifully proportioned, muscular arms, and noble, well-set heads, of the true Caucasian mould; others were hideous negroes from Nubia, or lean, malignant-looking Arabs, with sinister eyes and hungry aspect; and some were dirty Marabouts, fanatics from Mecca, inflamed by the influence of their Hadj, or pilgrimage. They were divided into five regiments, and each man was paid a franc a-day by the French authorities. For this reason many of our Bashis "bolted" from Colonel Beatson and the English officers, and joined the French. Colonel Beatson had no money to pay them, and, indeed, it was not very clear that he had the sanction, or at all events the approbation, of Lord Raglan, whatever countenance he may have received from the home authorities. As Omar Pasha moved northwards, and left a larger extent of ground between his army and the Allies without military occupation, these wild and reckless men, deserting from both Beatson and Yusuf, became more and more troublesome, and began to indulge in their old habits of violence and plunder.

Omar Pasha left Varna early on Thursday, the 6th of July, and, on arriving at Aladyn, found the Duke of Cambridge's Division ready to receive him. He expressed his admiration at the magnificent appearance of the Guards and Highlanders, and after the review he retired with His Royal Highness the Duke to his tent, where he remained for some time, and partook of some refreshment. About two o'clock Omar Pasha's travelling carriages, escorted by Turkish cavalry, appeared in sight of our camp. The Pasha was received by Lord Raglan, Sir George Brown, Brigadier-General Scarlett, the Brigadiers of Division. After a time the 5th Dragoon Guards went past in splendid order, and then the two troops of Royal Horse Artillery and the battery, which did just what they are wont to do when his Royal Highness Saxe-some-place-or-other visits Woolwich, moving like one man, wheeling as if men, horses, and guns formed part of one machine, sweeping{53} the plain with the force and almost the speed of steam engines, unlimbering guns, taking them to pieces, putting them together, and vanishing in columns of dust. They came by at a trot, which was gradually quickened into a dashing gallop, so that the six-pound and nine-pound guns, and carriages, and tumbrils, went hopping and bounding over the sward. A charge in line, which shook the very earth as men and horses flew past like a whirlwind, wreathed in clouds of dust, particularly excited the Pasha's admiration, and he is reported to have said, "With one such regiment as that I would ride over and grind into the earth four Russian regiments at least." He was particularly struck by the stature of the men, and the size and fine condition of the horses, both dragoon and artillery; but these things did not lead him away from examining into the more important question of their efficiency, and he looked closely at accoutrements, weapons, and carriages. At his request Sir George Brown called a dragoon, and made him take off his helmet. The Pasha examined it minutely, had the white cover taken off, and requested that the man should be asked whether it was comfortable or not. The inspection was over at half-past three o'clock, to the great delight of the men; and Omar Pasha, who repeatedly expressed his gratification and delight at the spectacle, retired with the Generals to Sir George Brown's quarters, and in the course of the evening renewed his journey to Shumla.

There was one phrase which served as the universal exponent of peace, goodwill, praise, and satisfaction between the natives and the soldiery. Its origin cannot be exactly determined, but it probably arose from the habit of our men at Malta in addressing every native as "Johnny." At Gallipoli the soldiers persisted in applying the same word to Turk and Greek, and at length Turk and Greek began to apply it to ourselves, so that stately generals and pompous colonels, as they stalked down the bazaar, heard themselves addressed by the proprietors as "Johnny;" and to this appellation "bono" was added, to signify the excellence of the wares offered for public competition. It became the established cry of the army. The natives walked through the camp calling out "Bono, Johnny! Sood, sood" (milk)! "Bono, Johnny! Yoomoortler" (eggs)! or, "Bono, Johnny! Kasler" (geese)! as the case might be; and the dislike of the contracting parties to the terms offered on either side was expressed by the simple phrase of "No bono, Johnny." As you rode along the road friendly natives grinned at you, and thought, no matter what your rank, that they had set themselves right with you and paid a graceful compliment by a shout of "Bono, Johnny."

Even the dignified reserve of Royal Dukes and Generals of Division had to undergo the ordeal of this salutation from Pashas and other dignitaries. If a benighted Turk, riding homewards, was encountered by a picquet of the Light Division, he answered the challenge of "Who goes there?" with a "Bono, Johnny," and was immediately invited to "advance, friend, and all's well!" and the native servants sometimes used the same phrase to disarm the anger of their masters. It was really a most wonderful form of{54} speech, and, judiciously applied, it might, at that time, have "worked" a man from one end of Turkey in Europe to the other.

The most singular use of it was made when Omar Pasha first visited the camp. After the infantry had been dismissed to their tents, they crowded to the front of their lines in fatigue jackets and frocks to see the Pasha go by, and as he approached them a shout of "Bono! bono! Johnny!" rent the air, to the great astonishment of Omar, while a flight of "foragers" gave him some notion of a British welcome. He smiled and bowed several times in acknowledgment, but it was said that as the whoops, hurrahs, and yells of the Connaught Rangers rang in his ears, he turned to one of the officers near him, and said, "These are noble-looking fellows, but it must be very hard to keep them in order!" He could not comprehend how such freedom could be made consistent with strict discipline in the ranks.

Early in July Lord Cardigan returned to camp with the detachments of Light Cavalry, with which he effected an extended reconnaissance along the banks of the Danube, towards Rustchuk and Silistria. The men were without tents, and bivouacked for seventeen nights; in a military point of view, the reconnaissance effected very little service.

On the 16th, the Vesuvius, Captain Powell, and the Spitfire, Captain Spratt, were cruising off the Sulina mouth of the Danube, and it occurred to the two captains that they would feel their way up to the scene of poor Captain Parker's death. On the morning of the 17th, Lieut. A. L. Mansell, of the Spitfire, went up towards the bar in one of the boats, and ascertained from the captain of an Austrian vessel coming down that there was one small buoy left to mark the channel over the bar. He ran up accordingly, found the buoy, and discovered that there was eleven feet of water on the bar, instead of six or seven as is generally reported. The channel was found to be about a cable's length across, and when Lieut. A. L. Mansell had buoyed it down he returned to the ships, which were ready with their paddle-box boats, their launches, gigs, and cutters. This little flotilla proceeded up the river, destroying the stockades as it passed, without a show of resistance, and at last came to the small town of Sulina, on which the boats opened fire. Only three musket-shots were fired in return, and at three o'clock P.M. the place was a heap of ruins, nothing being spared but the church and lighthouse.

On the 17th of July, Omar Pasha having slowly advanced from his camp opposite Rutschuk, on the track of the retreating Russians, entered the town of Bucharest, and took military possession of Wallachia.

On the 18th, an old woman, said to be Fatima Honoum, the Karakizla (Black Virgin), Kurdish chieftainess, passed through Devno on her way from Varna, attended by a rabble rout of thirty or forty Bashi-Bazouks. She stopped at a rude khan or café, and enjoyed her pipe for a time, so that one had an opportunity of seeing this Turkish Semiramis. She appeared to be a lean, withered, angular old woman, of some seventy years of age, with a face seamed{55} and marked in every part of its dark mahogany-coloured surface with rigid wrinkles. Her nose was hooked and skinny—her mouth toothless and puckered—her eyes piercing black, restless, and sinister, with bleary lids, and overhung by tufty grey brows. Her neck, far too liberally exhibited, resembled nothing so much as the stem of an ill-conditioned, gnarly young olive tree. With most wanton and unjustifiable disregard of the teachings of Mahomet and of the prejudices of Mussulmans, she showed all her face, and wore no yashmak. Her attire consisted of a green turban, dirty and wrinkled as her face; an antiquated red jacket, with remnants of embroidery, open in front, and showing, as far as mortal sight could gaze upon it, the lady's bosom; a handsome shawl waist scarf, filled with weapons, such as knives, pistols, and yataghans, and wide blue breeches. Hanoum was a spinster, and her followers believed her to be a prophetess. The followers were Bashi-Bazouks pur sang, very wild and very ragged, and stuck all over with weapons, like porcupines with spines. Their horses were lean and scraggy, and altogether it was a comfort to see this interesting Virgin Queen of the Kurds on her way to Shumla. The lady refused to visit our camp, and seemed to hold the Giaour in profound contempt. We never heard of her afterwards, but she was remarkable as being the only lady who took up arms for the cause in this celebrated war.

Next day, some five-and-twenty horsemen rode into the village, attired in the most picturesque excesses of the Osmanli; fine, handsome, well-kempt men, with robes and turbans a blaze of gay colours, and with arms neat and shining from the care bestowed on them. They said they came from Peshawur and other remote portions of the north-western provinces of the Indian Peninsula, and while the officer who was conversing with them was wondering if their tale could be true, the officer in charge of the party came forward and announced himself as an Englishman. It turned out to be Mr. Walpole, formerly an officer in our Navy, whose charming book on the East is so well known, and it appeared that the men under his command were Indian Mahomedans, who had come up on their pilgrimage to Mecca, and who, hearing of the Turkish crusade against the Infidels, had rushed to join the standard of the Sultan. They were ordered to be attached to Colonel Beatson's corps of Bashi-Bazouks, and to form a kind of body-guard to the colonel, whose name is so well known in India. Mr. Walpole seemed quite delighted with his command, and, as he had the power of life and death, he imagined there would be no difficulty in repressing the irregularities of his men.

A council of war was held on Tuesday, July 18th, at Varna, at which Marshal St. Arnaud, Lord Raglan, Admiral Hamelin, Admiral Dundas, Admiral Lyons, and Admiral Bruat were present, and it was resolved that the time had come for an active exercise of the powers of the allied forces by sea and land. The English Cabinet, urged probably by the English press, which on this occasion displayed unusual boldness in its military counsels and decision in its suggestions of hostility against the enemy, had despatched the most positive orders to Lord{56} Raglan to make a descent in the Crimea, and to besiege Sebastopol, of which little was known except that it was the great arsenal of Russia in the Black Sea. On the 19th orders were sent out by Lord Raglan to Sir George Brown, at Devno, to proceed to headquarters at Varna immediately. Sir George Brown lost no time in obeying the summons. He sent a portion of his baggage on at once, and went on to Varna, attended by his aide-de-camp, Captain Pearson. Lord Raglan and his second in command had a long conversation, and on Thursday morning, the 20th, Sir George Brown, attended by Captain Pearson, Colonel Lake, of the Royal Artillery, Captain Lovell, of the Royal Engineers, &c., went on board the Emeu, Captain Smart, and immediately proceeded to the fleets at Baltschik. At the same time General Canrobert, attended by Colonels Trochu, Lebœuf, and Sabatier, took ship for the same destination. The generals went on board the flag ships of the respective admirals, and stood out to sea, steering towards the Crimea, on board her Majesty's ship Fury. Of course, the object of this expedition was kept a dead secret; but it was known, nevertheless, that they went to explore the coast in the neighbourhood of Sebastopol, in order to fix upon a place for the descent.

On the 21st the 1st Division of the French army, General Canrobert and General Forey's Division, struck their tents, and broke up their camp outside Varna. They took the road which led towards the Dobrudscha, which they were to reconnoitre as far as the Danube, and on the 22nd General Yusuf followed with his wild gathering of Bashi-Bazouks, numbering 3,000 sabres, lances, and pistols.

The result of this expedition was one of the most fruitless and lamentable that has ever occurred in the history of warfare. The French Marshal, terrified by the losses of his troops, which the cholera was devastating by hundreds in their camps at Gallipoli and Varna, and alarmed by the deaths of the Duc d'Elchingen and General Carbuccia, resolved to send an expedition into the Dobrudscha, where there were—as Colonel Desaint, chief of the French topographical department, declared on his return from an exploration—about 10,000 Russians, two regiments of regular cavalry, 10 Sotnias of Cossacks, and 35 pieces of artillery. Marshal St. Arnaud, who was confident that the expedition for the Crimea would be ready by the 5th of August, and that the descent would take place on the 10th of the same month, imagined that by a vigorous attack on these detached bodies of men he might strike a serious blow at the enemy, raise the spirits and excite the confidence of the Allies, remove his troops from the camp where they were subject to such depressing influences, and effect all this in time to enable them to return and embark with the rest of the army. It has been said that he proposed to Lord Raglan to send a body of English troops along with his own, but there is, I believe, no evidence of the fact. The 1st Division was commanded by General Espinasse, and started on the 21st for Kostendji; the 2nd Division, under General Bosquet, marched on the 22nd towards Bajardik, and the 3rd Division, under Prince Napoleon, followed the next day and served as a support to the 2nd.{57} All the arrangements were under the control of General Yusuf. Having passed through the ruined districts of Mangalia, the 1st Division reached Kostendji on the 28th of July. They found that the whole country had been laid waste by fire and sword—the towns and villages burnt and destroyed, the stock and crops carried off. A cavalry affair took place on the same day between Yusuf's Bashi-Bazouks and some Russian cavalry, in which the former behaved so well that the General, aided by 1,200 Zouaves, pushed forward to make an attack on the enemy, and wrote to General Espinasse to march to his assistance. On that night, just ere the French broke up their camp at Babadagh, in order to set out on this march, the cholera declared itself among them with an extraordinary and dreadful violence. Between midnight and eight o'clock next morning nearly 600 men lay dead in their tents smitten by the angel of death! At the same moment the division of Espinasse was stricken with equal rapidity and violence at Kerjelouk. All that night men suffered and died, and on the 31st of July General Yusuf made his appearance at Kostendji with the remains of his haggard and horror-stricken troops, and proceeded towards Mangalia in his death march. On the 1st of August General Canrobert, who had returned from his reconnaissance, arrived at Kostendji from Varna, and was horrified to find that his camp was but a miserable hospital, where the living could scarcely bury the remains of their comrades. He could pity and could suffer, but he could not save. That day and the next the pestilence redoubled in intensity, and in the midst of all these horrors food fell short, although the General had sent most urgent messages by sea to Varna for means of transport, and for medicine and the necessaries of life. The 2nd and the 3rd Divisions were also afflicted by the same terrible scourge, and there was nothing left for the Generals but to lead their men back to their encampments as soon as they could, leaving behind them the dead and the dying. The details of the history of this expedition, which cost the French more than 7,000 men, are among the most horrifying and dreadful of the campaign. On returning to Varna the Bashi-Bazouks, tired of the settled forms of a camp life, and impatient of French drill, and the superintendence of brutal or rude non-commissioned officers, began to desert en masse, and on the 15th of August the corps was declared disbanded, and General Yusuf was obliged to admit his complete failure.

We return to Varna, where we find the same awful plague of the later days of the world developing itself with increasing strength and vigour. All June and July I lived in camp at Aladyn and Devno, with the Light Division, making occasional excursions into Varna or over to the camps of the other divisions; and although, the heat was at times very great indeed, there were no complaints among the men, except that diarrhœa began to get common about the beginning of July. On St. Swithin's day we had a heavy fall of rain, some thunder and lightning, and a high wind. On the 17th I heard several of my friends complaining of depression, heaviness, ennui, &c., and "wishing to do something," and the men exhibited traces of the same feeling. On the night of the 19th, having gone down{58} towards the river to visit Captain Anderson, of the Artillery, I was struck by the appearance of prodigious multitudes of small dark beetles, which blew out our candles, and crawled all over the tents in swarms. On the 20th, as I expected there would be a move down to Varna, and wanted to get some articles of outfits, I rode down there with some officers. Up to this time there had been no case of cholera in the Light Division; but early on Sunday morning, 23rd, it broke out with the same extraordinary violence and fatal effect which had marked its appearance in the French columns, and the camp was broken up forthwith, and the men marched to Monastir, nine miles further on, towards the Balkans.

CHAPTER VII.

IT will be seen that the cholera first appeared among the troops at Varna, but the English forces were tolerably free from it till it had been among the French for nearly three weeks. A good deal of sickness prevailed among the Turkish and Egyptian troops. Diarrhœa was only too prevalent. Nearly every one had it in his turn. The quantity of apricots ("Kill Johns") and hard crude fruit which were devoured by the men, might in some degree account for the prevalence of this debilitating malady. The commissariat bread was not so good as at first, and speedily turned sour; but the officers took steps to remedy the evil by the erection of ovens in the camp. As the intensity of the sun's rays increased, the bread served out to us from the Varna bakeries became darker, more sour, and less baked. As a general rule, the French bread was lighter and better than our own, and yet they suffered as much from diarrhœa as our troops.

In Varna the inhabitants suffered from the pestilence as much as the troops. Many of them fled from the town, and encamped near the neighbouring villages. Turks and Greeks suffered alike, and perished "like flies," to use their own image.

Illness increased; on the 28th of July there were thirty-three cases of cholera in our hospital, and a much larger number in the French hospital. The Duke of Cambridge was suffering from diarrhœa; indeed, a large percentage of officers of the different divisions had been attacked by this complaint, but great precautions were taken by the medical officers to prevent neglect in the early stages, and to cheek the premonitory symptoms.

The Heavy Dragoons at Varna, although encamped on a lovely{59} plateau on a promontory by the sea-side, the healthiest-looking site that could have been chosen by a medical board, in a few days lost twenty-six men from cholera—a large number out of such skeleton regiments.

The ration was increased to 1½lb. of meat, and a ration of rum was issued. Drilling and tight stocking began to fall into disuse, and, by a general order, moustachios were allowed, according to the pleasure of officers and men.

No less than 110,000 pounds' weight of corn, chopped straw, &c., was issued daily for the horses. To this was added all the full rations of meat, 27,000lb. of bread, proportionate quantities of rice, tea, coffee, sugar, &c., for the men. The commissariat had, besides, the horses, carts, saddles, packsaddles, tents, carriages for Dragoons, Light Cavalry, Infantry, Artillery, Sappers and Miners, to find interpreters. Commissary-General Filder's office in Varna was like a bank in the City in the height of business. The officers at the other branch departments were equally busy, and it was not unusual for some of them to ride to Varna and back to Devno, a distance of more than forty miles, between sunrise and sunset.

We paid in ready money, and a commissariat chest, under the care of Mr. Cowan, was established at Shumla, to keep our officers supplied with gold and silver. The French, on the contrary, gave cheques on their commissariat chest at Varna, which were only payable on presentation there. It can readily be imagined that a peasant at the other side of the Balkans, or an ignorant Bulgarian up the country, regarded this printed paper with huge disdain, and it was certainly rather hard to have to journey from Roumelia into Bulgaria in order to get 10s. or 12s. for the hire of an araba. The araba drivers were suspicious, and grew sulky and discontented. As soon as they were paid any large sum they sought, and generally with success, the first opportunity of getting away from our service.

Sir George Brown and Sir E. Lyons went down to Constantinople on board the Agamemnon, on the 1st of August, and for several days they were busily engaged in making arrangements for the transport of the fleet, and in the preparation of boats and provisions.

Positive orders were received by Lord Raglan to attack Sebastopol. On the 20th he had despatched Sir George Brown and several English officers to make a reconnaissance conjointly with General Canrobert and officers of the French Head-quarters Staff. On the 28th of July the commission returned after a cruise, in which they had been enabled to count the very guns of Sebastopol. In the course of their reconnaissance they coasted slowly along the west face of the shore from Eupatoria southwards, and at the mouth of the Katcha discovered a beach, which the English and French generals decided on making the site of their landing. The Fury stood off the port quietly at night, and about two o'clock ran in softly, and stopped within 2,000 yards of the batteries. There she remained till six o'clock in the morning. As the General was counting the guns, an officer observed a suspicious movement, and{60} in a moment afterwards a shot roared through the rigging. This was a signal to quit, and the Fury steamed out of the harbour as fast as she could; but the shot came after her still faster. A shell burst close to her, and one shot went through her hull.

Signs of a move soon became unmistakable. On the 29th July the Turkish fleet and the transports, which had been lying in the Bosphorus, left their anchorage for Varna, carrying with them pontoons and siege guns. The preparations made at Varna for the embarkation of the English forces were hailed with satisfaction by officers and men, tired of the monotony of life in this wretched country, and depressed by the influence of illness and laborious idleness. It was not then known where they were going to; but, in the absence of any exact knowledge respecting the destination of the troops, conjecture pointed with unsteady finger to Odessa, Anapa, Suchum-Kaleh, or Sebastopol. There were, however, divided counsels and timides avis. Lord de Ros, Admiral Dundas, and Admiral Hamelin, were notoriously opposed to the descent on the Crimea; Marshal St. Arnaud did not like to attack Sebastopol, nor was Sir George Brown very sanguine of success.

The force of the Russians in the Crimea was supposed to be upwards of 55,000 men, but considerable reinforcements might have been sent there of which we knew nothing. The Russians were well served by their spies, and were acquainted with all our movements; neither Marshal St. Arnaud nor Lord Raglan had equal means of intelligence. Speaking merely in reference to strategic considerations, there appeared to be some rashness in attempting the reduction of such a fortress as Sebastopol with an army inferior in force to that of the enemy inside and outside the walls—an army liable to be attacked by all the masses which Russia could direct, in her last extremity, to defend the "very navel of her power"—unless the fleet was able to neutralize the preponderance of the hostile army, and place our troops upon equal terms. It was not impregnable, either from the quality of the works or natural position, and, like all such fortresses, it could not but fall before the regular uninterrupted continuance and progress of sap, and mine, and blockade. The result showed, however, that the usual conditions of a siege were not complied with in this case; and the character of the expedition, which was at first a dashing, sudden onslaught, was, perhaps inevitably, changed by the course of events. Colonel Maule, Assistant Adjutant-General, Major Levinge, Mr. Newbury, Pay-master of the 2nd battalion Rifle Brigade, and Gregg, of the 55th Regiment, died. The hospital was quite full, and, numerous as our medical staff was, and unremitting as were our medical officers in doing all that skill and humanity could suggest for the sufferers, there were painful cases, of not rare occurrence, in which the men did not procure the attention they required paid to them till it was too late. Many of the poor fellows, too, who desired the attendance of a clergyman or priest at their dying hour, were denied that last consolation, for the chaplains were few, or at least not numerous enough for the sad exigencies of the season.

The French losses from cholera were frightful. The hospital had{61} been formerly used as a Turkish barrack. It was a huge quadrangular building, like the barracks at Scutari, with a courtyard in the centre. The sides of the square were about 150 feet long, and each of them contained three floors, consisting of spacious corridors, with numerous rooms off them of fair height and good proportions. About one-third of the building was reserved for our use; the remainder was occupied by the French. Although not very old, the building was far from being in thorough repair. The windows were broken, the walls in parts were cracked and shaky, and the floors were mouldering and rotten. Like all places which have been inhabited by Turkish soldiers for any time, the smell of the buildings was abominable. Men sent in there with fevers and other disorders were frequently attacked with the cholera in its worst form, and died with unusual rapidity, in spite of all that could be done to save them. I visited the hospital one memorable night in search of medical aid for my friend Dickson, who was suddenly seized with cholera. I never can forget the aspect of the place—a long train of thirty-five carts filled with sick was drawn up by the wall. There were three or four men in each. These were soldiers sent in from the camps waiting till room could be found for them; others were sitting by the roadside, and the moonbeams flashed brightly off their piled arms. All were silent; the quiet that prevailed was only broken by the moans and cries of the sufferers in the carts. Observing many empty arabas were waiting in the square, I asked a sous officer for what they were required. His answer, sullen and short, was,—"Pour les morts."

On the night of Tuesday (Aug. 10th) a great fire broke out at Varna, which utterly destroyed more than a quarter of the town. The sailors of the ships, and the French and English soldiery stationed near the town, worked for the ten hours during which the fire lasted with the greatest energy; but as a brisk wind prevailed, which fanned the flames as they leapt along the wooden streets, their efforts were not as successful as they deserved. The fire broke out near the French commissariat stores, in a spirit shop. The officers in charge broached many casks of spirits, and as the liquid ran down the streets, a Greek was seen to set fire to it. He was cut down to the chin by a French officer, and fell into the fiery torrent. The howling of the inhabitants, the yells of the Turks, the clamour of the women, children, dogs, and horses, were appalling. Marshal St. Arnaud displayed great vigour and coolness in superintending the operations of the troops, and by his exertions aggravated the symptoms of the malady from which he had long been suffering. The French lost great quantities of provisions, and we had many thousand rations of biscuit utterly consumed. In addition to the bread (biscuit) which was lost, immense quantities of stores were destroyed. 19,000 pairs of soldiers' shoes and an immense quantity of cavalry sabres, which were found amid the ruins, fused into the most fantastic shapes, were burnt. The soldiers plundered a good deal, and outrages of a grave character were attributed to the Zouaves during the fire. Tongues and potted meats, most probably abstracted from sutlers' stores, were to be had in the outskirts of{62} the camp for very little money soon after the occurrence, and some of the camp canteen keepers were completely ruined by their losses. To add to our misfortunes, the cholera broke out in the fleets in Varna Bay and at Baltschik with extraordinary virulence. The Friedland and Montebello suffered in particular—in the latter upwards of 100 died in twenty-four hours. The depression of the army was increased by this event. They "supped full of horrors," and listened greedily to tales of death, which served to weaken and terrify.

We lost fifteen or sixteen men a day. Some people said we pitched our camps too closely; but Sir George Brown's division covered nearly twice the space which would have been occupied by the encampment of a Roman legion consisting of nearly the same number of men, and yet there is no account in history of any of these camp epidemics in Gaul, or Thrace, or Pannonia, or in any of the standing camps of the Romans, and we must believe that the cholera and its cognate pests arise out of some combination of atmospherical and physical conditions which did not occur in former times. The conduct of many of the men, French and English, seemed characterized by a recklessness verging on insanity. They might be seen lying drunk in the kennels, or in the ditches by the road-sides, under the blazing rays of the sun, covered with swarms of flies. They might be seen in stupid sobriety gravely paring the rind off cucumbers of portentous dimensions, to the number of six or eight, and eating the deadly cylinders one after another, till there was no room for more—all the while sitting in groups in the fields, or on the flags by the shops in the open street, and looking as if they thought they were adopting highly sanitary measures for their health's sake; or frequently three or four of them would make a happy bargain with a Greek for a large basketful of apricots ("kill Johns"), scarlet pumpkins, water melons, wooden-bodied pears, green-gages, and plums, and then retire beneath the shade of a tree, where they divided and ate the luscious food till nought remained but a heap of peel, rind, and stones. They then diluted the mass of fruit with raki, or peach brandy, and struggled home or to sleep as best they could. One day I saw a Zouave and a huge Grenadier staggering up the street arm in arm, each being literally laden with enormous pumpkins and cucumbers, and in the intervals of song—for one was shouting out "Cheer, boys, cheer," in irregular spasms, and the other was chanting some love ditty of a very lachrymose character—they were feeding each other with cucumbers. One took a bit and handed it to his friend, who did the same, and thus they were continuing their amphibœan banquet till the Englishman slipped on a stone and went down into the mud, bringing his friend after him—pumpkins, cucumbers, and all. The Frenchman disengaged himself briskly; but the Grenadier at once composed himself to sleep, notwithstanding the entreaties of his companion. After dragging at him, head, legs, arms, and shoulders, the Zouave found he could make no impression on the inert mass of his friend, and regarding him in the most tragic manner possible, he clasped his hands, and exclaimed, "Tu es là, donc, mon ami, mon cher Jeeon! Eh bien, je{63} me coucherai avec toi;" and calmly fixing a couple of cucumbers for his pillow, he lay down, and was soon snoring in the gutter in unison with his ally. The Turkish soldiers were equally careless of their diet and living. It was no wonder, indeed, that cholera throve and fattened among us.

All the tokens of an impending expedition were eagerly caught up and circulated among the camps. A number of boats, ordered by Admiral Lyons at Constantinople, now arrived at Varna, and their construction showed they were intended for the disembarkation of troops. Each vessel consisted of two of the large Turkish boats of the Bosphorus, which are about fifty feet long, and about eight feet broad, fastened together, and planked over at top, so as to form a kind of raft, and drawing more than a foot of water, and capable of landing two heavy guns and their men, or of carrying 150 or 200 men with the greatest of ease. The fleet was assembled in the bay, and consisted of steamers of a magnitude and speed hitherto unknown in any operation of war, and of sailing vessels which would have constituted a formidable navy of themselves. It was calculated that the disembarkation of 20,000 could be effected by the boats of our steamers in two hours. Cavalry would be more difficult to manage; but at this time our strength in that arm was not very great, for we had two Generals in command of a force which mustered in the Crimea less than 1,200 sabres. The artillery, under General Cator, consisted of the siege train (30 guns out), commanded by Colonel Gambia; the Royal Horse Artillery, Colonel Strangeways; the Artillery of the Light Division, Colonel Dacres; of the First Division, Colonel Lake; of the Second Division, Colonel Dupuis; and of the Third Division, Colonel Fitzmayer. Each division had twelve field guns attached to it, so that there were forty-eight field guns in all. The C and I troops of the Royal Horse Artillery acted with the Cavalry.

But the armies of the allies were about to enter upon the career of active warfare, and to escape from a spot fraught with memories of death unredeemed by a ray of glory. It was no secret that in the middle of July a council of generals and admirals had, by a majority, overcome the timides avis of some, and had decided upon an expedition to the Crimea, in compliance with the positive orders of the English Cabinet, and with the less decided suggestions of the Emperor of the French. That project had been arrested by the sickness and calamities which had fallen on the French and English armies, but it had not been abandoned.

In the second week in August the cholera assumed such an alarming character that both Admirals (French and English) resolved to leave their anchorage at Baltschik, and stand out to sea for a cruise. On Wednesday the 16th the Caradoc, Lieutenant Derriman, which left Constantinople with the mails for the fleet and army the previous evening, came up with the English fleet. The Caradoc was boarded by a boat from the Britannia, and the officer who came on board communicated the appalling intelligence that the flag-ship had lost 70 men since she left Baltschik, and that she had buried 10 men that morning. Upwards of 100 men were on the{64} sick list at that time. Some of the other ships had lost several men, but not in the same proportion.

After the great fire on the night of the 10th the cholera seemed to diminish in the town itself, and the reports from the various camps were much more favourable than before. The British army was scattered broadcast all over the country, from Monastir to Varna, a distance of twenty-six or twenty-seven miles. The Duke of Cambridge's division marched in from Aladyn, and encamped towards the south-western side of the bay. It appeared that notwithstanding the exquisite beauty of the country around Aladyn, it was a hot-bed of fever and dysentery. The same was true of Devno, which was called by the Turks "the Valley of Death;" and had we consulted the natives ere we pitched our camps, we assuredly should never have gone either to Aladyn or Devno, notwithstanding the charms of their position and the temptations offered by the abundant supply of water and by the adjacent woods. It was the duty of the general in command to pay attention to the representations of the medical officers and the traditions of the natives, which assigned to this locality a most unfavourable character for the preservation of health.

Whoever gazed on these rich meadows, stretching for long miles away, and bordered by heights on which the dense forests struggled all but in vain to pierce the masses of wild vine, clematis, dwarf acacia, and many-coloured brushwoods—on the verdant hill-sides, and on the dancing waters of lake and stream below, lighted up by the golden rays of a Bulgarian summer's sun—might well have imagined that no English glade or hill-top could well be healthier or better suited for the residence of man. But these meadows nurtured the fever, the ague, dysentery, and pestilence in their bosom—the lake and the stream exhaled death, and at night fat unctuous vapours rose fold after fold from the valleys, and crept up in the dark and stole into the tent of the sleeper and wrapped him in their deadly embrace. So completely exhausted was the Brigade of Guards, that these 3,000 men, the flower of England, had to make two marches from Aladyn to Varna, which was not more than (not so much many people said as) ten miles. Their packs were carried for them. How astonished must have been the good people of England, sitting anxiously in their homes, day after day, expecting every morning to gladden their eyes with the sight of the announcement, in large type, of "Fall of Sebastopol," when they heard that their Guards—their corps d'élite—the pride of their hearts—the delight of their eyes—these Anakims, whose stature, strength, and massive bulk they exhibited to kingly visitors as no inapt symbols of our nation, had been so reduced by sickness, disease, and a depressing climate, that it was judged inexpedient to allow them to carry their own packs, or to permit them to march more than five miles a day, even though these packs were carried for them! In the Brigade there were before the march to Varna upwards of 600 sick men.

The Highland Brigade was in better condition, but even the three noble regiments which composed it were far from being in good{65} health. The Light Division had lost 110 or 112 men. The Second Division had suffered somewhat less. The little cavalry force had been sadly reduced, and the Third (Sir R. England's) Division, which had been encamped to the north-west of Varna, close outside the town, had lost upwards of 100 men also, the 50th Regiment, who were much worked, being particularly cut up. The ambulance corps had been completely crippled by the death of the drivers and men belonging to it, and the medical officers were called upon to make a special report on the mortality among them.

In truth, it may be taken as an actual fact that each division of the army had been weakened by nearly one regiment, and that the arrival of the division of Sir George Cathcart did little more than raise the force to its original strength.

The same day Lieutenant A. Saltmarshe, of the 11th Hussars, died of cholera. Dead bodies rose from the bottom in the harbour, and bobbed grimly around in the water, or floated in from sea, and drifted past the sickened gazers on board the ships—all buoyant, bolt upright, and hideous in the sun.

At a Council of War, held at Marshal St. Arnaud's quarters on the 24th of August, the final decision was taken. There were present the Marshal, Lord Raglan, General Canrobert, Sir George Brown, Sir Edmund Lyons, Sir John Burgoyne, Admirals Dundas, Hamelin, and Bruat, and the deliberation lasted several hours. Sir John Burgoyne's views with regard to the point selected for our landing in the Crimea were not quite in unison with those of the Generals who have lately reconnoitred the best locality. It would not have been very politic to have published the decisions of this Council, even if they had been known, though secrets did leak out through closed doors and fastened windows. It was, indeed, said at the time, that the London journals did great mischief by publishing intelligence respecting the points to be attacked. Some people were absurd enough to say, with all possible gravity, that they would not be at all surprised if the whole expedition against Sebastopol were to be abandoned in consequence of articles in the English newspapers. Certainly, if any "dangerous information" were conveyed to the Czar in this way, it was not sent home from the head-quarters of the army, but was derived from sources beyond a correspondent's reach. Considerations connected with geographical position did not appear to exercise the slightest influence on the reason of persons who urged the extraordinary proposition that the publication in a London newspaper of a probable plan of campaign influenced the Czar in the dispositions he made to meet our attack. Even if the Czar believed that plan to be correct—and he might well entertain suspicions on that point—is it likely that he would take the trouble, as soon as he has read his morning paper, to send off a courier to the Crimea to prepare his Generals for an attack on a certain point which they must have hitherto left undefended? His spies in London rendered him much surer and better service. The debates in Parliament threw a much plainer and steadier light upon our movements. And yet so positive was the Emperor Nicholas that all our preparations were shams intended to deceive him, so unintelligible to him were{66} the operations of a free press and free speech, that he persisted in thinking, up the very eve of the descent, that our armies were in reality destined to follow up his retreating legions on the Danube, and he obstinately rejected all Prince Menschikoff's appeals for reinforcements.

Under any circumstances the Russian engineers knew their coast well enough to be ready to defend its weak points, and to occupy the best ground of defence against the hostile descent. They knew our object, if we went to the Crimea at all, must be the reduction of Sebastopol, and of course they took care to render the primos aditus difficiles. When the Furious returned to the fleet, after a cruise along the south-western coast of the Crimea, she saw a Russian intrenched camp of about 6000 men placed above the very spot at which it seemed desirable we should effect a landing. Who told the Russians what the intentions of our chiefs were? Why, they saw an English steam frigate, with Sir George Brown, General Canrobert, and Sir E. Lyons on board, making a deliberate survey of that very spot days before, and it was only natural to suppose that the same strategical knowledge which led the English and French Generals to select this place for the landing warned the Russians that it would be wise to defend it. Certainly it was not any article in a London journal which enabled the Russians to know the point selected by our Generals, so as to induce them to throw up an intrenchment and to form a camp of 6000 men there.

However, Marshal St. Arnaud prevented much doubt existing as to our real intentions, for on the 25th he published the following Ordre Général. (No. 100.)

{67}

In curious contrast to the above order, Lord Raglan issued a memorandum, requesting "Mr. Commissary-General Filder to take steps to insure that the troops should all be provided with a ration of porter for the next few days." It reminded one of the bathos of the Scotch Colonel's address to his men before the Pyramids, compared to Napoleon's high-flown appeal.

The Light Division began its march from Monastir to Varna at five A.M. on Wednesday, the 23rd. The men were in the highest spirits on their march, and sang songs on the way; their packs were carried by mules and horses. They arrived at Yursakova, ten miles from Monastir, near the old camp of Sir De Lacy Evans's division, who had already left for Varna, at one o'clock in the day, and pitched their camp there. Sunday was a day of rest, and many of the men availed themselves of the opportunity afforded to them of receiving the Sacrament. Through the valley of Devno, "the Valley of Death," the men marched in mournful silence, for it was the place where they had left so many of their comrades, and where they had suffered so much. The air was tainted by the carcases of dead horses; and as some of the officers rode near the burial-places of the poor fellows in the division who had died of cholera, they were horrified to discover that the corpses had been dug up, most probably by the Bulgarians, for the sake of the blankets in which they had been interred, and had been left half-covered a prey to the dogs and vultures. On Monday the brigade again advanced and reached Karaguel, seven miles from Varna. All the other divisions began to move towards Varna at the same time, and prepared for embarkation as fast as they could be shipped from the neighbourhood of the town. The greatest care was taken to reduce the baggage and impedimenta of the army to a minimum. To each regiment there was only allowed five horses; and as every officer had at least one—some, indeed, had two, and others three—there were some thirty-five or forty horses from every regiment to be provided for, so that the park formed near Varna for the derelicts consisted of 4000 government animals and 1200 officers' horses.

On the 27th of August, most of the English men-of-war which had lain at Baltschik came down to Varna; and, including French, Turkish, and English vessels, there were seventeen sail of the line in the bay. All this time the sickness, though decreasing, continued to affect us. The 5th Dragoon Guards suffered so much—their commanding officer (Major Le Marchant) absent from ill-health, the senior Captain (Duckworth), the surgeon (Pitcairn), and the veterinary-surgeon (Fisher), dead, as well as a number of non-commissioned officers and privates—that it was dis-regimented for a time, and was placed under the command of Colonel Hodge, who incorporated it with his own regiment, the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoons.

On the morning of the 29th of August, the brigade of Guards and the brigade of Highlanders moved down to the beach, and were embarked on board the Simoom, the Kangaroo, and other large steamers. Captain L. T. Jones, H. M. S. Samson, Captain King of the Leander, and Captain Goldsmith, of the Sidon, deserved the{68} greatest praise. The plan of fitting the paddle-box boats, so that they were capable of carrying seven horses each, was due to Lieutenant Roberts, Her Majesty's Steamer Cyclops, who worked hard, fitting up boats and pontoons.

On 1st of September, the 1st, the 2nd, and the 3rd Divisions of the French army were embarked on board the vessels destined for their conveyance to the Crimea. Marshal St. Arnaud and his staff embarked at Varna, on board the Berthollet, on the 2nd of September, and at six o'clock the same evening shifted his headquarters to the Ville de Paris in Baltjik Bay.

Monday, September the 4th, was spent by the authorities in final preparations, in embarking stragglers of all kinds, in closing the departments no longer needed at Varna, such as the principal commissariat offices, the post-office, the ordnance and field train, &c. The narrow lanes were blocked up with mules and carts on their way to the beach with luggage, and the happy proprietors, emerging from the squalid courtyards of their whilome quarters, thronged the piers in search of boats, the supply of which was not by any means equal to the demand. Some of those most industrious fellows, the Maltese, who had come out and taken their harbour boats with them, made a golden harvest, for each ceased his usual avocation of floating stationer, baker, butcher, spirit merchant, tobacconist, and poultryman for the time, and plied for hire all along the shores of the bay.{69}

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

THE arrangements for the conveyance of the troops to their destination were of the largest and most perfect character; and when all the transports were united, they constituted an armada of 600 vessels, covered by a fleet with 3000 pieces of artillery.

Although, at first sight, this force appeared irresistible, it could not be overlooked that the enemy had a large fleet within a few hours' sail—that in using our men-of-war as transports, we lost their services in case of a naval action—that our army had suffered much from illness and death, and that the expedition had something of uncertainty, if not audacity, in its character—all that was fixed being this, that we were to descend at the Katcha, beat the Russians, and take Sebastopol.

Writing at the time, I said—"I am firmly persuaded that the patience of people at home, who are hungering and thirsting for the news of 'the Fall of Sebastopol,' will be severely tried, and that the chances are a little against the incidents of its capture being ready by Christmas for repetition at Astley's. It is late, very late, in the year for such a siege as there is before us, and I should not be surprised if we are forced to content ourselves with the occupation of a portion of the Crimea, which may become the basis of larger and more successful operations next year."

Few but our generals, admirals, and some old officers, troubled their heads much about these things, except a few notorious old grumblers. The only persons who were dejected or melancholy were those who were compelled to stay behind. Such vast establishments as had been created at Varna for the use of our army could not be broken up without many fragments remaining, and these fragments must be watched. There were, besides, the poor invalids in the hospitals, the officers and men in charge of them and of various regimental stores, of depôts, of commissariat supplies, the commis{70}sariat officers themselves—in fact, the guardians of the débris which an army leaves behind it, all melancholy, and lamenting their hard fate. The most extravagant efforts were made by some of the officers on whom the lot fell to remain, in order to evade so great a calamity.

At the last moment many an aching heart was made happy by an order from head-quarters. The women of several of the regiments who had mournfully followed their husbands to the beach, and rent the air with their wailings when they heard they were to be separated from those with whom they had shared privation and pestilence, were allowed to go on board. It was found that no provision had been made for their domicile or feeding. A camp of women!—the very idea was ludicrous and appalling; and so, as they could not be left behind, the British Andromaches were perforce shipped on board the transports and restored to their Hectors.

In the course of (Monday) September 4th, six English men-of-war and four French men-of-war left Varna Bay, and from morning to evening not an hour passed that some six or eight transports did not weigh anchor and steer away to the northward to the rendezvous at Baltschik. Sir Edmund Lyons, who had charge of the arrangements connected with the expedition, was busy all the day on board his flagship communicating with the shore and with the fleet.

The signal for starting was very anxiously expected, but evening closed in on the bulk of the English flotilla still anchored in the waters of Varna, and for the last time, perhaps, in the history of the world, the echoes of its shores were woke up by the roll of English drums, and by the music of the bands of our regiments, which will, in all probability, never re-visit these ill-omened lands. As the sun set and shot his yellow rays across the distant hills, the summit of which formed our camping grounds, and lighted up the flat expanse of rolling vapours above the lake, one could not but give a sigh to the memory of those who were lying far away from the land of their fathers—whose nameless graves are scattered in every glade and on every knoll in that unkindly Mœsian soil.

However, the morrow came, and with it life and motion. A gun from the Admiral! Signals from the Emperor, the seat of power of the Admiralty agents! The joyful news throughout the fleet that we were to weigh, and to get off to our rendezvous in Baltschik as soon as we could. Many sailing transports were already stealing out to the southwards under all light canvas, in order to get a good offing. All the steamers were busy, clothing the bay and the adjacent coast with clouds of smoke as they got up steam, through which, as it shifted, and rose and fell, and thinned away under the influence of a crisp, fresh breeze, one could see the town of Varna, all burnt up and withered by fire, its white minarets standing up stiffly through the haze, its beach hemmed by innumerable boats, its be-cannoned walls, the blanched expanse around it of hill and plain, still thickly dotted with the camps of the French.

At ten o'clock A.M., Tuesday, September 4th, we were fairly under way, with a ship in tow. The City of London, in which I had a berth, carried the head-quarters of the 2nd Division, Sir De Lacy Evans, Lieutenant-General Commanding, Colonel Percy Herbert,{71} Deputy Assistant Quarter Master General, Colonel Wilbraham, Deputy Assistant General, Captain Lane Fox, Captain Allix, aide-de-camp, Captain Gubbins, aide-de-camp, Captain Bryan, aide-de-camp, and Major Eman, 41st Regiment. The coast from Varna to Baltschik very much resembles that of Devonshire. It was as green, more richly wooded, and crowned by verdant expanses of dwarf forest trees, which undulate from the very verge of the sea to the horizon. For some four or five miles outside Varna, the French, camps dotted these pleasant-looking hills—the abode of fever and cholera. Then came the reign of solitude—not a homestead, not a path, not a sign of life visible as for the next eight or ten miles one coasted along the silent forest! Just about Baltschik the wood disappears, and the land becomes like our coast between the Forelands, with high white cliffs and bare green hills above them. The town itself, or rather the overgrown village, seemed through the glass to be as dirty and straggling as any Bulgaro-Turkish town it had been our lot to witness, and offered no temptation to go ashore. On steaming out of the bay northwards the number of steamers and sailing transports in sight was wonderful, but when, after a run of two hours, we anchored in Baltschik roads, one was almost disappointed at the spectacle, for the line of coast is so long, and the height of the cliffs inland so considerable, that the numerous vessels anchored in lines along the shore were dwarfed, as it were, by the magnitude of the landscape. It was only as the eye learnt to pick out three-deckers and large vessels—to recognize the Britannia here, the Trafalgar there, the Himalaya further on—that the grandeur of these leviathans grew upon one, just as a simple attempt to count the vessels along the coast gave an idea of their numbers. In addition to the transports, there were several coal vessels for the supply of the steamers; some laden with Turkish coal from Heraclea, and others with coal from England.

Towards evening Lord Raglan came from Varna on board H.M.S. Caradoc, Lieutenant Reynolds, which he had selected as his headquarters afloat. The Duke of Cambridge, and a portion of his staff, took up their quarters on board Her Majesty's ship Triton, Commander Lloyd. Many of the ships had to get water from the beach, to complete coaling, &c., and the masters were twice summoned on board the Emperor, to receive instructions from Captain Christie, R.N., respecting the sailing of the expedition, and the landing of the troops, &c., conveyed to him by the Rear-Admiral.

The French were nowhere visible, and we learnt, on inquiry, that their fleet, with the few transports under their charge, had left on the previous Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and were to rendezvous at Fidonisi, or Serpents' Island, off the mouth of the Danube, near which they were to be joined by the fleets from Bourgas and Varna. Their men were nearly all on board line-of-battle ships. A squadron of steamers, with a multitude of brigs and transports in tow, was visible towards evening, steering north-east, and the tricolor could be seen ere evening flying from the peaks of the steamers; they passed by Baltschik with a stiff breeze off the land on their quarter. Towards evening the wind freshened and hauled round{72} more to the northward; but the fleet rode easily at anchor all night.

Wednesday, the 6th of September, was passed in absolute inactivity, so far as the bulk of the officers and men of the expedition were concerned. There was a fresh wind to the eastward, which would have carried the transports out rapidly to sea. We thought at the time that some arrangement with the French, or some deficiency to be made good, not known to us, was the cause of the delay.[7] The ships of the various divisions were got into order as far as possible, and the officers and men were in great measure consoled for the detention by the exchange of good fare on board ship for ration beef and bread and camp living. The soldier may have the sunny side of the wall in peace, but assuredly he has the bleaker side in times of war. Wherever the sailor goes he has his roof over his head, his good bed, his warm meal. He moves with his house about him. If he gets wet on deck he has a snug hammock to get into below, or a change of dry clothing, and his butcher and his baker travel beside him. From a wet watch outside, the soldier is lucky if he gets into a wet tent; a saturated blanket is his covering, and the earth is his pillow. He must carry his cold victuals for three days to come, and eat them as best he may, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, with no change of clothing and no prospect of warmth or shelter.

These and such other topics could not fail to be discussed on board ship, and the discussion necessarily promoted a better understanding between the services, for Jack saw that these rigid gentlemen in red coats and straps and buckles, whom he is rather apt to look upon as Sybaritical and effeminate creatures, had to go through as much hard work and exposure as himself; and the soldier was not a little surprised, perhaps, to find that those whose business is upon the waters lived in comfort which he would gladly find in the best-appointed barrack. Sailors and soldiers worked together in the greatest harmony, although it was trying to the best of tempers to be turned out of bed for a stranger, and although people with only six feet square a-piece to live, move, and have their being in, when stowed away in thousands, might be expected to view their neighbours with a little reasonable dislike.

At half-past four o'clock on Thursday morning, the 7th of September, three guns from the Agamemnon fired in quick succession woke up the sleepers of the fleet. The signal-men made out through the haze of morning twilight the joyful order fluttering in the coloured bunting from the mizen of the Admiral, "Prepare to weigh anchor," and in a quarter of an hour the volumes of smoke rising from the steamers, mingled with white streaks of steam, showed that not much time would be lost in obeying it. Ere seven o'clock arrived the steamers had weighed anchor, and each was busy "dodging about" the mass of transports to pick up its own particular charges. This was a work of time, of trouble, and of difficulty. Towing is at all times an unpleasant operation, but it{73} is especially difficult to arrange the details and to get the towed vessels under weigh when there is such a mass of shipping to thread as there was at present. When the vessels were found, and the hawsers passed and secured, then came the next great difficulty—to get them into their assigned places in the several lines of the different divisions. There was some time lost before the lines were formed, and the signal "to sail" was given. With a gentle breeze off shore the flotilla started in nearly the order assigned to it. The lines were about half a mile apart, and each line was four or five miles long, for the towing power of the several steamers was so unequal, that the weaker ones tailed off and the stronger got ahead, in spite of repeated orders to keep station.

It was a vast armada. No pen could describe its effect. Ere an hour had elapsed it had extended itself over half the circumference of the horizon. Possibly no expedition so complete and so terrible in its means of destruction, with such enormous power in engines of war and such capabilities of locomotion, was ever yet sent forth. The speed was restricted to four miles and a half per hour, but with a favouring wind it was difficult to restrain the vessels to that rate, and the transports set no sail. The course lay N.E. by E., and the fleet was ordered to make for a point 40 miles due west of Cape Tarkan. On looking to the map it will be seen that the point thus indicated is about 50 miles east of Fidonisi, or Serpents' Island, off the mouth of the Danube, and that it lies about 100 miles to the north-east of Sebastopol, Cape Tarkan being a promontory of the Crimea, 63 miles north of the fortress. It was understood that this point was the rendezvous given to our French and Turkish allies. The fleet, in five irregular and straggling lines, flanked by men-of-war and war steamers, advanced slowly, filling the atmosphere with innumerable columns of smoke, which gradually flattened out into streaks and joined the clouds, adding to the sombre appearance of this well-named "Black" Sea. The land was lost to view very speedily beneath the coal clouds and the steam clouds of the fleet, and as we advanced, not an object was visible in the half of the great circle which lay before us, save the dark waves and the cold sky.

Not a bird flew, not a fish leaped, not a sail dotted the horizon. Behind us was all life and power—vitality, force, and motion—a strange scene in this so-called Russian lake! From time to time signals were made to keep the stragglers in order, and to whip up the laggards, but the execution of the plan by no means equalled the accuracy with which it had been set forth upon paper, and the deviations from the mathematical regularity of the programme were very natural. The effect was not marred by these trifling departures from strict rectilinearity, for the fleet seemed all the greater and the more imposing as the eye rested on these huge black hulls weighing down upon the face of the waters, and the infinite diversity of rigging which covered the background with a giant network.

Towards three o'clock we came up with eight French and Turkish steamers, towing about 50 small brigs and schooners under the French flag, which appeared to be laden with commissariat{74} stores, for there were very few men on board. They steered rather more to the east than we did, and we soon passed them. Soon afterwards several large French men-of-war steamers, with transports in tow, appeared in the distance on our starboard quarter (right-hand side), steering the same course with ourselves, and they seemed to get very close to the stragglers of our fleet. One could not but contrast the comfort of our soldiers in their splendid transports with the discomfort to which our brave allies must have been exposed in their small shallops of 150 and 200 tons burden.

Towards night, quick steamers were sent on in advance and on the flanks, to look out, as a matter of precaution. At daybreak they returned, and reported to the Admiral that the French and Turkish fleets were steering eastward across our bows a long way in advance. In the course of Friday morning, the 8th, the wind chopped round, and blew rather freshly right in our teeth. The result was a severe strain upon hawsers and steamers; in some instances the hawsers parted and the transports drifted away.

Our progress against a head wind and light head sea was tedious, and on taking our observation at noon we found we were in lat. 48 33 N., long. 31 10 E., which gave us an average speed of 3 7-10ths miles since we started on Thursday. At ten A.M. we steered by signal N.E. ½ N. About eleven o'clock the topgallantsails of a large fleet steering in two lines were seen above the horizon. Signals were made for the transports to close up and keep in their stations, and the Agamemnon stood on in advance to communicate with the strangers. The Britannia, towed by a man-of-war steamer and followed by the Caradoc, went in the same direction. At the same time the Napoleon, with a convoy of steamers and transports, rose well into sight on our starboard quarter. The Trafalgar, the Terrible, and the Retribution, followed the Britannia, and other men-of-war were in advance on our bows.

At half-past twelve o'clock the Turco-French fleet was clearly visible, steering nearly E.N.E. in two lines. They were all under plain sail aloft and alow—27 sail of the line, frigates and steamers. As we came up, they laid their maintopsails aback, and hove-to while we passed. They were in two lines, and the decks of those steamers we came near were covered with troops, as thickly packed as they could stand. Large boats and flats were slung over the sides and lashed amidships. Some of the Turks (who appeared to have six line-of-battle ships—one three-decker and five two-deckers, and a couple of frigates) carried troops also. We passed through the fleet slowly, and about three o'clock they were hull down on our starboard quarter. The wind went down towards evening, but the weather became raw and cold. When we came up with the French fleet, Admiral Dundas went on board the Ville de Paris, where there was a conference, at which Marshal St. Arnaud was seized with such a violent attack of his old malady that he was obliged to leave the table. It had been reported to the French General that there was a Russian camp on the Katcha, which was the spot indicated by the reconnaissance under Sir George Brown and General Canrobert as the best place for the disembarkation; and this circumstance,{75} coupled with the fact that the gallant officers in recommending the place had not duly considered the small size of the bay, and the great size of the fleet, caused some difference of opinion in the council. Lord Raglan could not attend this conference on account of the swell, which prevented his getting up the side of the Ville de Paris, and Marshal St. Arnaud requested Admiral Hamelin and Colonel Trochu to repair on board the Caradoc and ask his opinion. It was there decided that a second commission of exploration should be sent to examine the coast from Eupatoria to Sebastopol, but not until the French Marshal had faintly recommended a descent on Theodosia (Kaffa), instead of the west coast of the Crimea. General Canrobert, Colonel Trochu, Colonel Lebœuf, Admiral Bruat, General Thierry, General Bizot, General Martimprey, and Colonel Rose[8] were deputed on this service by the French. Sir John Burgoyne, Sir George Brown, Admiral Lyons, and some other officers, represented the English.

About six o'clock on Saturday morning, the Agamemnon and Caradoc, accompanied by the Samson and the Primauguet, left the fleet and steered due east, a course which would bring them to the coast of the Crimea, a little above Sebastopol. For the rest of the fleet, the greater part of Saturday was almost lost, for we did not move eight miles in the interval between eight A.M. and noon. The advanced ships were ordered by signal to lie-to for the rear of the fleet, which was very far astern. Our observation at noon gave our position lat. 44 30 N., long. 30 11 E., which is 22 miles north-west of the point, 40 miles west of Cape Tarkan, for which we were ordered to steer, and it appeared we were keeping away considerably to the westward and northward at present. From ten A.M. till three P.M. we scarcely moved a mile. Finally, all cast anchor in the middle of the Black Sea, in 25 fathoms water. The weather fine—the precious time going fast. So passed the greater part of Saturday and all day Sunday.

Night came on, but still there was no sign of the Agamemnon or of the French and English Generals-in-Chief. The French and Turkish fleets combined were ten leagues south this morning, trying to beat up to us. The Napoleon arrived and anchored near us, and several French steamers with transports in tow hove in sight. All the Generals not in the secret of our policy were sorely puzzled.

Our exact bearings at noon, verified and amended, were, lat. 45 36 north, long. 31 23 east. This was about 25 miles north and west of the original rendezvous given to the fleet at starting.

Many of the ships were so short of coal they would have had some difficulty in steaming to Sebastopol, in case it was resolved to go there.

We made very slow progress. At half-past two o'clock the French fleet was visible on the starboard or right-hand bow, hull down, and with their topmasts only visible above the horizon. They seemed to be steering towards the south-east. The sun was hot, but the wind felt cold and piercing; at times slight showers fell. The sea was{76} very smooth and tranquil, and of that peculiar dark colour which has induced so many nations to agree in giving it names of similar significance. The fleet stretched across the whole diameter of the circle—that is, they had a front of some eighteen miles broad, and gradually the irregular and broken lines tapered away till they were lost in little mounds and dots of smoke, denoting the position of the steamers far down below the horizon.

As many of the seamen in the merchant vessels and transports had been grumbling at the expected boat service, which rendered them liable to shot and shell if the enemy should oppose the landing of the troops, and some had gone so far, indeed, as to say they would not serve at all—particularly the seamen of the Golden Fleece, a communication was made to Admiral Dundas, before the departure of the ships from their anchorage, and his reply, to the following effect, was circulated and read among the crews of the transports, to their great satisfaction, on Sunday morning:—

The Caradoc and Primauguet returned at seven A.M., on the morning of the 11th September, with their attendant guardians, after a cruise along the coast; on the morning of the 10th they arrived off Sebastopol, which they reconnoitred from the distance of three miles, and then proceeded to Cape Chersonese, where the beach appeared favourable for a descent, but the timides avis opposed the proposition on the ground that the men would have to fight for their landing. Some camps were seen near the town, and on turning towards the north, and arriving off the mouth of the Belbek, the Commissioners saw a small camp on the heights over the river. It was decided that this beach and little bay were too close to the enemy for the landing. Then they went upwards to the Katcha, which Sir George Brown had recommended, but all the officers at once condemned the spot, as the beach was much too small. There were some troops visible on shore. The Caradoc next ran on to the Alma, which was found to be protected by large camps along the southern ridges—proceeding towards Eupatoria she lay off a beach between the sea and a salt-water lake about fourteen miles south of that town, which after some consideration, the Generals fixed upon as the scene of their landing, and having reconnoitred Eupatoria, they made for the rendezvous. In about half an hour after they joined us, signal was made to the transports to steer to Eupatoria. Soon afterwards this signal was recalled, and was replaced by another to "steer S.S.E." For the whole day we ran very quietly on this course without any incident worthy of notice. The night closed in very darkly. The lightning flashed in sheets and forked streams every two or three minutes, from heavy masses of clouds behind us, and the fleet was greatly scattered. We were driving through a squall{77} of rain and wind, varied by hailstorms. The thermometer was still at 65°. Our course was rather hazardous at times, and so many steamers were steering across us that great care was required to steer clear of them in the dark. The moon, which would otherwise have aided us, was quite obscured by banks of clouds.

During the night the expedition altered its course slightly to the eastward, and stood in more directly towards the land. The night was fine, but the sharpness of the air told of the approach of winter. Two heavy showers of hail, which fell at intervals in the morning, covered the decks with coatings of ice a couple of inches thick, but the sun and the broom soon removed them. Early in the morning of the 12th, just after dawn, a dark line was visible on our port (or left-hand) side, which became an object of interest and discussion, for some maintained it was land, others declared it was cloud-land. The rising sun decided the question in favour of those who maintained the substantiality of the appearance. It was indeed the shore of the Crimea.

The first impression as we drew near was, that the coast presented a remarkable resemblance to the dunes which fortify the northern shores of La Belle France against her old enemy Neptune; but when the leading ships had got within a distance of 18 or 20 miles, it was evident that the country beyond the line of beach was tolerably well cultivated to the margin of the sand. Clumps of trees, very few and wide apart, could be made out with the glass, and at last a whitewashed farm-house or fishing-station, surrounded by outhouses, was visible on the sea-shore. The land was evidently a promontory, for it tapered away at each end to a thin line, which was lifted up by the mirage above the sea horizon, and was lost in air. We had, in fact, struck on the coast south of Cape Tarkan. At seven o'clock a remarkable table-land came into view in quite an opposite direction, namely, on our starboard or right-hand side, showing that we were running into a deep indentation of the coast. By degrees, as we advanced, this hill, which was in the form of the section of a truncated cone, became a very prominent object, and was generally supposed to be Tchatyr Dagh, a remarkable mountain of some 5000 feet high, east of Sebastopol. As no course had been given to steer by during the night, the fleet scattered greatly, and was seen steering in all directions. At 9.30 A.M. the steamer leading the second division was stopped, her head lying N.E. by E. The other divisions "slowed" and stopped also, or quickened their speed, as they happened to be before or behind their positions.

At 10 A.M. a fleet of eleven men-of-war appeared in the north-west, steering towards us. Signal was made to close up and keep in order. At a quarter past ten signal was made to steer E.N.E. by compass. This unexpected change of course puzzled us all greatly, and we were thus ordered to go back on the very course we had just come. About 8 A.M. we had been in about 44 45 lat., 32 30 long., as we now began to steer away from land towards our original rendezvous. The average speed of the expedition was about three miles an hour. At one o'clock we steered due N. by W., the fleet of{78} transports and of men-of-war being visible in all directions, some going south, others east, others west, others north—in fact, it puzzled every one but the Admiral, or those who were in the secret, to form the slightest notion of what we were doing. Three three-deckers, two two-deckers, two frigates, and four steamers, ran away on our starboard side, as our head was turned from the land, to which we had been steering, and lapped over, as it were, the wing of the fleet of transports.

Out of all this apparent chaos, however, order was springing, for these changes of our course were no doubt made with the view of picking up stragglers, and sweeping up all the scattered ships. The Emperor led the way towards the N.E., and great was the grumbling and surprise of the captains, Admiralty agents, and military men with a taste for aquatics. "We have been steering S.E. all night, and now we are steering N.W., and going back again—very strange!" &c., was the cry. Others believed the expedition was only intended as a demonstration. In fact, "they knew all along" that was all that was meant, and that we were going to Anapa or Odessa, or some other pet destination of the speakers, after we had thoroughly frightened the Russ in Sebastopol. There were wise men, too, who said the expedition was a feint at that particular point, and that when we had drawn the garrison out of Sebastopol we should run suddenly down and take it with comparative ease, while deprived of its usual number of defenders. We had, however, only gone on this course for two hours when the leading ships of the lines stopped engines, the fleet passing slowly through the rear of the transports towards the southward, with a fine leading breeze. None of the French expedition were clearly visible, but some steamers and sailing ships far away to the N.W. were supposed to belong to it. At 3.15 signal was made from the Emperor to steer W.N.W. This order completely baffled even the sagest of our soothsayers, and took the wind out of the sails of all the prophets, who were rendered gloomy and disconsolate for the rest of the day. But when, in a few minutes after, the Emperor made signal to steer by compass N.E. by E., and we turned our head once more in-shore, it was felt that any attempt to divine the intentions of our rulers was hopeless. We were also desired to prepare to anchor, but in the depth of water under us—not less than forty fathoms—it was very likely that many ships would never be able to get up their anchors and cables again if we had done so, as they were not strong enough to stand so great a strain. The expedition had been got together pretty well by this time, and with a freshening breeze stood in for the land. It presented the same aspect as the other portion of it, which we had seen closely earlier in the day.

A few farm-houses were dimly discernible in the distance over the waste and low-lying plains, which seemed embrowned by great heats. Little dark specks, supposed to be cattle, could also be distinguished. Shortly before six o'clock the anchor was let go in sixteen fathoms of water, at the distance of twelve or fifteen miles from shore. The number of vessels was prodigious—forty-four steamers could be counted, though many of the French vessels were{79} not visible. When evening set in, the bands of the various regiments, the drums and fifes of those who had no bands, the trumpets of cavalry and horse artillery, and the infantry bugles formed a concert monstre, which must have been heard on shore in spite of the contrary breeze. Some of the ships lay closer in than we did, and they were so thick that collisions took place more than once, happily without any serious consequences.

The sunset was of singular beauty and splendour. Heavy masses of rich blue clouds hung in the west, through innumerable golden chasms of which the sun poured a flood of yellow glory over the dancing waters, laden with great merchantmen, with men-of-war staggering under press of canvas, and over line after line of black steamers, contending in vain to deface the splendour of the scene. When night came on, and all the ships' lights were hung out, it seemed as if the stars had settled down on the face of the waters. Wherever the eye turned were little constellations twinkling far and near, till they were lost in faint halos in the distance. The only idea one could give of this strange appearance is that suggested by the sight from some eminence of a huge city lighted up, street after street, on a very dark night. Flashes of the most brilliant lightning, however, from time to time lifted the veil of night from the ocean, and disclosed for an instant ships and steamers lying at anchor as far as could be seen. About eight o'clock, just as every one had turned in for the night, orders were sent on board to the deputy-quartermaster-general of each division respecting the preparations for the disembarkation of the men. The men seemed in excellent health and spirits. The number of fever and cholera cases, though greater than we could have wished, was not sufficient to cause any very great alarm. No doubt the voyage had done the army good, and they all looked forward with confidence to their landing next day.

The place off which we anchored on the night of Tuesday, September 12th, was marked on the charts as Schapan. It is fourteen miles distant N.N.E. from our starting-point on Tuesday at noon, so that we only ran that length the whole of the afternoon from twelve to six o'clock.

CHAPTER II.

AT six o'clock on the morning of the 13th, signal was given to weigh and proceed, and at eight o'clock the lines were formed and the expedition proceeded, steering towards the S.E. The French{80} and Turkish line-of-battle ships joined us in the course of the day. A division of the allies went on in front, and cruised towards Sebastopol. It was evident, from the course we had taken, that the expedition was going towards Eupatoria, a town situated on a low promontory of land about thirty-four miles distant from Sebastopol. Towards noon the ships of the expedition closed in with the shore. The country was flat, but numerous herds of cattle were to be seen in the plains and salt marshes, and the farm-houses became more frequent as we proceeded southwards. At noon Eupatoria bore ten miles S.E. by E. from us. We soon after saw the Cossacks in twos or threes—or at least horsemen whom every one declared to be those famous irregulars—scouring along towards the town, but there were very few of them, and they were at long intervals; now and then a farmer-looking man, in a covered cart, was visible, jogging along, as it appeared, with perfect indifference to the formidable apparition of some 400 vessels keeping company with him at the distance of some five or six miles only.

Eupatoria soon became visible. It lies on a spit of sand, and for a long time we imagined that it was defended by heavy works, for the solid stone houses close by the sea-coast were so increased by refraction and lifted up so high, that they looked like forts. The town is astonishingly clean, perhaps by contrast with Varna and Gallipoli. A large barrack was in course of erection near the town on the north side. Towards the south side were innumerable windmills, and several bathing-boxes, gaily painted, along the beach gave an air of civilization to the place, in spite of the old Turkish minarets which peered above the walls in a very dilapidated state. The chapel was a conspicuous object, and boasted of a large dome. Many square stone buildings were in view. At a quarter past three the expedition anchored off the town, at the distance of two or three miles.

We could see up the main streets of the town with our glasses very clearly. Cossacks dotted all the hills, watching us, and some of them were "driving" the cattle across the sandy hillocks towards the interior. There seemed to be a blockhouse on shore, and a kind of earthwork, near which was a flagstaff, but no flag was exhibited. The Caradoc slowly coasted by the flat and very low shore close in. A boat with Colonel Steele, Colonel Trochu, and Mr. Calvert, interpreter, proceeded towards the quay with a flag of truce, and summoned the town, which the governor surrendered at once, as he had only 200 invalids under his command. He said, very brusquely, "Nous sommes tous rendus, faites ce que vous voulez." Some Russian soldiers stood gazing on the expedition from the mounds of earth near the town, and we were amused by seeing the process of relieving guard, which was done in very good style by three regulars. They left a sentry behind, in lieu of the man whom they relieved.

There was only one vessel in the roadstead—a Tartar sloop of sixty or seventy tons. The Tribune stood leisurely in as soon as the fleet anchored, till she was within half a mile of the town. A boat put off with four men, who pulled towards the sloop, got into her,{81} and immediately hoisted a white flag; the first prize on the shore of the Crimea! All this time the people were gazing at us out of the windows, from the corners of the streets, and from the roofs of the houses.

All the vessels were drawn up in immense lines, with a front extending over nine miles, and with an unknown depth—for the rigging and sails of the distant transports belonging to the expedition were lost far below the horizon; and after we had anchored, stragglers arrived every hour. After a short conversation by signal between generals and admirals, towards eight o'clock P.M. the Agamemnon sent off boats to the steamers and transports with the following order to the quartermasters-general of division:—

These orders were obeyed, and after an interchange of rockets from the admirals, the divisions weighed in the order indicated, and slowly stood along the coast till about eight o'clock in the morning, when we anchored off Staroe Ukroplenie, or the Old Fort.

The place thus selected for our landing was a low strip of beach and shingle, cast up by the violence of the surf, and forming a sort of causeway between the sea and a stagnant salt-water lake. The lake is about one mile long, and half a mile broad, and when we first arrived, its borders and surface were frequented by vast flocks of wildfowl. The causeway was not more than two hundred yards broad, leading, at the right or southern extremity of the lake, by a gentle ascent, to an irregular table-land or plateau of trifling elevation, dotted with tumuli or barrows, such as are seen in several parts of England. Towards the sea this plateau presented a precipitous face of red clay and sandstone, varying in height from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet, and it terminated by a descent almost to the sea-level, at the distance of nearly two miles from the shores of the lake. Thence towards the south there was a low sandy beach, with a fringe of shingle raised by the action of the waves above the level of the land, and saving it from inundation. This low coast stretched along as far as the eye could reach, till it was lost beneath the base of the mountain ranges over Sebastopol. The country inland, visible from the decks of our ships, was covered with cattle, with grain in stack, with farm-houses. The stubble-fields were covered with wild lavender, southernwood, and other fragrant shrubs, which the troops collected for fuel, and which filled the air with an aromatic perfume. As we cruised towards Eupatoria, we could see the people driving their carts and busy in their ordinary occupations.{82}

Now and then some Cossacks were visible, scouring along the roads to the interior, and down south towards the menaced stronghold of the Czar; but they were not numerous, and at times it was doubtful whether the people we saw were those freebooters of the Don, or merely Crim Tartar herdsmen, armed with cattle-spears. The post carriage from Sebastopol to Odessa was also seen rolling leisurely along, and conveying, probably, news of the great armament with which the coast was menaced.

We were further disappointed to find the natives in dress and aspect very like our friends of Bulgaria. They were better kempt, and seemed better clad; but the "style" of the men was the same as that of the people with whom we had been so long and so unpleasantly familiar.

The daybreak of Thursday (September 14) gave promise of a lovely morning, but the pledge was not quite fulfilled. The sun rose from a cloudless sky. Towards noon the heat of his mid-day beams was tempered by a gentle breeze, and by some floating fleecy vapours, which turned speedily into showers of rain, and the afternoon was dark and gloomy. The vast armada, which had moved on during the night in perfect order, studded the horizon with a second heaven of stars, and, covering the face of the sea with innumerable lights, advanced parallel with the coast till it gradually closed in towards the shore near Lake Saki.

At seven A.M. most of the fleet were in shore near their prescribed positions, but it was found necessary to send the Firebrand and some other steamer to sea, in order to tow up the slower transports of men-of-war. The Emperor, which was our guiding star, did not keep exactly in her position, or the places taken by the leading steamers of the rest of the fleet were wrong, and some doubt and a little confusion arose in consequence; but the absence of an enemy rendered any slight deviations from order of comparatively trifling importance. The greatest offender against the prescribed order of disembarkation was the Admiral himself, who, instead of filling the place assigned to him in the centre of his fleet, stood out four miles from the shore, and signalled for four ships of the line to come out from among us and reconnoitre.

As the ships of our expedition drew up in lines parallel to the beach, the French fleet passed us under steam, and extended itself on our right, and ran in close to shore below the cliffs of the plateau. Their small war steamers went much nearer than ours were allowed to do, and a little after seven o'clock the first French boat put off from one of the men-of-war; not more than fifteen or sixteen men were on board her. She was beached quietly on shore at the southern extremity of the real cliff already mentioned. The crew leaped out; they formed into a knot on the strand, and seemed busily engaged for a few moments over one spot of ground, as though they were digging a grave. Presently a flag-staff was visible above their heads, and in a moment more the tricolor was run up to the top, and fluttered out gaily in the wind, while the men took off their hats, and no doubt did their "Vive l'Empereur!"{83} in good style. The French were thus the first to take possession and seisin of the Crimea.[9]

There was no enemy in sight. The most scrutinizing gaze at this moment could not have detected a hostile uniform along the coast. The French Admiral fired a gun shortly after eight o'clock, and the disembarkation of their troops commenced. In little more than an hour they got 6000 men on shore. This was very smart work, but it must be remembered that nearly all the French army were on board line-of-battle ships, and were at once carried from their decks to the land by the men-of-war's boats. The instant the French had landed a regiment, a company was pushed on to reconnoitre—skirmishers or pickets were sent on in front. As each regiment followed in column, its predecessors deployed, extended front, and advanced in light marching order en tirailleur, spreading out like a fan over the plains. It was most curious and interesting to observe their progress, and to note the rapid manner in which they were appropriating the soil. In about an hour after their first detachment had landed, nearly 9000 troops were on shore, and their advanced posts were faintly discernible between three and four miles from the beach, like little black specks moving over the cornfields, and darkening the highways and meadow paths. The Montebello carried upwards of 1400 men, in addition to her crew. The Valmy had in all 3000. The Ville de Paris and Henri Quatre were laden with men in proportion; and all the line-of-battle ships and steamers had full cargoes of troops. In fact, it was found that their small brigs and schooners were neither safe nor comfortable, and that they were better suited for carrying stores and horses than men. The fleet of French men-of-war carried more than 20,000 men. Their whole force to be landed consisted of 23,600 men.

Our army amounted to 27,000 men, who were embarked in a vast number of transports, covering a great extent of water. But they were carried in comfort and safety; and, though there was still much sickness on board, it was as nothing compared to the mortality among the closely-packed French. Perhaps no army ever was conveyed with such luxury and security from shore to shore as ours in the whole history of war. A body of French Spahis, under Lieutenant de Moleyn, were the first cavalry to land. Next morning these men attacked an advanced post, and cut off a Russian officer and a few soldiers, whom they carried back to camp.

About nine o'clock one black ball was run up to the fore of the Agamemnon and a gun was fired to enforce attention to the signal. This meant, "Divisions of boats to assemble round ships for which they are told off, to disembark infantry and artillery." In an instant the sea was covered with a flotilla of launches, gigs, cutters, splashing through the water, some towing flats, and the{84} large Turkish boats, others with horse-floats plunging heavily after them. They proceeded with as great regularity as could be expected to their appointed ships, and the process of landing commenced. Up to this moment not an enemy was to be seen; but as the boats began to shove off from the ships, five horsemen slowly rose above the ridge on the elevated ground, to the right of the strip of beach which separated the salt-water lake from the sea in front of us. After awhile four of them retired to one of the tumuli inland opposite the French fleet. The other retained his position, and was soon the cynosure of all neighbouring eyes. The Russian was within about 1100 yards of us, and through a good telescope we could watch his every action. He rode slowly along by the edge of the cliff, apparently noting the number and disposition of the fleet, and taking notes with great calmness in a memorandum book. He wore a dark green frock-coat, with a little silver lace, a cap of the same colour, a sash round his waist, and long leather boots. His horse, a fine bay charger, was a strange contrast to the shaggy rough little steeds of his followers. There they were, "the Cossacks," at last!—stout, compact-looking fellows, with sheepskin caps, uncouth clothing of indiscriminate cut, high saddles, and little fiery ponies, which carried them with wonderful ease and strength. Each of these Cossacks carried a thick lance of some fifteen feet in length, and a heavy sabre. At times they took rapid turns by the edge of the cliff in front of us—now to the left, now to the rear, of their officer, and occasionally they dipped out of sight, over the hill, altogether. Then they came back, flourishing their lances, and pointed to the accumulating masses of the French on their right, and more than half-a-mile from them, on the shore, or scampered over the hill to report progress as to the lines of English boats advancing to the beach. Their officer behaved very well. He remained for an hour within range of a Minié rifle, and making a sketch in his portfolio of our appearance, we all expected she was going to drop a shell over himself and his little party. We were glad our expectations were not realized, if it were only on the chance of the sketch being tolerably good, so that the Czar might really see what our armada was like.

Meantime the English boats were nearing the shore, not in the order of the programme, but in irregular groups; a company of a regiment of the Light Division, the 7th Fusileers, under Lieutenant-Colonel Yea, I think, landed first on the beach to the left of the cliffs;[10] then came a company of the 2nd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence: a small boat from the Britannia commanded by Lieutenant Vesey, had, however, preceded the Fusileers, and disembarked some men on the beach, who went down into the hollow at the foot of the cliffs. The Russian continued his sketching. Suddenly a Cossack crouched{85} down and pointed with his lance to the ascent of the cliffs. The officer turned and looked in the direction. We looked too, and, lo! a cocked hat rose above the horizon. Another figure, with, a similar head-dress, came also in view. The first was on the head of Sir George Brown, on foot; the second we found out to be the property of the Assistant Quartermaster-general Airey. Sir George had landed immediately after the company of the Fusileers on their right, and having called Colonel Lysons' attention to the ground where he wished the Light Division to form, he walked on towards the cliff or rising ground on the right of the salt-water lake. The scene was exciting. It was evident the Russian and the Cossack saw Sir George, but that he did not see them. The Russian got on his horse, the Cossacks followed his example, and one of them cantered to the left to see that the French were not cutting off their retreat, while the others stooped down over their saddle-bows and rode stealthily, with lowered lances, towards the Englishmen.

Sir George was in danger, but he did not know it. Neither did the Russians see the picket advancing towards the brow of the hill, for our General was not alone, Sergeant Maunsell and two privates of the 23rd had followed him as he advanced towards the hill; and they had not gone very far when Sir George ordered one of them to go back, and tell the officer commanding the company to advance, and extend his men along the brow of the hill. Sir George was busy scanning the country, and pointing out various spots to the Quartermaster-general. Suddenly the two turned and slowly descended the hill—the gold sash disappeared—the cocked hat was eclipsed—Cossacks and officers dismounted and stole along by the side of their horses. They, too, were hid from sight in a short time, and on the brow of the cliff appeared a string of native carts. General Airey had seen these arabas, and applied to Colonel Lysons to know if he should not intercept them. In about five minutes two or three tiny puffs of smoke rose over the cliff, and presently the faint cracks of a rifle were audible to the men in the nearest ships. In a few minutes more the Cossacks were flying like wind on the road towards Sebastopol, and crossing close to the left of the French lines of skirmishers.

Sir George Brown, whose sight was very indifferent, had a near escape of being taken prisoner. The Cossacks, who had been dodging him, made a dash when they were within less than a hundred yards. The General had to run, and was only saved from capture by the fire of the Fusileers. The Cossacks bolted. The first blood spilt in this campaign was that of a poor boy, an arabajee, who was wounded in the foot by the volley which dislodged them; and our capture consisted of fourteen arabas, in which were found abundance of delicious fruit and stores of firewood. The Cossacks beat the drivers to hasten them in taking the bullocks out of the carts, nor did they desist in their attempts till one of them was badly hit, and our men were close at hand. The drivers came in to us when the Cossacks rode off.

The Light Division got on shore very speedily, and were all landed, with the exception of a few companies, in an hour. The{86} First Division landed simultaneously with the leading division; the Duke of Cambridge and his staff being early on the beach, the Brigadiers Sir C. Campbell and Major-General Bentinck preceding their respective brigades. As the regiments landed, the brigades were formed in contiguous columns at quarter distance. The Light Division was on the left, the First Division the next, and so on in order towards the right. The Second Division had landed. Sir De Lacy Evans got on shore with his staff about half-past ten o'clock. By eleven o'clock, the Rifles and Fusileers had been inspected, and were marching from the left of the line, along the front of the other regiments, towards the right. They ascended the slope of the hill over the cliffs, passing by the pickets and sentries who had been placed on outpost duty by Sir George Brown, and marching straight on over the plain I have described inland.

Very amusing was it to watch the loading and unloading of the boats. A gig or cutter, pulled by eight or twelve sailors, with a paddle-box boat, flat, or Turkish pinnace in tow (the latter purchased for the service), would come up alongside a steamer or transport in which troops were ready for disembarkation. The officers of each company first descended, each man in full dress. Over his shoulder was slung his havresack, containing what had been, ere it underwent the process of cooking, four pounds and a half of salt meat, and a bulky mass of biscuit of the same weight. This was his ration for three days. Besides this, each officer carried his greatcoat, rolled up and fastened in a hoop round his body, a wooden canteen to hold water, a small ration of spirits, whatever change of under-clothing he could manage to stow away, his forage-cap, and, in most instances, a revolver. Each private carried his blanket and greatcoat strapped up into a kind of knapsack, inside which was a pair of boots, a pair of socks, a shirt, and, at the request of the men themselves, a forage-cap; he also carried his water canteen, and the same rations as the officer, a portion of the mess cooking apparatus, firelock and bayonet of course, cartouch box and fifty rounds of ball-cartridge for Minié, sixty rounds for smooth-bore arms.

As each man came creeping down the ladder, Jack helped him along tenderly from rung to rung till he was safe in the boat, took his firelock and stowed it away, removed his knapsack and packed it snugly under the seat, patted him on the back, and told him "not to be afeerd on the water;" treated "the sojer," in fact, in a very kind and tender way, as though he were a large but not a very sagacious "pet," who was not to be frightened or lost sight of on any account, and did it all so quickly, that the large paddle-box boats, containing 100 men, were filled in five minutes. Then the latter took the paddle-box in tow, leaving her, however, in charge of a careful coxswain, and the same attention was paid to getting the "sojer" on shore that was evinced in getting him into the boat; the sailors (half or wholly naked in the surf) standing by at the bows, and handing each man and his accoutrement down the plank to the shingle, for fear "he'd fall off and hurt himself." Never did men work better than our blue-jackets; especially valuable were they with horses and artillery; and their delight at having a horse to{87} hold and to pat all to themselves was excessive. When the gun-carriages stuck fast in the shingle, half a dozen herculean seamen rushed at the wheels, and, with a "Give way, my lad—all together," soon spoked it out with a run, and landed it on the hard sand. No praise can do justice to the willing labour of these fine fellows. They never relaxed their efforts as long as man or horse of the expedition remained to be landed, and many of them, officers as well as men, were twenty-four hours in their boats. Our force consisted of:—

The Light Division, Sir George Brown—2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, 7th Fusileers, 19th Regiment, 23rd Fusileers, Brigadier Major-General Codrington, 33rd Regiment, 77th Regiment, 88th Regiment, and Brigadier-General Buller.

The First Division, under the Duke of Cambridge, included the Grenadier, Coldstream, and Scots Fusileer Guards, under Major-General Bentinck, and the 42nd, 79th, and 93rd Highlanders, under Brigadier Sir C. Campbell.

The Second Division, under Sir De Lacy Evans, consisted of the 30th, 55th, and 95th, under Brigadier-General Pennefather, and the 41st, 47th, and 49th, under Brigadier-General Adams.

The Third Division, under Sir R. England, was composed of the 1st Royals, 28th, 38th, 44th, 50th, and 68th Regiments—Brigadiers Sir John Campbell and Eyre. (4th Regiment only six companies.)

The Fourth Division, under Sir George Cathcart—the 20th Regiment, 21st Regiment, Rifle Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 63rd Regiment. (46th Regiment en route; 57th Regiment en route.)

The Cavalry Division (Lord Lucan) was made up of the 4th Light Dragoons, 8th Hussars, 11th Hussars, 13th Light Dragoons, 17th Lancers, forming a Light Cavalry Brigade, under Lord Cardigan; the Scots Greys (not yet arrived here), 4th Dragoon Guards, 5th Dragoon Guards, 6th Dragoons, making the Heavy Cavalry Brigade, under Brigadier-General Scarlett.

By twelve o'clock, that barren and desolate beach, inhabited but a short time before only by the seagull and wild-fowl, was swarming with life. From one extremity to the other, bayonets glistened, and redcoats and brass-mounted shakoes gleamed in solid masses. The air was filled with our English speech, and the hum of voices mingled with loud notes of command, cries of comrades to each other, the familiar address of "Bill" to "Tom," or of "Pat" to "Sandy," and an occasional shout of laughter.

At one o'clock most of the regiments of the Light Division had moved off the beach over the hill, and across the country towards a village, to which the advanced parties of the French left had already approached. The Second Battalion of the Rifle Brigade led the way, covering the advance with a cloud of skirmishers, and pushed on to the villages of Bagaili and Kamishli, four miles and three-quarters from the beach, and lying in the road between Tchobatar and the Alma; and the other regiments followed in order of their seniority, the artillery, under Captain Anderson, bringing up the rear. One wing of the Rifles, under Major Norcott, occupied Kamishli—the other, under Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence, was in{88}stalled in Bagaili, and they were supported and connected by a small party of cavalry. By this time the rain began to fall pretty heavily, and the wind rose so as to send a little surf on the beach. The Duke of Cambridge's division followed next in order. The 2nd Division followed, and Sir De Lacy Evans and staff inspected them on the beach. Up to three o'clock we landed 14,200 men, and two batteries of artillery. Many of the staff-officers, who ought to have been mounted, marched on foot, as their horses were not yet landed. Generals might be seen sitting on powder-barrels on the beach, awaiting the arrival of "divisional staff horses," or retiring gloomily within the folds of their macintoshes. Disconsolate doctors, too, were there, groaning after hospital panniers—but too sorely needed, for more than one man died on the beach. During the voyage several cases of cholera occurred; 150 men were buried on the passage from Varna, and there were about 300 men on board not able to move when we landed. The beach was partitioned off by flagstaffs, with colours corresponding to that of each division, in compartments for the landing of each class of man and beast; but it was, of course, almost beyond the limits of possibility to observe these nice distinctions in conducting an operation which must have extended over many square miles of water. Shortly before two o'clock, Brigadier-General Rose, the Commissioner for the British Army, with Marshal St. Arnaud, rode over from the French quarters to inform Lord Raglan, by the authority of the Marshal, that "the whole of the French troops had landed." Disembarkation was carried on long after sunset, and a part of the 3rd and 4th Divisions remained on the beach and on the hill near it for the night.

All the regiments were the better for the sea voyage. The 20th and 21st Regiments and the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade looked remarkably fresh and clean, but that was accounted for, without disparagement to their companions in arms, by the circumstance of their having so recently come out, and that the polish had not been taken off them by a Bulgarian summer. The Guards had much improved in health during their sojourn on shipboard, and were in good spirits and condition.

After a short time the country people began to come in, and we found they were decidedly well inclined towards us. Of course they were rather scared at first, but before the day was over they had begun to approach the beach, and to bring cattle, sheep, and vegetables for sale. Their carts, or rather arabas, were detained, but liberally paid for; and so well satisfied were the owners, that they went home, promising increased supplies to-morrow. The men were apparently of pure Tartar race, with small eyes very wide apart, nose very much sunk, and a square substantial figure. They generally wore turbans of lambswool, and jackets of sheepskin with the wool inwards. They spoke indifferent Turkish, and were most ready with information respecting their Russian masters, by whom they had been most carefully disarmed. A deputation of them waited on Lord Raglan to beg for muskets and powder to fight the Muscovite.

They told us that the ground round Sebastopol had been mined for{89} miles, but such rumours are always current about a fortress to be defended, and Russian mines not better constructed than those at Silistria could not do much harm. They said, too, that the cholera, of which we had had such dreadful experience, had been most fatal at Sebastopol, that 20,000 of the troops and seamen were dead, and that the latter had been landed to man the forts. They estimated the force between us and Sebastopol at about 15,000 men, and the garrison at 40,000 more. They added, however, that there was an army south of Sebastopol, which had been sent to meet an expected attack on Kaffa. On the whole, the information we at first obtained was encouraging, and the favourable disposition of the people, and their willingness to furnish supplies, were advantages which had not been expected.

While the troops were disembarking, one of the reconnoitring steamers returned with news of a Russian camp situated near the beach, about eight miles south of the place where we were landing. The Samson, the Fury, and the Vesuvius, in company with three French steamers, at once proceeded to the spot. They found a camp of about 6000 men formed at a mile's distance from the sea. The steamers opened fire with shell at 2500 yards, knocking them over right and left, and driving the soldiery in swarms out of the camp, which was broken up after less than an hour's firing. The squadron returned to the fleet, having effected this service, and were ordered to cruise off Sebastopol.

Few of those who were with the expedition will forget the night of the 14th of September. Seldom or never were 27,000 Englishmen more miserable. No tents had been sent on shore, partly because there had been no time to land them, partly because there was no certainty of our being able to find carriage for them in case of a move. Towards night the sky looked very black and lowering; the wind rose, and the rain fell in torrents. The showers increased in violence about midnight, and early in the morning fell in drenching sheets, which pierced through the blankets and greatcoats of the houseless and tentless soldiers. It was their first bivouac—a hard trial enough, in all conscience, worse than all their experiences of Bulgaria or Gallipoli, for there they had their tents, and now they learned to value their canvas coverings at their true worth. Let the reader imagine old generals[11] and young gentlemen exposed to the violence of pitiless storms, with no bed but the reeking puddle under the saturated blankets, or bits of useless waterproof wrappers, and the twenty-odd thousand poor fellows who could not get "dry bits" of ground, and had to sleep or try to sleep, in little lochs and watercourses—no fire to cheer them, no hot grog, and the prospect of no breakfast;—let him imagine this, and add to it that the nice "change of linen" had become a wet abomination, which weighed the poor men's kits down, and he will admit that this "seasoning" was of rather a violent character—particularly as it came after all the luxuries of dry ship stowage.{90} Sir George Brown slept under a cart tilted over. The Duke of Cambridge, wrapped in a waterproof coat, spent most of the night riding about among his men. Sir De Lacy Evans was the only general whose staff had been careful enough to provide him with a tent. In one respect the rain was of service: it gave the men a temporary supply of water; but then it put a fire out of the question, even if enough wood could have been scraped together to make it. The country was, however, destitute of timber.

During the night it blew freshly from the west, a heavy sea tumbled into the bay, and sent a high surf upon the beach, which much interfered with the process of landing cavalry and artillery on the 15th. Early in the day signal was made to the steamers to get up steam for Eupatoria, and it was no doubt intended to land the cavalry and artillery there, in consequence of the facility afforded by a pier and harbour; but towards noon the wind went down, and the swell somewhat abated. Several valuable animals were drowned in an attempt to land some staff horses. Lord Raglan lost one charger and another swam off seaward, and was only recovered two miles from the shore. Some boats were staved and rendered useless, and several others were injured by the roll of the surf on the beach; nor did the horse-boats and flats escape uninjured. Operations went on slowly, and the smooth days we had wasted at sea were bitterly lamented.

The work was, however, to be done, and in the afternoon orders were given to land cavalry. For this purpose it was desirable to approach the beach as close as possible, and a signal to this effect was made to the cavalry steamers. The Himalaya in a few minutes ran in so far that she lay inside every ship in our fleet, with the exception of the little Spitfire, and immediately commenced discharging her enormous cargo of 390 horses, and nearly 700 men. The attendance of cutters, launches, paddle-box boats, and horse-floats from the navy was prompt, and the seamen of the Royal and mercantile marine rivalled each other in their efforts. Never did men work so hard, so cheerfully, or so well. The horses, too, were so acclimated to ship life—they were so accustomed to an existence of unstable equilibrium in slings, and to rapid ascents and descents from the tight ropes, that they became comparatively docile. Besides this, they were very tired from standing for fourteen days in one narrow box, were rather thin and sickly, and were glad of change of air and position.

Before the disembarkation had concluded for the day, signal was made for all ships to "land tents." It need not be said that this order was most gratefully received. But alas! the order was countermanded, and the tents which had been landed were sent back to the ships again. Our French allies, deficient as they had been in means of accommodation and stowage and transport, had yet managed to land their little scraps of tents the day they disembarked. Whilst our poor fellows were soaked through and through, their blankets and greatcoats saturated with wet, and without any change of raiment, the French close at hand, and the Turks, whose tents were much more bulky than our own, were lying snugly under{91} cover. The most serious result of the wetting was, however, a great increase in illness among the troops.

CHAPTER III.

IT was decided to garrison Eupatoria, and Captain Brock and 500 Marines were sent away for the purpose, in conjunction with a French, force. On the 15th of September, signal had been made from the Emperor for all ships to send their sick on board the Kangaroo. Before evening she had about 1500 invalids in all stages of suffering on board. When the time for sailing arrived, the Kangaroo hoisted, in reply to orders to proceed, this signal—"It is a dangerous experiment." The Emperor then signalled—"What do you mean?" The reply was—"The ship is unmanageable." All the day she was lying with the signal up—"Send boats to assistance;" and at last orders were given to transfer some of her melancholy freight to other vessels also proceeding to Constantinople. Many deaths occurred on board—many miserable scenes took place which it would be useless to describe. It was clear, however, that neither afloat nor on shore was the medical staff sufficient. More surgeons were required, both in the fleet and in the army. Often—too often—medical aid could not be obtained at all; and it frequently came too late.

Provisions were at first plentiful. Sixty arabas, laden with flour for Sebastopol, were seized on the 15th of September. More came in for sale or hire the next day: horses also were brought in, and men offered themselves as servants. A market was established for meat and vegetables, and the confidence of the country people in their new customers was confirmed by prompt payment and good treatment. A village near the head-quarters of the Light Division was sacked by some Zouaves, who deprived the inhabitants of everything they could lay their hands upon, in spite of the exertions of the Rifles who were stationed in the place. Lord Raglan gave strict orders that no French soldiers should be permitted to enter the village.

On the evening of Saturday, September 16th, a lengthened dark line was seen approaching along the sea coast. As it came nearer, it was resolved by the telescope into a train of Spahis, under the command of some cavalry officers, driving in immense flocks of sheep and cattle for the use of their troops in the camp situated on the extreme right of our lines. First came a drove of some hundreds of sheep captured, natives, drivers, and all guarded in the rear by some Spahis, flourishing their long lances in high delight.{92} Close after them appeared a mighty herd of cattle, tossing their horns and bellowing, as the remorseless Spahis goaded them on over the hard shingle, and circled like drovers' dogs around them. Next came the French officers in command of the party. They were followed by a string of country carts driven by sad-looking Cimmerians, who seemed very anxious to be out of the hands of their Arab captors. Lastly appeared, with all the gravity of their race, a few camels, which the Spahis had laden heavily with grain. Such razzias caused an amount of evil quite disproportionate to any paltry gains made by plundering those poor people. They frightened them from our markets, and, though for the moment successful, threatened to deprive us of the vast supplies to be obtained from their goodwill. The much-abused Turks remained quietly in their well-ordered camp, living contentedly on the slender rations supplied from their fleet. Their appearance was very acceptable to the large Mussulman population, and they were very proud of serving on equal terms with their French and English allies.

On the 17th the disembarkation of stores continued and was completed, and the tents were carried up to the various divisions with great labour by large fatigue parties. The siege train still remained on board ship, and it was intended to land it at the mouth of the river Belbeck, close to Sebastopol, as we could not stay to put it ashore at Old Fort. The Cossacks came round our outposts, and the sky at night was reddened by the glare of their burnings. The Tartars said the Russians had 15,000 men posted in an entrenched camp on the Alma river, about twelve miles distant, on the road to Sebastopol. A troop of the 11th Hussars, who went out reconnoitring, were pursued by a regiment of Cossacks, but retired in order without any casualty. Captain Creswell, an officer of the regiment, who was a great favourite with his comrades, died of cholera in the little village in which his troop was quartered.

At twelve o'clock on the night of Monday, September 18th, orders were given by Lord Raglan that the troops should strike tents at daybreak, and that all tents should be sent on board the ships of the fleet. M. de Bazancourt asserts that the French Marshal was ready to march on the 17th, and that he all along hoped to do so, but that the English were not prepared, as they had an immense quantity of impedimenta. He further says that it was arranged between the Generals to defer the march till 11 A.M. on the 18th, but that we again delayed the movement when the time came, and that Marshal St. Arnaud wrote to Lord Raglan to say he would move without him if he was not ready the following morning.

At three o'clock in the morning of the 19th, the camp was roused by the réveil, and the 50,000 sleepers woke into active life. The boats from the ships lined the beach to receive the tents which were again returned to the ships. The English commissariat officers struggled in vain with the very deficient means at their disposal to meet the enormous requirements of an army of 26,000 men, for the transport of baggage, ammunition, and food; and a{93} scene, which to an unpractised eye seemed one of utter confusion, began and continued for several hours, relieved only by the steadiness and order of the regiments as they paraded previous to marching.

The right of the allied forces was covered by the fleet, which moved along with it in magnificent order, darkening the air with innumerable columns of smoke, ready to shell the enemy should they threaten to attack our right, and commanding the land for nearly two miles from the shore.

It was nine o'clock ere the whole of our army was ready. The day was warm. On the extreme right and in advance, next the sea, was the 1st Division of the French army, under Bosquet, marching by battalion in columns par peloton, the artillery being in the centre. The 2nd Division, under Canrobert, marching in column by division, protected the right flank, which, however, was in no need of such defence, as it was covered by the allied fleets. The 3rd Division was on the left flank of the French army. The 4th Division and the Turks formed the rear guard. The formation of our allies was of a lozenge shape, with the 1st Division at the salient angle, the 2nd and 3rd Divisions at the lateral angles, and the 4th Division at the other angle, the baggage being in the centre. Next to Prince Napoleon's Division was the 2nd British, under Sir De Lacy Evans, with Sir Richard England's (the 3rd) Division in his rear in support. On a parallel line with the 2nd Division marched the Light Division, under Sir George Brown, with the 1st Division under the Duke of Cambridge in support in his rear. The order of the English advance was by double columns of companies from the centre of divisions. The 8th Hussars and 17th Lancers moved on our left flank, to protect it, and the 13th Light Dragoons and 11th Hussars, in extended order, preceded the infantry, so as to cover our front. The commissariat and baggage followed behind the 3rd and 1st Divisions, and were covered by the 4th Division as a rear guard. Part of the 4th Division and of the 4th Light Dragoons were left to protect and clear the beach of stores. They joined the army late on the evening of the 20th.

The country beyond the salt lake, near which we were encamped, was entirely destitute of tree or shrub, and consisted of wide plains, marked at intervals of two or three miles with hillocks and long irregular ridges of hills running down towards the sea at right angles to the beach. It was but little cultivated, except in the patches of land around the unfrequent villages built in the higher recesses of the valleys. Hares were started in abundance, and afforded great sport to the soldiers whenever they halted, and several were fairly hunted down among the lines. All oxen, horses, or cattle, had been driven off by the Cossacks. The soil was hard and elastic, and was in excellent order for artillery. The troops presented a splendid appearance. The effect of these grand masses of soldiery descending the ridges of the hills, rank after rank, with the sun playing over forests of glittering steel, can never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. Onward the torrent of war swept; wave after wave, huge{94} stately billows of armed men, while the rumble of the artillery and tramp of cavalry accompanied their progress.

After a march of an hour a halt took place for fifty minutes, during which Lord Raglan, accompanied by a very large staff, Marshal St. Arnaud, Generals Bosquet, Forey, and a number of French officers, rode along the front of the columns. The men of their own accord got up from the ground, rushed forward, and column after column rent the air with three thundering English cheers. It was a good omen. As the Marshal passed the 55th Regiment, he exclaimed, "English, I hope you will fight well to-day!" "Hope!" exclaimed a voice from the ranks, "sure you know we will!" Many sick men fell out, and were carried to the rear. It was a painful sight—a sad contrast to the magnificent appearance of the army in front, to behold litter after litter borne past to the carts, with the poor sufferers who had dropped from illness and fatigue. However, the march went on, grand and irresistible. At last, the smoke of burning villages and farm-houses announced that the enemy in front were aware of our march. It was melancholy to see the white walls of the houses blackened with smoke—the flames ascending through the roofs of peaceful homesteads—and the ruined outlines of deserted hamlets.

Presently, from the top of a hill, a wide plain was visible, beyond which rose a ridge darkened here and there by masses which the practised eye recognised as cavalry. It was our first view of the enemy, and we soon lost sight of them again. On the left of the plain, up in a recess formed by the inward sweep of the two ridges, lay a large village in flames; right before us was a neat white house unburnt, though the outhouses and farm-yard were burning. This was the Imperial Post-house of Bouljanak, just twenty miles from Sebastopol, and some of our officers and myself were soon busily engaged in exploring the place.

The house was deserted and gutted. Only a picture of a saint, bunches of herbs in the kitchen, and a few household utensils, were left; and a solitary pea-hen stalked sadly about the threshold, which soon fell a victim to a revolver. A small stream ran past us, which was an object of delight to our thirsty soldiers who had marched more than eight miles from their late camp. After a short halt for men and horses by the stream, over which the post-road was carried by a bridge which the enemy had left unbroken for the passage of our artillery, the army pushed on again. The cavalry (about 500 men of the 8th Hussars, the 11th Hussars, and 13th Light Dragoons) pushed on in front, and on arriving about a mile beyond the post-house, we clearly made out the Cossack Lancers on the hills in front. Lord Cardigan threw out skirmishers in line, who covered the front at intervals of ten or twelve yards from each other. The Cossacks advanced to meet us in like order, man for man, the steel of their long lances glittering in the sun. They were rough-looking fellows, mounted on sturdy little horses; but the regularity of their order and the celerity of their movements showed that they were by no means despicable foes. As our skirmishers advanced, the{95} Cossacks halted at the foot of the hill. From time to time a clump of lances rose over the summit of the hill and disappeared.

Lord Cardigan was eager to try their strength, and permission was given to him to advance somewhat nearer; but as he did so, dark columns of cavalry appeared in the recesses of the hills. Lord Lucan therefore ordered the cavalry to halt, gather in their skirmishers, and retire slowly. When our skirmishers halted, the Cossacks commenced a fire of carabines from their line of vedettes, which was quite harmless. Few of the balls came near enough to let the whiz be heard. I was riding between the cavalry and the skirmishers, with Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson, R.A., Captain Fellowes, 12th Lancers, Dr. Elliott, R.A., and we were looking out anxiously for the arrival of Maude's Troop, when the Russians, emboldened by our halt, came over the brow of the hill, and descended the slope in three columns, the centre of which advanced nearer than the others.

"Now," said Dickson, "we'll catch it. These fellows mean mischief." I conceived that it would be a very pleasant thing to look at, whatever they meant. Our skirmishers, who had replied smartly to the fire of the Cossacks, but without effect, retired and joined their squadrons. At every fifty paces our cavalry faced. Fellowes rode off to quicken the advance of the artillery. Suddenly one of the Russian squares opened—a spurt of white smoke rose out of the gap, and a round shot, which first pitched close to my horse and covered me with dust, tore over the column of cavalry behind, and rolled away between the ranks of the riflemen in the rear, just as they came in view. In another instant a second shot bowled right through the 11th Hussars, and knocked over a horse, taking off his rider's leg above the ankle. Another and another followed. Meantime the C Troop followed by the I Troop, galloped over the hillock, but were halted by Lord Raglan's order at the base in rear of the cavalry on the left flank.

Our cavalry was drawn up as targets for the enemy's guns, and had they been of iron they could not have been more solid and immovable. The Russian gunners were rather slow, but their balls came bounding along, quite visible as they passed, right from the centre of the cavalry columns. After some thirty rounds from the enemy, our artillery, having cleared their front, opened fire. Captain Brandling laid the first gun, No. 5, and fired with so true an aim that the shell was seen to burst right over a Russian gun, and apparently to shut it up. All our shells were not so successful as the first, but one, better directed than the rest, burst right in the centre of a column of light infantry, which the Russians had advanced to support their cavalry. Our fire became so hot that the enemy retired in fifteen minutes after we opened on them, and manœuvring on our left with their light cavalry, seemed to threaten us in that direction; but Captains Maude and Henry having shifted their guns so as to meet their front, the enemy finally withdrew over the hills, and seemed to fall back on the Alma.

While this affair was going on the French had crept up on the right, and surprised a body of Russian cavalry with a round{96} from a battery of nine-pounders, which scattered them in all directions.

It is impossible to form an accurate notion of the effect of our fire, but it must have caused the Russians a greater loss than they inflicted on us. There is reason to believe they lost about twelve men killed, thirty-five wounded, and thirty-two horses hors de combat. We lost six horses, and four men were wounded. Two men lost their legs. The others, up to yesterday, though injured severely, were not in danger. A sergeant in the 11th Hussars rode coolly to the rear with his foot dangling by a piece of skin to the bone, and told the doctor he had just come to have his leg dressed. Another trooper behaved with equal fortitude, and refused the use of a litter to carry him to the rear, though his leg was broken into splinters.

When the Russians had retired beyond the heights orders were given to halt and bivouac for the night, and our tired men set to work to gather weeds for fuel. So ended the affair of the Bouljanak. Lord Cardigan was, it is said, anxious to charge, but received most positive orders from Lord Lucan not to do so. Lord Raglan was anxious not to bring on any serious affair in the position in which the army was placed, and the cavalry were ordered to retire towards the Bouljanak, their retreat being supported by the 1st Brigade Light Division, and part of the 2nd Division.

As our skirmishers retired and formed, the Cossacks raised a derisive yell, but did not attempt to pursue or molest them. It is now known that this was a reconnaissance made by the General Kiriakoff with the 2nd Brigade of the 17th Division, No. 4 Light Field Battery, the 2nd Brigade of the 6th Division of Cavalry, consisting of the Saxe Weimar and another Regiment of Hussars, 900 Don Cossacks, and one Cossack battery. The infantry kept out of sight behind the ridge, and we were not aware of their presence in such force.

As soon as the rations of rum and meat had been served out, the casks were broken up, and the staves used to make fires for cooking, aided by nettles and long grass. At night the watch-fires of the Russians were visible on our left and front. It was cold and dreary, and if I could intrude the recital of the sorrows of a tentless, baggageless man wandering about in the dark from regiment to regiment in hope of finding his missing traps,[12] I might tell a tale amusing enough to read, the incidents of which were very distressing to the individual concerned. The night was damp, the watch-fires were mere flashes, which gave little heat, and barely sufficed to warm the rations; but the camp of British soldiers is ever animated by the very soul of hospitality; and the wanderer was lucky enough to get a lodging on the ground beside Colonel Yea, of the 7th Fusileers, who was fortunate enough to have a little field-tent, and a bit of bread and biscuit to spare after a march of ten miles and a fast of ten hours.{97}

All night arabas continued to arrive, and soldiers who had fallen out or gone astray. Sir George Brown, Sir De Lacy Evans, the Brigadier-Generals, and staff-officers, went about among their divisions ere the men lay down. It was admitted that, as a military spectacle, the advance of our troops, and the little affair of our artillery, as well as the management of the cavalry, formed one of the most picturesque and beautiful that could be imagined.

All night we could see the Russian position on the Alma clearly defined by the watch-fires, which illuminated the sky. A heavy dew fell, but the night was clear, and many a debate did we hold as to the strength of the enemy—of the ground they occupied—of their qualities as soldiers. It was by no means sure that the Russian cavalry might not beat up our quarters during the night, and the cavalry were placed in advance, and the 1st Brigade Light Division supported them, lying down in rear. There is every reason to be thankful that they gave us a quiet night, for an alarm on the part of an enemy who knew the ground might have greatly distressed us, at little risk to them. Lord Raglan and part of his staff occupied the rooms of the deserted post-house at Bouljanak, which were tolerably comfortable. Colonel Lagondie, of the Head-quarters Staff, who had been sent by Lord Raglan to take a message to Prince Napoleon, to place his division nearer to Sir De Lacy Evans, was taken prisoner, owing to his having mistaken a party of Cossacks for English cavalry. When the armies halted, the French had their right resting a good deal in advance towards the Alma, so that they were nearer to it than we were. The line of the armies was in an oblique position, the English on the left being thrown back on the Bouljanak, and the French on the right being a good deal in advance of it.

CHAPTER IV.

WITH early morning on Tuesday, September 20th, the troops were up and stirring; but the march did not begin for some hours afterwards, and this circumstance has given rise to severe strictures by several French writers on the conduct of our generals on the occasion. At 5 o'clock on the evening of the 19th, says M. de Bazancourt, M. St. Arnaud convened the French Generals before his tent, and explained to them verbally his plan of battle, concerted with the English Commander-in-Chief. This plan was that the English army should execute "a turning movement on the Russian right, whilst its attention was seriously drawn on its left by a French division, and that the bulk of the army should make a powerful{98} effort to force the Russian centre." General Bosquet, who had charge of the French right, consisting of the 2nd Division, supported by the Turks, was to turn the Russian left by the abrupt slopes, "judged (by the Russians) to be inaccessible," and therefore not defended by artillery. The 1st and 3rd Divisions were to assault the centre of the position—the 4th Division forming the reserve. The hour of starting was fixed as follows:—The French right wing at 5.30 A.M.; the left wing, formed by the English, at 6 A.M.; the centre at 7 A.M. Having given these explanations to his generals, M. St. Arnaud sent Colonel Trochu, with General Rose, across to Lord Raglan, to inform him of the plan, and the hours fixed for the march of the troops, which Lord Raglan "accepted entirely" in detail. On this statement it may be remarked, that if the plan had been "concerted" between the Generals, as the French writer declares, there was no necessity for Lord Raglan's acceptance of a proposition which he had, conjointly with another, previously agreed to. In order to obtain unity of action in the allied movements Prince Napoleon and General Canrobert received orders to communicate with Lord Raglan and with Sir De Lacy Evans, who commanded the 2nd Division, immediately in proximity with the French.

The French writer proceeds:—"At 5.30 the 2nd Division quitted its bivouac, and descended into the plain towards the Alma, which it reached at 6.30, but no movement was visible among the English army. General Canrobert and Prince Napoleon, astonished at this immobility, so contrary to the instructions, went in all haste to Sir De Lacy Evans, whom they found in his tent, and expressed their astonishment at a delay which might gravely compromise the success of the day. 'I have not received the order,' replied Sir De Lacy Evans. They were at once obliged to arrest the march of Bosquet's division, and on informing the Marshal, who was already mounted, of what had passed, he sent over a staff officer, Major Renson, to order them to wait for the English troops, who were en retard, and despatched Colonel Trochu in all haste to Lord Raglan, whom he found on horseback, although the English troops were still in the encampment as he passed the lines, and not at all prepared for the march as agreed upon. It was half-past 7 o'clock when Colonel Trochu reached the head-quarters of our army; and when Lord Raglan had received the message which the Marshal sent, to the effect that he thought, after what his lordship said to the Colonel the night before, that the English should push on in front at 6 o'clock, he said with that calm which distinguished him,—'I am giving orders at this moment, and we are just about to start. Part of my troops did not arrive at their bivouac till late at night. Tell the Marshal that at this moment the orders are being carried all along the line.'" It will be observed that General Evans was not only not asked for his opinion in concerting the plan of attack, but that he was not even made acquainted with it. This is the more inexplicable, that General Evans' Division, from its position, would necessarily have to co-operate with the French. As it is desirable that the point of order as to this march should{99} be fully illustrated, I think it best to let Sir De Lacy Evans speak for himself.

"Shortly after daybreak on the morning of this battle his Imperial Highness Prince Napoleon and General Canrobert did me the honour to come into my tent to confer on the co-operation of my division with that of the Prince in the ensuing conflict. They informed me that this co-operation had been agreed to the previous evening between the two commanders-in-chief, expressed surprise that I had not been made acquainted with it, and showed me a well-executed plan by the French staff of the Russian position, and of the proposed lines of movement of the allied columns of attack.

"According to this plan, General Bosquet's troops and the Turks, supported by the powerful fire of the shipping, were to turn the enemy's left. The second British division, that of the Prince, and two other French divisions, were to attack their centre. The whole of the remainder of the British army was to turn the enemy's right.

"I expressed the very great pleasure I should have in fulfilling my share of these operations, and with this view sent forthwith to Lord Raglan for permission—which was given—to place at once my right as proposed, in contact with the left of the Prince, which was promptly done.

"About three hours, however, elapsed before the armies (excepting the corps of General Bosquet) received orders to advance. To the unavoidable want of unity in command this delay was probably attributable.

"But before moving off, both head-quarter staffs passed along the front. On reaching my division Lord Raglan expressed to me a dissent from part of the plan alluded to, not necessary to observe on here; mentioning also, in the course of his remarks, a disposition he supposed to exist on the part of the Marshal or the French chiefs to appropriate me and my division altogether, which he could not allow; that he had no objection to my communicating and co-operating with and regulating my advance by that of the Prince's division, but could not consent to my receiving orders through any one but himself.

"On hearing this, I requested him to send to acquaint the Marshal that such was his lordship's desire, as I believed a different expectation was entertained, which, if not removed, might lead during the action to misunderstanding. This his lordship immediately did. And it was arranged that Major Claremont, one of the British commissioners with the French army, was to be the medium of any communications to me which the French chiefs might find it desirable to make.

"The armies advanced. After about three miles a halt for a short interval took place by order of the commander of the force. On the arrival of the Second Division in front of the village of Bourliouk, which, having been prepared for conflagration by the Russians, became suddenly, for some hundred yards, an impenetrable blaze, Major Claremont came to me in great haste, to say{100} from the Marshal that a part of the French army, having ascended the heights on the south of the river, became threatened by large bodies of Russians, and might be compromised, unless the attention of the enemy were immediately drawn away by pressing them in our front.

"I made instant dispositions to conform to this wish—sending at the same time, as was my duty, an officer of my staff (Colonel the Hon. P. Herbert) to Lord Raglan, who was then a short distance in our rear, for his lordship's approval—which was instantly granted."

"It was," says M. de Bazancourt, in the next paragraph, "10.30 before Colonel Trochu announced that the English were ready to march, and the result was that it was impossible to execute the original plan of battle," for the enemy had full time to counteract the dispositions of the army, and Menschikoff, seeing that Bosquet's attack was of secondary importance, weakened his left wing to reinforce his centre and his right. At 11 o'clock Bosquet received the order to march, which was countermanded soon afterwards, as he was still too far in advance, and whilst the halt took place, that active and able general made a reconnaissance, the first of the day, of the enemy's position, and discovered two passes to the heights in front—one a mere path on the mountain side, close to the sea; the second about two-thirds of a mile to the left of that path, running from the burning village of Almatamak, and ascending the heights by a very narrow ravine. It was plain that infantry could get up, but it seemed very doubtful if guns could be brought up the second of these passes to the heights, and the first was utterly impracticable for artillery. One of the Russian officers, speaking of this battle, says that the French, in making this reconnaissance, brought up a large white stone, and fixed it on the north bank of the river; but I think it much more likely that it was the white cart belonging to Colonel Desaint, the topographical officer attached to the French army, for it is not likely that our allies would have taken such trouble as to move down an enormous stone for no possible object.

It appears somewhat strange that no reconnaissance was made of the Russian position by the generals. They did not reconnoitre the Alma, nor did they procure any information respecting the strength of the enemy or of the ground they occupied. They even concerted their plan before they had seen the enemy at all, relying on the bravery of the troops, not only to force the Russians from their lines, but, if necessary, to swim, or to ford a stream of unknown depth, with steep rotten banks, the bridges across which might, for all they knew, and certainly ought, according to the practice of war, to have been effectually destroyed by the enemy, so as to make the passage of guns all but impossible. We shall first follow the French attack. On returning to his troops, Bosquet, with the brigade of d'Autemarre, followed by its artillery, moved on the village, whilst the brigade of General Bouat was directed to march to the very mouth of the river, and to ascend by the first of the paths indicated, after having crossed the shallow bar, in single{101} file, up to their waists on a sort of narrow rib of hard sand which had been discovered by the officers of the Roland. The artillery of the brigade, being unable to pass, was sent back to join that of d'Autemarre's brigade; and the soldiers of Bouat's brigade, having crossed the river, commenced to climb up the steep paths to the top of the opposite height without meeting any obstruction from the enemy, who had, indeed, been driven away from the seaside by the heavy guns of the steamers.

The brigade of d'Autemarre, which passed the Alma without any difficulty, by the bridge close to the burnt village of Almatamak, moving forward at the same time with great celerity, swarmed up the very steep cliffs on the opposite side, and gaining the heights in a few minutes, after immense exertions, crowned the summit, and dispersed a feeble troop of Cossacks who were posted there. It will be seen that the French right had thus been permitted to ascend the very difficult heights in front of them without opposition from the enemy; and although the cliffs were so precipitous as to create considerable difficulties to even the most active, hardy, and intelligent troops in scaling their rugged face, yet it would seem very bad generalship on the part of Prince Menschikoff to have permitted them to have established themselves on the plateau, if we did not know, by the angry controversy which has taken place between him, General Kiriakoff, and Prince Gortschakoff I., that it was part of his plan to allow a certain number of battalions to gain the edge of the cliffs, and then, relying on the bayonet, to send heavy masses of infantry against them and hurl them down into the Alma, and the ravines which run towards its banks. General Bosquet, when he observed this success, at once spurred up the steep road of which mention has already been made; and Major Barral, who commanded the artillery, having satisfied himself that the guns could just be brought up by the most tremendous exertions, orders were given for their advance, and they were, by prodigious efforts of horses and infantry soldiers, urged up the incline, and placed on the plateau at right angles to the line of the cliffs, so as to enfilade the Russians, on whom, protected by the 3rd Zouaves, who lay down in a small ravine about a hundred yards in front, they at once opened fire.

Prince Menschikoff, surprised by the extraordinary rapidity of this advance, and apprized of its success by the roar of the French guns, ordered up three batteries of eight pieces each to silence the French fire, and to cover an advance of his infantry against the two brigades which were forming on his left; and finding that the French maintained themselves against this superior fire, in a rage despatched two field batteries to crush them utterly. These guns were badly managed, and opened in line at the distance of 900 yards, and the fire, for nearly an hour, was confined to a duel of artillery, in which the French, though suffering severely, kept their ground with great intrepidity and courage. All at once the Russians ordered some cavalry and a field battery to menace the right of the line of French guns; but Bouat's brigade having pushed on to meet them, and a few well-directed shells having burst among{102} the horsemen, they turned round and retired with alacrity. According to the concerted plan, the Division Canrobert and the Division Napoleon were not to attack till the Division Bosquet had gained the heights, and were engaged with the enemy. The directions given by the Marshal to the Generals ere they advanced were simply, "Keep straight before you, and follow your own inspiration for your manœuvres. We must gain these heights. I have no other instructions to give to men on whom I rely." On hearing the first guns of Bosquet's artillery, the French, in the centre and in the left, deployed and advanced, covered by a number of riflemen. The 1st Zouaves, under Colonel Bourbaki, at once rushed to the front, driving before them a line of Russian riflemen and skirmishers placed among the orchard trees and rivers which skirted the deep banks of the Alma, and availing themselves of the branches of these trees to swing themselves across the narrow stream into which others plunged up to the waist. The Russian regiment of Moscow came down the opposite slopes to support their skirmishers, but were driven back with loss by the sudden fire of the batteries of the First Division, that had just come into action. Having thus cleared the way, the 1st and 9th battalions of Chasseurs, the 7th of the line, and the 1st Zouaves advanced amid a storm of grape, round shot, and musketry up the high banks before them, at the other side of which were deployed masses of the enemy, concealed from view in the ravines and by the inequalities of the ground.

At the same time, the Prince's division advancing towards Bourliouk, which was in flames, was met by a very serious fire of riflemen and skirmishing parties of infantry from the vineyards and rugged ground on the other side of the stream, and by a plunging fire of artillery, which was answered by the batteries of his division; but, after a short pause, the first line, consisting of Cler's Zouaves and the infantry of marine, supported by the second line under General Thomas, passed the Alma and drove back the enemy, who opened a masked battery upon them, which occasioned considerable loss. Canrobert's division, meantime, was compelled to attack without the aid of its artillery; for the river in their front was not practicable for guns, and they were obliged to be carried round to the right to follow the road by which Bosquet's batteries had already reached the summit; but the column pushed on energetically, and forming on the crest of the plateau by battalions, in double columns on two lines, ready to form square under the fire of the enemy's artillery, which had been engaged with that of the French second division, drove back the Russian regiments in front, which, on retiring, formed in square in front of their right flank. It was then that the officers perceived a white stone tower, about 800 yards on their left, behind which was formed a dense mass of the enemy's infantry. These with great precision advanced, at the same time pouring in a tremendous fire, at the distance of 200 yards, upon Canrobert's division, which was, as we have seen, left without its artillery. The general, perceiving his danger, sent off a staff-officer to Bosquet's division, and a battery, commanded by Captain. Fievet, coming up to his assistance in all haste, opened fire with{103} grape on the ponderous mass of the enemy, checking their fire, whilst Bosquet, by a flank movement, threatened to take its battalions in the rear.

The third division, with equal success and greater losses, attacking a mamelon occupied in force by the enemy, drove them back with great intrepidity: but it was evident by the movements of the Russians that they were about to make a great effort to save their centre, and M. St. Arnaud sent off orders to General Forey, who commanded the reserve, to move one of his brigades (de Lourmel's) to General Canrobert's support, and to proceed with the other (d'Aurelle's) to the extreme right of the battle. This was a happy inspiration: d'Aurelle's brigade, with great speed, crossed the river, and arrived to the support of Canrobert's division at a most critical moment. The Russians seemed to consider the Telegraph Tower as the key of the centre of their position. Sharpshooters, within the low wall outside the work, and batteries on its flanks, directed a steady fire on the French, who were checked for a moment by its severity: but the two batteries of the reserve came up and drew off some of the enemy's fire. The Russians, however, still continued a serious fusillade, and directed volleys of grape against the French, who were lying down in the ravine till the decisive moment should arrive for them to charge the enemy. The losses of our allies were sensible; it was evident that the Russian cavalry, says, M. de Bazancourt,[13] were preparing for a rush in upon them from the flank of the Russian square, which, partially covered by the Telegraph Tower, kept up an incessant fire from two faces upon the French. Colonel Cler, at this critical moment, perceiving that the 1st and 2nd Zouaves, the Chasseurs, and the 39th Regiment had arrived, calling to his men to charge, dashed at the tower, which, after a short but sanguinary combat, they carried at the point of the bayonet, driving out the Russians in confusion, and at the very moment General Canrobert, with his division, advanced at the double to support the movement. Struck down for a moment by a fragment of a shell which wounded him on the chest and shoulder, the gallant officer insisted upon leading on his men to complete the success obtained against the Russian left and left-centre; and Generals Bosquet and Canrobert, wheeling round their divisions from left to right, drove back the enemy towards the rear of the troops, which were still contending with the English, or forced them to seek for safety in flight. It was at this moment that M. St. Arnaud, riding up to the Generals, congratulated them on the day, and directed them to proceed to the aid of the English. Thanks be to the valour of our soldiers—thanks be to Heaven—we required no French aid that day. We received none, except that which was rendered by one battery of French artillery of the reserve, under M. de la Boussiniere, which fired a few rounds on some broken Russian columns from a spot close to the two English guns, of which I shall have to speak hereafter. Such is the part, according to their account, which the French had in the victory of{104} the Alma. Their masses crossed the river and crowded the plateau ere they were seriously engaged, and their activity and courage, aided by the feeble generalship of the commander of the Russian left, and by many happy chances, enabled them to carry the position with comparatively little loss.

Having thus far given the French version of the action, let us return to our countrymen, and see what was their share in this great battle, which was not decisive, so far as the fate of Sebastopol was concerned, merely because we lacked either the means or the military genius to make it so. There is one question which has often been asked in our army and in the tents of our allies, which is supposed to decide the controversy respecting the military merits of St. Arnaud and Lord Raglan: "Would Napoleon have allowed the Russians three days' respite after such a battle?" The only reply that could be made if Napoleon commanded the victorious army, and was not hampered with a colleague of equal power, was, and is, that the notion is preposterous. "But," say the French, "the English were not ready to move next day." "Ay, it is true," reply the English, "because we were far from the sea; but still we offered to assist you to pursue the very night of the battle." "Then," rejoin the French, "we were too much exhausted, and it would have been foolish to have attempted such a movement, and to have divided our army." Posterity, which cares but little for ephemeral political cliquerie, family connexion, or personal amiability, will pass a verdict in this cause which none of us can hope to influence or evade.

The reason of the extraordinary delay in executing our plan of attack has never yet been explained. Lord Raglan's excuse, as given by M. de Bazancourt, is not worth any notice but this—it is not true. The Staff-officer says that "the army was under arms soon after 6 A.M., and on the move" Where?—a mile or two too much inland? What were we doing for five hours? For this same authority further on says, "It was 11 A.M. before we came in sight of the Alma." Now, the distance between the Bouljanak and the Alma is barely six miles. Were we five hours marching six miles? This is indeed a feeble statement; but it is not quite so weak as that which follows, namely, that it was not till after 11 o'clock "the plan of attack was finally settled." This statement is made to cover Lord Raglan, and to prevent there being any suspicion that a plan had been arranged the night before, for the disregard and non-performance of which the Staff-officer's uncle was responsible. That Lord Raglan was brave as a hero of antiquity, that he was kind to his friends and to his staff, that he was unmoved under fire, and unaffected by personal danger, that he was noble in manner, gracious in demeanour, of dignified bearing, and of simple and natural habits, I am, and ever have been, ready not only to admit, but to state with pleasure; that he had many and great difficulties to contend with, domi militiæque, I believe; but that this brave, high-spirited, and gallant nobleman had been so long subservient to the power of a superior mind—that he had lost, if he ever possessed, the ability to conceive and{105} execute large military plans—and that he had lost, if he ever possessed, the faculty of handling great bodies of men, I am firmly persuaded. He was a fine English gentleman—a splendid soldier—perhaps an unexceptionable lieutenant under a great chief; but that he was a great chief, or even a moderately able general, I have every reason to doubt, and I look in vain for any proof of it whilst he commanded the English army in the Crimea.

It was 10 o'clock ere the British line moved towards the Alma. A gentle rise in the plain enabled us to see the Russian position for some time after, but the distance was too great to make out details, and we got into a long low bottom between the ridge and another elevation in front.

Our army advanced in columns of brigades in deploying distance, our left protected by a line of skirmishers, the brigade of cavalry, and horse artillery. The army, in case of attack on the left or rear, could form a hollow square, with the baggage in the centre.

Sir De Lacy Evans's division, on the extreme right, was in contact with the French left, under Prince Napoleon, which was of course furthest from the sea. At the distance of two miles we halted, and then the troops steadily advanced, with our left frittered into a foam of skirmishers of the Rifle Brigade, Major Northcott covered by the 11th and 8th Hussars, 13th Light Dragoons, and 17th Lancers. This was a sight of inexpressible grandeur, and one was struck with the splendid appearance of our infantry in line as seen from the front. The bright scarlet, the white facings, and cross belts, rendering a man conspicuous, gave him an appearance of size which other uniforms do not produce. The French columns looked small compared to our battalions, though we knew they were quite as strong; but the marching of our allies, laden as they were, was wonderful. Our staff was more showy and numerous than that of the French. Nothing strikes the eye so much as a cocked hat and bunch of white feathers; several officers doffed the latter adornment, thinking that they were quite conspicuous on horseback. When the regiments halted, I went past the Light Division, part of the 2nd Division, the Guards, and the Highlanders. Many a laugh did I hear from lips which in two hours more were closed for ever. The officers and men made the most of the delay, and ate what they had with them; but there was a want of water, and the salt pork made them so thirsty that in the passage of the Alma the men stopped to drink and fill their canteens under the heaviest fire.

The plan of attack has been already described, as well as the circumstances of our early march. As we advanced we could see the enemy very distinctly—their grey-coated masses resembling patches of wood on the hill-sides. The ravines held them occasionally, but still we could see that from within a mile of the sea coast, up to the left of the Tartar village, towards which we were advancing, a strong force of infantry was posted, and now and then, as the Russian made his last disposition to meet our advance, the sun's rays flashed brightly in diamond-like points from bright steel. The line of the river below the heights they occupied was indicated by patches of the richest verdure, and by belts of fine fruit trees and{106} vineyards. The Alma is a tortuous little stream, which has worked its way down through a red clay soil, deepening its course as it proceeds seawards, and which drains the steppe-like lands on its right bank, making at times pools and eddies too deep to be forded, though it can generally be crossed by waders who do not fear to wet their knees. The high banks formed by the action of the stream in cutting through the rich soil vary from the right side to the left, according to the course of the stream—the corresponding bank on the opposite side being generally of a slope, more or less abrupt, as the bank is high. The drop from the edge to the water varies also from two to six or eight feet. Along the right or north bank of the Alma there is a number of Tartar houses, at times numerous and close enough to form a cluster of habitations deserving the name of a hamlet, at times scattered wide apart amid little vineyards, surrounded by walls of mud and stone of three feet in height. The bridge over which the post road passes from Bouljanak to Sebastopol runs close to one of these hamlets—a village, in fact, of some fifty houses. This village is approached from the north by a road winding through a plain nearly level till it comes near to the village, where the ground dips, so that at the distance of three hundred yards a man on horseback can hardly see the tops of the nearer and more elevated houses, and can only ascertain the position of the stream by the willows and verdure along its banks. At the left or south side of the Alma the ground assumes a very different character—it rises at once from the water in steep banks up to plateaux at the top of varying height and extent. The general surface is pierced here and there by the course of the winter's torrents, which have formed small ravines, commanded by the heights above. A remarkable ridge of tumuli and hillocks, varying in height from 100 to 400 feet, runs along the course of the Alma on the left side, assuming the form of cliffs when close to the sea, and rising in a gentle slope a little to the left of the village I have mentioned, which is called by the Tartar, and marked on the maps as Burliuk. At its commencement on the left this ridge recedes from the course of the river for several hundred yards, the ground sloping gradually from the bank up to the knolls and tumuli into which the ridge is broken. It then strikes downwards at a sharp angle to its former course, till it sinks into the high ground over the river below the village. There is then a sort of of which the base is the river, and the sides the elevated terrace of the ridge. This terrace, or the succession of terraces, is commanded by higher ground in the rear, but is separated from the position on its proper left by a ravine. It is marked by deep gullies towards the river. If the reader will place himself on the top of Richmond-hill, dwarf the Thames to the size of a rivulet, and imagine the hill to be deprived of vegetation, he may form some notion of the position occupied by the Russians, the plains on the left bank of the Thames will bear some similitude to the land over which the British and French advanced, barring only the verdure. On the slope of the rising ground, to the right of the bridge, the Russians had thrown up two epaulements, armed with 32-pounder batteries and 24-pound howitzers.{107}

PLAN OF THE HEIGHTS and BAY of ALMA.

These 12 guns enfiladed the slopes parallel to them, or swept them to the base. The principal battery consisted of a semicircular earthwork, in which were embrasures for 13 guns. On the right, and farther in the rear, was another breastwork, with embrasures for 9 guns, which played on the right of the bridge. To the left, on a low ridge in front of the village, they had placed two and a half field batteries, which threw 1000 and 1200 yards beyond the village. The first battery was about 300 yards distant from the river, but the hill rose behind it for 50 feet. The second was turned more towards the right. About 12.15, when we were about three miles from the village, the steamers ran in close to the bluff at the south side of the Alma, commenced shelling the heights, the enemy were obliged to retire their infantry and guns, and the ships covered the advance of the French right, and never permitted the Russians to molest them till they were in force on the plateau. At one o'clock we saw the French columns struggling up the hills, covered by a cloud of skirmishers. They swarmed like bees to the face of the cliffs, tiny puffs of smoke rising from every tree, and shrub, and stone. On the right they formed their masses without opposition. At sight of a threatening mass of Russian infantry, who advanced slowly, pouring in all the time a tremendous rolling fire, the French, who were forming in the centre, seemed to pause, but it was only to collect their skirmishers, for as soon as they had formed they ran up the hill at the pas de charge, and broke up the Russians at once, who fled in disorder, with loss, up the hill. We could see men dropping on both sides, and the wounded rolling down the steep. However, our attention was soon drawn to our own immediate share in the battle. As I had slept at the head-quarters camp, I joined the general staff, and for some time rode with them; but when they halted, just before going into action, Major Burke, who was serving on the staff as Aide-de-camp to Sir John Burgoyne, advised me to retire, "as," said he, "I declare I will make Sir John himself speak to you if you do not." There was at the time very little to be seen from the ground which the staff occupied, and there were so many officers along with Lord Raglan, that it was difficult to see in front at all; and so, observing Sir De Lacy Evans somewhat in advance on the right of Lord Raglan, on higher ground about a quarter of a mile away, I turned my horse to join him, and in an instant afterwards a round shot rushed over the heads of the staff, being fired at the Rifles in advance of them. As it turned out, Sir De Lacy's small staff suffered much more severely than Lord Raglan's large one, although the Staff-officer seems firmly persuaded that the enemy's artillery was partially directed against the body to which he belonged. One could scarcely have been in a safer place on the field, considering out of so large a body only two were wounded, whereas five of General Evans's small staff were badly hit or contused. By the time I had reached Sir De Lacy Evans, who was engaged in giving orders to Brigadier Adams, the round shot were rolling through the columns, and the men halted and lay down by order of Lord Raglan. Sir De Lacy said, "Well, if you want to see a great battle, you're in a fair way of having{108} your wish gratified." At this moment the whole of the village in our front burst into flames—the hay-ricks and wooden sheds about it causing the fire to run rapidly, fanned by a gentle breeze, which carried the smoke and sparks towards our line. Sir De Lacy rode towards the left to get rid of this annoyance, and to get to his men, and as he did so, the round shot came bounding among the men lying down just before us. From the groans and stifled cries it was too plain they left dead and dying in their course. The Rifles in advance of our left were sharply engaged with the enemy in the vineyard, and, anxious to see what was going on, I rode over in that direction, and arrived at the place where were stationed the staff of the Light Division. Sir George Brown was just at the time giving some orders to one of his Aides relative to the "Russian cavalry on our left front." I looked across the stream, and saw, indeed, some cavalry and guns slowly moving down towards the stream from the elevated ground over its banks; but my eye at the same time caught a most formidable-looking mass of burnished helmets, tipped with brass, just above the top of the hill on our left, at the other side of the river. One could plainly see through the glass that they were Russian infantry, but I believe the gallant old General thought at the time that they were cavalry, and that a similar error led to the serious mistake, later in the day, which deprived the Light Division of part of its regimental strength, and wasted it on "preparing to receive" an imaginary "cavalry." Sir George looked full of fight, clean shaven, neat and compact; I could not help thinking, however, there was a little pleasant malice in his salutation to me. As he rode past, he said, in a very jaunty, Hyde Park manner, "It's a very fine day, Mr. Russell." At this moment the whole of our light was almost obscured by the clouds of black smoke from the burning village on our right, and the front of the Russian line above us had burst into a volcano of flame and white smoke—the roar of the artillery became terrible—we could hear the heavy rush of the shot, those terrible dumps into the ground, and the crash of the trees, through which it tore with resistless fury and force; splinter and masses of stone flew out of the walls. It was rather provoking to be told so coolly it was a very fine day amid such circumstances; but at that very moment the men near us were ordered to advance, and they did so in quick time in open line towards the walls which bounded the vineyards before us. As I had no desire to lead my old friends of the Light Division into action, I rode towards the right to rejoin Sir De Lacy Evans, if possible; and as I got on the road I saw Lord Raglan's staff riding towards the river, and the shot came flinging close to me, one, indeed, killing one of two bandsmen who were carrying a litter close to my side, after passing over the head of my horse. It knocked away the side of his face, and he fell dead—a horrible sight. The G and B batteries of the Second Division were unlimbered in front, and were firing with great steadiness on the Russians; and now and then a rocket, with a fiery tail and a huge waving mane of white smoke, rushed with a shrill shout against the enemy's massive batteries. Before me{109} all was smoke—our men were lying down still; but the Rifles, led by Major Norcott, conspicuous on a black horse, were driving back the enemy's sharpshooters with signal gallantry, and clearing the orchards and vineyards in our front by a searching fire. When I reached the spot where I had last seen Sir De Lacy Evans, he was nowhere to be found, for he had, as I afterwards heard, ridden with his staff close to the river by the burning village. My position was becoming awkward. Far away in the rear was the baggage, from which one could see nothing; but where I was placed was very much exposed. A shell burst over my head, and one of the fragments tore past my face with an angry whir-r-r, and knocked up the earth at my poor pony's feet. Close at hand, and before me, was a tolerably good stone-house, one story high, with a large court-yard, in which were several stacks of hay that had not as yet caught fire. I rode into this yard, fastened up my pony to the rope binding one of the ricks, and entered the house, which was filled with fragments of furniture, torn paper, and books, and feathers, and cushion linings, and established myself at the window, from which I could see the Russian artillerymen serving their guns; their figures, now distinctly revealed against the hill side, and again lost in a spurting whirl of smoke. I was thinking what a terrible sort of field-day this was, and combating an uneasy longing to get to the front, when a tremendous crash, as though a thunderclap had burst over my head, took place right above me, and in the same instant I was struck and covered with pieces of broken tiles, mortar, and stones, the window out of which I was looking flew into pieces, parts of the roof fell down, and the room was filled with smoke.

There was no mistaking this warning to quit. A shell had burst in the ceiling. As I ran out into the yard I found my pony had broken loose, but I easily caught him, and scarcely had I mounted when I heard a tremendous roll of musketry on my left front, and looking in the direction, I saw the lines of our red jackets in the stream, and swarming over the wooden bridge. A mass of Russians were at the other side of the stream, firing down on them from the high banks, but the advance of the men across the bridge forced these battalions to retire; and I saw, with feelings which I cannot express, the Light Division scrambling, rushing, foaming like a bloody surge up the ascent, and in a storm of fire, bright steel, and whirling smoke, charge towards the deadly epaulement, from which came roar and flash incessantly. I could distinctly see Sir George Brown and the several mounted officers above the heads of the men, and could detect the dark uniforms of the Rifles scattered here and there in front of the waving mass. On the right of this body, the 30th, 55th, and 95th were slowly winning their way towards the battery, exposed to a tremendous fire, which swallowed them up in the fiery grey mantle of battle. The rush of shot was appalling, and I recollect that I was particularly annoyed by the birds which were flying about distractedly in the smoke, as I thought they were fragments of shell. Already the wounded were{110} passing by me. One man of the 30th was the first; he limped along with his foot dangling from the ankle, supporting himself on his firelock. "Thank you kindly, sir," said he, as I gave him a little brandy, the only drop I had left. "Glory be to God, I killed and wounded some of the Roosians before they crippled me, any way." He halted off towards the rear. In another moment two officers approached—one leaning on the other—and both wounded, as I feared, severely. They belonged to the 30th. They went into the enclosure I had left, and having assured them I would bring them help, I rode off towards the rear, and returned with the surgeon of the Cavalry Division, who examined their wounds. All this time the roar of the battle was increasing. I went back to my old spot; in doing so I had to ride gently, for wounded men came along in all directions. One was cut in two by a round shot as he approached. Many of them lay down under the shelter of a wall, which was, however, enfiladed by the enemy. Just at this moment I saw the Guards advancing in the most majestic and stately order up the hill; while through the intervals and at their flanks poured the broken masses of the Light Division, which their officers were busy in re-forming. The Highlanders, who were beyond them, I could not see; but I never will forget the awful fury, the powerful detonation of the tremendous volleys which Guards and Highlanders poured in upon the Russian battalions, which in vain tried to defend their batteries and to check the onward march of that tide of victory. All of a sudden the round shot ceased to fly along the line; then there was a sharp roll of musketry and a heavy fire of artillery which lasted for some moments. Then one, two, three round shot pitched in line, ricochetting away to the rear. As I looked round to see what mischief they did, a regiment came rapidly towards the river. I rode towards them; they were the 50th. "The cannon shot come right this way, and you'll suffer frightfully if you go on." As I spoke, a shell knocked up the dust to our right, and Colonel Waddy, pushing the left, led his men across the river. I rode towards the bridge. The road wall was lined by wounded. Fitzgerald (7th), with his back against the wall, was surveying his wounded legs with wonderful equanimity. "I wish they had left me one, at all events," said he, as we tried to stop the bleeding. As I passed the bridge there was a spattering of musketry. The cannon were still busy on our right, and field-guns were firing on the retreating Russians, whose masses were over the brow of the hill. Then there was a thundering cheer, loud as the roar of battle, and one cannon boomed amid its uproar. This was the victory. A few paces brought me to the bloody slopes where friend and foe lay in pain, or in peace for ever.

When the columns were deploying, Northcott moved from the left and advanced to the front of the Light and First Divisions, till they came to a long low stone wall. Here they waited till the line came up. The instant they did so, the two front companies, in extended order, leaped over the wall into the vineyards, the two companies in support moving down a road to their left, on a ford,{111} by which they crossed the stream. The Rifles were first across the river. They were under the cover of a bank which bounded the plateau, and hid them from the fire at our advancing columns. It was a second terrace; for just at this place the ground was a series of three giant steps—the first being that from the river to the top of the bank; the second, from the plateau at the top of the bank to the plateau on which the enemy were in position; and the third being from that position to the highest ground of all, on which they had their reserves. No sooner had the Rifles lined this lower ridge than the enemy pushed a column of infantry, headed by some few Cossacks, down the road which led to the ford, and threatened to take them in rear and flank and destroy them, for these gallant fellows were without support. Major Norcott, however, was not dismayed, but at once made the most skilful disposition to meet this overwhelming column of the enemy. Retiring from the ridge, he placed one of the four companies under him on the road by which they were advancing, two others he posted along the bank of a vineyard on the right of this road, and with the fourth he occupied the farm-house in the centre of the vineyard: thus availing himself of the resources of the ground with much skill and judgment. At this moment there were no supports in sight—nothing to rest or form upon in the rear—the Rifles were quite alone. The Russians advanced leisurely; but to the astonishment of our officers, just as the men were about to open fire on them, the Cossacks and the column halted, and then wheeling to the right-about, retired up the road and disappeared over the brow of the hill. On looking round, however, the phenomenon was soon explained—Codrington's brigade was rushing across the river under a tremendous fire, and at the same time the Russians advanced heavy columns of infantry towards the ridge over the stream. The Rifles moved towards their right to join the Light Division, and at the same time poured in a close and deadly fire upon the dense formation of the enemy, which must have caused them great loss. Having effected their junction, the Rifles moved up with the Light Division, and bringing up their left shoulders, threw themselves on the flank of the battery, bravely led by Major Norcott, till they were forced to retire with their supports. One company, under Captain Colville, was separated from the left wing, and did not participate as fully as the other companies in the fight; and the right wing, under Colonel Lawrence, was kept back by a variety of impediments, and had no opportunity of playing the same distinguished part as the left.

As soon as the line of the Light Division came up to the Rifles, the latter were ordered to retire, and re-form in rear of the brigades; but some few of the men could not obey the order, and were consequently in front along with the advance—some with the Guards, others with the men of Codrington's brigade. Captain the Hon. W. Colville and Lieutenant Nixon both claim, or claimed, the credit of having led up their men skirmishing in front of the advance of the red soldiers; and the question is one which I cannot decide. Both those gallant officers arrogated to themselves the honour of having performed the same action; and I believe each thought that{112} he had, when one of the colonels of the Guards was dismounted, brought a horse to the officer, and enabled him to resume his place with his men.

The approach of the Light Division—why should I not dwell fondly on every act of that gallant body, the first "put at" everything, the first in Buffering, in daring, in endurance throughout the campaign?—their approach, then, was in double columns of brigades; the Second Division being on their right, and the second battalion of the Rifle Brigade, divided into two wings, one under Major Norcott, the other under Colonel Lawrence, being in advance in skirmishing order. When the Light Division got within long range, they deployed; the men lay down. Again they advanced; once more they were halted to lie down; this time the shot pitched among them; the same thing was repeated again ere they reached the river, and many were wounded before they got to the vineyards. Here, indeed, they were sheltered, but when the order was given to advance, the men were thrown into disorder, not so much by the heavy fire as by the obstacles opposed by hedges, stone walls, vines, and trees. These well-drilled regiments were thus deprived of the fruits of many a day's hard marching at Gallipoli, Aladyn, and Devna; but the 1st Brigade being in rather better ground and more in hand than the 2nd Brigade, moved off, and with them the 19th Regiment, belonging to Brigadier Buller, who was lost in a hollow, and afterwards, as Lord Raglan euphemistically expressed it, manœuvred judiciously on the left. The 19th, 7th, 23rd, and 33rd were led at a run right to the river, gallantly conducted by Codrington. Their course was marked by killed and wounded, but the four regiments were quickly under the shelter of the high bank at the south side, in such a state of confusion from the temporary commingling of the men in the rush, that it was necessary to re-form. The enemy, too late to support their skirmishers, sought to overwhelm them in the stream, and three battalions of grey-coated infantry came down at the double almost to the top of the bank, and poured down a heavy fire. They were straggling, but not weak; the Brigade and the 19th made a simultaneous rush up the bank, and, as they crowned it, met their enemies with a furious fire. The dense battalions, undeployed, were smitten, and as the Light Division advanced they rapidly fell back to the left, for the renewed fire of their batteries, leaving, however, many dead and wounded men. After a momentary delay, these gallant regiments, led by Sir George Brown and Brigadier Codrington, advanced up the slope which was swept by the guns of the battery; grape, round, and shell tore through their ranks, and the infantry on the flanks, advancing at an angle, poured in a steady fire from point-blank distance. It must be confessed that the advance was disorderly—instead of the men being two deep and showing an extended front of fire, they were five, six, and seven deep, in ragged columns, with scarcely any front, and not half so extended as they should have been. Thus their fire was not as powerful or their advance as imposing as it ought to have been. The General and Brigadier made some attempts to restore order, but they were unsuccessful.{113} The men had not only got into confusion in the river from stopping to drink, as I have related, but had disordered their ranks by attacks on the grapes in the vineyards on their way. Behind the work, on rising ground, a Russian regiment kept up a most destructive file fire on our advance; the field-pieces on the flank also played incessantly upon them. Every foot they advanced was marked by lines of slain or wounded men. The 7th Fusiliers, smitten by a storm of grape, reeling to and fro like some brave ship battling with a tempest, whose sails are gone, whose masts are toppling, and whose bulwarks are broken to pieces, but which still holds on its desperate way, impelled by unquenchable fire, within a few seconds lost a third of its men. Led by "Old Yea," it still went on—a colour lost for the time, their officers down, their files falling fast—they closed up, and still with eye which never left the foe, pressed on to meet him. The 23rd Regiment was, however, exposed more, if that were possible, to that lethal hail. In less than two minutes from the time they crowned the bank till they neared the battery the storm had smitten down twelve of their officers, of whom eight never rose again. Diminished by one-half, the gallant companies sought, with unabated heart, to reach their terrible enemies. The 19th marched right up towards the mouths of the roaring cannon which opened incessantly and swept down their ranks; the 33rd, which had moved up with the greatest audacity over broken ground towards the flank of the epaulement, where it was exposed to a tremendous fire and heavy losses from guns and musketry from the hill above, was for the moment checked by the pitiless pelting of this iron rain. Their general at this terrible crisis seemed to have but one idea—right or wrong, it was to lead them slap at the battery, into the very teeth of its hot and fiery jaws. As he rode in front, shouting and cheering on his men, his horse fell, and down he went in a cloud of dust. He was soon up, and called out, "I'm all right. Twenty-third, be sure I'll remember this day." It was indeed a day for any one to remember. General Codrington in the most gallant manner rode in advance of his brigade, and rode his horse right over and into the work, as if to show his men there was nothing to fear; for by this time the enemy, intimidated by the rapid, though tumultuous advance of the brigade, were falling away from the flanks of the battery, and were perceptibly wavering in their centre. The infantry behind the breastwork were retreating up the hill. The Russians were in great dismay and confusion. They limbered up their guns, which were endangered by the retirement of their infantry from the flanks of the epaulement, and retired towards their reserves, which were posted on high ground in the rear. In this retrograde movement their artillery got among the columns of the infantry, and increased the irregular nature of their retreat; but they still continued to fire, and were at least three times as numerous as the men of the Light Division who were assailing them. When Sir George Brown went down, a rifleman, named Hugh Hannan, assisted him on his horse, and as they stood under a murderous fire, saluted as he got into his seat, and said,{114} "Are your stirrups the right length, sir?" Major Norcott, on his old charger, which, riddled with balls, carried his master throughout the day, and lay down and died when his work was over, got up to the redoubt, which was also entered by Brown and Codrington. (The reserve artillery horses had succeeded in drawing away all the guns except one, which was still in position, and on this gun, when the first rush was made, an officer of the 33rd, named Donovan, scratched his name.) In broken groups the 23rd, with whom were mingled men of the 19th and 33rd Regiments, rushed at the earthwork, leaped across it, bayoneted a few Russians who offered resistance, and for an instant were masters of the position. Captain Bell, of the 23rd, observed a driver in vain urging by whip and spar two black horses to carry off one of the brass sixteen-pounder guns which had done so much execution. Bell ran up, and, seizing the reins, held a revolver to his head. He dismounted, and ran off. Bell, with the assistance of a soldier of the 7th, named Pyle, led the horses round the shoulder of the parapet to the rear of our line, where the gun remained after the Light Division was obliged to retire, and reported the capture to Sir George Brown. The horses were put into our "black battery." This was but an episode. The colours of the 23rd were planted on the centre of the parapet. Both the colour-officers, Butler and Anstruther, were killed. The colours were hit in seventy-five places, and the pole of one was shot in two; it had to be spliced. Meantime, the Russians, seeing what a handful of men they had to deal with, gained heart. The brigade and the 19th had held the entrenchment for nearly ten minutes, keeping the massive columns above them in check by their desperate but scattered fire. Where were the supports? they were not to be seen. The advance of the Guards, though magnificent, was somewhat slow. Two of the dark-grey masses, bristling with steel on our front, began to move towards the battery. The men fired, but some staff-officer or officers called out that we were firing upon the French. A bugler sounded the "Cease firing." The Russians advanced, and our men were compelled to fall back. Some of the enemy, advancing from the epaulement, proceeded in pursuit, but were checked by the apparition of the Guards.

The Duke of Cambridge, who commanded the First Division, had never seen a shot fired in anger. Of his Brigadiers, only Sir Colin Campbell—a soldier trained in many a stubborn fight, and nursed in the field—was acquainted with actual warfare; but it is nevertheless the case that the deciding move of the day on our left was made by his Royal Highness, and that the Duke, who was only considered to be a cavalry officer, showed then, as on a subsequent tremendous day, that he had the qualities of a brave and energetic leader. When the last halt took place, the Guards and Highlanders lay down a good deal to the rear of the Light Division, which they were to support; and in the advance immediately afterwards, the Brigade of Guards, being on the left behind Codrington's Brigade, lost several men ere they reached the river by the fire directed on those regiments. Between them and the river the ground was much broken, and intersected by walls and the hedges of vineyards; but{115} on their left, opposite the Highlanders, the ground was more favourable. The men wearing their bearskins—more ponderous and more heavily weighted than the men of the line—suffered much from thirst and the heat of the day, and they displayed an evident inclination to glean in the vineyards after the soldiers of the Light Division; but the Duke led them on with such rapidity that they could not leave their ranks, and the officers and sergeants kept them in most admirable order till they came to the wall, in leaping over which they were of course a little disorganized. On crossing it they were exposed to a heavier fire, and by the time they reached the river the Light Division were advancing up the slope against the enemy's guns. The bank of the stream in front was deep and rugged, but the Duke and his staff crossed it gallantly; and placing himself in front of the Guards on the left—Sir Colin Campbell being near him at the head of his Brigade, and General Bentinck being on his right—his Royal Highness led his division into action. On reaching the other side of the river the Guards got into another large vineyard, the same in which the Rifles had been stationed for a time, and it became very difficult to get them into line again, for they had of course been disordered in passing through the river. The guards threw out their sergeants in front, as if on parade, and dressed up in line, protected in some degree from fire as they did so by the ridge in front of them, and Sir Colin Campbell formed up his Highlanders on their left, as if they were "ruled" by machinery. It was time they were ready for action, for at this moment the Light Division was observed to be falling back towards them in disorder, and the Russians, encouraged by the partial success, but taught by their short experience that it would be rather dangerous to come too near them, were slowly advancing after them, and endeavouring to get positions for the guns; in fact, it was probable that in a few minutes more they would run them into the epaulement once more. In front of the 42nd Highlanders was the 88th Regiment halted, and doing nothing; and Colonel Cameron, who was astonished to find them in such a position, was obliged to move out of his course a little in order to pass them. As we thus come on this gallant regiment, it may be as well to say how they came here.

As the 88th were about to advance from the river, having their right on the 19th and their left on the 77th, an Aide-de-Camp—I believe the Hon. Mr. Clifford—came down in haste from Sir George Brown, with the words "Cavalry! form square! form square!" and the right, accordingly, in some haste corresponding with the order, which was almost at the moment reiterated by Brigadier Buller, prepared to execute the movement, but the whole of the companies did not join in it, the men who were excluded, and an officer and some few of the Rifles, struggled to obtain admission into the square, which was for some moments in a very ineffective state, and scarcely ready to receive any determined charge of cavalry. The apprehensions, however, which were entertained by a few short-sighted people were unfounded. The enemy had made no demonstration with the cavalry. They had advanced a demi-battery of artillery towards the left flank of the 2nd Brigade, and supported{116} the advance with a body of infantry in spiked helmets. Sir George Brown, whose sight was not good though he would not wear spectacles, and General Buller, whose vision was not good although he did wear spectacles, were deceived by the appearance of this force, and sent orders to form square. It was fortunate the Russian guns did not fire upon the 88th; just as they unlimbered Codrington's Brigade began to advance on the right, and the Rifles, part of the 88th, and the 77th, who, as they crossed the river, and endeavoured to re-form under the bank, were menaced by a column of Russians firing on the gunners, forced them to retire higher up the hill. Had the artillery held their ground, they could have inflicted great loss upon us, and seriously interfered with our advance on the right; but on this, as on other occasions, the Russians were too nervous for their guns, and withdrew them. In this general movement the 77th and 88th Regiments did not participate. There was not in the army a more gallant or better disciplined regiment than the 77th. Colonel Egerton was not only one of the bravest but one of the most intelligent, skilled, and thorough soldiers and officers in the whole service. In the trenches—at Inkerman—throughout the siege, the regiment showed of what noble material it was composed. The 88th had a fighting reputation, which they well vindicated at Inkerman, at the Quarries, and in many encounters with the enemy. It is astonishing, therefore, that the Light Division should have been in a vital moment deprived of the co-operation of these splendid soldiers, and should have been, hurled in confused masses against the enemy's bayonets and artillery, reduced by the suicidal incapacity of some one or other to four regiments. That there was no notion of keeping these regiments in reserve is shown by the fact that they were never advanced in support or used as a reserve when their comrades were involved in a most perilous and unequal struggle.

The First Division advancing, and passing this portion of the Light Division, at once became exposed to fire, and received the shot which passed through the fragments of Codrington's Brigade; but as it was imperatively necessary that they should not be marched up in rear of regiments in a state of disorder, the Duke, by the advice of Sir Colin Campbell, ordered General Bentinck to move a little to his left, but ere the movement could be effected, portions of the Light Division came in contact with the centre of the line, and passing through its files to re-open in the rear, carried disorder into the centre battalion. It may be observed that this is a casualty to which extended line formations in support must always be liable, when the attacking lines in advance of them are obliged to fall back to re-form. Formations in column are of course less likely to be subjected to this inconvenience, and the broken troops can pour through the intervals between column and column with greater facility than they can pass round the flanks of lengthy and extended lines. The Coldstreams and the Grenadiers never for an instant lost their beautiful regularity and order, although they now fell fast under the enemy's fire, and several of the mounted officers lost their horses. Among these Major Macdonald was included, his horse{117} was killed by a round shot, and he received a severe fall, but never for a moment lost his coolness and equanimity.

As the Light Division retreated behind the Guards to re-form, the Russian battalions on the flanks and behind the work fired on them, continuously, and at the same moment the guns which had been drawn out of the work to the high ground over it opened heavily. The Guards were struck in the centre by this iron shower. The fragments of Codrington's Brigade poured through them. In their front was a steel-bound wall of Russian infantry. Our own men were fast falling back, firing as they retired. After them came a glistening line of Russian bayonets, as if to clear the field. For a few seconds the Scots Fusiliers wavered and lost order; they were marching over dead and dying men. The Russians were within a few yards of them, but the officers rallied the men, and, conspicuous in their efforts, suffered heavily. The colour-bearers, Lieutenant Lindsay and Lieutenant Thistlewayte, with signal gallantry, extricated themselves from a perilous position, in which for the instant their men had left them—order was restored in the centre, and on the flanks the Grenadiers, under Colonel Hood, and Coldstreams were as steady and in as perfect order as though they were on parade. For a moment, it is said, the Duke thought of halting to dress his line, but Sir Colin Campbell, who was near at hand with his Highlanders, begged his Highness not to hesitate, but to push on at once at the enemy. The Russian artillery on the slopes above sent repeated volleys of grape, canister, round, and shell through their ranks, but at this moment, threatened on the flank by the French batteries, enfiladed by a 9-pounder and 24-pound howitzer of Turner's battery, which Lord Raglan had ordered up to a knoll on the opposite side of the river, on the slope between our attack and that of the French, the Russian guns were limbered up, and ceased their fire.

Meantime General Sir De Lacy Evans had, in the most skilful and gallant manner, executed his instructions, and, with Pennefather's Brigade, had forced the Russian centre and the right centre. The Second Division advanced on the same alignement with Prince Napoleon's Division to the burning village of Bourliouk. Sir De Lacy Evans detached the 41st and the 49th Regiments, of Adams's Brigade and Turner's battery, by the right of the village, which the flames rendered impenetrable, and ordered them to force the passage. The ford in front was very deep, and the banks were bad and high, defended by a heavy fire; the regiments lost upwards of 40 men in the stream and on its banks. The General placed himself at the head of the remaining regiments, and led them by the left of the village towards the river; but, experienced in war, Sir De Lacy Evans availed himself of all means to carry the enemy's position with the smallest loss to his own men; he covered the advance of his troops by the fire of 18 pieces. Pennefather's Brigade, the 30th, 55th, and 95th Regiments, was accompanied by Fitzmayer's battery; but the General, finding Dacre's battery and Wodehouse's battery, which belonged to the First and Light Divisions, stationed near, availed himself of the services volunteered by{118} the officers in command of them to cover the advance of his men. The 95th Regiment, being on the extreme left of the Brigade, came upon the bridge of Bourliouk; the 55th Regiment, in the centre, had in front of them a deep ford and high banks; and the 30th Regiment were inconvenienced in their advance by the walls of the village, and by the cooking places cut in the high banks on the opposite side of the stream. On the right of the 30th Regiment came the 47th Regiment, and in the interval between these two regiments rode Sir De Lacy Evans. As soon as the Division emerged from the smoke and the houses of the village, the enemy directed on them an extremely severe fire—"such," says Sir De Lacy Evans, "as few, perhaps, of the most experienced soldiers have ever witnessed," till they came to the stream, which they passed under a storm of missiles which lashed the waters into bloody foam. The 95th, led very gallantly by Colonel Webber Smith, debouched from the bridge and narrow ford just as the 7th, under Colonel Yea, formed on the other side. They were exposed to the same tremendous fire; they advanced, with colours flying, towards the left of the Russian epaulement, which Codrington was assailing, and claim the credit of having been the temporary captors of a gun on the left of the works. The 55th and 30th, led by Colonel Warren and Colonel Hoey, exposed to the full fire of two batteries and of six battalions disposed on the sides of the ravines and of the slopes above them, behaved with conspicuous gallantry, but could make no impression on the solid masses of the enemy. In a short time the 95th lost 6 officers killed, the Colonel and Major and 9 officers wounded, and upwards of 170 men. The 55th had 128 casualties, 8 of which occurred to officers, and 3 of which were fatal; the 80th Regiment lost 150 officers and men.

But the steadiness of our infantry and the destructive effect of their musketry were shaking the confidence of the enemy, now broken and turned on their left by the French. The Light Division was obliged to relinquish its hold of the work it had taken; but the Guards were advancing to their support—the Highlanders were moving up on the left—and the fortune of the day was every moment inclining to the allies. The French had sent to Lord Raglan for assistance, some say twice—certainly once, before we advanced. Our attack was not to begin till they had turned the left, and it is likely that M. St. Arnaud arranged to send information of that fact to Lord Raglan. But our Commander-in-chief did not receive any such intelligence. He was annoyed, uneasy, and disappointed at the delay which occurred on his right. He sent Colonel Vico to ascertain the state of affairs, to communicate, if possible, with the French Generals. Meantime, the French Generals were, if we credit authorities, annoyed, uneasy, and disappointed by the slowness of the English. Prince Napoleon sent to Lord Raglan, French staff-officers came with the piteous appeal—Milord, je vous prie! pour l'amour de Dieu! Venez aux Français! Nous sommes massacrés! At last Lord Raglan gave orders to advance, although he had not heard of the success of the French attack on which the advance was to depend. When the 1st and 3rd Divisions had{119} deployed, and were moving towards the Alma, Lord Raglan, and his staff advanced, and skirting the village of Bourliouk to the right, passed down a narrow lane which led to the ford, by which part of Adams's Brigade had crossed to the other side. They proceeded round the right of Adams's Brigade, immediately between the French and Evans's extreme right, and en route, his lordship observed Turner's battery, and passed close to the 41st and 49th on the other side of the river, for whose disposition he gave orders to Brigadier Adams. In crossing the ford the staff were exposed to fire from the Russian guns on the high grounds opposite Bourliouk, and the infantry in support. Two of the staff-officers were hit—Lieutenant Leslie, Royal Horse Guards, who was acting as orderly officer to the Commander-in-chief, and Captain Weare, Deputy-Assistant Adjutant-General. Lord Raglan gave orders for Turner's battery to come up to enfilade the enemy's guns. The lane, which formed at the other side of the ford the continuation of that road by which the Commander-in-chief had passed round Bourliouk to the river, ran at the bottom of a sheltered ravine, which almost divided the Russian position, and formed a boundary between the English and the French attacks. The enemy had been driven out of this ravine by the French, and the lane was unoccupied, but here and there in its windings it was swept by guns. The ravine, as it ascended, opened out, and became shallower, and on the right it wound below a small table-land, or rather a flattened knoll, of which there were several at the edge of the general level of the plateau. On ascending this knoll, Lord Raglan saw, as he anticipated, that the Russian guns commanding the ford were on his left, in such a position that they could be enfiladed, and indeed, taken in reverse. He despatched repeated orders to Turner; but owing to the steepness of the lane, and to the loss of a gun horse in the river, there was difficulty and delay in getting the guns up, and when they did arrive the Guards and Highlanders were already advancing up the hill, and closing on the Russian columns. The guns[14] which came up were, I believe, a 24-pounder howitzer, and a 9-pounder, and as the tumbril attached to the former had not arrived, it was served with 9-pounder ammunition and round shot. The artillery officers and General Strangways dismounted and worked the guns, as the men had not yet come up; Lieutenant Walsham arrived with the rest of the battery, and the six guns opened—on what? One officer says, on the "artillery" of the Russians—that two shots forced a whole line of Russian guns to retire, and that the Russian General, "seeing he was taken in flank," limbered up. But surely{120} he could have turned round some of his numerous guns, and could have fought Turner's two with heavier metal. In fact, it was something else besides this fire of two shots (one of which hit a tumbril) which determined the retreat of the Russian artillery. It was the advance of the First and Second Divisions. The Guards were half-way up the hill when these two guns opened, and the Russians limbered up when they saw they were turned on their left, and threatened on their right. The Russian artillery officer, after he retired, directed his guns against Turner's battery, and some riflemen were sent to cripple it, one of whom shot Lieutenant Walsham as he was in the act of loading. Lord Raglan saw the day was won by the Light Division, the Second Division, the Guards, and Highlanders; for, seeing the advance of the latter, he exclaimed, "Let us join the Guards!" and rode into the ravine to his left in their direction.

But the enemy had not yet abandoned their position. A division of infantry in columns came from the rear of the hill, and marched straight upon the Brigade of Guards. The Guards dressed up, and advanced to meet them. Some shot struck the rear of the Russian columns, they began to melt away, and wavered; still they came on slowly, and began file-firing. One column moved towards the left flank of the Guards, facing round as if to meet the Highlanders, who were moving with rapidity up from the hollow in which they had been sheltered from the enemy's fire. The two other columns faced the Guards. The distance between them was rapidly diminishing, when suddenly the Brigade poured in a fire so destructive that it annihilated their front ranks, and left a ridge of killed and wounded men on the ground. The Highlanders almost at the same moment delivered a volley, sharp, deadly, and decisive. Pennefather's Brigade, on the right of the Guards, supported by Adams, appeared on the side of the slope. The enemy, after a vain attempt to shake off the panic occasioned by that rain of death, renewed their fire very feebly, and then, without waiting, turned as our men advanced with bayonets at the charge, over the brow of the hill to join the mass of the Russian army, who, divided into two bodies, were retreating with all possible speed. Our cavalry rode up to the crest of the hill, and looked after the enemy. They took a few prisoners, but they were ordered to let them go again. Lord Raglan expressed his intention of keeping his cavalry "in a bandbox," and was apprehensive of getting into serious difficulty with the enemy. The Battle of the Alma was won. The men halted on the battle-field, and as the Commander-in-chief, the Duke of Cambridge, Sir De Lacy Evans, and the other popular generals rode in front of the line, the soldiers shouted, and when Lord Raglan was in front of the Guards, the whole army burst into a tremendous cheer, which made one's heart leap—the effect of that cheer can never be forgotten by those who heard it. It was near five o'clock; the men had been eleven hours under arms, and had fought a battle, and the enemy were to be—"let alone." The Russians fired one gun as they retreated, and made some show of covering their rear with their cavalry.{121}

Upon the conduct of the Battle of the Alma there has been much foreign criticism, and the results and deductions have been unfavourable to the Russian General, who permitted his left to be turned without any serious resistance, although he ought to have calculated on the effect of the operations by sea on that flank. In apparent opposition to this judgment there has been at the same time great praise awarded to the French for the gallantry with which they attacked that portion of the position. They deserve every laudation for the extraordinary activity, rapidity, and bravery with which they established themselves on the centre and left-centre, but on the extreme left they had no hard fighting. The English seem to have been awarded the meed of solidity and unshaken courage, but at the same time hints are thrown out that they did not move quite quickly enough, that therefore their losses were great, and their work after all not so hazardous and difficult as that of the French, inasmuch as the English attack took place only when the Russian left was turned. In effect, however, the right of the enemy presented less physical difficulties to the establishment of a hostile force on the flank, and it was there that the greatest number of artificial obstacles in the shape of guns, cavalry, and men, was accumulated. But was the plan of battle good? In the first place, we attacked the enemy in the position of his own selection, without the least attempt to manœuvre or to turn him. It might have been difficult, situated as we were, without cavalry, and with masses of baggage, to have attempted any complex manœuvres; but it has been asserted that by a flank march we could, by a temporary abandonment of our seaboard, have placed the enemy between two fires, and have destroyed his army in case of defeat. It has been suggested that early on the morning of the 20th the Allies should have moved obliquely from the bivouac on the Bouljanak, and, crossing the Alma to the east of the enemy's position, have obliged his left to make a harassing march, to get up and occupy new ground in a fresh alignement, have deprived him of his advantages, and have endangered his retreat to Bakshi Serai or Simpheropol, if he refused battle, and that in event of his defeat, which would have been pretty certain, considering how much weaker his new line would have been, he would have been driven towards the shore, exposed to the fire of our ships, so that his force would have been obliged to lay down their arms. Menschikoff's army utterly ruined, Sebastopol would have at once surrendered, disposed as it was to have done so with very little compression. Criticism is easy after the circumstances or conduct of which you judge have had their effect; but to this it may be remarked that criticism cannot, by its very nature, be prospective. Even civilians are as good judges as military men of the grand operations of war, although they may be ignorant of details, and of the modes by which those operations have been effected. Alexander, Cæsar, Pompey, Hannibal, may have had many club colonels in their day, who thought they made "fatal moves;" we know that in our own time there were many military men who "had no great opinion" of either General Wellesley or{122} General Bonaparte; but the results carry with them the weight of an irreversible verdict, which is accepted by posterity long after the cliques and jealousies and animosities of the hour have passed away for ever. Now, without being a member of a clique, having no possible jealousies, and being free from the smallest animosities, I may inquire was there any generalship shown by any of the allied generals at the Alma? We have Lord Raglan, as brave, as calm, as noble, as any gentleman who ever owned England as his mother-land—trotting in front of his army, amid a shower of balls, "just as if he were riding down Rotten Row," with a kind nod for every one, leaving his generals and men to fight it out as best they could, riding across the stream through the French riflemen, not knowing where he was going to, or where the enemy were, till fate led him to a little knoll, from which he saw some of the Russian guns on his flank, whereupon he sent an order for guns, seemed surprised that they could not be dragged across a stream, and up a hill which presented difficulties to an unencumbered horseman—then, cantering over to join the Guards ere they made their charge, and finding it over while he was in a hollow of the ground. As to the mode in which the attack was carried on by us, there was immense gallantry, devotion, and courage, and, according to military men present, no small amount of disorder. The Light Division was strangely handled. Sir George Brown, whose sight was so indifferent that he had to get one of his officers to lead his horse across the river, seemed not to know where his division was, and permitted Brigadier Buller to march off with two regiments of his brigade, leaving the third to join Codrington's Brigade. The men got huddled together on the other side of the river under the ridge, and lay there seven or eight instead of two deep, so that when they rose and delivered fire, their front was small, and the effect diminished. Then they were led straight up at the guns in a confused mass; when they had got into the battery they were left without supports, so that the enemy forced them to relinquish their hold, and were enabled to recover the work. The Light Division had, it is true, drawn the teeth of the battery, but still the enemy were able to fire over the heads of the columns from the hill above. However, the Alma was won. Menschikoff was in retreat, and the world was all before us on the evening of the 20th of September. Whether our generals had any foresight of what that world was to be—what were to be the fruits of victory, or the chances of disaster—let the history of the war on some future day communicate to the world.

The Russians were very much dissatisfied with the result of this battle. They put forth the rawness of the troops, their inferiority in numbers, and many other matters; they criticised severely the conduct of their generals during the action, and the disposition of the troops on the ground; but, after all, their position ought to have been impregnable, if defended by determined infantry.

The force under the orders of Prince Menschikoff was composed as follows:—{123}

The Russians have given the following account of their own position and of some incidents of the action:—

The centre of their position lay on the high slopes of the left bank of the river, opposite the village of Bourliouk; the left on the still higher and less accessible hills, with perpendicularly scarped sides, which rise from the river near the sea; the right wing on the gentle ascents into which this rising ground subsides about half a mile eastward of the village.

The reserves, which were posted behind the centre, consisted of the regiments of Volhynia, Minsk, and Moscow, the two former of which subsequently took an active part in the siege, and were the principal workmen and combatants in constructing and occupying the famous "white works" on the right of our position before Sebastopol. On their right flank were two regiments of hussars and two field batteries; in the rear of the right wing was stationed a regiment of Riflemen. Oddly enough, the Russian General sent off a battalion of the Moscow regiment to occupy the village of Ulukul Akles, several miles in the rear of his left wing, as if to prevent a descent behind him from the sea.

The disposition of this force will be seen on reference to the plan which accompanies the description of the battle of the Alma. The right was commanded by Lieutenant-General Knetsinsky, of the 16th Division; the centre by Prince Gortschakoff I.; the left by Lieutenant-General Kiriakoff, Commander of the 17th Division; and Prince Menschikoff took the control of the whole, being generally on the left of the centre, near the telegraph station. When the Allies came in sight, the Rifle battalion, about 650 strong, crossed to the right bank of the river, and occupied the{124} village of Bourliouk and the vineyards near it, and the regiments in front advanced their skirmishers to the left bank, and Menschikoff rode along the front from the right to the left of the line to animate the men, most of whom had been present at a mass to the Virgin early in the morning, when prayers were offered for her aid against the enemy. Our advance seemed to the Russians rather slow; but at last, at about 12.30, the Allies came within range, and a sharp fusilade commenced between the skirmishers and riflemen. About 12.20 the steamers outside began to fire on the Russian left, and forced the regiments of Minsk and Moscow to retire with loss, and killed some horses and men of the light battery stationed on their flank. Their shells struck down four officers of Menschikoff's staff later in the day, and did most effective service in shaking the confidence of the enemy, and in searching out their battalions so as to prevent their advance towards the seaboard. As the Allies advanced, the Cossacks, according to orders, set fire to the haystacks in the Tartar village, which soon caught, and poured out a mass of black smoke, mingled with showers of sparks. The guns of the Allies, from the right of the village, now began to play on the enemy, and caused so much loss in the four reserve battalions under General Oslonovich, that they, being young soldiers, began to retire of their own accord. At the same time the French gained the heights, driving back and destroying the 2nd battalion of the Moscow regiment, and holding their ground against the Minsk regiment, the 1st, 3rd, and 4th battalions of the Moscow regiment, and a numerous artillery, which arrived too late to wrest the heights from their grasp till the demonstration in the centre rendered their position certain and secure. General Kiriakoff, who commanded the left wing, seems to have been utterly bewildered, and to have acted with great imbecility, and want of decision and judgment. The Russians with whom I have conversed have assured me that he gave no orders, left every officer to do as he liked, and retired from the field, or at least disappeared from their view, very early in the fight. As the reserve battalions retired, the battalion of the Taioutine regiment, which was placed in a ravine in front of the river, withdrew as soon as it got under fire, and left a very important part of the position undefended. The Kazan and Ouglitsky regiments, defending the epaulement in which the guns were placed, suffered severely from the fire of the English riflemen, and the two battalions of the Borodino regiment, which advanced towards the river to fire on our men as they crossed the ford, were driven back with great slaughter by the continuous flight of Minié bullets. As Pennefather's brigade advanced, two battalions of the Vladimir regiment, deploying into columns of battalions, charged them with the bayonet, but were checked by our murderous fire, and only a few men were killed and wounded in the encounter between the foremost ranks, which were much broken and confused for a few moments. The advance of the French obliquely from the right, and the success of the English on the left, threatening to envelope the whole of the enemy, they began to retreat in tolerable order; but the English and{125} French guns soon began to open a cross fire on them, and their march became less regular. A Russian officer, who has written an account of the action, relates that Prince Menschikoff, as he rode past his regiment, then marching off the ground as fast as it could under our fire, said, "It's a disgrace for a Russian soldier to retreat;" whereupon one of the officers exclaimed, "If you had ordered us, we would have stood our ground." It would appear that, on arriving at the heights of the Katcha, part of the Russian army halted for a short time, and took up their position in order of battle, in case the Allies followed. As to the propriety of such a movement on our part by a portion of our army, under the circumstances, there may be some difference of opinion. As to the pursuit of the enemy on the spot by all the allied forces there can be no diversity of sentiment; but as to the proposition which Lord Raglan's friends declare he made, to continue the pursuit with our 1,100 cavalry, some artillery, and no infantry, it seems scarcely possible that it was made in seriousness. The enemy, defeated though they were, mustered nearly 30,000 men, of whom 3,500 were cavalry, and they had with them 94 guns. In their rear there was a most formidable position, protected by a river of greater depth and with deeper banks than the Alma. It was getting dark—no one knew the country—the troops were exhausted by a day's marching and manœuvring under a hot sun—and yet it is said that, under these circumstances, Lord Raglan proposed a pursuit by the portion of the French who had not been engaged, by the Turkish division, and by part of our cavalry, and a hypothetical two or three batteries. Most military men will, if that assertion be substantiated, probably think less of his lordship's military capacity than ever they did before. The grounds on which M. St. Arnaud is stated to have declined acceding to the wishes of Lord Raglan are these—that he could send no infantry, and that his artillery had exhausted their ammunition. Now, unquestionably St. Arnaud was quite as anxious as any one could be to complete his victory, and continue the pursuit of the enemy; and in his three despatches respecting the battle he laments repeatedly his inability, from want of cavalry, to turn the retreat of the Russians into a rout. It is also true that the artillery of the French had exhausted their ammunition; but let us calmly examine the means at the disposal of the two generals to effect an operation of a most difficult and serious kind, which is said to have been suggested by the one and rejected by the other. The English army present at the Alma, in round numbers as stated in the official returns, consisted of 27,000 men; the French, of 25,000; the Turks, of 6,000 men. Of the English were engaged with such loss as would incapacitate the regiments from action—the Guards, the 7th, 19th, 23rd, 30th, 33rd, 47th, 55th, 95th, one wing of 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade. There remained in just as good order for marching as any of the French regiments—1st Battalion of the Royals, 4th, 79th, 44th, 21st, 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade, 50th, 49th, 77th, 88th, 20th, 28th, 38th, 42nd—14 Battalions—and the cavalry; and according to the French accounts all their divisions were more or less engaged, with the{126} exception of part of Forey's. The Staff-officer admits we had 7,000 men who had not taken a part in the action; but then he adds that these 7,000 men were "not in fact more than sufficient for the immediate necessities of the camp." Now, as the French force was nearly equal to ours, the necessities of their camp would be nearly equal to ours also. He avers they had "12,000 men who had never been engaged." Be it so. But deduct 7,000 men required for "the immediate necessities of the camp," and you will have a disposable force of 5,000 men, who, with a force of Turks (supposed to have no camp at all, and therefore to have none of the English or French necessities for eating or drinking or camping), were, according to Lord Raglan's Staff-officer, to start off at four o'clock on a September evening to chase an army of 30,000 cavalry and infantry, and 94 guns! That is really the most preposterous attempt to vindicate Lord Raglan's generalship that has ever been given to the world. His lordship never says a word in his published despatches to corroborate those confidential communications, and it is to be hoped that they illustrate some of "the many opinions and motives ascribed to Lord Raglan which the Field-Marshal never entertained," to which the writer refers. Next day St. Arnaud wished to advance and follow the enemy, but Lord Raglan would not listen to it, as he had 3,000 wounded English and Russians to move. That is, if the 10,000 Turks and French, and a few field batteries, had come up with and beaten the Russians, Lord Raglan would have permitted them to pursue their career of victory without support, and to do as they pleased; and if they were beaten and allowed to fall back, he would leave their wounded in the hands of the enemy, or spend still more time in burying them. But the worst of all is that, after losing two days, the English wounded were nearly all on board ship by the afternoon of the 21st—in spite of the Marshal's protest we were obliged to leave upwards of 700 wounded Russians on the ground, with one surgeon and one servant to wait upon them. The enemy halted at the Katcha till after midnight, crossing it at Aranchi, and fell back towards Sebastopol, on the north side of which a portion of the troops arrived by 4 o'clock on the following afternoon. Their loss was, as stated in the official accounts, 1,762 killed, 2,315 wounded, 405 contused. Two generals prisoners. Generals Kvitzinsky, Schelkanoff, Goginoff, Kourtianoff, wounded.

Every one of the enemy had a loaf of black bread, and a linen roll containing coarse broken biscuit or hard bread like oil cake. Though some of the troops had been at the Alma for a couple of days, no bones were found about the ground. The ground was in a most filthy state. After battle came removal of wounded and the burial of the dead.

The Russian dead were all buried together in pits, and were carried down to their graves as they lay. Our parties on the 21st and 22nd buried 1,200 men. The British soldiers were buried in pits. Their firelocks, and the useful portions of their military equipment, were alone preserved.

The quantity of firelocks, great coats, bearskin caps, shakos, helmets and flat forage caps, knapsacks (English and Russian),{127} belts, bayonets, cartouch-boxes, cartridges, swords, exceeded belief; and round shot, fragments of shell smeared with blood and hair, grape and bullets, were under the foot and eye at every step. Our men broke the enemies' firelocks and rifles which lay on the ground. As many of them were loaded, the concussion set them off, so that dropping shot never ceased for about forty hours. The Russian musket was a good weapon to look at, but rather a bad one to use. The barrel, which was longer than ours, and was polished, was secured to the stock by brass straps, like the French. The lock was, however, tolerably good. The stock was of the old narrow Oriental pattern, and the wood of which it was made—white-grained and something like sycamore, broke easily. From the form of the heel of the stock, the "kick" of the musket must have been sharp with a good charge. Many had been originally flint-locked, but were changed to detonators by screwing in nipples and plugging up the touch-holes with steel screws. The cartridges were beautifully made and finished, the balls being strongly gummed in at the end, but the powder was coarse and unglazed, and looked like millet-seed; it was, however, clean in the hand, and burnt very smartly. The rifles were two-grooved, and projected a long conical ball. The ball was flat at the base, and had neither hollow cup nor pin; its weight must exceed that of our Minié ball. These rifles were made by J. P. Malherbe, of Liège. The bayonets were soft and bent easily. Some good swords belonging to officers were picked up, and weapons, probably belonging to drummers or bandsmen, exactly like the old Roman sword, very sharp and heavy. Some six or seven drums were left behind, but nearly all of them were broken—several by the shot which killed their owners. No ensign, eagle, standard, or colour of any kind was displayed by the enemy or found on the field. Our regiments marched with their colours, as a matter of course, and the enemy made the latter a special mark for the rifles. Thus it was so many ensigns, lieutenants, and sergeants fell.

The sad duty of burying the dead was completed on the 22nd. The wounded were collected and sent on board ship in arabas and litters, and the surgeons with humane barbarity were employed night and day in saving life. In the Light Division there were nearly 1,000 cases for surgical attendance and operations, at which Drs. Alexander and Tice were busily employed. Dr. Gordon was active in the Second Division in the same work.

There was more than an acre of Russian wounded when they were brought and disposed on the ground. Some of the prisoners told us they belonged to the army of Moldavia, and had only arrived in the Crimea twelve or fourteen days before the battle. If that were so, the expedition might have achieved enormous results at little cost, had it arrived three weeks earlier. All the Russian firelocks, knapsacks, bayonets, cartridge-boxes, &c., were collected together, near Lord Raglan's tent, and formed heaps about twenty yards long by ten yards broad. Our men were sent to the sea, three miles distant, on jolting arabas or tedious litters. The French had well-appointed covered hospital vans, to hold ten{128} or twelve men, drawn by mules, and their wounded were sent in much greater comfort than our poor fellows. The beach was lined with boats carrying off the wounded. Commander Powell, of the Vesuvius, as beachmaster was indefatigable in his exertions. Some poor fellows died on their way to the sea. Not only the wounded but the sick were sent on board the fleet. As a sanatorium alone, the value of the floating batteries of our friends the sailors was beyond all price. The Russian officers who were wounded, and all prisoners of rank, were likewise sent on board. We had 1,000 sick on board, in addition to our wounded. The French return of 1,400 killed and wounded was understood to include those who died of cholera during the passage from Varna and the march to the Alma.

Had a couple of thousand seamen and marines been landed, they could have done all that was required, have released us from two days' fearful duty, enabled us to follow the footsteps of our flying enemy, and to have completed his signal discomfiture, and have in all probability contributed materially to the issue of the campaign. Admiral Dundas, however, seemed to be in apprehension of the Russian fleet sallying out to attack us.

Brigadier-General Tylden died in his tent early on the morning of the 23rd, of cholera. He was buried in the valley under the heights of Alma. He was succeeded by Lieut.-Colonel Alexander, R.E., who was not, however, promoted to the rank of Brigadier. Many men died of cholera in the night. My sleep was disturbed by the groans of the dying, and on getting up in the morning I found that the corpse of a Russian lay outside the tent in which I had been permitted to rest. He was not there when we retired to rest, so that the wretched creature, who had probably been wandering about without food upon the hills ever since the battle, must have crawled down towards our fires, and there expired. Late at night on the 22nd orders were sent round the divisions to be prepared for marching after daybreak. Early on the 23rd we left the blood-stained heights of the Alma—a name that will be ever memorable in history. Soon after dawn the French assembled drums and trumpets on the top of the highest of the hills they carried, and a wild flourish and roll, repeated again and again, and broken by peals of rejoicing from the bugles of the infantry, celebrated their victory ere they departed in search of the enemy. It was spirit-stirring and thrilling music, and its effect, as it swelled through the early morning over the valley, can never be forgotten.

Our watch-fires were still burning languidly, as the sleepers roused themselves, and prepared to leave the scene of their triumphs. The fogs of the night crept slowly up the hill sides, and hung in uncertain folds around their summits, revealing here and there the gathering columns of our regiments in dark patches on the declivities, or showing the deep black-looking squares of the French battalions, already in motion towards the south. Dimly seen in the distance, the fleet was moving along slowly by the line of the coast, the long lines of smoke trailing back on their wake. But what was that grey mass on the plain, which seemed settled{129} down upon it almost without life or motion? Now and then, indeed, an arm might be seen waved aloft, or a man raised himself for a moment, looked around, and then fell down again. Alas! that plain was covered with the wounded Russians. Nearly sixty long hours they passed in agony upon the ground, and with but little hope of help or succour more, we were compelled to leave them. Their wounds had been bound and dressed.

Ere our troops marched, General Estcourt sent into the Tartar village up the valley, into which the inhabitants were just returning, and having procured the attendance of the head men, proceeded to explain that the wounded Russians would be confided to their charge, and that they were to feed and maintain them, and when they were well they were to be let go their ways. An English surgeon was left behind with these 750 men—Dr. Thomson, of the 44th Regiment. He was told his mission would be his protection in case the Cossacks came, and that he was to hoist a flag of truce should the enemy appear in sight; and then, provided with rum, biscuit, and salt meat, he was left with his charge, attended by a single servant. One of the Russian officers addressed the wounded, and explained the position in which they were placed; they promised to obey Dr. Thomson's orders, to protect him as far as they could, and to acquaint any Russian force which might arrive with the peculiar circumstances under which he was among them.

It was nearly eight o'clock ere the tents of head-quarters were struck, and the march began. We heard from the fleet that the enemy had not only left the Katcha, but that they had even retired across the Belbek. Our course was directed upon the former stream, almost in continuation of our march of the 20th, before the battle. As we moved along, the unfinished stone building, intended by the Russians for a telegraph station, came into view. The French had cut upon the entablature the simple inscription—La Bataille d'Alma, 20 Septembre, 1854. A similar building was visible further on towards Sebastopol; on reaching the top of one of the hills on our way, we could see the white lighthouse of Chersonesus at the end of the promontory which juts out into the sea. The country through which we marched was undulating and barren. Amidst steep hillocks covered with thistles, and separated from each other at times by small patches of steppe, or by more undulating and less hillocky ground, wound the road to Sebastopol—a mere beaten track, marked with cart-wheels, hoofs, and the nails of gun-carriage wheels. We advanced uninterruptedly at an average rate of two and a quarter miles an hour, halting occasionally to rest the troops, and allow the baggage-wagons to come up.

At three o'clock the beautiful valley of the Katcha came in sight, formed by a ridge of hills clad with verdure and with small forests of shrubs, through which here and there shone the white walls of villas and snug cottages. The country over which we marched slid down gradually to the level of the river, whose course was marked all along the base of the hills to the stream by lines of trees, and by the most luxurious vegetation, forming a strong contrast to the barren and bleak-looking tract on which our troops advanced. Lord{130} Raglan and his staff rode on considerably in advance of the troops, to the great astonishment and indignation of a Prussian officer (Lieut. Wagman), who loudly declared such conduct was quite opposed to the rules of war. Fluellen himself could not have been more angry at such disregard of martial etiquette than the gallant gentleman in question, and certainly we did show marked contempt for the enemy, and the most superb disdain of his famed Cossacks. Lord Raglan, his aides, his generals of artillery and engineers and their staff, his quartermaster-general and his staff, his adjutant-general and his staff, Sir John Burgoyne and his staff, and all the staff-doctors, actually came within a few hundred yards of the shrubberies and plantations at the river, a mile in advance of even the cavalry, and were riding on towards it in the same poco curante fashion, when Captain Chetwode and his troop of the 8th Hussars pushed on in the front to reconnoitre.

The Katcha is a small and rapid rivulet, with banks like those of the Alma; its course marked by neat white cottages, the most delicious vineyards and gardens, but no inhabitants were visible. Wheeling over the bridge, we turned eastward towards the little village of Eskel, on the left bank. The first building on the road was the Imperial Post-house, with its sign-post of the double-headed eagle, and an illegible inscription. The usual wooden direction-post, with a black and red riband painted round it diagonally on a white ground, informed us we were on our way to Sebastopol, distant ten miles. The road now assumed the character of an English by-way in Devonshire or Hampshire. Low walls at either side were surmounted by fruit trees laden with apples, pears, peaches and apricots, all ripe and fit for use, and at their foot clustered grapes of the most delicate flavour. The first villa we came to was the residence of a physician. It had been destroyed by the Cossacks. A verandah, laden with clematis, roses, and honeysuckle in front, was filled with broken music-stools, work-tables, and lounging chairs. All the glasses of the windows were smashed. Everything around betokened the hasty flight of the inmates. Two or three side-saddles were lying on the grass outside the hall-door; a parasol lay near them, close to a Tartar saddle and a huge whip. The wine casks were broken and the contents spilt; the barley and corn of the granary were thrown about all over the ground; broken china and glass of fine manufacture were scattered over the pavement outside the kitchen;—and amid all the desolation and ruin of the place, a cat sat blandly at the threshold, winking her eyes in the sunshine at the new comers.

Mirrors in fragments were lying on the floor; beds ripped open, the feathers littered the rooms a foot deep; chairs, sofas, fauteuils, bedsteads, bookcases, picture-frames, images of saints, women's needlework, chests of drawers, shoes, boots, books, bottles, physic jars, smashed or torn in pieces, lay in heaps in every room. The walls and doors were hacked with swords. The genius of destruction had been at work, and had revelled in mischief. The physician's account-book lay open on a broken table: he had been stopped in the very act of debiting a dose to some neighbour, and{131} his entry remained unfinished. Beside his account-book lay a volume of "Madame de Sévigné's Letters" in French, and a Pharmacopœia in Russian. A little bottle of prussic acid lay so invitingly near a box of bon-bons, that I knew it would be irresistible to the first hungry private who had a taste for almonds, and I accordingly poured out the contents to prevent the possible catastrophe. Our men and horses were soon revelling in grapes and corn; and we pushed on to Eskel, and established ourselves in a house which had belonged to a Russian officer of rank.

Every house and villa in the place was in a similar state. The better the residence, the more complete the destruction. Grand pianos, and handsome pieces of furniture, covered with silk and damasked velvet, rent to pieces, were found in more than one house. One of the instruments retained enough of its vital organs to breathe out "God save the Queen" from its lacerated brass ribs, and it was made to do so accordingly, under the very eye of a rigid portrait of his Imperial Majesty the Czar, which hung on the wall above! These portraits of the autocrat were not uncommon in the houses—nearly as common as pictures of saints with gilt and silver glories around their heads. The houses, large and small, consisted of one story only. Each house stood apart, with a large patch of vineyard around it, and a garden of fruit trees, and was fenced in from the road by a stone wall and a line of poplars or elms. A porch covered with vines protected the entrance. The rooms were clean and scrupulously whitewashed. Large outhouses, with wine-presses, stables, &c., complete the farmer's establishment.

A deserter came in, and was taken before Lord Raglan. He was, however, only a Tartar, but he gave such information respecting the feelings of the inhabitants towards us, that steps were at once taken to inform those who were hiding that if they returned to their homes, their lives and property would be protected. Some hour or so after we had arrived at Eskel, a number of bullet-headed personages, with sheepskin caps, and loose long coats and trousers, made their appearance, stealthily creeping into the houses, and eyeing the new occupants with shy curiosity. From the people who thus returned we heard that the Russians had arrived at the Katcha in dispirited condition the night of the battle of the Alma, and had taken up their position in the villages and in the neighbouring houses. At twelve o'clock the same night they continued their march. A part of the army went towards Bakschiserai. They were said to consist of about 20,000, and to be under the command of Menschikoff in person. The rest proceeded direct to Sebastopol, and entered the city in disorder. The evidences of their march were found along the road, in cartridges, shakos, caps, and articles of worn-out clothing. In the house which we occupied were abundant traces of the recent visit of a military man of rank: books on strategy, in Russian, lay on the floor, and a pair of handsome epaulets were found in the passage.

Lord Raglan occupied a very pretty villa for the night, but most of the furniture had been destroyed by the Cossacks. Orders were{132} given to prevent the soldiers destroying the vineyards or eating the fruit, but of course it was quite impossible to guard so extensive and tempting a region as the valley of the Katcha from thirsty and hungry men. There our soldiers fared on the richest of grapes and the choicest pears and apples; but they did not waste and spoil as the French did at Mamaschai, lower down the river.

CHAPTER V.

ON the 23rd, it was discovered that the enemy had sunk a line of vessels across the harbour in deep water, so as to form a submarine barrier against us. The ships thus sunk were the Tre Sviatitel (Three Bishops), three-decker; Sufail, Urail, two-deckers; the frigates Varna and Med, and the old two-decker Bachmont. This resolute and sagacious measure was advised by Korniloff, and adopted by Menschikoff.

The head-quarters did not move from the Katcha till nearly noon on the 24th. The day was very hot, and the troops, standing under arms, or lying down under the sun while this long delay took place, were very much dissatisfied. The French received between 7,000 and 8,000 men, who landed on the night of the 23rd and the morning of the 24th, at the mouth of the Katcha. The Scots Greys, landed from the Himalaya, and the 57th Regiment, which had been all but disembarked at the mouth of the Alma, came round to the Katcha and joined the army.

The country towards the Belbek is hilly and barren for a couple of miles after leaving the Katcha river. Then it becomes somewhat fresher and more level, and at length the river is approached by a gentle descent of meadow and greensward from the hills. The distance between the Katcha and the Belbek is about six miles. The valley of the Belbek is commanded by high hills on the left bank, but instead of being bare, like the summits of the hills over the Katcha and the Alma, they are covered with trees and brushwood.

PLAN OF THE FORTIFICATIONS OF SEBASTOPOL TO SEPT 1st 1854.

As it had been ascertained by reconnaissance that the enemy had batteries along the north-west of the harbour of Sebastopol, in conjunction with the Star Fort and Fort Constantine, which would cause loss in an attempt to invest the town on that face, it occurred to Sir John Burgoyne that a flank movement on Balaklava would turn and neutralize the batteries, secure a new base of operations (of which, we were in want, having abandoned that of the Katcha),{133} and distract the enemy, who would find the weakest part of Sebastopol exposed to the fire of our batteries, and our attacks directed against a point where they had least reason to expect it, and which they might have imagined free from all assault. The whole army marched towards the south-east, on the Black River, and as they were obliged to pass through a thickly-wooded country, intersected by narrow lanes winding up and down the hills, the troops were in some disorder, and had the enemy possessed the smallest enterprise they might have inflicted severe loss and annoyance by a spirited attack on our flank. This operation they at one time contemplated, but they dreaded the result of a second defeat.

At times, from the top of the hills, the town, with its white houses shining in the sun, could plainly be seen. All the afternoon the steamers effected a diversion by shelling the Star Fort and Fort Constantine, but at such a long range they could do but little execution; however, the fire had the effect of engaging the attention of the Russians. They did not make the smallest attempt to interrupt our progress. In the course of our march the baggage was sent too far to the left, and became involved in the line of the French and Turkish troops, who were marching on our flanks. Lord Raglan and his staff rode on (as was their wont) in advance, and reconnoitred Sebastopol. They were close to the north-east fort; but no shot was fired at them, notwithstanding that they were within range.

The works which commanded the mouth of the Belbek were inconsiderable, and could easily have been silenced by the fleet. An eyewitness, who served in the Russian army, states that all the troops, as they arrived in at the south side on the 20th and 21st, crossed to the south-west, except the Taioutine regiment. Such a movement would make it appear that the Russians expected a descent upon the south side, or were prepared to hold that side against the north, in case the Allies seized upon the Sievernaya and the northern forts. The only preparation made for the defence of the Sievernaya on the 22nd was as follows:—The Taioutine regiment, four battalions; the four depôt battalions of the 13th Division, and one battalion of sailors, in all about 6,000 men, were placed to garrison the work, which was in a very bad state and badly armed. They received orders to retire by a subterranean passage 4,000 feet long to the sea-side, in case the enemy should attack with vigour. On the 23rd, finding they were not pressed or pursued, the Russians pushed twelve battalions, two field batteries, and a regiment of cavalry, to the Belbek, and at one time seemed to have contemplated a demonstration against our flank. This, however, they abandoned; and on the 24th they turned their attention to the defence of the bridge across the Tchernaya, at Inkerman, on which they brought to bear four field and four siege guns, and the troops which had been on the Belbek, and the 16th Division, the cavalry part of the 14th Division, &c., moved across the Tchernaya by the Traktir bridge, and ascended to Mackenzie's farm, whence on the morning of the 25th they descended to Otoukoi, on the Belbek, and marched to Bakschiserai{134} to await the course of events, being joined there by Prince Gortschakoff, with the rest of the Russian army of the Alma. The troops left in Sebastopol, exclusive of the equipages of the fleet, were four battalions of the reserve of the 13th Division, which had suffered severely at the Alma, four depôt battalions of the 13th Division, and third battalion of the Taioutine regiment, in all nine weak battalions.

All the Russian officers with whom I have conversed—all the testimony I have heard or read, coincide on these two points—first, that if on the 25th we had moved to Bakschiserai in pursuit of the Russians, we should have found their army in a state of the most complete demoralisation, and might have forced the great majority of them to surrender as prisoners of war in a sort of cul de sac, from which but few could have escaped. Secondly, that had we advanced directly against Sebastopol, the town would have surrendered after some slight show of resistance to save the honour of the officers. The deduction from these propositions is that the flank march was the certain precursor of a long siege, of bloody battles and great losses; was an evidence of diffidence, and at the same time of boldness which, though favoured by fortune in its execution, was scarcely justifiable in a military sense, and was an abandonment of the original character of the expedition.

And here I may be permitted to remark, that the statement in the letters (of a Staff-officer) "from Head-quarters," page 224, to the effect that Lord Lyons could not have disapproved of the flank march because he was not present when Sir John Burgoyne proposed it, and that his manner, when he received Lord Raglan at Balaklava, "proved he highly admired" that movement, is calculated to lead to very erroneous impressions in the minds of those who attach any weight to the assertions of that officer. Lord Lyons, when he heard of the flank march, expressed his disapproval of it, and when he met Lord Raglan, he (as I heard from his own lips) told his lordship that he conceived the flank march to be a departure from the spirit in which the expedition was undertaken, and said, "This is strategy, but we are in no condition for strategical operation. We came here for a coup-de-main, but this is strategy!" The effects of that march are now matters beyond argument, and we can only weigh probable results against events—a very difficult equation. Whatever may be the opinions of civilians or military men respecting the flank march, it is certain that to Sir John Burgoyne belongs the credit of originating the idea at the conference which took place between the generals on the Belbek.

On the day of our march from the Katcha I was struck down by fever, fell from my pony into the stream where he was drinking, and was placed by one of the staff surgeons in a jolting araba carrying a part of the baggage of the Light Division, with poor Hughes of the 23rd Regiment, one of the finest men in the British army, who died in the course of the winter. The sun was exceedingly powerful, and when from the top of a wooded hill we saw the delicious valley of the Belbek studded with little snow-white cottages, with stately villas, with cosy snug-looking hamlets buried in{135} trees, and fringed with a continuous line of the most gloriously green vineyards, and the noblest orchards of fruit-trees, there was a murmur of delight throughout the army, the men, precipitating themselves down the steep slopes of the hill-sides, soon swarmed in every garden, and clustered in destructive swarms around every bush. Their halt was, however, a short one.

The word was given to push over the stream, and its bright waters were soon denied by the tramp of many feet. Just as the araba in which I lay was passing by a beautiful little chateau, said to belong to a Russian general, I saw a stream of soldiers issue from it, laden with incongruous, but at the same time the richest, spoils; others were engaged inside, breaking the glasses, throwing mirrors, pictures, and furniture out of the open frames. I learned from an officer who was standing by that the soldiers had not done the smallest mischief till they saw a staff-officer take a bronze statuette out of the house and ride away with it, whereupon the cry arose, "Let us plunder too if our officer sets the example." I could not help thinking what would have been the fate of that officer if he had served under our great Duke.

At the other side of the valley of the Belbek the hill-sides are exceedingly steep, and were covered with dwarf wood and undergrowth of bushes. It was with difficulty the waggons were urged up the rugged and narrow paths. Lord Raglan occupied one of the plundered villas, near the only bridge the Russians had left across the stream. There was very great confusion in getting the men into their places on this wooded and steep ridge of hills intersected with ravines, and it was long after sunset ere the men finally settled down at their bivouac fires. They had not eaten their scrambling and very heterogeneous suppers, and laid down to rest more than a few hours, when (about 1.30 in the morning) the report of a gun on the hills towards our right woke up the allied armies. The bugles at once sounded, the men stood to their arms, but all was silent. It appeared that the French vedettes saw some Cossacks in their front, and fell back on a picket who were bivouacing by a large fire, when the enemy opened upon them at a long range, either from some of the earthworks of the north side or from field-pieces. The shot whizzed high over head, and one of them passed over the English head-quarters, but as the vedettes reported all quiet in front soon afterwards, the troops piled arms and lay down to sleep again. Cholera was much on the increase, and many fell sick or died during the night.

On Monday morning, the 25th, our troops were under arms at 5.30 A.M.; at seven Lord Raglan, Sir John Burgoyne, and other staff officers proceeded to the French head-quarters, to decide on the course to be pursued in the forthcoming attack on Sebastopol. Marshal St. Arnaud was very unwell, but if M. de Bazancourt is to be credited, he was able to write very unjust entries in his journal, and to speak in a tone of egotistical confidence which his situation rendered painful, and which but for that would have been ridiculous. He says, under the head of the 25th, "The English ought to start first, and do not move till nine o'clock." He must have known{136} that till after nine o'clock it was not decided what course the troops were to take. Again, he speaks of himself as the sole leader, at a time when he had all but resigned the command. "Je les battrai," &c., on the very day when he was obliged to be carried from his tent in Prince Menschikoff's carriage. At the conferences, the French proposed to force the Inkerman bridge across the Tchernaya, and to make a push at the town. Sir John Burgoyne proposed that we should cross the stream by the bridge, at a place called Traktir, or "Restaurant," near Tchorguna, and by his representations carried the majority of those present with him, as he adduced strong reasons for seizing Balaklava, Kamiesch, and Kazatch, which were as much appreciated by our allies as by the English. It was therefore decided that the armies should continue their march on the ridge between the Belbek and the Tchernaya.

Our march was by different routes, the artillery proceeding by a difficult road, which allowed only one horseman to ride by the side of each gun. The Duke of Cambridge's baggage was actually within gunshot of Sebastopol for a quarter of an hour. As Lord Raglan was riding on in front of his staff he found himself, on emerging from a wooded road on the open space in front, in the immediate presence of a body of Russian infantry, which turned out to be the baggage guard of a large detachment of the Russian army marching from Sebastopol to Bakschiserai. They were not more than a few hundred yards distant. Lord Raglan turned his horse, and quietly cantered back to the rear of the first division of Artillery. The cavalry, consisting of a portion of the 11th and 8th Hussars, were quickly got in front—the guns were unlimbered and opened on the retreating mass of Russians; the 2nd battalion of Rifles in skirmishing order threw in a volley, the cavalry executed a charge, and the Russians broke and fled, leaving behind them an enormous quantity of baggage of every description. The enemy were pursued two or three miles on the road to Bakschiserai, but they fled so precipitately the cavalry could not come up with them.

The troops were halted and allowed to take what they liked. They broke open the carts and tumbled out the contents on the road; but the pillage was conducted with regularity, and the officers presided over it to see that there was no squabbling, and that no man took more than his share. Immense quantities of wearing apparel, of boots, shirts, coats, dressing cases, valuable ornaments, and some jewellery were found in the baggage carts, as well as a military chest containing some money (there are people who say it held 3000l.). A Russian artillery officer was found in one of the carriages, in a very jovial mood. Plenty of champagne was discovered among the baggage, and served to cheer the captors during their cold bivouac that night. A number of handsome hussar jackets, richly laced with silver, and made of fine light-blue cloth, which had never been worn, were also taken, and sold by the soldiers for sums varying from 20s. to 30s. a-piece. Fine large winter cloaks of cloth, lined with rich furs, were found in abundance.

This plunder put the soldiers in good humour, and they marched{137} the whole day, leaving Sebastopol on their right, till they arrived at the little hamlet of Traktir, on the Tchernaya or Black River, just before sunset, and halted for the night. As the baggage was separated from the bulk of the army by the distance of some miles, Lord Raglan was fain to put up in a miserable lodge for the night, while the bulk of his staff slept on the ground in a ditch outside it. Not the smallest attempt was made by the enemy to interrupt or annoy us during this very remarkable march, which could at any time have been greatly harassed by the least activity on the part of the Russians. Continuing our advance early next morning, we crossed the Tchernaya, and proceeded across the plains to Balaklava.

He was a bold mariner who first ventured in here, and keen-eyed too. I never was more astonished in my life than when on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 26th, I halted on the top of one of the numerous hills of which this portion of the Crimea is composed, and looking down saw under my feet a little pond, closely compressed by the sides of high rocky mountains; on it floated some six or seven English ships, for which exit seemed quite hopeless. The bay is like a highland tarn, and it is long ere the eye admits that it is some half mile in length from the sea, and varies from 250 to 120 yards in breadth. The shores are so steep and precipitous that they shut out the expanse of the harbour, and make it appear much smaller than it really is. Towards the sea the cliffs close up and completely overlap the narrow channel which leads to the haven, so that it is quite invisible. On the south-east of the poor village, which struggles for existence between the base of the rocky hills and the margin of the sea, are the extensive ruins of a Genoese fort, built some 200 feet above the level of the sea. It must have once been a large and important position, and its curtains, bastions, towers, and walls, all destroyed and crumbling in decay though they are, evince the spirit and enterprise of the hardy seamen who penetrated these classic recesses so long ago. There may be doubts whether the Genoese built it, but there can be none that it is very old, and superior in workmanship to the edifices of the Turks or Tartars.

The staff advanced first on the town, and were proceeding to enter it, when, to their surprise, from the old forts above came four spirts of smoke in rapid succession, and down came four shells into the ground close to them; but by this time the Agamemnon, outside the rocks, was heard. The Rifles and some of the Light Division opened fire, and the fort hung out a flag of truce. The Commandant had only sixty men, and they were all made prisoners. On being asked why he fired from a position which he must have known to be untenable, he replied that he did so in order that he might be summoned, and that he felt bound to fire till required to surrender.

Lord Raglan entered about twelve o'clock in the day. As he approached the inhabitants came out to meet him, bearing trays laden with fruit and flowers. Some of them bore loaves of bread cut up in pieces, and placed on dishes covered with salt, in token{138} of goodwill and submission. Towards evening, the Agamemnon glided in between the rocks in the narrow harbour, and anchored opposite the house of the General, whom Sir E. Lyons speedily visited. The fleet and army were thus once more united, and Lord Raglan had secured his base of operations.

Our cavalry in the afternoon took Mr. Upton, son of the English engineer who constructed so many useful works at Sebastopol. He was captured on his farm, and was taken before Lord Raglan, but refused to give any information respecting the Russians, as he said he could not reconcile it to his notions of honour to injure a Government in whose military service he had been.

All the hills around were barren rock; towards the land they became more fertile, and for a mile towards Sebastopol and Simpheropol were studded with pleasant-looking white villas and farmhouses, principally inhabited by Russian officials from Sebastopol.

The lighthouse of Cape Cherson fell into our hands, and was lighted up by English sailors. The Russians had left it in darkness, but a party of blue-jackets dashed at it on the 26th of September, and compelled the Russian lighthouse-keeper to illuminate it. Jack was in great delight at this. The Firebrand and Sanspareil landed 1000 sailors from the fleet on the 1st of October. They were placed under canvas at the head of the Bay of Balaklava. One thousand marines garrisoned the heights above the town, and the First Division, liberated by their presence, moved on in advance, and supported the Fourth Division. The Turks encamped at the rear and to the right of our Third Division.

The Australian, Sidney, and Gertrude, with the heavy artillery and siege train, came in on the 27th, and proceeded to disembark their heavy guns at a pier which was repaired by the 3rd company of Sappers. The 4th and 2nd Divisions were pushed on towards the south-west side of Sebastopol, and encamped on ridges about two miles from the city, separated from each other by a ravine, which commences near Balaklava and runs nearly to the head of the creek of Sebastopol. The city was quite visible below. Across the north of the harbour, near the most easterly of the creeks, was placed a two-decker, painted so as to look like a three-decker, with springs on her cable, and her broadside turned towards our position. On the northern side a large circular work, with three tiers of guns—Fort Constantine—was visible, and more inland there was another large fortification, called the "Star Fort." On the near side was a very large fortification, with curtains, running inland, a semi-circular bastion, and some rudimentary earthworks—all outside the town. Lord Raglan and staff rode out and made a reconnaissance. A frigate, anchored inside the two-decker, near the end of the creek, amused herself by firing round shot and shell, but did no damage. The French landed their guns at Kamiesch and Khazatchel.

The cholera, which never left us, made many victims. Colonel Beckwith (1st battalion Rifles), Captain Cox (Grenadier Guards), Colonel Hoey (30th Regiment), Dr. Mackay, Lieutenant Grant (79th), the Rev. Mr. Mockler, and others, were among the number.{139}

On Friday, September 29, Marshal St. Arnaud, who had been obliged to resign his command to General Canrobert on the march, was carried from his quarters in Balaklava on board the Berthollet in a dying state, and expired at sea ere she reached the Bosphorus.

On the 30th, all our heavy guns were parked. On the 1st of October, there was a general rest throughout the army. The enemy the whole of that day amused themselves firing shot and shell over the heads of our artillery, and General Cathcart was obliged to move his quarters, as the Russians found out his range and made beautiful practice at them. However, he left his flagstaff, which seemed of much attraction to them, in the same place, and they continued to hammer away at it as usual. The Second Division moved up on the left of our position on the 8th of October, and the Light Division took ground on the extreme right.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson obtained the command of Captain Patton's battery of artillery, vacated by the decease of the latter-named officer by cholera.

During the first three weeks of our stay in the Crimea we lost as many of cholera as perished on the Alma. We heard strange things from the deserters who began to join us. They said that thirty Russian ladies went out of Sebastopol to see the battle of the Alma, as though they were going to a play or a picnic. They were quite assured of the success of the Russian troops, and great was their alarm and dismay when they found themselves obliged to leave the telegraph house on the hill, and to fly for their lives in their carriages. There is no doubt but that our enemies were perfectly confident of victory.

Forty pieces of heavy artillery were sent up on the 4th of October to the park, and twelve tons of gunpowder were safely deposited in the mill on the road towards Sebastopol. As the French had very little ground left on which to operate on our left, the 2nd Division moved from its position, crossed the ravine on its right, and took up ground near the 4th Division. The French immediately afterwards sent up a portion of their troops to occupy the vacant ground.

Dr. Thomson, of the 44th, and Mr. Reade, Assistant-Surgeon Staff, died of cholera on the 5th of October, in Balaklava. The town was in a revolting state. Lord Raglan ordered it to be cleansed, but there was no one to obey the order, and consequently no one attended to it.{140}

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

LORD RAGLAN and Staff established head-quarters in a snug farmhouse, surrounded by vineyards and extensive out-offices, about four and a half miles from Balaklava, on the 5th of October. From the rising ground, about a mile and a half distant from head-quarters, in front, the town of Sebastopol was plainly visible. The Russians were occupied throwing up works and fortifying the exposed portions of the town with the greatest energy.

The investment of the place on the south side was, as far as possible, during the night of the 7th, completed. Our lines were to be pushed on the right and closed in towards the north, so as to prevent supplies or reinforcements passing out or in on this side of the Black River. This measure was absolutely necessary to enable our engineers to draw the lines or measure the ground.

The Russians continued to work all the week at the White Fort, and cast up strong earthworks in front of it, and also on the extreme left, facing the French. They fired shell and shot, at intervals of ten minutes, into the camps of the Second and Light Divisions. Sir George Brown had to move his quarters more to the rear.

The silence and gloom of our camp, as compared with the activity and bustle of that of the French, were very striking. No drum, no bugle-call, no music of any kind, was ever heard within our precincts, while our neighbours close by kept up incessant rolls, fanfaronnades, and flourishes, relieved every evening by the fine performances of their military bands. The fact was, many of our instruments had been placed in store, and the regimental bands were broken up and{141} disorganized, the men being devoted to the performance of the duties for which the ambulance corps was formed. I think, judging from one's own feelings, and from the expressions of those around, that the want of music in camp was productive of graver consequences than appeared likely to occur at first blush from such a cause. Every military man knows how regiments, when fatigued on the march, cheer up at the strains of their band, and dress up, keep step, and walk on with animation and vigour when it is playing. At camp, I always observed with pleasure the attentive auditory who gathered every evening at the first taps of the drum to listen to the music. At Aladyn and Devno the men used to wander off to the lines of the 77th, because it had the best band in the division; and when the bands were silenced because of the prevalence of cholera, out of a humane regard for the feelings of the sick, the soldiers were wont to get up singing parties in their tents in lieu of their ordinary entertainment. It seemed to be an error to deprive them of a cheering and wholesome influence at the very time they needed it most. The military band was not meant alone for the delectation of garrison towns, or for the pleasure of the officers in quarters, and the men were fairly entitled to its inspiration during the long and weary march in the enemy's country, and in the monotony of a standing camp ere the beginning of a siege.

Soon after daybreak on the morning of the 10th, the Russian batteries opened a heavy fire on the right of our position, but the distance was too great for accuracy. On the same day four battalions of French, numbering 2400 men, broke ground at nine o'clock P.M., and before daybreak they had finished a ditch, parapet, and banquette, 1200 metres long, at a distance of 900 metres from the enemy's line; and so little did the Russians suspect the operation, that they never fired a gun to disturb them. Each man worked and kept guard at one of the covering parties in turn till daybreak, and by that time each man had finished his half metre of work, so that the 1,200 metres were completed. From this position a considerable portion of the enemy's defences on their right was quite under control, and the French could command the heaviest fort on that side. From the top of the ditch seventy-six guns could be counted in the embrasures of this work, which was called the Bastion du Mât. The French had got forty-six guns ready to mount when the embrasures should be made and faced with gabions and fascines, and the platforms were ready. Their present line was from 200 to 300 yards nearer to the enemy's lines than ours; but the superior weight of our siege guns more than compensated for the difference of distance.

On the previous night the British, who had already thrown up some detached batteries, broke ground before Sebastopol on the left. Soon after dark, 800 men were marched out silently under the charge and direction of Captain Chapman, R.E., who has the construction of the works and engineering department of the left attack under his control. About 1200 yards of trench were made, though the greatest difficulty was experienced in working, owing{142} to the rocky nature of the ground. The cover was tolerably good. The Russians never ceased firing, but attempted nothing more, and those who were hoping for a sortie were disappointed. As an earthwork for a battery had been thrown up the previous day, within fire of the enemy's guns, their attention was particularly directed to our movements, and throughout the day they kept up a tremendous fire on the high grounds in front of the Light and Second Divisions. The Russians, who usually ceased firing at sunset, were on the alert all night, and continued their fire against the whole line of our approaches almost uninterruptedly. Every instant the darkness was broken by a flash which had all the effect of summer lightning—then came darkness again, and in a few seconds a fainter flash denoted the bursting of a shell. The silence in the English Camp afforded a strange contrast to the constant roar of the Russian batteries, to the music and trumpet calls and lively noises of the encampment of our allies. After nightfall the batteries on the Russian centre opened so fiercely that it was expected they were covering a sortie, and the camp was on the alert in consequence. Lord Raglan, accompanied by Quartermaster-General Airey and several officers, started at ten o'clock, and rode along the lines, minutely inspecting the state and position of the regiments and works. They returned at half-past one o'clock in the morning. The casualties on the night of the 10th were, one man, 68th, died of wounds, legs taken off; one man, 57th, killed by cannon-shot; another man, 57th, arm shot off; Lieutenant Rotherham, 20th, slightly wounded in the leg by a stone which had been "started" by a cannon-shot.

Colonel Waddy, Captain Gray, and Lieutenant Mangles, 50th, were wounded by a shell on the evening of the 11th. It was rumoured that the Russians would attack Balaklava, while the Greeks were to aid them by setting fire to the town. The information on this point was so positive, that the authorities resorted to the extreme measure of ordering the Greeks, men, women, and children, to leave the town, and the order was rigidly carried into effect before evening. An exception was made in favour of the Tartar families, who were all permitted to remain. The Greeks were consoled in their flight by a good deal of plunder in the shape of clothes which had been left with them to wash.

Capt. Gordon, R.E., commenced our right attack soon after dark. Four hundred men were furnished from the Second and Light Divisions on the works, and strong covering parties were sent out in front and in rear to protect them. The working party was divided into four companies of 100 men each, and they worked on during the night with such good will, that before morning No. 1 party had completed 160 yards; No. 2, 78 yards; No. 3, 95 yards; No. 4, 30 yards—in all 363 yards of trench ready for conversion into batteries. These trenches were covered very perfectly. It was intended that a party of similar strength should be employed on the left and centre; but, owing to one of those accidents which unavoidably occur in night work, the sappers and miners missed their way, and got in advance towards the lines of the enemy.{143} They were perceived by an advanced post, which opened fire on them at short distance, and, wonderful to relate, missed them all. The flashes, however, showed our men that strong battalions of Russian infantry were moving silently towards our works, and the alarm was given to the division in the rear. At twenty-five minutes past one a furious cannonade was opened by the enemy on our lines, as they had then ascertained that we had discovered their approach. The Second and Light Divisions turned out, and our field guns attached to them opened fire on the enemy, who were advancing under the fire of their batteries. Owing to some misunderstanding, the covering parties received orders to retire, and fell back on their lines—all but one company of riflemen, under the command of Lieutenant Godfrey, who maintained the ground with tenacity, and fired into the columns of the enemy with effect. The Russians pushed on field-pieces to support their assault. The batteries behind them were livid with incessant flashes, and the roar of shot and shell filled the air, mingled with the constant "ping-pinging" of rifle and musket-balls. All the camps "roused out." The French on our left got under arms, and the rattle of drums and the shrill blast of trumpets were heard amid the roar of cannon and small arms. For nearly half-an-hour this din lasted, till all of a sudden a ringing cheer was audible on our right, rising through the turmoil. It was the cheer of the 88th, as they were ordered to charge down the hill on their unseen enemy. It had its effect, for the Russians, already pounded by our guns and shaken by the fire of our infantry, as well as by the aspect of the whole hill-side lined with our battalions, turned and fled under the shelter of their guns. Their loss was not known; ours was very trifling. The sortie was completely foiled, and not an inch of our lines was injured, while the four-gun battery (the main object of their attack) was never closely approached at all. The alarm over, every one returned quietly to tent or bivouac. In order to understand this description of the works, it will be necessary to refer to the plan which accompanies this. It affords a good idea of the appearance presented by the lines and works on the eve of the first bombardment.

At the distance of about 700 sagenes (a sagene is seven feet), from the south extremity of the Careening Bay, was placed a round tower, around which the Russians had thrown up extensive entrenchments, armed with heavy guns. There was a standing camp of cavalry and infantry on a rising ground, on the summit of which this tower was placed, and probably 10,000 or 12,000 men were encamped there. This round tower was provided with guns, which, equally with those in the earthworks below, threw shot and shell right over our advanced posts and working parties, and sometimes pitched them over the hills in our front into the camps below. At the distance of 1200 yards from this round tower, in a direction nearly due south-south-east, our first batteries were to be formed, and the earthworks had been thrown up there, inclining with the slope of the hill towards the end of the Dockyard Creek, from which they were distant 930 yards. The guns of works were{144} intended to command the Dockyard Creek, the ships placed in it, and the part of the town and its defences on the west and south of the creek.

Our left attack extended up towards the slope of the ravine which divided the French from the British attacks, and which ran south-east from the end of the Dockyard Creek up to our headquarters at Khutor. Dominating both of these entrenchments, for most of their course, was a heavy battery of eight Lancaster and ten-inch naval guns, placed at a distance of 2500 yards from the enemy's lines. The extreme of the French right was about two and a half miles from the extreme of the British left attack. South of the Cemetery, and inclining up towards Quarantine Bay and the fresh-water wells, were the French lines, which were beautifully made and covered. The fire of the Russian batteries thrown up from the circular position at the end of the western wall towards the barracks, near the end of the Dockyard Harbour, was incessantly directed on them, and shells sometimes burst in the lines; but as a general rule they struck the hill in front, bounded over, and burst in the rear. Our left attack crept round towards Inkerman, and commanded the place from the influx of the Tchernaya into the head of the bay or harbour of Sebastopol, to the hills near the round tower already threatened by our right attack. The French commanded the place from the sea to the ravine at the end of the Dockyard Harbour, and when their guns were mounted, it was hoped that all the forts, intrenchments, buildings, earthworks, barracks, batteries, and shipping would be destroyed.

The front of both armies united, and the line of offensive operations covered by them, extended from the sea to the Tchernaya for seven and a half or eight miles. From our extreme right front to Balaklava our lines extended for about the same distance, and the position of the army had been made so strong on the eastern, south-eastern, flank and rear, as to set all the efforts of the Russians to drive us from it utterly at defiance. In the first place, the road from Kadikoi to Kamara, and the western passes of the mountains, had been scarped in three places so effectually that it would have been difficult for infantry, and therefore impossible for artillery, to get along it to attack us. A heavy gun had, however, been placed in position on the heights to command this road, and to sweep the three scarps effectually. On the heights over the east side of Balaklava, were pitched the tents of about 1000 marines from the various ships of the fleet, and several 24 pound and 32 pound howitzers had been dragged up into position on the same elevation. At Kadikoi, towards the north-west, was situated a sailors' camp of about 800 men, with heavy guns in support, and with a temporary park for artillery and ship-guns below them. From Kadikoi towards Traktir the ground was mountainous, or rather it was exceedingly hilly, the heights having a tumular appearance, and the ridges being intersected by wide valleys, through a series of which passed on one side Prince Woronzoff's road, the road to Inkerman, and thence to Sebastopol, by a long détour over the Bakschiserai road, and that to Traktir.{145}

On five of these tumular ridges overlooking the road to Balaklava, a party of 2000 Turks were busily engaged casting up earthworks for redoubts, under the direction of Captain Wagman, a Prussian engineer officer, who was under the orders of Sir John Burgoyne. In each of these forts were placed two heavy guns and 250 Turks. These poor fellows worked most willingly and indefatigably, though they had been exposed to the greatest privations. For some mysterious reason or other the Turkish government sent instead of the veterans who fought under Omar Pasha, a body of soldiers of only two years' service, the latest levies of the Porte, many belonging to the non-belligerent class of barbers, tailors, and small shopkeepers. Still they were patient, hardy, and strong—how patient I am ashamed to say. I was told, on the best authority, that these men were landed without the smallest care for their sustenance, except that some Marseilles biscuits were sent on shore for their use. These were soon exhausted—the men had nothing else. From the Alma up to the 10th of October, the whole force had only two biscuits each! The rest of their food they had to get by the roadside as best they might, and in an inhospitable and desolated country they could not get their only solace, tobacco; still they marched and worked day after day, picking up their subsistence by the way as best they might, and these proud Osmanli were actually seen walking about our camps, looking for fragments of rejected biscuit. But their sorrows were turned to joy, for the British people fed them, and such diet they never had before since Mahomet enrolled his first army of the faithful. They delighted in their coffee, sugar, rice, and biscuits, but many of the True Believers were much perturbed in spirit by the aspect of our salt beef, which they believed might be pork in disguise, and they subjected it to strange tests ere it was incorporated with Ottoman flesh and blood.

Eighteen days had elapsed since our army, by a brilliant and daring forced march on Balaklava, obtained its magnificent position on the heights which envelope Sebastopol on the south side from the sea to the Tchernaya; the delay was probably unavoidable. Any officer who has been present at great operations of this nature will understand what it is for an army to land in narrow and widely separated creeks all its munitions of war—its shells, its cannon-shot, its heavy guns, mortars, its powder, its gun-carriages, its platforms, its fascines, gabions, sandbags, its trenching tools, and all the various matériel requisite for the siege of extensive and formidable lines of fortifications and batteries. But few ships could come in at a time to Balaklava or Kamiesch; in the former there was only one small ordnance wharf, and yet it was there that every British cannon had to be landed. The nature of our descent on the Crimea rendered it quite impossible for us to carry our siege train along with us, as is the wont of armies invading a neighbouring country only separated from their own by some imaginary line. We had to send all our matériel round by sea, and then land it as best we could. But when once it was landed the difficulties of getting it up to places where it was required seemed really to commence. All these enormous masses of metal had to be dragged by men, aided by{146} such inadequate horse-power as was at our disposal, over a steep and hilly country, on wretched broken roads, to a distance of eight miles, and one must have witnessed the toil and labour of hauling up a Lancaster or ten-inch gun under such circumstances to form a notion of the length of time requisite to bring it to its station. It will, however, serve to give some idea of the severity of this work to state one fact—that on the 10th no less than thirty-three ammunition horses were found dead, or in such a condition as to render it necessary to kill them, after the duty of the day before. It follows from all these considerations that a great siege operation cannot be commenced in a few days when an army is compelled to bring up its guns.

Again, the nature of the ground around Sebastopol offered great impediments to the performance of the necessary work of trenching, throwing up parapets, and forming earthworks. The surface of the soil was stony and hard, and after it had been removed the labourer came to strata of rock and petrous masses of volcanic formation, which defied the best tools to make any impression on them, and our tools were far from being the best. The result was that the earth for gabions and for sand-bags had to be carried from a distance in baskets, and in some instances enough of it could not be scraped together for the most trifling parapets. This impediment was experienced to a greater extent by the British than by the French. The latter had better ground to work upon, and they found fine beds of clay beneath the first coating of stones and earth, which were of essential service to them in forming their works.

The officers commanding the batteries on the right attack were Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson, Captain D'Aguilar, and Captain Strange. The officers commanding the batteries of the left attack were Major Young, Major Freese, and Major Irving. The whole of the siege-train was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Gambier.

Our left attack consisted of four batteries and 36 guns; our right attack of 20 guns in battery. There were also two Lancaster batteries and a four-gun battery of 68-pounders on our right. The French had 46 guns. In all 117 guns to 130 guns of the Russians. The night was one of great anxiety, and early in the morning we all turned out to see the firing. On 17th October the bombardment began. It commenced by signal at 6.30 A.M.; for thirty minutes previous the Russians fired furiously on all the batteries. The cannonade on both sides was most violent for nearly two hours.

At eight o'clock it was apparent that the French batteries in their extreme right attack, overpowered by the fire and enfiladed by the guns of the Russians, were very much weakened; their fire slackened minute after minute.

At 8.30 the fire slackened on both sides for a few minutes; but recommenced with immense energy, the whole town and the line of works being enveloped in smoke.

At 8.40 the French magazine in the extreme right battery of twelve guns blew up with a tremendous explosion, killing and wounding 100 men. The Russians cheered, fired with renewed vigour, and crushed the French fire completely, so that they were{147} not able to fire more than a gun at intervals, and at ten o'clock they were nearly silenced on that side.

At 10.30 the fire slackened on both sides, but the Allies and Russians re-opened vigorously at 10.45. Our practice was splendid, but our works were cut up by the fire from the Redan and from the works round a circular martello tower on our extreme right.

At 12.45 the French line-of-battle ships ran up in most magnificent style and engaged the batteries on the sea side. The scene was indescribable, the Russians replying vigorously to the attacks by sea and land, though suffering greatly.

At 1.25 another magazine in the French batteries blew up. The cannonade was tremendous. Our guns demolished the Round Tower but could not silence the works around it.

At 1.40 a great explosion took place in the centre of Sebastopol amid much cheering from our men, but the fire was not abated. The Lancaster guns made bad practice, and one of them burst. At 2.55 a terrific explosion of a powder magazine took place in the Russian Redan Fort. The Russians, however, returned to their guns, and still fired from the re-entering angle of their works. The cannonade was continuous from the ships and from our batteries, but the smoke did not permit us to discern whether the British fleet was engaged.

At 3.30 a loose powder store inside our naval battery was blown up by a Russian shell, but did no damage. The enemy's earthworks were much injured by our fire, the Redan nearly silenced, and the fire of the Round Tower entrenchments diminished, though the inner works were still vigorous.

At 3.35 the magazine inside the works of the Round Fort was blown up by our shot.

At four the ships outside were ripping up the forts and stone-works and town by tremendous broadsides. Only the French flag was visible, the English fleet being on the opposite side of the harbour. Orders were given to spare the town and buildings as much as possible.

From four to 5.30 the cannonade from our batteries was very warm, the Russians replying, though our fire had evidently established its superiority over theirs, the ships pouring in broadside after broadside on Forts Nicholas and Constantine at close ranges. Towards dusk the fire slackened greatly, and at night it ceased altogether, the Russians for the first time being silent.

The French lost about 200 men, principally by the explosions; our loss was very small—not exceeding 100 killed and wounded from the commencement of the siege.

The fire was resumed on the morning of the 18th, soon after daybreak. The French on that occasion were unable to support us, their batteries being silenced.

During the night the Russians remounted their guns and brought up fresh ones, and established a great superiority of fire and weight of metal.

On the 18th, early in the morning, a vedette was seen "circling left" most energetically;—and here, in a parenthesis, I must ex{148}plain that when a vedette "circles left," the proceeding signifies that the enemy's infantry are approaching, while to "circle right" is indicative of the approach of cavalry. On this signal was immediately heard the roll-call to "boot and saddle;" the Scots Greys and a troop of Horse Artillery assembled with the remaining cavalry on the plain; the 93rd got under arms, and the batteries on the heights were immediately manned. The distant pickets were seen to advance, and a dragoon dashed over the plain with the intelligence that the enemy was advancing quickly. Then cavalry and infantry moved upon the plain, remaining in rear of the eminences from which the movements of the vedettes had been observed. This state of things continued for an hour, when, from the hills, about 3000 yards in front, the Turks opened fire from their advanced entrenchments. The Moskows then halted in their onward course, and in the evening lighted their watch-fires about 2000 yards in front of our vedettes, the blaze showing bright and high in the darkness. Of course we were on the alert all night, and before the day broke were particularly attentive to our front. If the Russians had intended to attack us at that time, they could not have had a more favourable morning, a low dense white fog covering the whole of the plain. The sun rose, and the mist disappeared, when it was found the Russians had vanished also. The next day, the 19th, we naturally expected would be a quiet one, and that we should not be annoyed by having to remain at our arms for our final work. Not a bit of it; we had just laden ourselves with haversacks to forage among the merchant shipping in the harbour, when a vedette was seen to "circle right" most industriously. "Boot and saddle" again resounded through the cavalry camps, and another day was passed like its predecessor, the enemy finally once more retiring, this time without advancing near enough for a shot from the Turks.

The enemy scarcely fired during the night of the 18th. Our batteries were equally silent. The French on their side opened a few guns on their right attack, at which they worked all night to get them into position; but they did not succeed in firing many rounds before the great preponderance of the enemy's metal made itself felt, and their works were damaged seriously; in fact, their lines, though nearer to the enemy's batteries than our own in some instances, were not sufficiently close for the light brass guns with which they were armed.

At daybreak on the 19th the firing continued as usual from both sides. The Russians, having spent the night in repairing the batteries, were nearly in the same position as ourselves, and, unaided or at least unassisted to the full extent we had reason to expect by the French, we were just able to hold our own during the day. Some smart affairs of skirmishers and sharpshooters took place in front. Our riflemen annoyed the Russian gunners greatly, and prevented the tirailleurs from showing near our batteries. On one occasion the Russian riflemen and our own men came close upon each other in a quarry before the town. Our men had exhausted all their ammunition; but as soon as they saw the Russians, they seized the{149} blocks of stone which were lying about, and opened a vigorous volley on the enemy. The latter either had empty pouches, or were so much surprised that they forgot to load, for they resorted to the same missiles. A short fight ensued, which ended in our favour, and the Russians retreated, pelted vigorously as long as the men could pursue them. The coolness of a young artillery officer, named Maxwell, who took some ammunition to the batteries through a tremendous fire along a road so exposed to the enemy's fire that it has been called "The Valley of Death," was highly spoken of on all sides. The blue-jackets were delighted with Captain Peel, who animated the men by the exhibition of the best qualities of an officer, though his courage was sometimes marked by an excess that bordered on rashness. When the Union Jack in the sailors' battery was shot away, he seized the broken staff, and leaping up on the earthworks, waved the old bit of bunting again and again amid a storm of shot, which fortunately left him untouched.

Our ammunition began to run short, but supplies were expected every moment. Either from a want of cartridges, or from the difficulty of getting powder down to the works, our 12-gun battery was silent for some time. The Admiral (Sir E. Lyons), on his little grey pony, was to be seen hovering about our lines indefatigably.

The French fire slackened very much towards one o'clock, the enemy pitching shells right into their lines and enfilading part of their new works. Hour after hour one continuous boom of cannon was alone audible, and the smoke screened all else from view. At a quarter past three there was an explosion of powder in the tower opposite to our right attack. The Flagstaff Fort seemed much knocked about by the French. The Redan and Round Tower earthworks fired nearly as well as ever. As it was very desirable to destroy the ships anchored in the harbour below us, and to fire the dockyard buildings, our rockets were brought into play, and, though rather erratic in their flight, they did some mischief, but not so much as was expected. Wherever they fell the people could be seen flying up the streets when the smoke cleared. At three o'clock P.M. the town was on fire; but after the smoke had excited our hopes for some time, it thinned away and went out altogether. They kept smartly at work from three guns in the Round Tower works, and from some four or five in the Redan, on our batteries.

Two 68-pounders were mounted during the night of the 19th in our batteries, and the firing, which nearly ceased after dark, was renewed by daybreak. We were all getting tired of this continual "pound-pounding," which made a great deal of noise, wasted much powder, and did very little damage. Our amateurs were quite disappointed and tired out. Rome was not built in a day, nor could Sebastopol be taken in a week. In fact, we had run away with the notion that it was a kind of pasteboard city, which would tumble down at the sound of our cannon as the walls of Jericho fell at the blast of Joshua's trumpet. The news that Sebastopol had fallen, which we received viâ England, excited indignation and astonishment. The army was enraged, as they felt the verity, whenever it might be realized, must fall short of the effect of that splendid{150} figment. They thought that the laurels of the Alma would be withered in the blaze of popular delight at the imaginary capture. People at home must have known very little about us or our position. I was amused at seeing in a journal a letter from an "Old Indian," on the manufacture of campaign bread more Indico, in which he advised us to use salt! milk! and butter! in the preparation of what must be most delicious food. Salt was a luxury which was very rarely to be had, except in conjunction with porky fibre; and as to milk and butter, the very taste of them was forgotten. Lord Raglan was very glad to get a little cold pig and ration rum and water the night before we entered Balaklava. However, the hardest lot of all was reserved for our poor horses. All hay rations for baggagers were rigidly refused; they only received a few pounds of indifferent barley. There was not a blade of grass to be had—the whole of these plateaux and hills were covered with thistles only, and where the other covering of the earth went I know not. The hay ration for a charger was restricted to 6lb. daily. Under these circumstances horseflesh was cheap, and friendly presents were being continually offered by one man to another of "a deuced good pony," which were seldom accepted.

The next day, the 20th, I had a foraging expedition, and returned with a goose, butter, preserved milk, &c.—a very successful foray, and a full havresack. We were just beginning our meal of commissariat beef and pork, tempered with the contents of the aforesaid havresack, when away went the vedette again, first circling right and then reversing as suddenly to the left. Again sounded trumpet, bugle, and drum through the plain, and masses again moved into position upon it. So we remained till dark, a night attack on the Turkish position in our front being anticipated, and so we again stood all ready for some hours, during which the only amusement was in the hands of the Turks, who fired a round or two; darkness found us similarly occupied.

At 2.50 P.M. a fire broke out behind the Redan. At 3.15 P.M. a fire of less magnitude was visible to the left of the Redan, further in towards the centre of the town.

Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar was wounded in the trenches. His wound was, however, not at all serious. Our loss was three killed and thirty-two or thirty-three wounded.

On the 21st a battery was finished before Inkerman, and two 18-pounders were mounted in it, in order to silence the heavy ship gun which annoyed the Second Division.

The steamer Vladimir came up to the head of the harbour and opened fire on the right attack. She threw her shell with beautiful accuracy, and killed two men and wounded twenty others before we could reply effectually. A large traverse was erected to resist her fire, and she hauled off. Twenty-two guns were placed in a condition to open in this attack by the exertions of the men under Major Tylden, who directed it.

Lord Dunkellin, Captain Coldstream Guards, eldest son of the Marquis of Clanricarde, was taken prisoner on the 22nd. He was out with a working party of his regiment, which had got a little{151} out of their way, when a number of men were observed through the dawning light in front of them. "There are the Russians," exclaimed one of the men. "Nonsense, they're our fellows," said his lordship, and off he went towards them, asking in a high tone as he got near, "Who is in command of this party?" His men saw him no more, but he was afterwards exchanged for the Russian Artillery officer captured at Mackenzie's farm.

The Russians opened a very heavy cannonade on us in the morning; they always did so on Sundays. Divine Service was performed with a continued bass of cannon rolling through the responses and liturgy. The Russians made a stealthy sortie during the night, and advanced close to the French pickets. When challenged, they replied, "Inglis, Inglis," which passed muster with our allies as bonâ fide English; and before they knew where they were, the Russians had got into their batteries and spiked five mortars. They were speedily repulsed; but this misadventure mortified our brave allies exceedingly.

The return of killed and wounded for the 22nd, during the greater part of which a heavy fire was directed upon our trenches, and battery attacks right and left, showed the excellent cover of our works and their great solidity. We only lost one man killed in the Light Division, and two men in the Siege Train; of wounded we had one in the First Division, two in the Second Division, two in the Third Division, six in the Fourth Division, five in the Light Division, and ten in the Siege Train. A request made to us by the French that we would direct our fire on the Barrack Battery, which annoyed them excessively, was so well attended to, that before evening we had knocked it to pieces and silenced it. But sickness continued, and the diminution of our numbers every day was enough to cause serious anxiety. Out of 35,600 men borne on the strength of the army, there were not at this period more than 16,500 rank and file fit for service. In a fortnight upwards of 700 men were sent as invalids to Balaklava. There was a steady drain of some forty or fifty men a-day going out from us, which was not dried up by the numbers of the returned invalids. Even the twenty or thirty a-day wounded and disabled, when multiplied by the number of the days we had been here, became a serious item in the aggregate. We were badly off for spare gun carriages and wheels, for ammunition and forage. Whilst our siege works were languishing and the hour of assault appeared more distant, the enemy were concentrating on our flank and rear, and preparing for a great attempt to raise the siege.{152}

CHAPTER II.

IF the exhibition of the most brilliant valour, and of a daring which would have reflected lustre on the best days of chivalry, could afford full consolation for the affair of the 25th of October, we had no reason to regret the loss we sustained.

In the following account I describe, to the best of my power, what occurred under my own eyes, and I state the facts which I heard from men whose veracity was unimpeachable. A certain feeling existed in some quarters that our cavalry had not been properly handled since they landed in the Crimea, and that they had lost golden opportunities from the indecision and excessive caution of their leaders. It was said that our cavalry ought to have been manœuvred at Bouljanak in one way or in another, according to the fancy of the critic. It was affirmed, too, that the Light Cavalry were utterly useless in the performance of one of their most important duties—the collection of supplies for the army—that they were "above their business, and too fine gentlemen for their work;" that our horse should have pushed the flying enemy after the battle of the Alma; and, above all, that at Mackenzie's farm first, and at the gorge near Kamara on the 7th October, they had been improperly restrained from charging, and had failed in gaining great successes, which would have entitled them to a full share of the laurels of the campaign, owing solely to the timidity of the officer in command. The existence of this feeling was known to many of our cavalry, and they were indignant and exasperated that the faintest shade of suspicion should rest upon any of their corps. With the justice of these aspersions they had nothing to do, and perhaps the prominent thought in their minds was that they would give such an example of courage to the world, if the chance offered itself, as would shame their detractors for ever.

It has been already mentioned that several battalions of Russian infantry crossed the Tchernaya, and threatened the rear of our position and our communication with Balaklava. Their bands could be heard playing at night by the travellers along the Balaklava road to the camp, but they "showed" but little during the day, and kept among the gorges and mountain passes through which the roads to Inkerman, Simpheropol, and the south-east of the Crimea wind towards the interior. The position we occupied was supposed{153} by most people to be very strong. Our lines were formed by natural mountain slopes in the rear, along which the French had made entrenchments. Below these entrenchments, and very nearly in a right line across the valley beneath, were four conical hillocks, one rising above the other as they reached from our lines; the farthest, which joined the chain of mountains opposite to our ridges being named Canrobert's Hill, from the meeting there of that general with Lord Raglan after the march to Balaklava. On the top of each of these hills the Turks had thrown up redoubts, each defended by 250 men, and armed with two or three heavy ship guns—lent by us to them, with one artilleryman in each redoubt to look after them. These hills crossed the valley of Balaklava at the distance of about two and a half miles from the town. Supposing the spectator, then, to take his stand on one of the heights forming the rear of our camp before Sebastopol, he would have seen the town of Balaklava, with its scanty shipping, its narrow strip of water, and its old forts, on his right hand; immediately below he would have beheld the valley and plain of coarse meadow land, occupied by our cavalry tents, and stretching from the base of the ridge on which he stood to the foot of the formidable heights at the other side; he would have seen the French trenches lined with Zouaves a few feet beneath, and distant from him, on the slope of the hill; a Turkish redoubt lower down, then another in the valley; then, in a line with it, some angular earthworks; then, in succession, the other two redoubts up to Canrobert's Hill.

At the distance of two or two and a half miles across the valley was an abrupt rocky mountain range covered with scanty brushwood here and there, or rising into barren pinnacles and plateaux of rock. In outline and appearance this portion of the landscape was wonderfully like the Trosachs. A patch of blue sea was caught in between the overhanging cliffs of Balaklava as they closed in the entrance to the harbour on the right. The camp of the Marines, pitched on the hill sides more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea, was opposite to the spectator as his back was turned to Sebastopol and his right side towards Balaklava. On the road leading up the valley, close to the entrance of the town and beneath these hills, was the encampment of the 93rd Highlanders.

The cavalry lines were nearer to him below, and were some way in advance of the Highlanders, but nearer to the town than the Turkish redoubts. The valley was crossed here and there by small waves of land. On the left the hills and rocky mountain ranges gradually closed in towards the course of the Tchernaya, till, at three or four miles' distance from Balaklava, the valley was swallowed up in a mountain gorge and deep ravines, above which rose tier after tier of desolate whitish rock, garnished now and then by bits of scanty herbage, and spreading away towards the east and south, where they attained the Alpine dimensions of the Tschatir Dagh. It was very easy for an enemy at the Belbek, or in command of the road of Mackenzie's farm, Inkerman, Simpheropol, or Bakschiserai, to debouch through these gorges at any time upon this plain from the neck of the valley, or to march from Sebastopol{154} by the Tchernaya, and to advance along it towards Balaklava, till checked by the Turkish redoubts on the southern side, or by the fire from the French works on the northern—i.e., the side which, in relation to the valley at Balaklava, formed the rear of our position. It was evident enough that Menschikoff and Gortschakoff had been feeling their way along this route for several days past, and very probably at night the Cossacks had crept up close to our pickets, which were not always as watchful as might be desired, and had observed the weakness of a position far too extended for our army to defend, and occupied by their despised enemy, the Turks.

At half-past seven o'clock on the eventful morning of the 25th, an orderly came galloping in to the head-quarters camp from Sir Colin Campbell with the news, that at dawn a strong corps of Russian horse, supported by guns and battalions of infantry, had marched into the valley, had nearly dispossessed the Turks of the redoubt No. 1 (that on Canrobert's Hill, which was farthest from our lines), and they had opened fire on the redoubts Nos. 2, 3, and 4. Lord Lucan, who was in one of the redoubts when they were discovered, brought up his guns and some of his heavy cavalry, but they were obliged to retire owing to the superior weight of the enemy's metal.

Orders were despatched to Sir George Cathcart and the Duke of Cambridge, to put the Fourth and the First in motion; and intelligence of the advance of the Russians was furnished to General Canrobert. Immediately the General commanded General Bosquet to get the Third Division under arms, and sent artillery and 200 Chasseurs d'Afrique to assist us. Sir Colin Campbell, who was in command of Balaklava, had drawn up the 93rd Highlanders a little in front of the road to the town, at the first news of the advance of the enemy. The Marines on the heights got under arms; the seamen's batteries and Marines' batteries, on the heights close to the town, were manned, and the French artillerymen and the Zouaves prepared for action along their lines. Lord Lucan's men had not had time to water their horses; they had not broken their fast from the evening of the day before, and had barely saddled at the first blast of the trumpet, when they were drawn up on the slope behind the redoubts in front of their camp, to operate on the enemy's squadrons.

When the Russians advanced, the Turks fired a few rounds, got frightened at the advance of their supports, "bolted," and fled with an agility quite at variance with common-place notions of Oriental deportment on the battle-field.

Soon after eight o'clock, Lord Raglan and his staff turned out and cantered towards the rear of our position. The booming of artillery, the spattering roll of musketry, were heard rising from the valley, drowning the roar of the siege guns before Sebastopol. As I rode in the direction of the firing, over the undulating plain that stretches away towards Balaklava, on a level with the summit of the ridges above it, I observed a French light infantry regiment (the 27th, I think) advancing from our right towards the ridge near the telegraph-house, which was already lined by companies of{155} French infantry. Mounted officers scampered along its broken outline in every direction.

General Bosquet followed with his staff and a small escort of Hussars at a gallop. Never did the painter's eye rest on a more beautiful scene than I beheld from the ridge. The fleecy vapours still hung around the mountain tops, and mingled with the ascending volumes of smoke; the patch of sea sparkled freshly in the rays of the morning sun, but its light was eclipsed by the flashes which gleamed from the masses of armed men.

Looking to the left towards the gorge, we beheld six masses of Russian infantry, which had just debouched from the mountain passes near the Tchernaya, and were advancing with solemn stateliness up the valley. Immediately in their front was a line of artillery. Two batteries of light guns were already a mile in advance of them, and were playing with energy on the redoubts, from which feeble puffs of smoke came at long intervals. Behind these guns, in front of the infantry, were bodies of cavalry. They were three on each flank, moving down en échelon towards us, and the valley was lit up with the blaze of their sabres, and lance points, and gay accoutrements. In their front, and extending along the intervals between each battery of guns, were clouds of mounted skirmishers, wheeling and whirling in the front of their march like autumn leaves tossed by the wind. The Zouaves close to us were lying like tigers at the spring, with ready rifles in hand, hidden chin deep by the earthworks which ran along the line of these ridges on our rear; but the quick-eyed Russians were manœuvring on the other side of the valley, and did not expose their columns to attack. Below the Zouaves we could see the Turkish gunners in the redoubts, all in confusion as the shells burst over them. Just as I came up, the Russians had carried No. 1 redoubt, the farthest and most elevated of all, and their horsemen were chasing the Turks across the interval which lay between it and redoubt No. 2.

At that moment the cavalry, under Lord Lucan, were formed—the Light Brigade, under Lord Cardigan, in advance; the Heavy Brigade, under Brigadier-General Scarlett, in reserve, drawn up in front of their encampment, and were concealed from the view of the enemy by a slight "wave" in the plain. Considerably to the rear of their right, the 93rd Highlanders were in front of the approach to Balaklava. Above and behind them, on the heights, the Marines were visible through the glass, drawn up under arms, and the gunners could be seen ready in the earthworks, in which were placed the ships' heavy guns. The 93rd had originally been advanced somewhat more into the plain, but the instant the Russians got possession of the first redoubt they opened fire on them from our own guns, which inflicted some injury, and Sir Colin Campbell "retired" his men to a better position. Meantime the enemy advanced his cavalry rapidly. The Turks in redoubt No. 2 fled in scattered groups towards redoubt No. 3, and Balaklava; but the horse-hoof of the Cossack was too quick for them, and sword and lance were busily plied among the retreating herd. The yells of the pursuers and pursued{156} were plainly audible. As the Lancers and Light Cavalry of the Russians advanced they gathered up their skirmishers. The shifting trails of men, which played all over the valley like moonlight on the water, contracted, gathered up, and the little peloton in a few moments became a solid column. Up came their guns, in rushed their gunners to the abandoned redoubt, and the guns of No. 2 soon played upon the dispirited defenders of No. 3 redoubt. Two or three shots in return and all was silent. The Turks swarmed over the earthworks, and ran in confusion towards the town, firing at the enemy as they ran. Again the solid column of cavalry opened like a fan, and resolved itself into a "long spray" of skirmishers. It lapped the flying Turks, steel flashed in the air, and down went the Moslem on the plain. In vain the naval guns on the heights fired on the Russian cavalry; the distance was too great. In vain the Turkish gunners in the batteries along the French entrenchments endeavoured to protect their flying countrymen; their shot flew wide and short of the swarming masses.

The Turks betook themselves towards the Highlanders, where they checked their flight and formed on the flanks. As the Russian cavalry on the left of their line crowned the hill across the valley, they perceived the Highlanders drawn up at the distance of some half a mile. They halted, and squadron after squadron came up from the rear. The Russians drew breath for a moment, and then in one grand line charged towards Balaklava. The ground flew beneath their horses' feet; gathering speed at every stride, they dashed on towards that thin red line tipped with steel. The Turks fired a volley at eight hundred yards and ran. As the Russians came within six hundred yards, down went that line of steel in front, and out rang a rolling volley of Minié musketry. The distance was too great; the Russians were not checked, but swept onwards, here and there knocked over by the shot of our batteries; but ere they came within two hundred and fifty yards, another volley flashed from the rifles. The Russians wheeled about, and fled faster than they came. "Bravo, Highlanders! well done!" shouted the excited spectators. But events thickened; the Highlanders and their splendid front were soon forgotten—men scarcely had a moment to think of this fact, that the 93rd never altered their formation to receive that tide of horsemen. "No," said Sir Colin Campbell, "I did not think it worth while to form them even four deep!" Then they moved en échelon, in two bodies, with another in reserve. The cavalry who had been pursuing the Turks on the right were coming up to the ridge beneath us, which concealed our cavalry from view. The Heavy Brigade in advance was drawn up in two lines. The first line consisted of the Scots Greys, and of their old companions in glory, the Enniskillens; the second, of the 4th Royal Irish, of the 5th Dragoon Guards, and of the 1st Royal Dragoons. The Light Cavalry Brigade was on their left, in two lines also.

Lord Raglan sent orders to Lord Lucan to cover the approaches, and his heavy horse were just moving from their position near the vineyard and orchard, when he saw a body of the enemy's cavalry{157} coming after him over the ridge. Lord Lucan rode after his cavalry, wheeled them round, and ordered them to advance against the enemy. The Russians—evidently corps d'élite—their light blue jackets embroidered with silver lace, were advancing at an easy gallop towards the brow of the hill. A forest of lances glistened in their rear, and several squadrons of grey-coated dragoons moved up quickly to support them as they reached the summit. The instant they came in sight, the trumpets of our cavalry gave out the warning blast which told us all that in another moment we should see the shock of battle beneath our very eyes. Lord Raglan, all his staff and escort, and groups of officers, the Zouaves, French generals and officers, and bodies of French infantry on the height, were spectators of the scene as though they were looking on the stage from the boxes of a theatre. Every one dismounted, and not a word was said. The Russians advanced down the hill at a slow canter, which they changed to a trot, and at last nearly halted.

The trumpets rang out again through the valley, and the Greys and Enniskilleners went right at the centre of the Russian cavalry. The space between them was only a few hundred yards; it was scarce enough to let the horses "gather way," nor had the men quite space sufficient for the full play of their sword arms. The Russian line brought forward each wing as our cavalry advanced, and threatened to annihilate them as they passed on. Turning a little to the left, so as to meet the Russian right, the Greys rushed on with a cheer that thrilled to every heart—the wild shout of the Enniskilleners rose through the air at the same instant. As lightning flashes through a cloud, the Greys and Enniskilleners pierced through the dark masses of Russians. The shock was but for a moment. There was a clash of steel and a light play of sword-blades in the air, and then the Greys and the redcoats disappeared in the midst of the shaken and quivering column. The first line of Russians, which had been smashed by and had fled off at one flank and towards the centre, were coming back to swallow up our handful of men. By sheer steel and sheer courage Enniskillener and Scot were winning their way right through the enemy's squadrons, and already grey horses and red coats appeared at the rear mass, when the 4th Dragoon Guards, riding at the right flank of the Russians, and the 5th Dragoon Guards, following close after the Enniskilleners, rushed at the enemy and put them to utter rout.

A cheer burst from every lip—in the enthusiasm, officers and men took off their caps and shouted with delight; and thus keeping up the scenic character of their position, they clapped their hands again and again. Lord Raglan at once despatched Lieutenant Curzon, aide-de-camp, to convey his congratulations to Brigadier-General Scarlett, and to say "Well done!" The Russian cavalry, followed by our shot, retired in confusion, leaving the ground, covered with horses and men.

At ten o'clock the Guards and Highlanders of the First Division were seen moving towards the plains from their camp. The Duke of Cambridge came up to Lord Raglan for orders, and his lordship,{158} ready to give the honour of the day to Sir Colin Campbell, who commanded at Balaklava, told his Royal Highness to place himself under the direction of the Brigadier. At forty minutes after ten, the Fourth Division also took up their position in advance of Balaklava. The cavalry were then on the left front of our position, facing the enemy; the Light Cavalry Brigade en échelon in reserve, with guns, on the right; the 4th Royal Irish, the 5th Dragoon Guards, and Greys on the left of the brigade, the Enniskillens and 1st Royals on the right. The Fourth Division took up ground in the centre; the Guards and Highlanders filed off towards the extreme right, and faced the redoubts, from which the Russians opened on them with artillery, which was silenced by the rifle skirmishers under Lieutenant Godfrey.

At fifty minutes after ten, General Canrobert, attended by his staff, and Brigadier-General Rose, rode up to Lord Raglan, and the staffs of the two Generals and their escorts mingled in praise of the magnificent charge of our cavalry, while the chiefs apart conversed over the operations of the day, which promised to be one of battle. At fifty-five minutes after ten, a body of cavalry, the Chasseurs d'Afrique, passed down to the plain, and were loudly cheered by our men. They took up ground in advance of the ridges on our left.

Soon after occurred the glorious catastrophe. The Quartermaster-General, Brigadier Airey, thinking that the Light Cavalry had not gone far enough in front, gave an order in writing to Captain Nolan, 15th Hussars, to take to Lord Lucan. A braver soldier than Captain Nolan the army did not possess. He was known for his entire devotion to his profession, and for his excellent work on our drill and system of remount and breaking horses. He entertained the most exalted opinions respecting the capabilities of the English horse soldier. The British Hussar and Dragoon could break square, take batteries, ride over columns, and pierce any other cavalry, as if they were made of straw. He thought they had missed even such chances as had been offered to them—that in fact, they were in some measure disgraced. A matchless horseman and a first-rate swordsman he held in contempt, I am afraid even grape and canister. He rode off with his orders to Lord Lucan.

When Lord Lucan received the order from Captain Nolan, and had read it, he asked, we are told, "Where are we to advance to?" Captain Nolan pointed with his finger in the direction of the Russians, and according to the statements made after his death, said "There are the enemy, and there are the guns," or words to that effect.

Lord Raglan had only in the morning ordered Lord Lucan to move from the position he had taken near the centre redoubt to "the left of the second line of redoubts occupied by the Turks." Seeing that the 93rd and invalids were cut off from the cavalry, Lord Raglan sent another order to Lord Lucan to send his heavy horse towards Balaklava, and that officer was executing it just as the Russian horse came over the ridge. The Heavy Cavalry charge{159} then took place, and afterwards the men dismounted on the scene. After an interval of half an hour, Lord Raglan again sent an order to Lord Lucan—"Cavalry to advance and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the heights. They will be supported by infantry, which has been ordered to advance upon two fronts." Lord Raglan's reading of this order was, that the infantry had been ordered to advance on two fronts. It does not appear that the infantry had received orders to advance; the Duke of Cambridge and Sir G. Cathcart stated they were not in receipt of such instruction. Lord Lucan advanced his cavalry to the ridge, close to No. 5 redoubt, and while there received from Captain Nolan an order which as follows:—"Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns; troops of Horse Artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate."

Lord Lucan gave the order to Lord Cardigan to advance upon the guns, conceiving that his orders compelled him to do so. The noble Earl saw the fearful odds against him. It is a maxim of war, that "cavalry never act without a support." "Infantry should be close at hand when cavalry carry guns, as the effect is only instantaneous," and should always be placed on the flank of a line of cavalry. The only support our light cavalry had was the heavy cavalry at a great distance behind them, the infantry and guns being far in the rear. There were no squadrons in column. There was a plain to charge over, before the enemy's guns could be reached, of a mile and a half in length.

At ten minutes past eleven our Light Cavalry Brigade advanced. The whole Brigade scarcely made one effective regiment, according to the numbers of continental armies; and yet it was more than we could spare. They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war. They advanced in two lines, quickened their pace as they closed towards the enemy. At the distance of 1,200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame. The flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain. In diminished ranks, with a halo of steel above their heads, and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow's death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries; but ere they were lost from view the plain was strewed with their bodies.

Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabres flashing as they rode between the guns, cutting down the gunners as they stood. We saw them riding through, returning, after breaking through a column of Russians, and scattering them like chaff, when the flank fire of the batteries on the hill swept them down. Wounded men and dismounted troopers flying towards us told the sad tale. At the very moment a regiment of Lancers was hurled upon their flank. Colonel Shewell, of the 8th Hussars, whose attention was drawn to them by Lieutenant Phillips, saw the danger, and rode his few men straight at them. It was as much as our Heavy Cavalry Brigade could do to cover the retreat of the{160} miserable remnants of that band of heroes as they returned to the place they had so lately quitted in all the pride of life. At thirty-five minutes past eleven not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of these Muscovite guns. The Heavy Cavalry, in columns of squadrons, moved slowly backwards, covering the retreat of the broken men. The ground was left covered with our men and with hundreds of Russians, and we could see the Cossacks busy searching the dead. Our infantry made a forward movement towards the redoubts after the cavalry came in, and the Russian infantry in advance slowly retired towards the gorge; at the same time the French cavalry pushed forward on their right, and held them in check, pushing out a line of skirmishers, and forcing them to withdraw their guns.

Captain Nolan was killed by the first shot fired, as he rode in advance of the first line. Lord Cardigan received a lance thrust through his clothes.

While the affair was going on, the French cavalry made a most brilliant charge at the battery on our left, and cut down the gunners; but they could not get off the guns, and had to retreat with the loss of two captains and fifty men killed and wounded out of their little force of 200 Chasseurs.

The Russians from the redoubt continued to harass us, and the First Division were ordered to lie down in two lines. The Fourth Division, covered by the rising ground, and two regiments of French infantry which had arrived in the valley, followed by artillery, moved onwards to operate on the Russian right, already threatened by the French cavalry. The Russians threw out skirmishers to meet the French skirmishers, and the French contented themselves with keeping their position. At eleven A.M., the Russians, feeling alarmed at our steady advance and at the symptoms of our intention to turn or cut off their right, retired from No. 1 redoubt, which was taken possession of by the allies. At fifteen minutes past eleven they abandoned redoubt No. 2, blowing up the magazine; and, as we still continued to advance, they blew up and abandoned No. 3 at forty-five minutes past eleven; but, to our great regret, we could not prevent their taking off seven out of nine guns in the works.

At forty-eight minutes past eleven, the Russian infantry began to retire, a portion crept up the hills behind the 1st redoubt, which still belonged to them. The artillery on the right of the First Division fired shot and rockets at the 1st redoubt, but could not do much good, nor could the heavy guns of the batteries near the town carry so far as to annoy the Russians. At twelve o'clock the greater portion of the French and English moved on, and an accession to the artillery was made by two French batteries, pushed on towards the front of our left. The First Division remained still in line along the route to Balaklava. From twelve to fifteen minutes passed, not a shot was fired on either side, but the Russians gathered up their forces towards the heights over the gorge, and, still keeping their cavalry on the plain, manœuvred in front on our right.

At twenty-eight minutes after twelve the allies again got into{161} motion, with the exception of the First Division, which moved en échelon towards the opposite hills, keeping their right wing well before Balaklava. At forty minutes after twelve, Captain Calthorpe was sent by Lord Raglan with orders which altered the disposition of our front, for the French, at one P.M. showed further up on our left. As our object was solely to keep Balaklava, we had no desire to bring on a general engagement; and as the Russians would not advance, but kept their cavalry in front of the approach to the mountain passes, it became evident the action was over. The cannonade, which began again at a quarter-past twelve, and continued with very little effect, ceased altogether at a quarter-past one. The two armies retained their respective positions.

Lord Raglan continued on the hill-side all day, watching the enemy. It was dark ere he returned to his quarters. With the last gleam of day we could see the sheen of the enemy's lances in their old position in the valley; and their infantry gradually crowned the heights on their left, and occupied the road to the village which is beyond Balaklava to the southward. Our Guards were moving back, as I passed them, and the tired French and English were replaced by a French division, which marched down to the valley at five o'clock.

We had 13 officers killed or taken, 162 men killed or taken; 27 officers wounded, 224 men wounded. Total killed, wounded, and missing, 426. Horses, killed or missing, 394; horses wounded, 126; total, 520.

In the night when our guns were taken into Sebastopol, there was joy throughout the city, and it was announced that the Russians had gained a great victory. A salvo of artillery was fired, and at nine o'clock P.M. a tremendous cannonade was opened against our lines by the enemy. It did no injury. At one P.M. on the 26th, about 4,000 men made an attack on our right flank, but were repulsed by Sir De Lacy Evans's Division, with the loss of 500 men killed and wounded. As I was engaged in my tent and did not see the action, I think it right to give the dispatches which relate this brilliant affair.

"Lord Raglan to the Duke of Newcastle.

"Before Sebastopol, Oct. 28, 1854.

"My Lord Duke,

"I have nothing particular to report to your Grace respecting the operations of the siege since I wrote to you on the 23rd instant. The fire has been somewhat less constant, and our casualties have been fewer, though I regret to say that Captain Childers, a very promising officer of the Royal Artillery, was killed on the evening of the 23rd, and I have just heard that Major Dalton, of the 49th, of whom Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans entertained a very high opinion, was killed in the trenches last night.

"The enemy moved out of Sebastopol on the 26th with a large force of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, amounting, it is said, to 6,000 or 7,000 men, and attacked the left of the Second Division, commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans, who speedily and energetically repulsed them, assisted by one of the batteries of the First Division and some guns of the Light Division, and supported by a brigade of Guards, and by several regiments of the Fourth Division, and in rear by the French Division, commanded by General Bosquet, who was most eager in his desire to give him every aid.

"I have the honour to transmit a copy of Sir De Lacy Evans's report, which I am sure your Grace will read with the highest satisfaction, and I beg to recommend the officers whom he particularly mentions to your protection.

"Captain Bayley of the 30th, and Captain Atcherley of the same regiment, and Lieutenant Conolly of the 49th, all of whom are severely wounded, appear to have greatly distinguished themselves.

"I cannot speak in too high terms of the manner in which Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans met this very serious attack. I had not the good fortune to witness it myself, being occupied in front of Balaklava at the time it commenced, and having only reached his position as the affair ceased, but I am certain I speak the sentiments of all who witnessed the operation in saying that nothing could have been better managed, and that the greatest credit is due to the Lieutenant-General, whose services and conduct I have before had to bring under your Grace's notice.{164}

On the 28th of October our cavalry abandoned their old camp. They took up ground on the hills on the road to Balaklava, close to the rear of the French centre. We thus abandoned the lower road to the enemy.

CHAPTER III.

THE end of October. All waiting for the French. I am not sure but that the French were waiting for us to "écraser" some of the obnoxious batteries which played upon their works from ugly enfilading positions.

The Quarantine Fort was opposed to them on their extreme left. Then came a long, high, loopholed wall or curtain extending in front of the town from the back of the Quarantine Fort to the Flagstaff Battery. The Russians had thrown up a very deep and broad ditch in front of this wall, and the French artillery had made no impression on the stonework at the back. The Flagstaff Battery, however, and all the houses near it, were in ruin; but the earthworks in front of it, armed with at least twenty-six heavy guns, were untouched, and kept up a harassing fire on the French working parties, particularly at certain periods of the day, and at the interval between nine and eleven o'clock at night, when they thought the men were being relieved in the trenches. Inside the Road Battery we could see the Russians throwing up a new work, armed with six heavy ships' guns. They had also erected new batteries behind the Redan and behind the Round Tower. The latter was a mass of crumbled stone, but two guns kept obstinately blazing away at our 21-gun battery from the angle of the earthwork around it, and the Redan had not been silenced, though the embrasures and angles of the work were much damaged. The heavy frigate which had been "dodging" our batteries so cleverly again gave us a taste of her quality in the right attack. She escaped from the position in which she lay before where we had placed two 24-pounders for her, and came out again on the 29th in a great passion, firing regular broadsides at our battery and sweeping{165} the hill up to it completely. Occasionally she varied this amusement with a round or two from 13-inch mortars. These shells did our works and guns much damage: but the sailors, who were principally treated to these agreeable missiles, got quite accustomed to them. "Bill," cries one fellow to another, "look out, here comes 'Whistling Dick!'" The 13-inch shell has been thus baptized by them in consequence of the noise it makes. They look up, and their keen, quick eyes discern the globe of iron as it describes its curve aloft. Long ere "Whistling Dick" has reached the ground the blue-jackets are snug in their various hiding-places; but all the power of man could not keep them from peeping out now and then to see if the fusee is still burning. One of them approached a shell which he thought had "gone out;" it burst just as he got close to it, and the concussion dashed him to the ground. He got up, and in his rage, shaking his fist at the spot where the shell had been, he exclaimed, "You —— deceitful beggar, there's a trick to play me!"

Sir De Lacy Evans met with an accident on the 29th, which compelled him to resign the command to Brigadier-General Pennefather. His horse fell with him as he was going at a sharp trot; and the shock so weakened him that he was obliged to go on board the Simoom.

The Turks, or, as they were called, the "Bono Johnnies," except by the sailors, who called them "No bono Johnnies," were employed in working in the trenches. The first night in Captain Chapman's attack they worked till ten o'clock at night, when a Russian shell came over. They ran away, carrying a portion of our working and covering parties; they were re-formed and worked till eleven o'clock, when they declared it was "the will of Heaven they should labour no more that night," and, as they had exerted themselves, it was considered advisable to let them go. They were decimated by dysentery and diarrhœa, and died in swarms. They had no medical officers, and our surgeons were not sufficient in number for our army. Nothing could exceed their kindness to their own sick. It was common to see strings of them on the road to Balaklava carrying men on their backs down to the miserable shed which served them as a hospital, or rather as a "dead-house."

A deserter from the Russian cavalry on the 30th said the Russians were without tents or cover; their fare was scanty and miserable, and their sufferings great.

The French batteries opened on the 1st of November. For an hour they fired with vivacity and effect; one battery which enfiladed them on the right was plied with energy, but the remainder, with the exception of the Flagstaff redoubt, were silent. The Russians had about 240 guns in their new works, reckoning those which had been subject to our fire. The French had 64 guns in position, most of them brass twenty-fours, the others thirty-twos and forty-eights, some ship's eighty-fours not mounted. The French might be seen like patches of moss on the rocks, and the incessant puffs of smoke with constant "pop!" rose along our front from morning to night.{166}

The earthworks around the town of Balaklava began to assume a formidable aspect. Trenches ran across the plains and joined the mounds to each other, so as to afford lines of defence. On the right of the approach the Highlanders, in three camps, were placed close to the town, with a sailors' battery of two heavy guns above. Higher up, on a very elevated hill-side, the Marines and Riflemen were encamped. There were four batteries bearing on this approach. The battery on the extreme right, on the road leading over the hills from Yalta, contained two 32-pounder howitzers; the second battery on the right, facing the valley, contained five guns; and the fourth battery, nearest Balaklava, contained eight brass howitzers, four 12, two 32, and two 24-pounders. The left approach was commanded by the heights held by the French infantry over the valley, and by the Turkish works in front. A formidable redoubt, under the command of Captain Powell, R.N., overlooked the approaches, armed with heavy ship's guns.

The Turks had cut up the ground so that it almost resembled a chess-board when viewed from one of the hills. They constructed ditches over valleys which led nowhere, and fortified passes conducting to abstruse little culs-de-sac in the hill sides.

From the road to Balaklava on the 3rd, we could see the Russians engaged in "hutting" themselves for the winter, and on the 3rd of November I made a little reconnaissance of my own in their direction. Their advanced posts were just lighting bivouac fires for the night. A solitary English dragoon, with the last rays of the setting sun glittering on his helmet, was perched on the only redoubt in our possession, watching the motions of the enemy. Two Cossacks on similar duty on the second redoubt were leaning on their lances, while their horses browsed the scanty herbage at the distance of about 500 yards from our dragoon sentry. Two hundred yards in their rear were two Cossack pickets of twenty or thirty men each. A stronger body was stationed in loose order some four or five hundred yards further back. Six pelotons of cavalry came next, with field batteries in the intervals. Behind each peloton were six strong columns of cavalry in reserve, and behind the intervals six battalions of grey-coated Russian infantry lay on their arms. They maintained this attitude day and night, it was said, and occasionally gave us an alert by pushing up the valley. On looking more closely into their position through the glass, it could be seen that they had fortified the high table-land on their right with an earthwork of quadrilateral form, in which I counted sixteen embrasures.

In their rear was the gorge of the Black River, closed up by towering rocks and mountain precipices. On their left a succession of slabs (so to speak) of table-land, each higher than the other, and attaining an elevation of 1,200 feet. The little village of Kamara, perched on the side of one of these slabs, commanded a view of our position, and was no doubt the head-quarters of the army in the valley. The Russians were stationed along these heights, and had pushed their lines to the sea on the high-peaked mountain chain to the south-east of our Marines. As the valley was connected with{167} Sebastopol by the Inkerman road, they had thus drawn a cordon militaire around our position on the land side, and we were besieged in our camp, having, however, our excellent friend, the sea, open on the west.

On the 4th November the fire on the place and the return continued. The Russians fired about sixty guns per hour, and we replied. The French burrowed and turned up the earth vigorously. A quantity of 10-inch shot were landed, but, unfortunately, we had no 10-inch guns for them. Two guns were added to the batteries of the right attack, which now contained twenty-three pieces of artillery. Whenever I looked at the enemy's earthworks I thought of the Woolwich butt. What good had we done by all this expenditure of shot, and shell, and powder? a few guns, when we first came, might have saved incredible toil and labour because they would have rendered it all but impossible for the Russians to cast up entrenchments and works before the open entrance to Sebastopol.

Whilst we were yet in hopes of taking the place, and of retiring to the Bosphorus for winter quarters, the enemy, animated by the presence of two of the Imperial Grand Dukes, made a vigorous attempt to inflict on the allies a terrible punishment for their audacity in setting foot on the territory of the Czar. The Battle of Inkerman was at hand.

It had rained almost incessantly for the greater part of the night of November 4th, and the early morning gave no promise of any cessation of the heavy showers. As dawn broke the fog and drifting rain were so thick that one could scarcely see two yards. At four o'clock A.M. the bells of the churches in Sebastopol were heard ringing drearily through the cold night air, but the occurrence excited no particular attention. About three o'clock A.M., a man of the 23rd regiment on outlying picket heard the sound of wheels in the valley, but supposed it arose from carts or arabas going into Sebastopol by the Inkerman road. After the battle he mentioned the circumstance to Major Bunbury, who rebuked him for neglecting to report it. No one suspected that masses of Russians were then creeping up the rugged heights over the Valley of Inkerman against the undefended flank of the Second Division, and were bringing into position an overwhelming artillery, ready to play upon their tents at the first glimpse of day.

Sir De Lacy Evans had long been aware of the insecurity of his position, and had repeatedly pointed it out. It was the only ground where we were exposed to surprise. Ravines and curves in the hill lead up to the crest against which our right flank was resting, without guns, intrenchments, abattis, or defence of any kind. Every one admitted the truth of the representations, but indolence, or a false sense of security led to indifference and procrastination. A battery was thrown up of sandbags on the slope of the hill, but Sir De Lacy Evans, thinking that two guns without any works to support them would only invite attack, caused them to be removed as soon as they had silenced the Light-house Battery, which had been firing on his camp.

{168}The action of the 26th of October might be considered as a reconnaissance en force. They were waiting for reinforcements to assault the position where it was vulnerable, speculating on the effects of a surprise of a sleeping camp on a winter's morning. Although the arrangements of Sir De Lacy Evans on repulsing the sortie were, as Lord Raglan declared, "so perfect that they could not fail to insure success," it was evident that a larger force would have forced him to retire from his ground, or to fight a battle in defence of it. No effort was made to intrench the lines, to cast up a single shovel of earth, to cut down the brushwood, or form an abattis. It was thought "not to be necessary."

Heavy responsibility rests on those whose neglect enabled the enemy to attack where we were least prepared for it, and whose indifference led them to despise precautions which might have saved many lives, and trebled the loss of the enemy. We had nothing to rejoice over, and almost everything to deplore, in the battle of Inkerman. We defeated the enemy indeed, but did not advance one step nearer Sebastopol. We abashed, humiliated, and utterly routed an enemy strong in numbers, in fanaticism, and in dogged courage, but we suffered a fearful loss when we were not in a position to part with one man.

It was a little after five o'clock in the morning, when Codrington, in accordance with his usual habit, visited the outlying pickets of his brigade. It was reported that "all was well" along the line. The General entered into conversation with Captain Pretyman, of the 33rd Regiment, who was on duty, and in the course of it some one remarked it would not be surprising if the Russians availed themselves of the gloom to make an attack. The Brigadier, an excellent officer, turned his pony round vigilant, and had only ridden a few yards, when a sharp rattle of musketry was heard down the hill on the left of his pickets, and where the pickets of the Second Division were stationed. Codrington at once turned in the direction of the firing, and in a few moments galloped back to camp to turn out his division. The Russians were advancing in force. The pickets of the Second Division had scarcely made out the infantry clambering up the steep hill through a drizzling rain before they were forced to retreat by a close sharp musketry, and driven up the hill, contesting every step, and firing as long as they had a round of ammunition. Their grey greatcoats rendered them almost invisible even when close at hand.

The pickets of the Light Division were soon assailed and obliged to fall back. About the time of the advance on our right flank took place a demonstration against Balaklava, but the enemy contented themselves with drawing up their cavalry in order of battle, supported by field artillery, at the neck of the valley, in readiness to sweep over the heights and cut off our retreat, should the assault on our right be successful. A steamer with very heavy guns was sent up by night to the head of the creek at Inkerman, and threw enormous shells over the hill.

Everything that could be done to bind victory to their eagles was done by the Russian Generals. The presence of the Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael, who told them that the Czar had issued orders{169} that every Frenchman and Englishman was to be driven into the sea ere the year closed, cheered the common soldiers, who regard the son of the Emperor as an emanation of the Divine presence. Abundance of a coarser and more material stimulant was found in their flasks; and the priests "blessed" them ere they went forth, and assured them of the aid and protection of the Most High. A mass was said. The joys of Heaven were offered those who might fall in the holy fight, and the favours of the Emperor were promised to those who might survive the bullets of the enemy.

The men in camp had just began to struggle with the rain in endeavouring to light their fires, when the alarm was sounded. Pennefather, to whom Sir De Lacy Evans had given up for the time the command of the Second Division, got the troops under arms. Adams's brigade, consisting of the 41st, 47th, and 49th Regiments, was pushed on to the brow of the hill to check the advance of the enemy by the road from the valley. Pennefather's brigade, consisting of the 30th, 55th, and 95th Regiments, was posted on their flank. The regiments met a tremendous fire from guns posted on the high grounds. Sir George Cathcart led such portions of the 20th, 21st, 46th, 57th, 63rd, and 68th Regiments as were not employed in the trenches, to the right of the ground occupied by the Second Division.

It was intended that Torrens's brigade should move in support of Goldie's, but the enemy were in such strength that the whole force of the division, which consisted of only 2,200 men, was needed to repel them. Codrington, with part of the 7th, 23rd, and 33rd, sought to cover the extreme of our right attack, and the sloping ground towards Sebastopol; Buller's brigade was brought up to support the Second Division on the left; Jeffrey's with the 88th, being pushed forward in the bushwood on the ridge of one of the principal ravines. As soon as Brown brought up his division, they were under fire from an unseen enemy. The Third Division, under Sir R. England, was in reserve. Part of the 50th, under Wilton, and 1st Battalion Royals, under Bell, were slightly engaged ere the day was over. The Duke of Cambridge turned out the Guards under Bentinck, and advanced on the right of the Second Division to the summit of the hill overlooking the valley of the Tchernaya. Between the left and the right of the Second Division there was a ravine, which lost itself on the plateau, close to the road to Sebastopol. This road was not protected; only a few scarps were made in it, and the pickets at night were only a short distance in advance. A low breastwork crossed this road at the plateau by the tents of the Second Division. On arriving at the edge of the plateau on the right ravine, the Duke of Cambridge saw two columns coming up the steep ground covered with brushwood. The enemy were already in the Sandbag Redoubt, but His Royal Highness at once led the Guards to the charge.

It has been doubted whether any enemy ever stood in conflicts with the bayonet, but here the bayonet was employed in a fight of the most obstinate character. We had been prone to believe that no foe could withstand the British soldier; but at Inkerman, not only were{170} desperate encounters maintained with the bayonet, but we were obliged to resist the Russian infantry again and again, as they charged us.

It was six o'clock before the Head-Quarter camp was roused by the musketry, and by the report of field guns. Soon after seven o'clock A.M. Lord Raglan rode towards the scene, followed by his staff. As they approached, the steady, unceasing roll told that the engagement was serious. When a break in the fog enabled the Russian gunners to see the camp of the Second Division, the tents were sent into the air or set on fire. Gambier was ordered to get up two 18-pounders to reply to a fire which our light guns were utterly inadequate to meet. As he was exerting himself in his duty, Gambier was severely but not dangerously wounded. His place was taken by Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson, and the fire of those two pieces had the most marked effect in deciding the fate of the day.

Our Generals could not see where to go. They could not tell where the enemy were. In darkness and rain they had to lead our lines through thick bushes and thorny brakes, which broke our ranks. Every pace was marked by a man down, wounded by an enemy whose position was only indicated by the rattle of musketry and the rush of ball.

Cathcart, advancing from the centre of our position, came to the hill where the Guards were engaged, and, after a few words with the Duke, led the 63rd Regiment down on the right of the Guards into a ravine filled with brushwood, towards the valley of the Tchernaya. He perceived, as he did so, that the Russians had gained possession of the hill in rear of his men, but his stout heart never failed him for a moment. A deadly volley was poured into our scattered companies. Sir George cheered and led them back up the hill, and Cathcart fell from his horse close to the Russian columns. He rode at the head of the leading company, encouraging them. A cry arose that ammunition was failing. "Have you not got your bayonets?" As he lead on his men, another body of the enemy had gained the top of the hill behind them on the right, but it was impossible to tell whether they were friends or foes. The 63rd halted and fired. They were met by a fierce volley. Seymour, who was wounded, got down from his horse to aid his chief, but the enemy rushed down on them, and when our men had driven them back, they lay dead side by side. The 63rd suffered fearfully. They were surrounded, and won their desperate way up the hill with the loss of nearly 500 men. Sir George Cathcart's body was recovered with a bullet wound in the head and three bayonet wounds in the body. In this attack where the Russians fought with the greatest ferocity, and bayoneted the wounded, Colonel Swyny, 63rd, Major Wynne, 68th, Lieutenant Dowling, 20th, and other officers, met their death. Goldie, who was engaged with his brigade on the left of the Inkerman road, received the wounds of which he afterwards died about the same time. The fight had not long commenced before it was evident that the Russians had received orders to fire at all mounted officers. The regiments did not take their{171} colours into the battle, but the officers, nevertheless, were picked off, and it did not require the colour to indicate their presence.

The conflict on the right was equally uncertain and equally bloody. The 88th in front were surrounded; but four companies of the 77th, under Major Straton, charged the Russians, and relieved their comrades. Further to the right, a fierce contest took place between the Guards and dense columns of Russians. The Guards twice charged them and drove the enemy out of the Sandbag Battery, when they perceived that the Russians had out-flanked them. They were out of ammunition. They had no reserve, and they were fighting against an enemy who stoutly contested every inch of ground, when another Russian column appeared in their rear. They had lost fourteen officers; one-half of their number were on the ground. The Guards retired. They were reinforced by a wing of the 20th under Major Crofton. Meanwhile the Second Division, in the centre of the line, was hardly pressed. The 41st Regiment was exposed to a terrible fire. The 95th only mustered sixty-four men when paraded at two o'clock, and the whole Division when assembled by Major Eman in rear of their camp after the fight was over numbered only 300 men.

At half-past nine o'clock, as Lord Raglan and his staff were on a knoll, a shell came and exploded on Captain Somerset's horse; a portion tore off the leather of Somerset's overalls. Gordon's horse was killed, and it then carried away General Strangeway's leg; it hung by a shred of flesh and bit of cloth from the skin. The old General never moved a muscle. He said in a quiet voice, "Will any one be kind enough to lift me off my horse?" He was laid on the ground, and at last carried to the rear. He had not strength to undergo an operation, and died in two hours.

At one time the Russians succeeded in getting up close to the guns of Captain Wodehouse's and Captain Turner's batteries in the gloom of the morning. Uncertain whether they were friends or foes, our artillerymen hesitated to fire. The Russians charged, bore down all resistance, drove away or bayoneted the gunners, and succeeded in spiking four of the guns.

The rolling of musketry, the pounding of the guns were deafening. The Russians, as they charged up the heights, yelled like demons. The regiments of the Fourth Division and the Marines, armed with the old and much-belauded Brown Bess, could do nothing against the Muscovite infantry, but the Minié smote them like the hand of the Destroying Angel. The disproportion of numbers was, however, too great—our men were exhausted—but at last came help. At last the French appeared on our right.

It was after nine o'clock when the French streamed over the brow of the hill on our right—Chasseurs d'Orleans, Tirailleurs, Indigènes, Zouaves, Infantry of the Line, and Artillery—and fell upon the flank of the Russians. On visiting the spot it was curious to observe how men of all arms—English, French, and Russians—lay together, showing that the ground must have been occupied by different bodies of troops. The French were speedily engaged, for the Russians had plenty of men for all comers. Their reserves in{172} the valley and along the road to Sebastopol received the shattered columns which were driven down the hill, allowed them to re-form and attack again, or furnished fresh regiments to assault the Allies again and again. This reserve seems to have consisted of three large bodies—probably of 5,000 men each. The attacking force could not have been less than 20,000 men, and it is a very low estimate indeed of the strength of the Russians to place it at from 45,000 to 50,000 men of all arms. Some say there were from 55,000 to 60,000 men engaged on the side of the enemy; but I think that number excessive, and there certainly was not ground enough for them to show front upon. Captain Burnett, R. N., states that he saw fresh bodies of Russians marching up to the attack on three successive occasions, and that their artillery was relieved no less than four times. The Minié rifle did our work, and Lord Hardinge is entitled to the best thanks of the country for his perseverance in arming this expedition as far as he could with every rifle that could be got, notwithstanding the dislike with which the weapon was received by many experienced soldiers.

Three battalions of the Chasseurs d'Orleans rushed by, the light of battle on their faces. Their trumpets sounded above the din of battle, and when we watched their eager dash on the flank of the enemy we knew the day was safe. They were followed by a battalion of Chasseurs Indigènes. At twelve o'clock they were driven pell-mell down the hill towards the valley, where pursuit was impossible, as the roads were commanded by artillery.

The day, which cleared up about eleven, again became obscured. Rain and fog set in, and we could not pursue. We formed in front of our lines, the enemy, covering his retreat by horse on the slopes, near the Careening Bay, and by artillery fire, fell back upon the works, and across the Inkerman Bridge. Our cavalry, the remnant of the Light Brigade, were moved into a position where it was hoped they might be of service, but they were too few to attempt anything, and lost several horses and men. Cornet Cleveland, was struck by a piece of shell and expired.

General Canrobert, who was wounded in the early part of the day, directed the French, ably seconded by General Bosquet, whose devotion was noble. Nearly all his escort were killed, wounded, or unhorsed.

The Russians, during the action, made a sortie on the French, and traversed two parallels before they were driven back; as they retired they fired mines inside the Flagstaff Fort, afraid that the French would enter pell-mell after them.

The last attempt of the Russians took place at about thirty-five minutes past twelve. At forty minutes past one Dickson's two guns had smashed up the last battery of their artillery which attempted to stand, and they limbered up, leaving five tumbrils and one gun-carriage on the field.{173}

CHAPTER IV.

I WENT carefully over the position on the 6th, and as I examined it, I was amazed at the noble tenacity of our men. The tents of the Second Division were pitched on the verge of the plateau which we occupied, and from the right flank of the camp the ground rises gently for two or three hundred yards to a ridge covered with scrubby brushwood, so thick that it was sometimes difficult to force a horse through it. The bushes grew in tufts, and were about four feet high. On gaining the ridge you saw below you the valley of the Tchernaya, a green tranquil slip of meadow, with a few white houses dotting it at intervals, some farm enclosures, and tufts of green trees. From the ridge the hill-side descended rapidly in a slope of at least 600 feet. The brushwood was very thick upon it, and at times almost impervious. At the base of this slope the road wound to Inkerman, and thence to Sebastopol. The sluggish stream stole quietly through it towards the head of the harbour, which was shut out from view by the projections of the ridge to the north. At the distance of a quarter of a mile across the valley the sides of the mountains opposite to the ridge of the plateau on which our camp stood rose abruptly in sheer walls of rock, slab after slab, to the height of several hundred feet. A road wound among those massive precipices up to the ruins of Inkerman—a city of the dead and gone and unknown—where houses, and pillared mansions, and temples, were hewn out of the face of the solid rock by a generation whose very name the most daring antiquaries have not guessed at. This road passed along the heights, and dipped into the valley of Inkerman, at the neck of the harbour. The Russians planted guns along it to cover the retreat of their troops, and at night the lights of their fires were seen glimmering through the window and door places from the chambers carved out from the sides of the precipice.

Looking down from the ridge, these ruins were, of course, to one's left hand. To the right the eye followed the sweep of the valley till it was closed in from view by the walls of the ridge, and by the mountains which hemmed in the valley of Balaklava, and one could just catch, on the side of the ridge, the corner of the nearest French earthwork, thrown up to defend our rear, and cover the position towards Balaklava. Below, to the right of the ridge, at the distance of 200 feet from the top towards the valley, was the Sandbag, or two-gun battery, intended for two guns, which had{174} been withdrawn a few days before, after silencing a Russian battery at Inkerman, because Sir De Lacy Evans conceived that they would only invite attack, and would certainly be taken, unconnected as they would have been with any line of defence. On the left hand, overlooking this battery, was a road from Balaklava right across our camp through the Second Division's tents on their front, which ran over the ridge and joined the upper road to Inkerman. Some of the Russian columns had climbed up by the ground along this road; others had ascended on the left, in front and to the right of the Sandbag Battery.

Litter-bearers, French and English, dotted the hillside, hunting through the bushes for the dead or dying, toiling painfully up with a burden for the grave, or some object for the doctor's care. Our men had acquired a shocking facility in their diagnosis. A body was before you; there was a shout, "Come here, boys, I see a Russian!" (or "a Frenchman," or "one of our fellows!") One of the party advances, raises the eyelid, peers into the eye, shrugs his shoulders, says "He's dead, he'll wait," and moves back to the litter; some pull the feet, and arrive at equally correct conclusions by that process. The dead were generally stripped of all but their coats. The camp followers and blackguards from Balaklava, and seamen from the ships, anxious for trophies, carried off all they could take from the field.

Parties of men busy at work. Groups along the hill-side forty or fifty yards apart. You find them around a yawning trench, thirty feet in length by twenty feet in breadth, and six feet in depth. At the bottom lie packed with exceeding art some thirty or forty corpses. The grave-diggers stand chatting, waiting for arrivals to complete the number. They speculate on the appearance of the body which is being borne towards them. "It's Corporal——, of the—th, I think," says one. "No! it's my rear rank man, I can see his red hair plain enough," and so on. They discuss the merits or demerits of dead sergeants or comrades. "Well, he was a hard man: many's the time I was belled through him!" or "Poor Mick! he had fifteen years' service—a better fellow never stepped." At last the number in the trench is completed. The bodies are packed as closely as possible. Some have still upraised arms, in the attitude of taking aim; their legs stick up through the mould; others are bent and twisted like fantoccini. Inch after inch the earth rises upon them, and they are left "alone in their glory." No, not alone; for the hopes and affections of hundreds of human hearts lie buried with them!

For about one mile and a half in length by half a mile in depth the hill-side offered such sights as these. Upwards of 2,000 Russians were buried there.

As I was standing at the Sandbag Battery, talking to some officers of the Guards, who were describing their terrible losses, Colonel Cunynghame and Lieutenant-Colonel Wilbraham of the Quarter-Master-General's staff rode up to superintend the burial operations. The instant their cocked hats were seen above the ridge a burst of smoke from the head of the harbour, and a shell{175} right over us, crashed into the hill-side, where our men were burying the Russian dead! Colonel Cunynghame told me Lord Raglan had sent in a flag of truce that morning to inform the Russians that the parties on the hill-side were burying the dead. As he was speaking a second shell came close and broke up our party. It is quite evident that the society of two officers in cocked hats, on horseback, is not the safest in the world. We all three retired.

During the battle of Inkerman the French were drawn up in three bodies of about 2,000 men each on the ridge of the hills over Balaklava, watching the movements of the Russian cavalry in the plain below. As I came up the enemy were visible, drawn out into six divisions, with the artillery and infantry ready to act, and horses saddled and bridled. It was evident they were waiting for the signal to dash up the hills in our rear and sabre our flying regiments. They had a long time to wait! The French lines below us were lined by Zouaves; the gunners in the redoubts, with matches lighted, were prepared to send their iron messengers through the ranks of the horse the moment they came within range. Behind the French 5,000 "Bono Johnnies" were drawn up in columns as a reserve, and several Turkish regiments were also stationed under the heights on the right, in a position to act in support should their services be required. The French were on their march from the sea to our assistance, and the black lines of their regiments streaked the grey plain as they marched double-quick towards the scene of action. The Chasseurs d'Afrique on their grey Arabs swept about the slopes of the hills to watch an opportunity for a dash. Our own cavalry were drawn up by their encampments, the Heavy Brigade on the left, the Light Brigade in the centre of our position. The latter were out of fire for some time, but an advance to the right exposed them to shot and shell. Mr. Cleveland received a mortal wound, and several men and horses were injured later in the day. The Heavy Cavalry were employed in protecting our left and rear.

The column on the extreme Russian right, which came on our position at the nearest point to Sebastopol, was mainly resisted by the Fourth Division and the Marines. The Russian centre was opposed by the Second Division and the Light Division. The Guards were opposed to the third or left column of the Russians. The Fourth Division in a short time lost all its generals—Cathcart, Goldie and Torrens—killed or mortally wounded, and 700, or more than one quarter of its strength, put hors de combat. The Second Division came out of action with six field officers and twelve captains; Major Farrer, of the 47th Regiment, was senior, and took command of the Division.

Sir De Lacy Evans was unwell on board ship when the fight began, but he managed to ride up to the front, and I saw him on the battle-field in the thick of the fight. Captain Allix, one of his aides-de-camp, was killed; Captain Gubbins, another, was wounded.

The Brigade of the Guards lost fourteen officers killed; the wonder is that any escaped the murderous fire. The Alma did not present anything like the scene round the Sandbag Battery. Upwards of{176} 1,200 dead and dying Russians laid behind and around and in front of it, and many a tall English Grenadier was there amid the frequent corpses of Chasseur and Zouave. At one time, while the Duke was rallying his men, a body of Russians came at him. Mr. Wilson, surgeon, 7th Hussars, attached to the brigade, perceived the danger of his Royal Highness, and with great gallantry assembled a few Guardsmen, led them to the charge, and dispersed the Russians. The Duke's horse was killed. At the close of the day he called Mr. Wilson in front and thanked him for having saved his life.{177}

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

FROM a deserter at Head-Quarters I gleaned some particulars respecting the formation of the Russian army. It had long been a puzzle to ignorant people like ourselves why the Russian soldiers had numbers on their shoulder-straps different from those on their buttons or on their caps. In recording my observations of the appointments of the men killed at the Alma, I remarked that certain "regiments" were present, judging by the shoulder straps. It will appear that these numbers referred not to regiments, but to divisions. So let our Pole, one of the few who came in after Inkerman, speak for himself through an interpreter:—

"What does the number on the strap on your shoulder indicate?"

"It is No. 16. It shows that I belong to the 16th Division of the army."

"Who commands it?"

"I don't know—a General."

"What does the number 31 on your buttons mean?"

"It means that I belong to Regt. 31 of the 16th Division."

"What does the number 7 on your cap, with P after it, mean?"

"It indicates that I belong to the 7th rota of my polk."

"What does a rota mean?"

"It means a company of 250 men."

"How many rotas are in a polk?"

"There are sixteen rotas in each polk."

"And how many polks are in a division?"

"There are four polks in a division."

"If that is so, why have you 31 on your buttons?" (A pause, a stupid look.)—"I don't know."

Finding our friend was getting into that helpless state of con{178}fusion into which the first glimpses of decimal fractions are wont to plunge the youthful arithmetician, we left him. Now let us combine our information, and see what, according to this Polish authority, a Russian division consists of. It stands thus:—

The men resembled those we met at the Alma, and were clad in the same way. We saw no infantry with helmets, however, and our soldiers were disappointed to find the Russians had, in most cases, come out without their knapsacks. Their persons were very cleanly, and the whiteness of their faces and of their feet were remarkable. Few of them had socks, and the marauders had removed their boots whenever they were worth taking. Our soldiers and sailors, as well as the French, looked out with avidity for a good pair of Russian boots, and were quite adepts in fitting themselves to a nicety by their simple mode of measurement—viz., placing their feet against those of the dead men. Many had medals, "the campaign of 1848-49 in Hungary and Transylvania." They were generally carried inside tin cases about their persons. Officers and men wore the same long grey coats, the former being alone distinguishable by the stripe of gold lace on the shoulder. Their uniform coats, of dark green with white facings and red and yellow trimmings, were put on underneath the great coat.

A considerable number of the Liège double-grooved rifles were found on the field. Many of the muskets bore the date of 1841, and had been altered into detonators. I remember a juvenile superstition in my sparrow-killing days, that such guns "shot stronger" than either flint or detonator, pur sang. Every part of the arm was branded most carefully. The word "BAK" occurs on each separate part of it. The Imperial eagle was on the brass heelplate, and on the lock "[Cyrillic: TULA] (Tula), 1841." The bayonets were long, but not well steeled. They bent if rudely handled or struck with force against the ground. The long and polished gun-barrels were made of soft, but tough iron. They could be bent to an acute angle without splitting. From the trigger-guard of each musket a thong depended, fastened to a cap of stout leather, to put over the nipple in wet weather. This seemed a simple and useful expedient. The devotion of the men to their officers was remarkable. How else was it that we seldom found either dead or wounded officers on the ground? It was again asserted—and I fear with truth—that the wounded Russians killed many of our men as they passed. For this reason our soldiers smashed the stock and bent the barrels. Some carried rifles, and heavy, thick swords with a saw-back, which they sold to the captains and sailors of merchantmen. Medals, ribands, the small brass crucifixes, and pictures of saints, and charms found upon the dead, were also in great request.

If it is considered that the soldiers who met these furious{179} columns of the Czar were the remnants of three British divisions, which scarcely numbered 8,500 men; that they were hungry and wet, and half-famished; that they belonged to a force which was generally "out of bed" four nights out of seven; enfeebled by sickness, by severe toil; that among them were men who had previously lain out for forty-eight hours in the trenches at a stretch—it will be readily admitted that never was a more brilliant contest maintained by our army.

Up to the beginning of this winter Commissary Filder deserved credit for his exertions in supplying our army. No army, I believe, was ever so well fed under such very exceptional circumstances. From Balaklava alone came our daily bread; no man had up to this time been without his pound of biscuit, his pound and a half or a pound of beef or mutton, his quota of coffee, tea, rice, and sugar, his gill of excellent rum, for any one day, excepting through his own neglect. We drew our hay, our corn, our beef, our mutton, our biscuits, spirits, and necessaries of all kinds from beyond sea. Eupatoria supplied us with cattle and sheep to a moderate extent; but the commissariat of the army depended on sea carriage. Nevertheless, large as were our advantages in the excellence and regularity of the supply of food, the officers and men had to undergo great privations.

The oldest soldiers never witnessed a campaign in which Generals were obliged to live in tents in winter, and officers who passed their youth in the Peninsular war, and had seen a good deal of fighting in various parts of the world, were unanimous in declaring that they never knew of a war in which the officers were exposed to such hardships. They landed without anything, marched beside their men, slept by them, fought by them, and died by them. They laid down at night in the clothes which they wore during the day; many delicately-nurtured youths never changed shirts or shoes for weeks together.

"Rank and fashion," under such circumstances, fell a prey to parasitical invasion—an evil to which the other incidents of roughing it are of little moment. The officers were in rags. Guardsmen, who were "the best style of men" in the Parks, turned out in coats and trousers and boots all seams and patches, mended with more vigour than neatness, and our smartest cavalry men were models of ingenious sewing and stitching. The men could not grumble at old coats, boots, or shoes when they saw their officers no better off than themselves. We had "soldiering with the gilding off," and many a young gentleman would be cured of his love of arms if he could but have had one day's experience. Fortunate it is for us that we have youth on which we can rely, and that there are in England men "who delight in war," who will be ever ready to incur privation and danger at her summons. As to young ladies suffering from "scarlet fever,"—who are thinking of heroes and warriors, singing of "crowning conquerors' brows with flowers," and wishing for "Arab steeds and falchions bright"—if they could but for one instant have stood beside me, and gazed into one of the pits where some thirty "clods of the valley,"{180} decked with scarlet and blue, with lace and broidery, were lying side by side, staring up at heaven with their sightless orbs, as they were about to be consigned to the worm, they would have joined in prayer for the advent of that day—if come it ever may—when war shall be no more, and when the shedding of blood shall cease. After Inkerman there was a period of collapse in the army. The siege languished. Our strength was wasting away—men's spirits failed—the future looked dark and uncertain.

It happened that we had a forewarning of what might be expected. On Friday, the 10th of November, just four days ere the fatal catastrophe which caused such disasters occurred, I was on board the Jason Captain Lane, which happened to be lying outside, and as it came on to blow, I could not return to the shore or get to the camp that evening. The ship was a noble steamer, well manned and ably commanded, but ere midnight I would have given a good deal to have been on land; for the gale setting right into the bay, raised a high wild sea, which rushed up the precipices in masses of water and foam, astonishing by their force and fury; and the strain on the cable was so great that the captain had to ease it off by steaming gently a-head against the wind. The luckless Prince, which had lost two anchors and cables on bringing up a day or two before, was riding near the Agamemnon, and adopted the same expedient; and, of the numerous vessels outside, and which in so short a time afterwards were dashed into fragments against those cruel rocks, the aspect of which was calculated to thrill the heart of the boldest seaman with horror, there were few which did not drag their anchors and draw towards the iron coast which lowered with death on its brow upon us. Guns of distress boomed through the storm, and flashes of musketry pointed out for a moment a helpless transport which seemed tossing in the very centre of the creaming foam of those stupendous breakers, the like of which I never beheld, except once, when I saw the Atlantic running riot against the cliffs of Moher. But the gale soon moderated—for that once—and wind and sea went down long before morning. However, Sir Edmund Lyons evidently did not like his berth, for the Agamemnon went round to Kamiesch on Sunday morning, and ordered the Firebrand, which was lying outside, to go up to the fleet at the Katcha. As to the Prince, and the luckless transports, they were allowed, nay, ordered, to stand outside till the hurricane rushed upon them.

On the 14th of November came a new calamity—the hurricane.

I had been in a listless state between waking and sleeping, listening to the pelting of the rain against the fluttering canvas of the tent, or dodging the streams of water which flowed underneath it, saturating blankets, and collecting on the mackintosh sheet in pools, when gradually I became aware that the sound of the rain and the noise of its heavy beating on the earth had been swallowed up by the roar of the wind, and by the flapping of tents outside. Presently the sides of the canvas, tucked in under big stones, began to rise, permitting the wind to enter and drive sheets of rain right into one's face; the pegs indicated painful indecision{181} and want of firmness of purpose. The glimpses afforded of the state of affairs outside were little calculated to produce a spirit of resignation to the fate which threatened our frail shelter. The ground had lost solidity. Mud—nothing but mud—flying before the wind and drifting as though it were rain, covered the face of the earth.

The storm-fiend was coming, terrible and strong as when he smote the bark of the Ancient Mariner. The pole of the tent bent like a salmon-rod; the canvas tugged at the ropes, the pegs yielded. A startling crack! I looked at my companions, who seemed determined to shut out all sound by piling as many clothes as they could over their heads. A roar of wind again, the pole bent till the "crack" was heard again. "Get up, Smith! Up with you; Eber! the tent is coming down!" The Doctor rose from beneath his tumulus of clothes. Now, if there was anything in which the Doctor put confidence more than another, it was his tent-pole; he believed that no power of Æolus could ever shake it. There was normally a bend in the middle of it, but he used to argue, on sound anatomical, mathematical, and physical principles, that the bend was an improvement. He looked on the pole, as he looked at all things, blandly, put his hand out, and shook it. "Why, man," said he, reproachfully, "it's all right—that pole would stand for ever," and then he crouched and burrowed under his bed-clothes.

Scarcely had he given that last convulsive heave of the blankets which indicates perfect comfort, when a harsh screaming sound, increasing in vehemence as it approached, struck us with horror. As it neared us, we heard the snapping of tent-poles and the sharp crack of timber. On it came, "a mighty and a strong wind." It struck our tent! The pole broke off short in the middle, as if it were glass; in an instant we were half stifled by the folds of the wet canvas, which beat us about the head with fury. Breathless and half blind, I struggled for the exit, and crept out into the mud. Such a sight met the eye! The whole head-quarters' camp was beaten flat to the earth, and the unhappy occupants of tents were rushing in all directions in chase of their effects, or holding on by the walls, as they strove to make their way to the roofless barns and stables.

Three marquees stood the blast—General Estcourt, Sir John Burgoyne, and Major Pakenham's. The General had built a cunning wall of stones around his marquee, but ere noon it had fallen before the wind; the Major's shared the same fate still earlier in the day. Next to our tent was the marquee of Captain de Morel, aide-de-camp to Adjutant-General Estcourt, fluttering on the ground, and, as I looked, the canvas was animated by some internal convulsion—a mimic volcano appeared to be opening, its folds assumed fantastic shapes, tossing wildly in the storm. The phenomenon was accounted for by the apparition of the owner fighting his way against the wind, which was bent on tearing his scanty covering from his person; at last he succeeded in making a bolt of it and squattered through the mud to the huts. Dr. Hall's tent was levelled, the principal medical officer of the British army might be seen in{182} an unusual state of perturbation and nudity, seeking for his garments. Brigadier Estcourt, with mien for once disturbed, held on, as sailors say, "like grim Death to a backstay," by one of the shrouds of his marquee. Captain Chetwode was tearing through the rain and dirt like a maniac after a cap, which he fancied was his own, and which he found, after a desperate run, to be his sergeant's. The air was filled with blankets, hats, great coats, little coats, and even tables and chairs! Mackintoshes, quilts, india-rubber tubs, bedclothes, sheets of tent-canvas went whirling like leaves in the gale towards Sebastopol. The barns and commissariat sheds were laid bare at once. The shingle roofs of the outhouses were torn away and scattered over the camp; a portion of the roof of Lord Raglan's house was carried off to join them.

Large arabas, or waggons, close to us were overturned; men and horses were rolled over and over; the ambulance waggons were turned topsy-turvy; a large table in Captain Chetwode's was whirled round and round till the leaf flew off, and came to mother earth deprived of a leg and seriously injured. The Marines and Rifles on the cliffs over Balaklava lost everything; the storm hurled them across the bay, and the men had to cling to the earth with all their might to avoid the same fate.

Looking over towards the hill occupied by the Second Division, we saw the ridges, the plains, and undulating tracts between the ravines, so lately smiling in the autumn sun, with row after row of neat white tents, bare and desolate, as black as ink. Right in front the camp of the Chasseurs d'Afrique presented an appearance of equal desolation. Their little tentes d'abri were involved in the common ruin. One-half of our cavalry horses broke loose. The French swarmed in all directions, seeking for protection against the blast. Our men, more sullen and resolute, stood in front of their levelled tents, or collected in groups before their late camps. Woe to the Russians had they come on that day, for, fiercer than the storm and stronger than all its rage, the British soldier would have met and beaten their battalions. The cry was, all throughout this dreadful day, "Let us get at the town; better far that we should have a rush at the batteries and be done with it, than stand here to be beaten by a storm."

Let the reader imagine the bleakest common in all England, the wettest bog in all Ireland, or the dreariest muir in all Scotland, overhung by leaden skies, and lashed by a tornado of sleet, snow, and rain—a few broken stone walls and roofless huts dotting it here and there, roads turned into torrents of mud and water, and then let him think of the condition of men and horses in such a spot on a November morning, suddenly deprived of their frail covering, and exposed to bitter cold, with empty stomachs, without the remotest prospect of obtaining food or shelter. Think of the men in the trenches, the covering parties, the patrols, and outlying pickets and sentries, who had passed the night in storm and darkness, and who returned to their camp only to find fires out and tents gone. These were men on whose vigilance the safety of our position depended, and many of whom had been for eight or ten hours in the rain and{183} cold, who dared not turn their backs for a moment, who could not blink their eyes. These are trials which demand the exercise of the soldier's highest qualities.

A benighted sportsman caught in a storm thinks he is much to be pitied, as, fagged, drenched and hungry, he plods along the hillside, and stumbles about in the dark towards some uncertain light; but he has no enemy worse than the wind and rain to face, and in the first hut he reaches repose and comfort await him. Our officers and soldiers, after a day like this, had to descend to the trenches again at night, look out for a crafty foe, to labour in the mire and ditches of the works; what fortitude and high courage to do all this without a murmur, and to bear such privations and hardships with unflinching resolution! But meantime—for one's own experience gives the best idea of the suffering of others—our tent was down; one by one we struggled out into the mud, and left behind us all our little household gods, to fly to the lee of a stone wall, behind which were cowering French and British of all arms and conditions.

Major Blane was staggering from the ruins of his marquee, under a press of greatcoat, bearing up for the shelter of Pakenham's hut. The hospital tents were all down, the sick had to share the fate of the robust. On turning towards the ridge on which the imposing wooden structures of the French were erected, a few scattered planks alone met the eye. The wounded of the 5th November, who to the number of several hundred were in these buildings, had to bear the inclemency of the weather as well as they could. Several succumbed to its effects. The guard tents were down, the occupants huddled together under the side of a barn, their arms covered with mud, lying where they had been thrown from the "pile" by wind. The officers had fled to the commissariat stores near Lord Raglan's, and there found partial shelter. Inside, overturned carts, dead horses, and groups of shivering men—not a tent left standing. Mr. Cookesley had to take refuge, and was no doubt glad to find it, amid salt pork and rum puncheons.

With chattering teeth and shivering limbs each man looked at his neighbour. Lord Raglan's house, with the smoke streaming from the chimneys, and its white walls standing out freshly against the black sky, was the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes." Lord Lucan, meditative as Marius amid the ruins of Carthage, was sitting up to his knees in mud, amid the wreck of his establishment. Lord Cardigan was sick on board his yacht in the harbour of Balaklava. Sir George Brown was lying wounded on board the Agamemnon, off Kamiesch Bay; Sir De Lacy Evans, sick and shaken, was on board the Sanspareil, in Balaklava; General Bentinck, wounded, was on board the Caradoc. The Duke of Cambridge was passing a terrible time of it in the Retribution, in all the horrors of that dreadful scene, off Balaklava. Pennefather, England, Campbell, Adams, Buller—in fact all the generals and officers—were as badly off as the meanest private.

The only persons near us whose tents weathered the gale were Mr. Romaine, Deputy Judge-Advocate-General; Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson, Artillery; and Captain Woodford. The first had pitched{184} his tent cunningly within the four walls of an outhouse, and secured it by guys and subtle devices of stonework. They were hospitable spots, those tents—oases in the desert of wretchedness; many a poor half-frozen wanderer was indebted almost for life to the shelter they afforded. While reading this, pray never lose sight of the fact, as you sit over your snug coal-fires at home, that fuel was nearly all gone, and that there were savage fights among the various domestics, even in fine weather, for a bit of shaving or a fragment of brushwood. Never forget that the storm raged from half-past six o'clock till late in the day, with the fury of Azraël, vexing and buffeting every living thing, and tearing to pieces all things inanimate. Now and then a cruel gleam of sunshine shot out of a rift in the walls of clouds and rendered the misery of the scene more striking. Gathered up under the old wall, we could not but think with anxious hearts of our fleet of transports off Balaklava and the Katcha. Alas! we had too much reason for our anxiety.

Towards ten o'clock matters were looking more hopeless and cheerless than ever, when a welcome invitation came through the storm to go over to the shelter of Romaine's tent. Our first duty was to aid the owner in securing the pole with "a fish" of stout spars. Then we aided in passing out a stay from the top of the pole to the wall in front. A cup of warm tea was set before each of us, provided by some inscrutable chemistry, and with excellent ration biscuit and some butter, a delicious meal, as much needed as it was unexpected, was made by my friends and myself, embittered only by the ever-recurring reflection, "God help us, what will become of the poor fellows in the trenches?" And there we sat, thinking and talking of the soldiers and of the fleet hour after hour, while the wind and rain blew and fell with the full sense of the calamity with which Providence was pleased to visit us.

Towards twelve o'clock the wind, which had been blowing from the south-west, chopped round more to the west, and became colder. Sleet fell first, and then a snow-storm, which clothed the desolate landscape in white, till the tramp of men seamed it with trails of black mud. The mountain ranges assumed their winter garb. French soldiers flocked about head-quarters, and displayed their stock of sorrows to us. Their tents were all down and blown away—no chance of recovering them; their bread was "tout mouillé et gâté," their rations gone to the dogs. The African soldiers seemed particularly miserable. Several of them were found dead next morning outside our cavalry camp. Two men in the 7th Fusileers, one man in the 33rd, and one man of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, were found dead, "starved to death" by the cold. About forty horses died, and many never recovered.

At two o'clock the wind went down a little, and the intervals between the blasts of the gale became more frequent and longer. We took advantage of one of these halcyon moments to trudge to the wreck of my tent, and having borrowed another pole, with the aid of a few men we got it up muddy and wet; but it was evident that no dependence could be placed upon it; the floor was a{185} puddle, and the bed and clothes dripping. Towards evening there were many tents re-pitched along the lines of our camps, though they were but sorry resting-places. It was quite out of the question to sleep in them. What was to be done? There was close at hand the barn used as a stable for the horses of the 8th Hussars, and Eber Macraghten and I waded across the sea of nastiness which lay between us and it, tacked against several gusts, fouled one or two soldiers in a different course, grappled with walls and angles of outhouses, nearly foundered in big horse-holes, bore sharply up round a corner, and anchored at last in the stable.

What a scene it was! The officers of the escort were crouching over some embers; along the walls were packed some thirty or forty horses and ponies, shivering with cold, and kicking and biting with spite and bad humour. The Hussars, in their long cloaks, stood looking on the flakes of snow, which drifted in at the doorway or through the extensive apertures in the shingle roof. Soldiers of different regiments crowded about the warm corners, and Frenchmen of all arms, and a few Turks, joined in the brotherhood of misery, lighted their pipes at the scanty fire, and sat close for mutual comfort. The wind blew savagely through the roof, and through chinks in the mud walls and window-holes. The building was a mere shell, as dark as pitch, and smelt as it ought to do—an honest, unmistakeable stable—improved by a dense pack of moist and mouldy soldiers. And yet it seemed to us a palace! Life and joy were inside, though melancholy Frenchmen would insist on being pathetic over their own miseries—and, indeed, they were many and great—and after a time the eye made out the figures of men huddled up in blankets, lying along the wall. They were the sick, who had been in the hospital marquee, and who now lay moaning and sighing in the cold; but our men were kind to them, as they are always to the distressed, and not a pang of pain did they feel which care or consideration could dissipate.

A staff officer, Colonel Wetherall, dripping with rain, came in to see if he could get any shelter for draughts of the 33rd and 41st Regiments, which had just been landed at Kamiesch, but he soon ascertained the hopelessness of his mission so far as our quarters were concerned. The men were packed into another shed, "like herrings in a barrel." Having told us, "There is terrible news from Balaklava—seven vessels lost, and a number on shore at the Katcha," and thus made us more gloomy than ever, the officer went on his way, as well as he could, to look after his draughts. In the course of an hour an orderly was sent off to Balaklava with dispatches from head-quarters; but, after being absent for three-quarters of an hour, the man returned, fatigued and beaten, to say he could not get his horse to face the storm. In fact, it would have been all but impossible for man or beast to have made headway through the hurricane.

We sat in the dark till night set in—not a soul could stir out. Nothing could be heard but the howling of the wind, the yelping of wild dogs driven into the enclosures, and the shrill neighings of terrified horses. At length a candle-end was stuck into a horn{186} lantern, to keep it from the wind—a bit of ration pork and some rashers of ham, done over the wood fire, furnished an excellent dinner, which was followed by a glass or horn of hot water and rum—then a pipe, and as it was cold and comfortless, we got to bed—a heap of hay on the stable floor, covered with our clothes, and thrown close to the heels of a playful grey mare, who had strong antipathies to her neighbours, a mule and an Arab horse, and spent the night in attempting to kick in their ribs. Amid smells, and with incidents impossible to describe or allude to more nearly, we went to sleep in spite of a dispute between an Irish sergeant of Hussars and a Yorkshire corporal of Dragoons as to the comparative merits of light and heavy cavalry, with digressions respecting the capacity of English and Irish horseflesh, which, by the last we heard of them, seemed likely to be decided by a trial of physical strength on the part of the disputants.

Throughout the day there had been very little firing from the Russian batteries—towards evening all was silent except the storm. In the middle of the night, however, we were all awoke by one of the most tremendous cannonades we had ever heard, and, after a time, the report of a rolling fire of musketry was borne upon the wind. Looking eagerly in the direction of the sound, we saw the flashes of the cannon through the chinks in the roof, each distinct by itself, just as a flash of lightning is seen in all its length and breadth through a crevice in a window shutter. It was a sortie on the French lines. The cannonade lasted for half-an-hour, and gradually waxed fainter. In the morning we heard that the Russians had been received with an energy which quickly made them fly to the cover of their guns.

CHAPTER II.

With the morning of the 15th of November, came a bright cold sky, and our men, though ankle deep in mud cheered up when they beheld the sun once more. The peaks of the hills and mountain sides were covered with snow. As rumours of great disasters reached us from Balaklava, I after breakfasting in my stable, made my way there as well as I could. The roads were mere quagmires. Another day's rain would have rendered them utterly impassable, and only for swimming or navigation. Dead horses and cattle were{187} scattered all over the country, and here and there a sad little procession, charged with the burden of some inanimate body, might be seen wending its way slowly towards the hospital marquees, which had been again pitched.

In coming by the French lines I observed that the whole of the troops were turned out, and were moving about and wheeling in column to keep their blood warm. They had just been mustered, and it was gratifying to learn that the rumours respecting lost men were greatly exaggerated. Our men were engaged in trenching and clearing away mud.

The Russians in the valley were very active, and judging from the state of the ground and the number of loose horses, they must have been very miserable also.

Turning down by Captain Powell's battery, where the sailors were getting their arms in order, I worked through ammunition mules and straggling artillery-wagons towards the town. Balaklava was below—its waters thronged with shipping—not a ripple on their surface. It was almost impossible to believe that but twelve hours before ships were dragging their anchors, drifting, running aground,, and smashing each other to pieces in that placid loch. The whitewashed houses in the distance were as clean-looking as ever, and the old ruined fortress on the crags above frowned upon the sea, and reared its walls and towers aloft, uninjured by the storm.

On approaching the town, however, the signs of the tempest of the day before grew and increased at every step. At the narrow neck of the harbour, high and dry, three large boats were lying, driven inland several yards; the shores were lined with trusses of compressed hay which had floated out of the wrecks outside the harbour, and pieces of timber, beams of wood, masts and spars, formed natural rafts, which were stranded on the beach or floated about among the shipping. The old tree which stood near the guard-house at the entrance to the town was torn up, and in its fall had crushed the house into ruin. The soldiers of the guard were doing their best to make themselves comfortable within the walls. The fall of this tree, which had seen many winters, coupled with the fact that the verandahs and balconies of the houses and a row of very fine acacia trees on the beach were blown down, corroborate the statement so generally made by the inhabitants, that they had never seen or heard of such a hurricane in their life time, although there was a tradition among some that once in thirty or forty years such visitations occurred along this coast. The City of London, Captain Cargill, was the only vessel which succeeded in getting out to sea and gaining a good offing during the hurricane of the 14th, and the Captain told me, in all his experience (and as an old Aberdeen master, he has passed some anxious hours at sea) he never knew so violent a gale.

There was an affair of pickets during the night of the 15th between the French and the Russians, in which a few men were wounded on both sides, and which was finished by the retreat of the Russians to their main body. This took place in the valley of Balaklava, and its most disagreeable result (to those not engaged){188} was to waken up and keep awake every person in the town for a couple of hours.

During this winter newspaper correspondents in the Crimea were placed in a rather difficult position. In common with generals and chiefs, and men-at-arms, they wrote home accounts of all we were doing to take Sebastopol, and they joined in the prophetic cries of the leaders of the host, that the fall of the city of the Czar—the centre and navel of his power in those remote regions—would not be deferred for many hours after our batteries had opened upon its defences. In all the inspiration of this universal hope, these poor wretches, who clung to the mantles of the military and engineering Elijahs, did not hesitate to communicate to the world, through the columns of the English press, all they knew of the grand operations which were to eventuate in the speedy fall of this doomed city. They cheered the heart of England with details of the vast armaments prepared against its towers and forts—of the position occupied by her troops—the imbecility of the enemy's fire—of the range of the guns so soon to be silenced—of the stations of our troops on commanding sites; and they described with all their power the grandiose operations which were being taken for the reduction of such a formidable place of arms. They believed, in common with the leaders, whose inspiration and whose faith were breathed through the ranks of our soldiers, that the allied forces were to reduce Sebastopol long ere the lines they penned could meet the expectant gaze of our fellow-countrymen at home; and they stated, under that faith and in accordance with those inspirations, that the operations of war of our armies were undertaken with reference to certain points and with certain hopes of results, the knowledge of which could not have proved of the smallest service to the enemy once beaten out of their stronghold.

Contrary to these hopes and inspirations, in direct opposition to our prophecies and to our belief, Sebastopol held out against the Allies; and the intelligence conveyed in newspapers which we all thought we should have read in the club-rooms of Sebastopol, was conveyed to the generals of an army which defended its walls, and were given to the leaders of an enemy whom we had considered would be impuissant and defeated, while they were still powerful and unconquered. The enemy knew that we had lost many men from sickness; that we had so many guns here and so many guns there, that our head-quarters were in one place, our principal powder magazines in another, that the camp of such a division had been annoyed by their fire, and that the tents of another had escaped injury from their shot, but it must be recollected that when these details were written it was confidently declared that, ere the news of the actual preliminaries of the siege could reach England, the Allies would have entered Sebastopol, that their batteries would have silenced the fire of their enemy, that the quarters of their generals would have been within the enceinte of the town, that our magazines would have been transferred to its storehouses, and that our divisions would have encamped within its walls.

How much knowledge of this sort the enemy gleaned through{189} their spies, or by actual observation, it is not needful to inquire; but undoubtedly, without any largely speculative conjecture, it may be inferred that much of the information conveyed to them, or said to have been conveyed to them, by the English press, could have been ascertained through those very ordinary channels of communication, the eye and ear, long ere our letters had been forwarded to Sebastopol, and translated from English in usum superiorum. However, it is quite evident that it was not advisable to acquaint the enemy with our proceeding and movements during a siege which promised to assume the proportions and to emulate the length of those operations of a similar character in which hosts of men conveyed by formidable armadas from distant shores, set down to beleaguer some devoted fortress.

Although it might be dangerous to communicate facts likely to be of service to the Russians, it was certainly hazardous to conceal the truth from the English people. They must have known, sooner or later, that the siege towards the end of November had been for many days practically suspended, that our batteries were used up and silent, and that our army was much exhausted by the effects of excessive labour and watching, to which they have been so incessantly exposed. The Russians knew this soon enough, for a silent battery—to hazard a bull—speaks for itself. The relaxation of our fire was self-evident, but our army, though weakened by sickness, was still equal to hold their position, and to inflict the most signal chastisement upon any assailants who might venture to attack it. In fact, I believe nothing would have so animated our men, deprived as they were of cheering words and of the presence and exhortations of their generals and destitute of all stimulating influences beyond those of their undaunted spirits and glorious courage, as the prospect of meeting the Russians outside their intrenchments. Rain kept pouring down, the wind howled over the staggering tents—the trenches were turned into dikes—in the tents the water was sometimes a foot deep—our men had neither warm nor waterproof clothing—they were out for twelve hours at a time in the trenches—they were plunged into the inevitable miseries of a winter campaign. These were hard truths, which sooner or later must have come to the ears of the people of England. It was right they should know that the beggar who wandered the streets of London led the life of a prince compared with the British soldiers who were fighting for their country, and who, we were complacently assured by the home authorities, were the best appointed army in Europe. They were fed, indeed, but they had no shelter. The tents, so long exposed to the blaze of a Bulgarian sun, and drenched by torrents of rain, let the wet through "like sieves."

On the night of the 20th of November, three companies of the Rifle Brigade (1st battalion), under Lieutenant Tryon, displayed coolness and courage in a very smart affair. In the rocky ground in the ravine towards the left of our left attack, about 300 Russian infantry established themselves in some caverns and old stone huts used by shepherds in days gone by, and annoyed the working and covering parties of the French right attack and of our advances.{190} These caves abounded in all the ravines, and were formed by the decay of the softer portions of the rock between the layers in which it is stratified. It was found expedient to dislodge them, and at seven o'clock this party was sent to drive the Russians out. The Rifles soon forced the enemy to retreat on the main body, but when the Rifles had established themselves for the night in the caves, they were assailed by a strong column. The action ended in the complete repulse of the Russian columns, but we had to deplore the loss of a most promising and excellent officer, Lieutenant Tryon, who was killed by a shot in the head. Seven men killed and eighteen or nineteen wounded.

General Canrobert issued a very flattering ordre du jour, in which he especially eulogized the intrepid bravery and noble energy of the three companies of the 1st battalion of our Rifle Brigade in the action, and Lord Raglan mentioned it in very handsome terms.

Our army was in a strange condition now. The Light Division was provisionally commanded by Codrington, Sir George Brown being on board the "Agamemnon."

The Duke of Cambridge was on board the "Retribution." The Brigade of Guards appeared to be commanded by Colonel Upton.

The Brigade of Highlanders was down at Kadikoi, under the command of Sir Colin Campbell.

The Second Division was commanded by Brigadier-General Pennefather, in the room of Sir De Lacy Evans, who was on his way home unwell.

The First Brigade was under the command of a Lieutenant-Colonel.

The Second Brigade was without a brigadier, General Adams' wound was more serious than was supposed.

The Third Division was under the command of Sir Richard England, and was fortunate in not being much engaged.

The Fourth Division, deprived of all its generals, was commanded by Sir John Campbell.

Brigadier-General Lord Cardigan was unable to leave his yacht. The Artillery was under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Dacres during the absence of Lieutenant-Colonel Gambier, who was wounded, after having succeeded to the command left vacant by the death of Strangways.

Our cattle at Eupatoria were by no means in high condition; they perished from hunger. It may readily be guessed that joints from the survivors were scarcely in such a condition as would justify the least conscientious of London waiters describing them as being in "prime cut."

Early in November a body of Russian cavalry appeared before Eupatoria to attack our stock, and a French colonel, with eighty horse, pushed forward to save his beeves and mutton from the gripe of the hungry Cossacks. The Russian cavalry always screen field guns, and on this occasion, as at the Bouljanak, plumped round shot and shell into the Frenchmen. The colonel was dismounted, seven men were killed or wounded, and, as the French{191} were retiring, a polk of Lancers made a dash at them. Our rocket battery was, however, near at hand, and one of these fiery abominations rushed right through their ranks. The horses reared, and the Lancers "bolted," leaving several dead upon the field.

On the 24th there was a brisk affair between the French and the Russians in front of the Flagstaff Battery, and the Russians dispelled all myths about their want of powder and ball by a most tremendous cannonade. Assaults and counter-assaults continued amid a furious fire, which lighted up the skies with sheets of flame from nine o'clock at night till nearly four in the morning. The French at one time actually penetrated behind the outer intrenchments, and established themselves for a time within the enceinte, but as there was no preparation made for a general assault, they eventually withdrew.

The struggle between French and Russians was renewed on the night of the 25th. The great bone of contention, in addition to the Ovens, was the mud fort at the Quarantine Battery, of which the French had got possession, though, truth to tell, it did not benefit their position very materially.

A Polish deserter came in on the 27th with a strange story. He said that on the 25th the Grand Duke Michael reviewed a strong force of Russians (as he stated, of 12,000 men, but no reliance can be placed on the assertions of men of this class with regard to the numbers of a force), and that he addressed them in a spirited speech, in which he appealed to them to drive the heretics out of Balaklava into the sea. At the conclusion of his harangue the Grand Duke distributed two silver roubles to each private.

A reconnaissance of our lines was made on the 30th of November by Grand Duke Michael and a very large staff, among whom our knowing people said they could see Prince Menschikoff and General Liprandi. The Grand Duke was recognisable by the profound respect paid to him—wherever he went hats were taken off and heads uncovered—and by the presence of a white dog which always accompanies him. While making his inspection, the enormous telescope through which he gazed was propped upon muskets and bayonets, and he made frequent references to a very large chart on a portable table. The Grand Duke rode back up the hills towards Tchergoun.

As the year waned and winter began to close in upon us, the army suffered greatly; worn out by night-work, by vigil in rain and storm, by hard labour in the trenches, they found themselves suddenly reduced to short allowance, and the excellent and ample rations they had been in the habit of receiving cut off or miserably reduced. For nine days, with very few exceptions, no issue of tea, coffee, or sugar, to the troops took place. These, however, are luxuries—not the necessaries of military life. The direct cause of this scarcity was the condition of the country, which caused a difficulty in getting food from Balaklava, and there was besides a want of supplies in the commissariat magazines. But though there was a cause, there was no excuse for the privations to which{192} the men were exposed. We were all told that when the bad weather set in, the country roads would be impassable. The fine weather was allowed to go by, and the roads were left as the Tartar carts had made them, though the whole face of the country was covered thickly with small stones which seem expressly intended for road metal. As I understood, it was suggested by the officers of the Commissariat Department that they should be allowed to form depôts of food, corn, and forage, as a kind of reserve at the head-quarters at the different divisions; but their carts were, after a few days' work in forming those depôts, taken for the siege operations, and were employed in carrying ammunition to the trenches. Consequently, the magazines at headquarters were small, and were speedily exhausted when the daily supplies from Balaklava could no longer be procured. The food, corn, and hay were stowed in sailing vessels outside the harbour, where they had to ride in thirty or forty fathoms of water on a rocky bottom, with a terrible coast of cliff of 1,200 feet in height stretching around the bay: it was notorious that the place was subject to violent storms of wind.

As to the town, words could not describe its filth, its horrors, its hospitals, its burials, its dead and dying Turks, its crowded lanes, its noisome sheds, its beastly purlieus, or its decay. All the pictures ever drawn of plague and pestilence, from the work of the inspired writer who chronicled the woes of infidel Egypt, down to the narratives of Boccacio, De Foe, or Moltke, fall short of individual "bits" of disease and death, which any one might see in half-a-dozen places during half an hour's walk in Balaklava. In spite of all our efforts the dying Turks made of every lane and street a cloaca, and the forms of human suffering which met the eye at every turn, and once were wont to shock us, ceased to attract even passing attention. By raising up the piece of matting or coarse rug which hung across the doorway of some miserable house, from within which you heard wailings and cries of pain and prayers to the Prophet, you saw in one spot and in one instant a mass of accumulated woes that would serve you with nightmares for a lifetime. The dead, laid as they died, were side by side with the living. The commonest accessories were wanting; there was not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness—the stench was appalling—the fœtid air could barely struggle out to taint the atmosphere, through the chinks in the walls and roofs. The sick appeared to be tended by the sick, and the dying by the dying.{193}

CHAPTER III.

AT twelve o'clock, on the night of the 5th of December, there was a great stir down in the valley of Balaklava. The hoarse hum of men was heard by the pickets, and they reported the circumstance to the officers of the French regiments on the heights. Lights were seen moving about in the redoubts occupied by the Russians. It was supposed that the enemy had received reinforcements, or were about to make a dash at our position before Balaklava. The Hospital Guards and the invalid battalion were turned out, the French shrouded in their capotes grimly waited in their lines the first decisive movement of the enemy. The night was cold, but not clear; after a time the noise of wheels and the tramp of men ceased, and the alarm was over. Ere morning, however, we knew the cause. About five o'clock A.M. an outburst of flame from the redoubts in which the Russians had hutted themselves illuminated the sky, and at the same time the fire broke out in Komara. When morning came, the Russians were visible in much-diminished numbers on the higher plateaux of the hills near Tchorgoun and Komara. The faint rays of the morning sun played on the bayonets of another portion of the force as they wound up the road towards Mackenzie's farm, and passed through the wood over the right bank of the Tchernaya. They had abandoned the position they had won on 25th October.

With the exception of the advance of the army in the rear on the 25th October, and the grand sortie on the 5th of November, no movement of any moment was attempted during the latter part of 1854 by the Russians to raise the siege.

On the 20th of December, the Russians succeeded in penetrating our lines where they were in contract with the French. In order to deceive the sentries they commanded in French, which ruse was successful; they killed and wounded sixteen men—among the latter Major Moller, of the 50th—and carried away eleven men and two officers, Captain Frampton and Lieutenant Clarke, as prisoners, but were driven back by the 34th regiment before they could do any further mischief, not without inflicting a loss.

On the 29th December, Sir Colin Campbell made a reconnaissance with a part of his force the 79th and Rifle Brigade. Soon after{194} seven o'clock the French proceeded towards the hills recently occupied by the Russians, with General Bosquet, the Rifles and Highlanders turning to the right and covering the flank of the expedition. As the force approached Komara, the Cossack vedettes came in sight, retiring slowly from the village, which has been in a ruinous state since the storm of the 14th of November. The vedettes fell back on a strong body of Lancers and Light Cavalry, which seemed disposed to await the shock of the French Chasseurs.

Cavalry skirmishers exchanged a few shots before they fell in with their respective squadrons, and when the French had arrived within about 800 yards, they broke from a trot into a gallop, and dashed right at the Russian cavalry. The latter met the shock, but made no attempt to charge the French, who broke them in an instant, and chased them back on the infantry, who were assembled in three small bodies on the hills, close to the village of Tchorgoun. As the French approached Tchorgoun, they were received with a brisk fire of shot and shell from some field-pieces, to which their guns were unable to reply; but they pushed within range, and the Russians again retired, and abandoned the village of Tchorgoun to our allies, as well as the line of cantonments and huts which they had constructed subsequent to Liprandi's advance in October.

The object was to beat up the Russian position and to ascertain the strength of the enemy. Our allies at once burst into the village, but the Cossacks had been there too long to leave anything to plunder, and so the French set it on fire. The whole cantonment was in a blaze, while volumes of white smoke curling up into the air, and spreading in sheets along the crests of the hills, indicated the destruction of the village, and informed the Russians that they could no longer hope for snug quarters there. The huts were very commodious and comfortable. Each was capable of containing twenty or thirty men, and held an oven for baking, which also warmed the room at the end. The object of the reconnaissance having been accomplished, the expedition was halted, and the men set to work at once to avail themselves of the abundance of wood along the hill-sides, and to make enormous fires, which almost obscured the retreat of the Russians. It was ascertained that they did not number more than 5000 or 6000 men. The French remained upon the ground till it was almost dark, and then returned to their camp. The French lost two officers, wounded (one since dead) and about twenty men put hors de combat. They took seventeen of the Russian cavalry and a few infantry prisoners.

We were cursed by a system of "requisitions," "orders," and "memos," which was enough to depress an army of scriveners, and our captains, theoretically, had almost as much work to do with pen and paper as if they had been special correspondents or bankers' clerks; that is, they ought to have had as much to do, but, thanks to the realities of war, they had no bookkeeping; their accounts being lost, and the captain who once had forty or fifty pounds' weight of books and papers to carry, had not so much as a penny memorandum-book. This fact alone showed the absurdity of our arrangements. In peace, when these accounts were of com{195}paratively little importance, we had plenty and too much of checks and returns, but in time of war the very first thing our army did was to leave all its stationery on board the steamer that carried it to the scene of action.

The cold was developing itself, and efforts to guard against it were attended with mischief. Captain Swinton, the Royal Artillery, was suffocated by the fumes of charcoal from a stove, several officers were half-killed by carbonic acid gas.

We were obliged to apply to the French to place guards over the line of march, for the instant a cart with provisions or spirits broke down it was plundered by our active friends the Zouaves, who really seemed to have the gift of ubiquity. Let an araba once stick, or break a wheel or an axle, and the Zouaves sniffed it out just as vultures detect carrion; in a moment barrels and casks were broken open, the bags of bread were ripped up, the contents were distributed, and the commissary officer, who had gone to seek for help and assistance, on his return found only the tires of the wheels and a few splinters of wood left, for our indefatigable foragers completed their work most effectually, and carried off the cart, body and boxes, to serve as firewood.

They were splendid fellows—our friends the Zouaves—always gay, healthy, and well fed; they carried loads for us, drank for us, ate for us, baked for us, foraged for us, and built our huts for us, and all on the cheapest and most economical terms. But there were some few degenerate wretches who grumbled even among this corps d'élite. An officer commanding a fatigue party, who happened to fall in with a party of Zouaves engaged in a similar duty, brought them all off to the canteen to give them a dram after their day's labour. While he was in the tent a warrior with a splendid face for a grievance came in and joined in the conversation, and our friend, seeing he was not a private, but that he had a chatty talkative aspect, combined with an air of rank, began to talk of the privations to which the allied armies were exposed. This was evidently our ally's champ de bataille. He at once threw himself into an attitude which would have brought down the pit and galleries of the Porte St. Martin to a certainty, and, in a tone which no words can describe, working himself up by degrees to the grand climax, and attuning his body to every nice modulation of phrase and accent, he plunged into his proper woes. Our gallant friend had been expatiating on the various disagreeables of camp life in the Crimea in winter time: "C'est vrai!" quoth he, "mon ami! En effet, nous éprouvons beaucoup de misère!" The idea of any one suffering misery except himself seemed to the Zouave too preposterous not to be disposed of at once. "Mais, mon lieutenant," cried he, "regardez moi——moi! pr-r-r-r-remier basson 3me Zouaves! élève du Conservatoire de Paris! après avoir sacrificé vingt ans de ma vie pour acquérir un talent—pour me—r-r-ren-dr-r-re agréable a la société—me voici! (with extended arms, and legs) me voici—forcé d'arracher du bois de la terre (with terrible earnestness and sense of indignity), pour me faire de la soupe!"{196}

At the close of the year there were 3500 sick in the British camp before Sebastopol, and it was not too much to say that their illness had, for the most part, been caused by hard work in bad weather, and by exposure to wet without any adequate protection. Think of a tent pitched, as it were, at the bottom of a marsh, into which some twelve or fourteen miserable creatures, drenched to the skin, had to creep for shelter after twelve hours of vigil in a trench like a canal, and then reflect what state these poor fellows must have been in at the end of a night and day spent in such shelter, huddled together without any change of clothing, and lying packed up as close as they could be stowed in saturated blankets. But why were they in tents? Where were the huts which had been sent out to them? The huts were on board ships in the harbour of Balaklava. Some of these huts, of which we heard so much, were floating about the beach; others had been landed, and now and then I met a wretched pony, knee-deep in mud, struggling on beneath the weight of two thin deal planks, a small portion of one of these huts, which were most probably converted into firewood after lying for some time in the camp, or turned into stabling for officers' horses when enough of disjecta membra had been collected. Had central depôts been established, as Mr. Filder proposed, while the fine weather lasted, much, if not all, of the misery and suffering of the men and of the loss of horses would have been averted.

It may be true that the enemy were suffering still more than our own men, but the calculation of equal losses on the part of England and on the part of Russia in the article of soldiery, cannot be regarded as an ingredient in the consideration of our position. Our force was deprived of about 100 men every twenty-four hours. There were between 7000 and 8000 men sick, wounded, and convalescent in the hospitals on the Bosphorus. The 39th Regiment before it had landed was provided with some protection against the severity of the weather—not by government, but by The Times Commissioner at Scutari: and I heard from the best authority that the bounty of the subscribers to the fund intrusted to The Times for distribution was not only well bestowed to the men, but that the officers of the regiments had evinced the greatest satisfaction at the comfort.

When the various articles sent up by The Times Commissioner arrived at the camp, there was a rush made to get them by the regimental medical officers, and no false delicacy was evinced by them in availing themselves of the luxuries and necessaries placed at their disposal, and of which they had been in so much need.

We had rather a dreary Christmas. Where were the offerings of our kind country-men and country-women, and the donations from our ducal parks? The fat bucks which had exhausted the conservative principles of a Gunter; the potted meats, which covered the decks and filled the holds of adventurous yachts; the worsted devices which had employed the fingers and emptied the crotchet-boxes of fair sympathizers at home?{197}

Omar Pasha arrived on the 4th of January, on board the "Inflexible," and landed at the Ordnance-wharf. A council of war?—was held, at which the French General-in-Chief, the French Admiral, Sir E. Lyons, and Sir John Burgoyne, were present.

Next day, 1600 French were sent down to Balaklava to help us in carrying up provisions and ammunition. Each man received from our commissariat a ration of rum and biscuits.

The scenery of our camping ground and of the adjacent country assumed a wintry aspect. The lofty abrupt peaks and sharp ridges of the mountains which closed up the valley of Balaklava were covered with snow. On the tops of the distant mounds black figures, which appeared of enormous size, denoted the stations of the enemy's pickets and advanced posts.

The 63rd Regiment had only seven men fit for duty; the 46th had only thirty on the 7th. A strong company of the 90th was reduced in a week to fourteen file, and that regiment lost fifty men in a fortnight. The Scots Fusileer Guards, who had 1562 men, mustered 210 on parade. Other regiments suffered in like proportion. The men sought after ardent spirits with great avidity, and in carrying out rum to camp broached the kegs when the eye of the officer in charge was off them.

The duty of the fatigue parties was, indeed, very trying. A cask of rum, biscuit, or beef was slung from a stout pole between two men, and then they went off on a tramp of about five miles from the commissariat stores at Balaklava to head-quarters. As I was coming in from the front one day, I met a lad who could not long have joined in charge of a party of the 38th Regiment. He had taken the place of a tired man, and struggled along under his load, while the man at the other end of the pole exhausted the little breath he had left in appeals to his comrades. "Boys! boys! won't you come and relieve the young officer?" Horses could not do this work, for they could not keep their legs.

Hundreds of men had to go into the trenches at night with no covering but their greatcoats, and no protection for their feet but their regimental shoes. Many when they took off their shoes were unable to get their swollen feet into them again, and they might be seen bare-footed, hopping along about the camp, with the thermometer at twenty degrees, and the snow half a foot deep upon the ground. The trenches were two and three feet deep with mud, snow, and half-frozen slush. Our patent stoves were wretched. They were made of thin sheet iron, which could not stand our fuel—charcoal. Besides, they were mere poison manufactories, and they could not be left alight in the tents at night. They answered well for drying clothes.

I do not know how the French got on, but I know that our people did not get a fair chance for their lives while wintering in the Crimea. Providence had been very good to us. With one exception, which must have done as much mischief to the enemy as to ourselves, we had wonderful weather from the day the expedition landed in the Crimea.

One day as I was passing through the camp of the 5th (French){198} Regiment of the line, an officer came out and invited me to dismount and take a glass of brandy which had been sent out by the Emperor as a Christmas gift. My host, who had passed through his grades in Africa, showed me with pride the case of good Bordeaux, the box of brandy, and the pile of good tobacco sent to him by Napoleon III.—"le premier ami du soldat." A similar present had been sent to every officer of the French army, and a certain quantity of wine, brandy and tobacco had been forwarded to each company of every regiment in the Crimea. That very day I heard dolorous complaints that the presents sent by the Queen and Prince Albert to our army had miscarried, and that the Guards and Rifles had alone received the royal bounty in the very acceptable shape of a ton of Cavendish.

Although he was living in a tent, the canvass was only a roof for a capacious and warm pit in which there was a bright wood fire sparkling cheerily in a grate of stones. We "trinqued" together and fraternised, as our allies will always do when our officers give them the chance.

It must not be inferred that the French were all healthy while we were all sickly. They had dysentery, fever, diarrhœa, and scurvy, as well as pulmonary complaints, but not to the same extent as ourselves, or to anything like it in proportion to their numbers. On the 8th of January, some of the Guards of Her Majesty Queen Victoria's Household Brigade were walking about in the snow without soles to their shoes. The warm clothing was going up to the front in small detachments.

CHAPTER IV.

The road which the French were making for the English from Kadikoi, by the Cavalry Camp, towards the front progressed, but not rapidly. The weather was so changeable, and was in every change so unfavourable for work, that it was hard to expect our allies to labour for us with their usual energy. However, they did work. They built huts for our officers, when paid for it, with much activity, and their aid in that way was invaluable. Some of the warm coats sent out for the officers were much too small, and I heard a pathetic story from a stout Highlander respecting the defeat of his exertions to get into his much-longed-for and much-wanted garment.{199}

There was only one officer in the whole regiment that the largest of the great coats fitted, and he was certainly not remarkable for bulk or stature. The men were far more lucky, and their coats were of the most liberal dimensions, however eccentric in cut and device they might be.

As the Ambulance Corps were quite hors de combat in weather of this kind—as the men and horses were nearly all gone or unfit for duty, our sick were subjected to much misery in going from the camp to be put on board ship. But for the kindness of the French in lending us their excellent mule-litters, many of our poor fellows would have died in their tents. Captain Grant, at the head of the Ambulance Corps, was a most excellent, intelligent, and active officer, but he had no materials to work with, and this was no place for intelligence and activity to work miracles in. Experience had taught our allies that the mule-litter was the best possible conveyance for a sick or wounded man. A movable jointed frame of iron, with a canvass stretcher, was suspended from a light pack saddle at each side of a mule. If the sick or wounded man was able to sit up, by raising the head of the litter, a support was afforded to his back. If he wished his legs to hang down, the frame was adjusted accordingly, and he rode as if he were in an arm-chair suspended by the side of a mule. When the invalid wished to lie down, he had a long and comfortable couch—comfortable in so far as the pace of a mule was easier than the jog of an ambulance, and he was not crowded with others like hens in a coop. These mules travelled where ambulance carts could not stir; they required no roads nor beaten tracks, and they were readily moved about in the rear when an action was going on.

It was right that England should be made aware of the privations which her soldiers endured in this great winter campaign, that she might reward with her greenest laurels those gallant hearts, who deserved the highest honour—that honour which in ancient Rome was esteemed the highest that a soldier could gain—that in desperate circumstances he had not despaired of the Republic. And no man despaired. The exhausted soldier, before he sank to rest, sighed that he could not share the sure triumph—the certain glories—of the day when our flag was to float from Sebastopol! There was no doubt—no despondency. No one for an instant felt diffident of ultimate success. From his remains, in that cold Crimean soil, the British soldier knew an avenger and a conqueror would arise. If high courage, unflinching bravery—if steady charge—the bayonet-thrust in the breach—the strong arm in the fight—if calm confidence, contempt of death, and love of country could have won Sebastopol, it had long been ours. Let England know her children as the descendants of the starved rabble who fought at Agincourt and Cressy; and let her know, too, that in fighting against a stubborn enemy, her armies had to maintain a struggle with foes still more terrible, and that, as they triumphed over the one, so they vanquished the other.

On the night of the 12th of January the wind changed round to the southward, and the thermometer rose to 34°. A speedy thaw{200} followed, and the roads and camp once more suffered from the ravages of our old enemy—the mud. The Russians who had been very active inside the town during the day, and who had lighted great watchfires on the north side of the place, illuminated the heights over Tchernaya with rows of lights, which shone brilliantly through the darkness of the cold winter's night, and were evidently with all possible pomp and ostentation celebrating the opening of their new year. Lights shone from the windows of the public buildings, and our lonely sentries in the valleys and ravines, and the enfans perdus—the French sharpshooters lying in their lairs with watchful eye on every embrasure before them—might almost fancy that the inhabitants and garrison of the beleaguered city were tantalising them with the aspect of their gaiety. At midnight all the chapel bells of the city began ringing. On our side the sentries and pickets were warned to be on the alert, and the advanced posts were strengthened wherever it was practicable.

About a quarter past one o'clock in the morning the Russians gave a loud cheer. The French replied by opening fire, and the Russians instantly began one of the fiercest cannonades we had ever heard. It reminded one of those tremendous salvoes of artillery which the enemy delivered on two or three occasions before we opened our batteries in October. The earthworks flashed forth uninterrupted floods of flame, which revealed distinctly the outlines of the buildings in the town, and defences swarming with men. The roaring of shot, the screaming and hissing of heavy shell, and the whistling of carcases filled up the intervals between the deafening roll of cannon, which was as rapid and unbroken as quick file-firing. The iron storm passed over our lines uninterruptedly for more than half an hour, and the French, whose works to our left were less protected by the ground than ours, had to shelter themselves closely in the trenches, and could barely reply to the volleys which ploughed up the parapets of their works.

While the firing was going on a strong body of men had been pushed out of the town up the face of the hill towards our works in front, and on the flank of the left attack. As it was expected that some attempt of the kind would be made, a sergeant was posted at this spot with twelve men. Every reliance was placed upon his vigilance, and a strict attention to his duties, but, somehow or other, the enemy crept upon the little party, surprised, and took them prisoners, and then advanced on the covering parties with such rapidity and suddenness that the parties on duty in the trenches were obliged to retire. They rallied, however, and, being supported by the regiments in rear, they advanced, and the Russians were driven back close to the town.

In this little affair one officer and nine men were wounded, six men were killed, and fourteen men taken. The French had to resist a strong sortie nearly at the same time; for a short time the Russians were within the parapet of one of their mortar batteries, and spiked two or three mortars with wooden plugs, but the French drove them back with loss, and in the pursuit got inside the Russian advanced batteries. The soldiers, indeed, say they could{201} have taken the place if they had been permitted to do so. At two o'clock all was silent.

A heavy gale of wind blew nearly all day, but the thermometer rose to 38°, and the snow thawed so rapidly that the tracks to the camp became rivulets of mud. The establishment of a central depôt for provisions had, however, done much to diminish the labours and alleviate the sufferings of the men engaged in the duties of the siege; but the formation of the depôt and the accumulation of the stores wore out and exhausted many of our best men. Out of a batch of 500 or 600 horses brought up from Constantinople, 279 died between the 16th of December and the 16th January. In fact the commissariat consumed and used up horseflesh at the rate of 100 head per week, and each of the animals cost on an average 5l. The araba drivers from Roumelia and Bulgaria disappeared likewise—out of the several hundreds there were very few left; and of the Tartars of the Crimea in our employ the majority were unwilling or unfit to work in cold weather, accustomed as they seemed to be to sit all day in close rooms provided with large stoves as soon as winter set in. Disease and sickness of all kinds swept these poor people away very rapidly. The mortality of the Turkish troops, which had, as I before stated, assumed the dimensions of a plague, had now begun to be attended with much of the physical appearances of the same terrible disease, and their sanitary condition excited the liveliest apprehensions of our medical officers in Balaklava, who had, over and over again, represented to the authorities the danger of allowing the Turks to remain in the town.

The Adelaide arrived in Balaklava on the 17th of January, after a splendid passage from England, and the passengers must have been a little astonished at the truly Christmas aspect presented by the Crimea; somewhat more real and less jovial they found it than the pictures which represented florid young gentlemen in gorgeous epaulettes, gloating over imaginary puddings and Christmas presents in snug tents, and ready to partake of the fare that England had sent to her dear boys in the Crimea, but which none of them had then received, and which none of them would ever eat in such comfort and with such appliances of luxury. There was a wind that would have effectually deprived, if wind could do it, any number of rats of their whiskers. Anxious to see what things were like on the heights above Balaklava, I started, with my gun upon my shoulder, through the passes across the hill, knee-deep in snow; and after a shot or two at great, raw-necked vultures, and stately eagles, and some more fortunate cracks at "blue rocks," scraping the snow off the points of the cliffs, I arrived in the camp of the Highlanders, several hundred feet below the elevated position of the Rifles, but quite high enough to induce me to accept a hearty invitation to stop to dinner, and rest for the night. Oh, could "Caledoniensis," "Pictus," "Memor antiquæ virtutis," or any of the high-spirited Celtic gentlemen who are fighting about lions rampant and Scottish rights, and the garb of that respectable person, Auld Gael, but have seen what their countrymen{202} were like as they faced the Crimean winter, how shamed they would have been of their kilt and philibeg and stocking declamation! All such things were clean gone, and if the gallant Highlanders ever wore the kilt 'twas for punishment! Breeks—low-lived breeks—and blanket gaiters, and any kind of leggings over them, were the wear of our Scottish Zouaves, though, in good sooth, they were no more like Zouaves, except in popular modern legends, than they were like Dutchmen, à la Rip Van Winkle.

Over the waste or snow, looking down from the heights towards the valley of the Tchernaya, I saw those indefatigable Cossacks riding about their picket ground, and a few waggons stealing along from Mackenzie's Farm towards the heights of Inkerman. A vedette or two were trotting up and down along a ridge, keeping a bright lookout on our movements, and through the glass we perceived them flapping their hands under their armpits, as London cabmen do on a cold night when waiting for a fare. Towards Baidar, pickets of the same active gentry were moving along to keep themselves warm. We had no cavalry posts advanced towards them. In fact we could not conveniently send any out. Those ragged ruffians, in sheepskin coats and fur caps, mounted on ragged ponies, with deal lances and coarse iron tips, were able in drifting snow and biting winds to hold ground which our cavalry could not face.

In the middle of January there were severe and sudden alterations of temperature. Men were frozen in their tents, and several soldiers on duty in the trenches were removed to hospital with severe frost-bites, but the frost enabled the men to get up considerable supplies of warm clothing, though the means at our disposal did not permit of the wood for huts being sent to the front. When a path had once been trodden through the snow, men and horses could get along much more easily than if they had to wade through mud or across a country in a state of semi-solution. Many thousands of coats, lined with fur, long boots, gloves, mits, and socks were served out, but there were regimental hospitals where they had only one blanket to lie upon.

Our army consisted of officers and regiments almost new to this campaign. The generation of six months before had passed away; generals, brigadiers, colonels, captains, and men, the well-known faces of Gallipoli, of Bulari, of Scutari, of Varna, of Aladyn, of Devno, of Monastir—ay, even of the bivouac of Bouljanak, had changed; and there was scarcely one of the regiments once so familiar to me which I could then recognise save by its well-known number. What a harvest Death had reaped, and yet how many more were ripe for the sickle of the Great Farmer! It was sad to meet an old acquaintance, for all one's reminiscences were of noble hearts now cold for ever, and of friend after friend departed. And then came—"Poor fellow! he might have been saved, if——"

Excepting Lord Raglan, Lord Lucan, and Sir R. England, not one of our generals remained of those who went out originally; the changes among our brigadiers and colonels were almost as great. Sir George Brown, the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of{203} Cardigan, Sir George Cathcart, Sir De Lacy Evans, General Tylden, General Strangways, Brigadier Bentinck, Brigadier Goldie, Brigadier Buller, Brigadier Adams, Brigadier Torrens, Brigadier Cator, Lord de Ros—had all been removed from the army by wounds, by sickness, or by death. And so it was with the men themselves.

On the 16th the thermometer was at 14° in the morning and at 10° on the heights over Balaklava. The snow fell all night, and covered the ground to the depth of three feet; but the cold and violent wind drifted it in places to the depth of five or six feet. In the morning 1200 French soldiers came down to Balaklava for shot and shell, and the agility, good spirits, and energy with which they ploughed through the snow were alike admirable. The wind blew almost a gale, and the native horses refused to face it, but our poor fellows came trudging along in the same dreary string, and there was something mournful in the very aspect of the long lines of black dots moving across the vast expanse of glittering snow between Sebastopol and Balaklava. When these dots came up, you saw they had very red noses and very white faces and very bleared eyes; and as to their clothes Falstaff would have thought his famous levy a corps d'élite if he could have beheld our gallant soldiery. Many of the officers were as ragged and as reckless in dress. The generals made appeals to their subalterns "to wear their swords, as there was no other way of telling them from the men."

It was inexpressibly odd to see Captain Smith, of the——Foot, with a pair of red Russian leather boots up to his middle, a cap probably made out of the tops of his holsters, and a white skin coat tastefully embroidered all down the back with flowers of many-coloured silk, topped by a head-dress à la dustman of London, stalking gravely through the mud of Balaklava, intent on the capture of a pot of jam or marmalade. Does the reader wonder why we were all so fond of jam? Because it was portable and come-at-able, and was a substitute for butter, which was only sent out in casks and giant crocks, one of which would exhaust the transport resources of a regiment. Captain Smith was much more like his great namesake of the Adelphi, when, in times gone by, he made up for a smuggler-burglar-bandit, than the pride of the High-street of Portsmouth, or than that hero of the Phœnix-park, with golden wings like an angel, before the redness of whose presence little boys and young ladies trembled. All this would be rather facetious and laughable, were not poor Captain Smith a famished wretch, with bad chilblains, approximating to frost-bites, a touch of scurvy, and of severe rheumatism.

This cold weather brought great quantities of wild fowl over the camp, but it was rather too busy a spot for them to alight in. They could scarcely recognize their old haunts in the Chersonese, and flew about disconsolately over their much metamorphosed feeding-grounds. Solemn flights of wild geese, noisy streams of barnacles, curlew, duck, and widgeon wheeled over the harbour, and stimulated the sporting propensities of the seamen who kept up a constant{204} fusillade from the decks. Balls and No. 1 shot whistled unpleasantly close to one's ears, and one day a man was startled by receiving a bullet slap through his arm. Huge flocks of larks and finches congregated about the stables and the cavalry camps, and were eagerly sought by our allies, who much admire a petite chasse, which furnished them with such delicate reliefs to the monotony of ration dinners. They were rather reckless in pursuit of their quarry; the enthusiastic Zouave in chase of a fluttering bunting was frequently greeted by sounds which his ignorance of English alone prevented him from considering a teterrima causa belli.

Lord Raglan's visit to Balaklava, on the 18th of January, was a memorable event. Men were set to work throwing stones down into the most Curtius-like gulfs in the streets.

Lord Raglan began to go about frequently and ride through the various camps.

We were astounded, on reading our papers, to find that on the 22nd of December, London believed, the coffee issued to the men was roasted before it was given out! Who could have hoaxed them so cruelly? Around every tent there were to be seen green berries, which the men trampled into the mud, and could not roast. Mr. Murdoch, chief engineer of the Sanspareil mounted some iron oil casks, and adapted them very ingeniously for roasting; and they came into play at Balaklava. I do not believe at the time the statement was made, one ounce of roasted coffee had ever been issued from any commissariat store to any soldier in the Crimea.

The great variableness of the Crimean climate was its peculiarity. In the morning, you got up and found the water frozen in your tent, the ground covered with snow, the thermometer at 20°; put on mufflers, greatcoat, and mits; and went out for a walk, and before evening you returned perspiring under the weight of clothing which you carried at the end of your stick, unable to bear it any longer, the snow turned into slush, the thermometer at 45°. On the 16th the thermometer 10° noon. On the 22nd it stood at 50°—an alternation of 40° in five days; but the character of the weather exhibited a still greater difference. In the southern Crimea the wind riots in the exercise of its prescriptive right to be capricious. It plays about the tops of the cliffs and mountain ridges, lurks round corners in ravines, nearly whips you off your legs when you are expatiating on the calmness of the day, and suddenly yells in gusts at the moment the stillness had tempted you to take out a sketch-book for a memorandum of Sebastopol.

Desertions to the enemy, from the French and from our own ranks, took place. The deserters generally belonged to the Foreign Legion, from the young draughts and from regiments just sent out. We received a few deserters in turn from the army in the rear, by scrambling along the cliffs, and one of them told us he was three days coming from Baidar by that route. These men stated that the part of the town built upon the slope to the sea was very little injured by our fire, as our shot and shells did not "top" the hill. To the south faced one steep slope covered with houses and batteries and ruined works and battered suburbs. The other descended to the{205} sea, and was covered by public buildings, fine mansions, warehouses and government edifices. This part had suffered very little. The ships took refuge below this slope when pressed by our fire; the workmen and soldiers and sailors found snug quarters in the buildings.

CHAPTER V.

WE gradually relinquished ground to our allies, and the front, which it had cost so much strength and so much health to maintain, was gradually abandoned to the more numerous and less exhausted army. Some of our regiments were reduced below the strength of a company.

The French relieved the Guards of their outpost duties, and gradually extended themselves towards Inkerman. What a difference there was in the relative position of the two armies from that on the evening of the 17th of October, when the French fire had been completely snuffed out, and our own fire still maintained its strength.

There was a white frost on the night of the 22nd of January, the next morning the thermometer was at 42°. A large number of sick were sent into Balaklava on the 23rd on French mule litters and a few of our bât horses. They formed one of the most ghastly processions that ever poet imagined. Many were all but dead. With closed eyes, open mouths, and ghastly faces, they were borne along two and two, the thin stream of breath, visible in the frosty air, alone showing they were still alive. One figure was a horror—a corpse, stone dead, strapped upright in its seat, its legs hanging stiffly down, the eyes staring wide open, the teeth set on the protruding tongue, the head and body nodding with frightful mockery of life at each stride of the mule over the broken road. The man had died on his way down. As the apparition passed, the only remark the soldiers made was,—"There's one poor fellow out of pain, any way!" Another man I saw with the raw flesh and skin hanging from his fingers, the naked bones of which protruded into the cold air. That was a case of frost-bite. Possibly the hand had been dressed, but the bandages might have dropped off.

The French army received important reinforcements. The Eighth Division arrived at Kamiesch; it consisted of 10,000 good troops. The Ninth Division, under General Brunet was expected.{206}

Our allies then would muster upwards of 75,000 bayonets. The Turks did not seem to amount to more than 5000 or 6000. These unfortunate troops received supplies of new clothing and uniforms from Riza Pasha, the War Minister at Constantinople, and were assuming a respectable appearance.

It would have astonished a stranger to have seen the multitudes of dead horses all along the road. In every gully were piles of their remains torn by wild dogs and vultures. On a lone hillside I beheld the remnants of the gallant grey on which Mr. Maxse rode to the mouth of the Katcha, in company with Major Nasmyth, on the eve of the flank march to Balaklava, and many of the equine survivors of the charge at Balaklava lay rotting away by the side of the cavalry camp. Some had dropped down dead, and were frozen still as they fell; others were struggling to rise from their miry graves. The carcases had been skinned, by the Turks and French, to cover their huts; many suspicious-looking gaps, suggestive of horse-steak, were cut out in their flanks.

There was very smart fighting in the trenches and advanced works between the French and Russians on the night of the 23rd and the morning of the 24th.

On the 24th, Lord Raglan, attended by Major-General Airey and a few staff officers, rode over to Balaklava. He went on board the Caradoc and had a long interview with Sir E. Lyons alone, previous to which there was a council of war. Lord Raglan did not return to head-quarters till it was nearly dusk.

I had a long reconnaissance of Sebastopol on the same day, in company with Captain Biddulph, of Artillery. It was a beautifully clear day, and at times it was almost warm. We went up to the hill in advance and on the left of the maison brulée, and swept every inch of ground. The aspect of the place itself had changed very little, considering the hundreds of tons of shot and shell thrown into it; but whitewashed houses, roofed with tiles, and at most two stories high, in the suburbs, were in ruins. The roofs, doors, and windows were off, but puffs of smoke showed that the frames were covers for Russian riflemen. In front and left, lay a most intricate series of covered ways, traverses, zigzags, and parallels from the seaside, close to the Quarantine Battery, over the undulating land to the distance of sixty-five metres from the outer works of the Russians. Swarms of Franctireurs lined the advanced parallel, and kept up a continual pop, pop, pop, in reply to the Russian riflemen behind their advanced works.

The works from the Quarantine Fort to the crenelated wall, and thence to the Flagstaff Battery, seemed very much in the same state as the first day I saw them, with the exception, that the guns were withdrawn, and the defence left to riflemen. The Flagstaff parapets had been knocked to atoms long before, and the large buildings around it were all in ruins; but, on looking towards the ridge behind it, from which the streets descend, and which shelters that part of the place, I could see but little difference in its appearance to that which it presented on the 26th of September. People were walking about (relief coming up from{207} the sea-side) carrying baskets. Between the rear of the Flagstaff Battery and this ridge, earthworks could be detected in the openings along the lines of streets, and immediately behind the first Russian intrenchment there was a formidable work armed which at two o'clock convinced us they had pretty good range, by thundering forth an astounding broadside in answer to fire from the French. There was a rattling fire from the enfans perdus at the embrasures, the Russians slackened their fire and replied to the French sharpshooters only. When the smoke cleared away, I could see the enemy and the French carrying away a few bodies on each side to the rear.

At the other side of the harbour, Fort Constantine was shining brightly in the sun, its white walls blackened here and there under the line of embrasures by the smoke of the guns on the 17th of October. Behind it were visible dark walls rising through the snow, and notched like saws by the lines of embrasures. The waters of the harbour, as smooth as glass, were covered with boats, plying from one side to the other, and one full of men came round the head of the Dockyard Creek towards Fort Alexander, with her white flag and blue St. Andrew's cross.

The large pile of Government buildings by the side of the Dockyard Creek was much injured. Close to there was a large two-decker, with a spring upon her cables lying so as to sweep the western slope of the town. A small steamer with her steam up was near at hand, either for the use of the garrison or to carry off the two-decker, in case heavy guns were unmasked upon her. To the right, at the other side of this creek, we could see into the rear of our left attack. The houses near the Redan and Garden Batteries as well as those in front of the Right Attack, and in the rear of Malakoff were in ruins. The part of the city beyond them seemed untouched. To the rear of Malakoff, which was split up, from top to bottom, as it was the first day of our fire, there was a perfect miracle of engineering.

It is impossible to speak too highly of the solidity and finish of the earthworks, thrown up to enfilade our attack, and to defend the key of their works. One line of battery was rivetted with tin boxes, supposed to be empty powder cases. This was the mere wantonness and surplusage of abundant labour. Behind this we could see about 2,000 soldiers and workmen labouring with the greatest zeal at a new line of batteries undisturbedly.

At the rear of Malakoff there was a camp, and another at the other side of the creek, close to the Citadel, on the north side. The men-of-war and steamers were lying with topgallantmasts and yards down, under the spit of land inside Fort Constantine. Our third parallel, which was within a few hundred yards of the enemy's advanced works, was occupied by sharpshooters, who kept up a constant fire, but from my position I could not see so well into our approaches as upon those of the French.

A circumstance occurred in Balaklava on the 25th, which I stated for the consideration of the public at home without one single word of comment. The Charity, an iron screw steamer, was in{208} harbour for the reception of sick under the charge of a British medical officer. That officer went on shore and made an application to the officer in charge of the Government stoves for two or three to put on board the ship to warm the men. "Three of my men," said he, "died last night from choleraic symptoms, brought on from the extreme cold, and I fear more will follow."

"Oh!" said the guardian of stoves, "you must make your requisition in due form, send it up to head-quarters, and get it signed properly, and returned, and then I will let you have the stoves."

"But my men may die meantime."

"I can't help that; I must have the requisition."

"It is my firm belief that there are men now in a dangerous state whom another night's cold will certainly kill."

"I really can do nothing; I must have a requisition properly signed before I can give one of these stoves away."

"For God's sake, then, lend me some; I'll be responsible for their safety."

"I really can do nothing of the kind."

"But, consider, this requisition will take time to be filled up and signed, and meantime these poor fellows will go."

"I cannot help that."

"I'll be responsible for anything you do."

"Oh, no, that can't be done!"

"Will a requisition signed by the P. M. O. of this place be of any use!"

"No."

"Will it answer, if he takes on himself the responsibility?"

"Certainly not."

The surgeon went off in sorrow and disgust.

I appended another special fact for Dr. Smith, the head of the British Army Medical Department. A surgeon of a regiment stationed on the cliffs above Balaklava, who had forty sick out of two hundred, had been applying to the "authorities" in the town for three weeks for medicines, and could not get one of them. The list he sent in was returned with the observation, "We have none of these medicines in store." The surgeon came down with his last appeal:—"Do, I beg you, give me any medicine you have for diarrhœa."

"We haven't any."

"Have you any medicine for fever? Anything you can let me have, I'll take."

"We haven't any."

"I have a good many cases of rheumatism. Can you let me have any medicines?"

"We haven't any."

Thus, for diarrhœa, fever, and rheumatism there were no specifics. Dr. Smith could prove, no doubt, that there were granaries full of the finest and costliest drugs and medicines for fever, rheumatism, and diarrhœa at Scutari, but the knowledge that they were there little availed those dying for want of them at Balaklava.{209}

But with all this, the hand of the plague was not stayed.

Sickness clung to our troops, the soldiers who climbed the bloody steeps of the Alma in the splendour of manly strength, and who defended the heights over the Tchernaya exhausted, and "washed out" by constant fatigue, incessant wet, insufficient food, want of clothing and of cover from the weather, died away in their tents night after night. Doctors, and hospitals, and nurses, came too late, and they sank to rest unmurmuringly, and every week some freshly-formed lines of narrow mounds indicated the formation of a new burial-place.

It must not be inferred that the French escaped sickness and mortality. On the contrary, our allies suffered to a degree which would have been considered excessive, had it not been compared with our own unfortunate standard of disease and death, and to the diminution caused by illness, must be added that from the nightly sorties of the Russians and the heavy fire from the batteries.

According to what I heard from people, I was honoured by a good deal of abuse for telling the truth. I really would have put on my Claude Lorraine glass, if I could. I would have clothed skeletons with flesh, breathed life into the occupants of the charnel-house, subverted the succession of the seasons, and restored the legions which had been lost; but I could not tell lies to "make things pleasant." Any statements I had made I have chapter, and book, and verse, and witness for. Many, very many, that I did not make I could prove to be true with equal ease, and could make public, if the public interest required it. The only thing the partisans of misrule could allege was, that I did not "make things pleasant" to the authorities, and that, amid the filth and starvation, and deadly stagnation of the camp, I did not go about "babbling of green fields," of present abundance, and of prospects of victory.

Suppose we come to "facts." Do people at home know how many bayonets the British army could muster? Do they believe we had 25,000, after all our reinforcements? They might have been told—nay, it might have been proved to them by figures at home—that the British army consisted of 55,000 men. From the 1st of December, 1854, to the 20th of January, 1855, 8,000 sick and wounded were sent down from camp to Balaklava, and thence on shipboard! Shall I state how many returned?

Yet people at home told us it was "croaking" to state the facts, or even to allude to them! The man who could have sat calmly down and written home that our troops were healthy, that there was only an average mortality, that every one was confident of success, that our works were advancing, that we were nearer to the capture of Sebastopol than we were on the 17th of October, that transport was abundant, and the labours of our army light, might be an agreeable correspondent, but assuredly he would not have enabled the public to form a very accurate opinion on the real state of affairs in the camp before Sebastopol. The wretched boys sent out to us were not even fit for powder. They died ere a shot was fired against them. Sometimes a good draught was received;{210} but they could not endure long vigil and exposure in the trenches.

And now for another "fact." The battle of Inkerman was fought on the 5th of November, as the world will remember for ever. About 40 per cent. of the Brigade of Guards were killed or wounded on that occasion. They received reinforcements, and the brigade which mustered about 2,500 men when it left England had received some 1,500 men in various draughts up to the end of the year. What was the strength in the last week of January of the Brigade of Household troops—of that magnificent band who crowned the struggle of the Alma with victory, and beat back the Russian hordes at Inkerman? I think they could have mustered, including servants, about 950 men in the whole brigade. Here is another fact. Since the same battle of Inkerman, at least 1,000 men of the brigade had been "expended," absorbed, used up, and were no more seen. The official returns will show how many of that thousand were killed or wounded by the enemy. Another fact. There were two regiments so shattered and disorganised—so completely destroyed, to tell the truth, that they had to be sent away to be "re-formed." Now, mark, one of these regiments was neither at the Alma nor at Inkerman—the other was engaged in the latter battle only, and did not lose many men.

January 28 was celebrated by an extremely heavy fire between the Russians and the French. The volleys were as heavy as those at the Alma or Inkerman, and from the numbers of Russian infantry thrown into the works, it was evident the enemy intended to dispute the small space of ground between the last French trench and the broken outworks of their late batteries with the greatest vigour. Possibly, indeed, orders had been received to resist any nearer approaches of the French, who had burrowed up, zigzagged, paralleled, and parapetted the country from the Quarantine Fort to the Flagstaff Fort.

It was not to be expected that such an affair could take place without considerable loss on both sides. After daybreak the fire recommenced with great fury, and about eight o'clock a regular battle was raging in the trenches between the French and Russians. There could not have been less than 3,000 men on each side firing as hard as they could, and the lines were marked by thick curling banks of smoke. The fire slackened about nine o'clock.

By general orders dated 29th of January, Lord Raglan communicated that the Russian commanders had entered into an agreement to cease firing whenever a white flag was hoisted to indicate that a burying-party was engaged in front of the batteries. Admiral Boxer arrived to assume the command of the harbour of Balaklava, and by incessant exertions succeeded in carrying out many improvements, and in introducing some order in that focus of feebleness, confusion, and mismanagement.

On the 31st, a spy walked through some of our trenches. He was closely shaven, wore a blue frock-coat buttoned up to the chin, and stopped for some time to look at Mr. Murdoch "bouching" the guns. Some said he was a Frenchman, others that he "looked like{211} a doctor." No one suspected he was a Russian till he bolted towards the Russian pickets, under a sharp fire of musketry, through which he had the good luck to pass unscathed.

Orders were issued, in consequence, to admit no one into the trenches or works without a written permission, and all persons found loitering about the camp were arrested and sent to divisional head-quarters for examination. The French were in the habit of sending out working parties towards the valley of Baidar, to cut wood for gabions and fuel. They frequently came across the Cossack pickets, and as it was our interest not to provoke hostilities, a kind of good-fellowship sprang up between our allies and the outposts. One day the French came upon three cavalry horses tied up to a tree, and the officer in command ordered them not to be touched. On the same day a Chasseur left his belt and accoutrements in a ruined Cossack picket-house, and gave up hope of recovering them, but on his next visit he found them on the wall untouched. To requite this act, a soldier who had taken a Cossack's lance and pistol, which he found against a tree, was ordered to return them. The next time the French went out, one of the men left a biscuit in a cleft stick, beckoning to the Cossack to come and eat it. The following day they found a loaf of excellent bread stuck on a stick in the same place, with a note in Russian to the effect that the Russians had plenty of biscuits, and that, although greatly obliged for that which had been left, they really did not want it; but if the French had bread to spare like the sample left in return, it would be acceptable. One day a Russian called out, as the French were retiring, "Nous nous reverrons, mes amis—Français, Anglais, Russes, nous sommes tous amis." The cannonade before Sebastopol, the echoes of which reached the remote glades distinctly, must have furnished a strange commentary on the assurance.

CHAPTER VI.

ON the 1st of February the French made a demonstration on our right and two divisions were marched down towards Inkerman, consisting of about 16,000 men; but the Russians who had been cheering loudly all along our front, did not meet them.

Every day strengthened the correctness of Sir John Burgoyne's homely saying about Sebastopol—"The more you look at it, the less you will like it." Three months before, that officer declared{212} his opinion to be that the place ought to be assaulted. General Neil we heard, laughed at the notion of our reducing the place by the fire of our artillery.

The thermometer on the 4th of February stood at 22°. In the afternoon a party of Cossacks with two light field-pieces, were observed crossing the head of the valley towards Inkerman, but the Russians mustered over the heights and on the ridges between the Belbek and the south side of Sebastopol. They must have suffered very severely during these cold nights, for they were less able to bear the severity of the climate than our own soldiers, being accustomed to spend their winters in hot close barracks. The Cossacks alone are employed in the open country during frost and snow.

As the spring advanced, all kinds of aid began to arrive, and even luxuries were distributed. The Government sent out stores to be sold at cost price. The Crimean Army Fund opened their magazines, and sold excellent articles of all kinds. Our parcels and boxes and Christmas presents turned up slowly in the chaos of Balaklava. The presents sent by the Queen and Prince to the Guards, in the St. Jean d'Acre, were after a time delivered to the men. Lord Rokeby was affected to tears when the three regiments paraded, on his taking the command. He communicated a most gratifying letter from the Queen to the officers, in which Her Majesty expressed her admiration of the conduct of "her beloved Guards."

Lord Raglan rode into Balaklava on the 5th, and remained some time, inspecting the arrangements. A harbour was assigned for French ships to unload stores for regiments which were nearer to Balaklava than to Kamiesch.

As I was riding out on the same day towards the camp from Balaklava with an officer of the Scots Fusileer Guards, I witnessed a refreshing instance of vigilance. We rode towards the Woronzoff road, and kept a little too much to our right, so that, happening to look towards the top of a mound about 300 yards distant, the first thing that struck us was the head of a Cossack as he crouched down to escape observation. A little in advance was an English soldier, behind him, at the distance of some 400 yards, another soldier was running, shouting, with his firelock at the present. The first man kept walking rapidly on. The other halted and fired. Still the fellow kept on, and we were riding up to see what he was, when a Dragoon dashed at a gallop from the cavalry picket, and rode between the man and the hill. The soldier turned back with the Dragoon, who marched him to the picket-house, and then went up to the other who was a sentry in front of the Highland Battery, and had run after the would-be deserter, whom he had seen edging up towards the Russian Lines along the plain. It was amusing to watch the Cossack. Nothing could be seen of him for the time but his little bullet head over the bank. He evidently imagined that by lying close he might get one of us, but he was disappointed.

It is strange that the first use—perhaps the only use—the Crim-Tartar{213} will ever witness of the great invention of recent days should be to facilitate the operations of war and to destroy life.[15] After the expedition leaves the shores of the Crimea, and has become a tradition among its people, the works of our railroad may serve to exercise the ingenuity of Cimmerian antiquaries, and form the only permanent mark of our presence on this bloodstained soil.

A new wooden world arose in a few days in early February along the hill-side over the road to Balaklava. A little town was erected on the right-hand side of the path, about three-quarters of a mile outside Balaklava, for the sutlers expelled from the town, in which fires had been suspiciously frequent; and, from the din and clamour, one might imagine he was approaching some well-frequented English fair. A swarm of men, in all sorts of grotesque uniforms, French, English, and Turks, thronged the narrow lines between the huts and tents, and carried on bargains in all the languages of Babel, with Greek, Italian, Algerine, Spaniard, Maltese, Armenian, Jew and Egyptian, for all sorts of merchandize. Here I beheld a runaway servant of mine—a vagabond Italian—selling small loaves of bread for 2s. each, which he had purchased from a French baker in Balaklava for 1s. 6d. As the authorities did not interfere in such cases, I was left to solace myself with the poor revenge of seeing him break his shins over a tent-stick as he ran away to escape my horsewhip.

In the camp all the scoundrels of the Levant who could get across the Black Sea, were making little fortunes by the sale, at the most enormous prices, of the vilest articles of consumption, which necessity alone forced us to use: and a few honest traders might also be seen sitting moodily in their stalls and mourning over their fast-departing probity. There was not then one Englishman, so far as I know, among these sutlers of the British army, though the greatest vein of nuggets that ever charmed multitudes to a desert was as dross and dirt to the wealth to be realized in this festering crowd. Camel-drivers, arabajees, wild-eyed, strange-looking savages from out-of the-way corners of Asia Minor, dressed apparently in the spoils of the chorus of "Nabucco" or "Semiramide," stalked curiously through the soldiery, much perplexed by the conflicting emotions of fear of the Provost-Marshal and love of plunder. Then there was an odd-looking acre or two of ground, with a low wall round it, which looked as if all the moles in the world lived beneath it, and were labouring night and day—so covered was it with mounds of earth, through which peered rags and bones. This was the Turkish burying-ground, and full well frequented was it. Little parties might be seen flocking to it down the hill-sides all day, and returning with the empty litters gravely back again. They also turned one or two vineyards into graveyards, and they also selected a quiet nook up among the hills for the same purpose. Our own more decent graveyard was situated outside the town, in{214} low ground, close to the sea. It was soon afterwards crossed by the railway, and covered by sheds, so that all traces of the graves were obliterated.

If Birnam Wood had been formed of deal boards, Macbeth might have seen his worst suspicions realized. He would have beheld literally miles of men, and of mules and ponies, all struggling through the mud with boards—nothing but boards. In calm weather they got on well enough, but a puff of wind put an end to progress, and a strong gust laid men and horses in the mire. However, they were slowly working up towards the camp, but how hard it was to take up even one hut, and what a great quantity of timber had to be moved ere the building was complete.

The cold and frost had almost disappeared; but the inhabitants warned us not to be misled; March was still to be endured, and we heard that he roared right royally, and came in, and remained in, with bitter cold and very strong winds, and heavy falls of rain, sleet, and snow. March was, in truth, like November. The climate, was beyond all conception fickle. A bird might be singing under the impression that he had done with foul weather, and think of getting ready his nest, and shortly afterwards be knocked down by a blow on the head from a hailstone.

An order was issued to supply charcoal in the trenches; but the commissariat could not furnish either the charcoal or transport. In default, the men were obliged to grub out the roots of brushwood or of vines, and were often obliged to go down the hill-sides under the enemy's fire, to gather enough to cook their meals.

The "navvies" worked away heartily, pulling down the rickety houses and fragments of houses near the post-office of Balaklava, to form the terminus of the first bit of the Grand Crimean Central Railway (with branch line to Sebastopol). The frail houses dissolved into heaps of rubbish under their vigorous blows, and the more friable remains were carted off and shot into and over the ineffable horrors and nastiness of the Turkish plague and charnel-houses. They landed a large quantity of barrows, beams, rails, spades, shovels, picks, and other materials.

There was an extremely hot contest on the night of the 6th, between the French and Russians: the cannonade, which sounded all over the camp, lasted about an hour. The enemy, were labouring hard at the works in the rear of the Malakoff (or the Round Tower), and at three o'clock on the 6th I saw they had about 1200 men employed on the earth slopes and parapets of the batteries. While I was examining the place there was scarcely a shot fired for two hours. The small steamers and boats were particularly active, running across the creek and to and fro in the harbour, and everything seemed to go on in the town much the same as usual. One portion of the place containing some fine buildings, and a large church with a cupola, as seen from the picket-house, put one in mind of the view of Greenwich from the Park Observatory through a diminishing glass. Lord Raglan ordered ten of our 13-inch mortars to be lent to the French from the Firefly.

General Niel, expressed a decided opinion that the batteries were{215} too far off. When we first sat down before the place, it was proposed that the first parallel should be at the usual distance of from 600 to 800 yards from the defences; but it was objected that there would be great loss of life in making it so near, and that the old rule of war which fixed the distance of the lines of the besiegers from those of the besieged was abrogated by recent improvements in gunnery, and by the increased power and range of siege guns. Our batteries were constructed at upwards of 1000 and 1200 yards from the enemy, and the steadiness of our artillerymen and the activity of our sailors were frustrated by the length of the range.

On the 7th of February, the French took charge of the whole of the Malakoff Attack—the key of the position,—and constructed two batteries on our right, under the direction of M. St. Laurent. It was said that Lord Raglan objected to this movement on the part of the French, and suggested that the British should move towards the right, and that the French should take our left attack; but his lordship failed to persuade our allies to accede to his propositions, and they were permitted to overlap and surround the English army.

"General Rumour" is a very efficient officer in the management of "alertes." He is never surprised, and errs rather on the safe side of caution than otherwise. On the morning of the 8th of February he turned out all the troops in and about Balaklava, manned his guns, roused up Admiral Boxer, awakened Captain Christie, landed the seamen, mercantile and naval, and taking Sir Colin Campbell and his staff out on the hills, awaited an attack which never was made, but which, no doubt, would have been repelled with signal energy and success. It appeared that a spy passing through the lines of the Rifle Brigade on his way to the head-quarters of the French army, on being interrogated by a young officer, informed him that the Russians had about a sotnia, or demi-troop, in several of the villages towards the eastward of Balaklava, such as Tchorgoun, and a large body, whom he estimated at 35,000 men, in their rear, removing round to the south-east of Baidar, so as to approach our right on the heights over Balaklava. The rifleman, imparted the result of his inquiries to an officer in a Highland regiment. There is no place in the world like a camp for the hatching and development of "canards." The egg thus laid was very soon matured, and the young bird stalked forth and went from tent to tent, getting here a feather and there a feather, till it assumed prodigious dimensions and importance. How it became "official" did not come to my knowledge, but at half-past ten o'clock at night orders were sent from Sir Colin Campbell to the regiments along the entrenchments up the heights to hold themselves in readiness for an attack, and the 71st regiment was marched up to strengthen the bold crest occupied by the Rifles and Marines. Later at night, or early next morning, Colonel Harding, the Commandant of Balaklava, roused up the Quartermaster-General, Major Mackenzie, who at once repaired into Sir Colin Campbell's quarters, and learned that this attack was fixed to come off at half-past four or five o'clock A.M.{216}

The alarm spread. Captain Christie sent orders to the large merchant steamers to be in readiness to render all the aid in their power; Admiral Boxer ordered the men of the Vesuvius to be landed, and the sailors of the transports to be armed and in readiness for service.

The Wasp and Diamond cleared for action and moored so as to command the approach of the harbour from the land side. At four o'clock Sir Colin Campbell and his staff mounted the heights up to the Rifle camp. It was bright moonlight. A deep blue sky sparkling with stars was streaked here and there by light fleecy clouds of snowy whiteness, which swept slowly across the mountain crags, or darkened the ravines and valleys with their shadows, like masses of infantry on march. Scarcely a sound was audible near us, except at long intervals the monotonous cry of the sentries, "Number one, and all's well," or the bells striking the hours on board the ships; but artillery and incessant volleys of musketry from the front, told that the French and Russians had availed themselves of the moonlight to continue their contest. The roar of the heavy mortars which came booming upon the ear twice or thrice every minute bespoke the deadly use which our allies were making against the city of the beauty of the morning.

In the rear, around the deep valleys and on the giant crags towards the sea, all was silent. The men behind the trench which defended our position from Balaklava to the seaboard scarcely spoke above a whisper, and were almost lost to sight, but the moonlight played on long lines of bright barrels and sparkling bayonets, which just crested, as it were, the dark outlines of the breastwork, beneath which English, French, and Turk were lying in readiness for the enemy. The guns in the redoubts and earthwork batteries were prepared for instant service. All the batteries were fully manned, and, had the enemy come on at that time, he would have met with an astonishingly warm reception. I had been roused out before four o'clock in the morning, but, being rather incredulous in the matter of alertes, I had contented myself with getting on my clothes and having the horses saddled. The firing from Sebastopol became so very heavy that the echoes sounded as if there was really a conflict taking place, and I went out to the heights. An hour and a half of anxious vigil brought the dawn. All eyes peered through the strange compound of light, formed by the rays of the rising sun and the beams of his fast-declining satellite, to discover the columns of the enemy, but there were none in sight. Just as the sun rose, the eternal Cossack vedettes came in view on the hill-tops to the east, each figure standing out sharp and black against the glowing background. A few Russians were seen about Kamara, but it was evident there was no preparation for an attack, and Sir Colin Campbell gave orders for the men to return to their tents.

The events of the day, however, proved that the spy brought trustworthy intelligence. The Russians returned to the heights over the valley of Balaklava towards the left of the Tchernaya, and reoccupied the hills and ravines about Kamara and Tchorgoun in force.{217}

Omar Pasha arrived at Kamiesch on the 8th, in the Colombo; and next day visited General Canrobert and Lord Raglan. These interviews constituted a council of war, and it is reasonable to suppose that the operations of the campaign were finally determined upon and arranged between the allied Generals.

It rained heavily all night on the 9th, and the ground was reduced to such a state that the reconnaissance which Sir Colin Campbell, aided by the French, intended to have made was postponed. The atmosphere was so obscure, that it was all but impossible to catch a glimpse of the enemy's movements; but a break in the rain and a lift in the haze now and then enabled us to see them working at some earthworks on the brow of the hills before Kamara. They pushed vedettes up to the top of Canrobert's Hill (formerly the site of Redoubt No. 1, held by the Turks previous to the 25th of October). About the middle of the day three columns, estimated at 3,000 men, were observed moving round from their right by the back of Kamara towards the hills over Baidar with guns. There was a swarm of Cossacks between Kamara and the road to Mackenzie's farm, and their vedettes were posted along the heights over the Woronzoff-road. Our vedettes on the mound over that road nearest to our lines had also been doubled. Some of the Cossacks came so close to our front that a shell was fired at them from No. 4 Battery, near Kadekeeva (Kadikoi).

An English artilleryman, for some fancied slight, set upon a Turk, gave him a beating, and attacked "outrageously" a Turkish officer who came to his countryman's assistance. He was found guilty of the double offence by general court-martial, and sentenced to fifty lashes. Osman Pasha, the commander of the Turkish troops, and the officer who had been struck, interceded with Lord Raglan for the remission of the man's punishment, and his lordship, in general orders, rescinded the sentence of the court-martial.

A considerable number of sick men (217) were sent down on the 10th from the camp to Balaklava. There were many bad cases of scurvy and of scorbutic dysentery among the men; and yet vegetables of all sorts, and lemons and oranges, were to be found in abundance, or could have been purchased in any quantities, all along the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora. No one could say there were no ships to bring them. Balaklava contained ships which had been lying here for weeks—ay, for months—doing nothing. The splendid screw steamer Jason fitted up especially as a horse transport, came in many days before from Ismed laden with a cargo of wood for fuel. The expenses of such a large vessel must have been enormous, and yet she had been in harbour for nearly a fortnight doing nothing.

The 11th was a day quite worthy of "General Février's" gratitude—bleak, raw, and stormy; the wind raging furiously between intervals of profound calm—the sky invisible in a murky sheet, from which fell incessant showers of rain, sleet, or snow alternately, or altogether—and the landscape shut out of sight at a few yards' distance by the grey walls of drizzling clouds and vapour. It{218} might be imagined that no one who could help it stirred out; a few drenched fatigue parties and some artillery wagons sent down for shot and shell were all one could see between Balaklava and the camp, and in the front all was silent—not a gun was fired the greater part of the day, and the popping of rifles also nearly ceased.

CHAPTER VII.

THERE was a good deal of sickness in the French camp, and one regiment was said to have suffered as much from scorbutic diseases as any of our own, and to have ceased to exist, like the 63rd Regiment. But the French had no large steamers which they could send to forage in all the ports of Asia Minor; and, with their deficient transport, they had less sickness and less loss of life from disease cent. per cent. than our troops, while they were better provided with food and soldiers' luxuries. Had the French army undergone the same amount of vigil, labour, and fatigue to which our army was exposed, I am convinced it would have been in as bad a plight, and that it would have suffered very nearly the same losses. Their system of cooking was better; their system of hutting was better; instead of having twelve or fourteen miserable, gloomy fellows, sitting moodily together in one tent, where each man ate his meal, cooked or uncooked, as best he could, they had four men together in a tent, who were neither miserable nor gloomy as a general rule, because they had a good dish of soup and bouilli well made at the mess fire, and carried away "piping hot" in the camp kettle of the tent. The canvass of the tente was in bad weather only a roof to a deep pit in the shape of the parallelogram formed by the flaps of the canvass. This pit was dug out of the earth; it contained a little fireplace at one end, with a mud chimney outside, and was entered by a flight of two or three steps, which descended to the dry floor. Our men rarely dug out the earth, and their tents were generally pitched on the surface of the ground. They had no time to do any better.

In cooking, our neighbours beat us hollow. I partook of a sumptuous banquet in the tent of an officer of the Guards one night, the staple of which was a goose, purchased for a golden egg in Balaklava, but which assumed so many forms, and was so good and strange in all—coming upon one as a pièce de résistance, again assuming the shape of a giblotte that would have done credit to Philippe, and again turning up as a delicate little plat with a flavour of woodcocks, that the name of the artist was at once demanded.{219}

He was a grisly-headed Zouave, who stood at the door of the tent, prouder of the compliments which were paid to him than of the few francs he was to get for his services, "lent," as he was, by the captain of his company for the day.

A few days after—these were Christmas times, or were meant to be so—there was a dinner in another friendly tent. A Samaritan sea-captain had presented a mess with a leg of English mutton, a case of preserved turnips, and a wild duck. Hungry as hunters, the little party assembled at the appointed hour, full of anticipated pleasure and good fare from the fatherland. "Bankes, bring in dinner," said the host, proudly, to his chef de cuisine. The guests were seated—the cover was placed on the table—it was removed with enthusiasm, and, lo! there lay the duck, burnt black, and dry as charcoal, in the centre of a mound of turnips. "I thout vowls wor always ate vurst," was the defence of the wretched criminal, as he removed the sacrifice for the time. Then he brought in the soup, which was excellent, especially the bouilli, but we could not eat soup all night, especially when the mutton was waiting. "Now then, Bankes, bring in the leg of mutton." "The wawt, zur?" "The leg of mutton, and look sharp, do you hear? I hope you have not spoiled that too." "Woy, zur, thee's been 'atin oo't!" The miserable being had actually boiled down the leg of mutton in the soup, having cut large slices off it to make it fit the pot!

We had great fun with the recipes for cooking rations which appeared in the papers. M. Soyer's were good and simple, but every one of them had been found out by experiment months before, and were familiar, however little successful, to every camp cook. The recipes which taught the men how to make rations palatable by the help of a "sliced turkey," nutmegs, butter, flour, spices, and suet, were cruel mockeries. Can any one tell us why the army was compelled to eat salt pork? Why was this the only meat except beef that was served out? The lean was always very hard and tough, and required great care and trouble in cooking to make it masticable—the fat was ever in undue proportion to the lean, and was far too "rich" for a debilitated stomach. Are "pigs" a national institution, to be maintained at any cost? Is the flesh of the bull a part of the constitution? A soldier is a very dear animal. A crop of them is most difficult to raise, and once they have been fully grown, and have become ripe soldiers, they are beyond all price. Had we not abundance of meals in our warehouses, of vegetables, of all kinds of nutritious preparations, to bestow on those who were left to us, and who were really "veterans," for in the narrow limits of one campaign they had epitomized all the horrors, the dangers, and the triumphs of war? The ration, with its accessories of sugar, tea or coffee, tobacco and rice, was sufficient, as long as it was unfailing, and while the army was in full health; but it was not sufficient, or, rather, it was not suitable, when the men were debilitated from excessive labour.

What was the cost to the country of the men of the Brigade of Guards who died in their tents or in hospital of exhaustion, overwork, and deficient of improper nutriment? The brigade mustered{220} in the middle of February very little over 400 men fit for duty. It would have been cheap to have fed the men we had lost on turtle and venison, if we could have kept them alive—and not only those, but the poor fellows whom the battle spared, but whom disease took from us out of every regiment in the expedition. It was the men who were to be pitied—the officers could, in comparison, take care of themselves; they had their bât-horses to go over to Kamiesch and to Balaklava for luxuries; their servants to send for poultry, vegetables, wine, preserved meats, sheep, and all the luxuries of the sutlers' shops; and they had besides abundance of money, for the pay of the subaltern is ample while he is in the field.

Sir George Brown arrived on the 12th, and Lord Raglan went down to meet him, and returned with him to head-quarters. The gallant old officer seemed to have quite recovered from the effects of his Inkerman wound, and was well received by his Division.

On the 14th the great topic of conversation was the recall of the Earl of Lucan. On the previous forenoon Lord Raglan sent the noble Lord a dispatch which he had received from the Duke of Newcastle, who stated that as he had thought fit to find fault with the terms used in his General's despatch respecting his conduct on the 25th of October, the Government had resolved on recalling him. The impression was that Lord Lucan was harshly and unjustly dealt with.

On February 19th, preparations were made for a reconnaissance by Sir Colin Campbell and Vinoy against the enemy between the Tchernaya and Kamara. The weather had been unfavourable, but the few fine days from the 15th to the 19th had made the country in tolerable order for the movements of artillery and cavalry. The French were to furnish 11,600 men; Sir Colin Campbell's force was to consist of the 42nd, 79th, 93rd Highlanders, the 14th and 71st Regts. detachments of cavalry, and two batteries. Soon after dark the French began to get ready, and the hum of men betrayed the movement. By degrees the rumour spread from one confidant to the other, and by midnight a good number of outriders and amateurs were aware of what was going on, and strict orders were issued for early calls and saddling of horses "to-morrow morning at dawn."

Nothing excites such interest as a reconnaissance. Our army was deprived of the peculiar attractions of most wars in Europe. There was none of the romance of the Peninsular campaigns about it. We were all shut up in one dirty little angle of land, with Cossacks barring the approaches to the heavenly valley around us. There were no pleasant marches, no halts in town or village, no strange scenes or change of position; nothing but the drudgery of the trenches and of fatigue parties, and the everlasting houses and works of Sebastopol, and the same bleak savage landscape around. The hardest-worked officer was glad, therefore, to get away on a reconnaissance, which gave him an excitement, and varied the monotony of his life; it was a sort of holiday for him—a hunt at Epping, if there be such a thing, to cockney existence.{221}

Before midnight the wind changed, and began to blow, and the stars were overcast. About one o'clock the rain began to fall heavily, and continued to descend in torrents for an hour. Then the wind chopped round to the north and became intensely cold, the rain crystallized and fell in hail, the gale rose higher and increased in severity every moment. Then came down a heavy snow fall. It was evident that no good could come of exposing the men, and that the attack would be a failure; it certainly would not have enabled us to form any accurate conception of the numbers or position of the enemy, inasmuch as it was impossible for a man to see a yard before him. Major Foley was despatched by General Canrobert to inform Sir Colin Campbell that the French would not move, the regiments under arms were ordered back to their tents, which they found with difficulty. When Major Foley arrived after many wanderings, at head-quarters, one of Lord Raglan's aides-de-camp was dispatched to Sir Colin Campbell to desire him to postpone any movement. This officer set out about six o'clock in the morning for the heights over Balaklava. On passing through the French camp he called upon General Vinoy to inform him of the change which the weather had effected in the plans agreed upon, but the General said he thought it would be better to move down his men to support Sir Colin in case the latter should have advanced before the counter-orders reached him. When our aide-de-camp, after a struggle with the darkness, reached Sir Colin's quarters, the General was gone. Another ride enabled him to overtake the General, who was waiting for the French, and had his troops drawn up near Kamara.

It may be imagined the news was not very pleasing to one who was all on fire, cold as he was, for a brush with the enemy, but Vinoy's promise put him into excellent spirits. It was four o'clock when the troops moved towards the plain, through the snow-storm, which increased in violence as the morning dawned. The Rifles preceded the advance, with the Highland Light Infantry, in skirmishing order. Strict orders had been given that there was to be no firing, it was hoped that we might surprise the enemy, but the falling snow prevented our men from seeing more than a few yards, and after daylight it was impossible to make out an object six feet in advance. However, the skirmishers managed to get hold of three sentries, belonging probably to the picket at Kamara, but their comrades gave the alarm. As our troops advanced, the Cossacks and vedettes fell back, firing their carbines and muskets into the darkness. The drums of the enemy were heard beating, and through rifts in the veil of snow their columns could be observed moving towards the heights over the Tchernaya.

By this time our men had begun to suffer greatly. Their fingers were so cold they could not "fix bayonets" when the word was given, and could scarcely keep their rifles in their hands. The cavalry horses almost refused to face the snow. The Highlanders, who had been ordered to take off their comfortable fur caps, and to put on their becoming but less suitable Scotch bonnets, suffered especially, and some of them were severely frostbitten in the ears—{222}indeed, there was not a regiment out in which cases of "gelatio," chiefly of the ears and fingers, did not occur. Scarcely had the enemy appeared in sight before the snow fell more heavily than ever, and hid them from our view.

Sir Collin very unwillingly gave the order to return, and the men arrived at their quarters about ten o'clock A.M., very much fatigued.

Being anxious to get a letter off by the post ere it started from Kamiesch, and not being aware that the expedition had been countermanded, I started early in the morning for the post-office marquee through a blinding storm of snow. The wind howled fiercely over the plain; it was so laden with snow that it was quite palpable, and had a strange solid feel about it as it drifted in endless wreaths of fine small flakes, which penetrated the interstices of the clothing, and blinded horse and man. For some time I managed to get on very well, for the track was beaten and familiar. I joined a convoy of artillerymen, but at last the drifts became so thick that it was utterly impossible to see to the right or left for a horse's length. I bore away a little, and soon after met a solitary pedestrian, who wanted to know the way to Balaklava. I sincerely trust he got there by my directions. As he was coming from Lord Raglan's he confirmed me in the justice of my views concerning the route, and I rode off to warn my friends, the artillerymen of their mistake. They were not to be found. I had only left them three or four minutes, and yet they had passed away as completely as if the earth had swallowed them up. So I turned on my way, as I thought, and, riding right into the wind's eye, made at the best pace I could force the horse to put forth, for my destination.

It was not above an hour's ride on a bad day, and yet at the end of two hours I had not only not arrived, but I could not make out one of the landmarks which denoted an approach to it. Tents, and hill-sides, and jutting rocks, all had disappeared, and nothing was visible above, around, below, but one white sheet drawn, as it were, close around me. This was decidedly unpleasant, but there was no help for it but to ride on, and trust to Providence. The sea or the lines would soon bring one up. Still the horse went on snorting out the snow from his nostrils, and tossing his head to clear the drift from his eyes and ears; and yet no tent, no man—not a soul to be seen in this peninsula, swarming with myriads of soldiery.

Three hours passed!—Where on earth can I be? Is this enchantment? Has the army here, the lines of trenches, and Sebastopol itself, gone clean off the face of the earth? Every instant the snow fell thicker and thicker. The horse stopped at last, and refused to go on against the storm. A dark form rushed by with a quick snarling bark—it is a wolf or a wild dog, and the horse rushed on afrighted. The cold pierced my bones as he faced the gale, now and then he plunged above the knees into snow-drifts, which were rapidly forming at every hillock and furrow in the ground; a good deep fallow—a well or pit—might have put a speedy termination to one's fears and anxiety at a moment's notice.{223}

My eyes were bleared and sore striving to catch a glimpse of tent or man, and to avoid the dangers in our path. Suddenly I plunged in amongst a quantity of brushwood—sure and certain signs that I had gone far astray indeed, and that I was removed from the camp and the wood-cutter. The notion flashed across me that the wind might have changed, and that in riding against it I might have shaped my course for the Tchernaya and the Russian lines. The idea of becoming the property of a Cossack picket was by no means a pleasant ingredient in one's thoughts at such a moment. Still what was to be done? My hands and feet were becoming insensible from the cold, and my face and eyes were exceedingly painful.

There was no help for it but to push on before nightfall. That would indeed have been a serious evil. There was a break in the snowdrift, and I saw to my astonishment a church dome and spires which vanished in a moment. I must either be close to Kamara or to Sebastopol, and that the church was in either of those widely separated localities. The only thing to do was to bear to the left to regain our lines, though I could not help wondering where on earth the French works were, if it was indeed Sebastopol. I had not ridden very far when, through the ravings of the wind, I heard a hoarse roar, and could just make out a great black wall rising up through the snow. The position was clear at once. I was on the edge of the tremendous precipices which overhang the sea near Cape Fiolente! I was close to the Monastery of St. George. Dismounting, and leading my horse carefully, I felt my way through the storm, and at last arrived at the monastery. A Zouave was shooting larks out of a sentry-box; he took my horse to the stable, and showed me the way to the guardhouse, where his comrades were enjoying the comforts of a blazing fire.

Having restored circulation to my blood, and got the ice out of my hair, I set out once more, and a Zouave undertook to show me the way to head-quarters; but he soon got tired of his undertaking, and having first adroitly abstracted my Colt's revolver out of my holster, deserted me on the edge of a ravine, with some very mysterious instructions as to going on always "tout droit," which, seeing that one could not see, would have been very difficult to follow. By the greatest good fortune I managed to strike upon the French wagon train, and halting at every outburst of the tempest, and pushing on when the storm cleared a little, I continued to work my way from camp to camp, and at last arrived at Head-Quarters, somewhat before four o'clock in the afternoon, covered with ice, and very nearly "done up." It was some consolation to find that officers had lost themselves in the very vineyard, close to the house, and that aides-de-camp and orderlies had become completely bewildered in their passage from one divisional camp to another.

The Russians during the night made a slight demonstration against us, thinking that the sentries and advanced posts might be caught sleeping or away from their posts. Their usual mode of conducting a sortie was to send on some thirty men in advance of{224} a party of 500 or 800, in loose skirmishing order. These men advanced stealthily, en tirailleur, up to the line of our sentries and pickets, and felt their way cautiously, in order to ascertain if there was a weak and undefended point for the advance of the main body. If the firing was slack, the latter immediately pushed on, rushed into the trenches, bayoneted as many as resisted, and, dragging off all the men they could get as prisoners, returned to the town as rapidly as possible. Any man, however weak, can rush across a landing into the nearest room, and do damage in it before he is kicked out. The French were so close to the Russians, they might be said to live next door to them. The latter could form in a small body, under cover of their works, at any hour in the night, and dash into the works ere our allies could get together to drive them back again. Some thirty-five men advanced upon the sentries stationed in front of Major Chapman's batteries (the left attack), but were perceived and challenged. They replied "Ruski!" and were fired upon. The Riflemen in the pits in front of these lines gave them a volley, and the Tirailleurs retreated. It was strange they should have given such a reply to the sentries' challenge, but the men all declared that the Russians used the word, which would seem to be the Russians' notion of their own name in the English tongue.

Next day the sun came out, the aspect of the camps changed, and our French neighbours filled the air with their many-oathed dialogues and snatches of song. A cold Frenchman is rather a morose and miserable being, but his spirits always rise with sunshine, like the mercury of a thermometer. In company with two officers from the head-quarters camp, I had a long inspection of Sebastopol from the ground behind the French position, and I must say the result was by no means gratifying. We went up to the French picket-house first (la Maison d'Eau or Maison Blanche of the plans), and had a view of the left of the town, looking down towards the end of the ravine which ran down to the Dockyard-creek, the buildings of the Admiralty, the north side of the harbour, and the plateaux towards the Belbek and behind Inkerman. As the day was clear one could see very well through a good glass, in spite of the dazzling effect of the snow and the bitter wind, which chilled the hands so as to render it impossible to retain the glass very long in one position. The little bridge of boats from the Admiralty buildings across to the French side of the town was covered with men, who were busily engaged passing across supplies, and rolling barrels and cases to the other side of the creek, showing that there was a centre of supply or some kind of depôt in the Government stores behind the Redan, and opposite to the fire of our batteries.

Several large lighters, under sail and full of men, were standing over from side to side of the harbour, and dockyard galleys, manned with large crews of rowers all dressed in white jackets, were engaged in tugging flats laden with stores to the south-western side of the town. A tug steamer was also very active, and spluttered about in all directions, furrowing the surface of the{225} water, which was scarcely "crisped" by the breeze, so completely was the harbour landlocked. The men-of-war, with their large white ensigns barred by a blue St. Andrew's cross flying from the peak, lay in a line at the north side, the top-gallant yards and masts of two out of four being down; a two-decker with bare topmasts lay on the south side, with her broadside towards the Ville Civile; and the white masts of three vessels peered above the buildings of the town further away on the right towards Inkerman.

The inner part of the town itself seemed perfectly untouched, the white houses shone brightly and freshly in the sun, and the bells of a Gothic chapel were ringing out lustily in the frosty air. Its tall houses running up the hill sides, its solid look of masonry, gave Sebastopol a resemblance to parts of Bath, or at least put one in mind of that city as seen from the declivity which overhangs the river. There was, however, a remarkable change in the look of the city since I first saw it—there were no idlers and no women visible in the streets, and, indeed, there was scarcely a person to be seen who looked like a civilian. There was, however, abundance of soldiers, and to spare in the streets. They could be seen in all directions, sauntering in pairs down desolate-looking streets, chatting at the corners or running across the open space, from one battery to another; again in large parties on fatigue duty, or relieving guards, or drawn up in well-known grey masses in the barrack-squares. Among those who were working on the open space, carrying stores, I thought I could make out two French soldiers. At all events, the men wore long blue coats and red trousers, and, as we worked our prisoners and made them useful at Balaklava, where I had seen them aiding in making the railway, I suppose the Muscovite commanders adopted the same plan.

Outside the city, at the verge of the good houses, the eye rested on great walls of earth piled up some ten or twelve feet, and eighteen or twenty feet thick, indented at regular intervals with embrasures in which the black dots which are throats of cannon might be detected. These works were of tremendous strength. For the most part there was a very deep and broad ditch in front of them, and wherever the ground allowed of it, there were angles and flèches which admitted of flanking fires along the front, and of cross fires on centre points of each line of attack or approach. In front of most of the works on both the French and English sides of the town, a suburb of broken-down white-washed cottages, the roofs gone, the doors off, and the windows out, had been left standing in detached masses at a certain distance from the batteries, but gaps had been made in them so that they might not block the fire of the guns. The image of misery presented by these suburbs was very striking—in some instances the havoc had been committed by our shot, and the houses all round to the rear of the Flagstaff Battery, opposite the French, had been blown into rubbish and mounds of beams and mortar. The advanced works which the Russians left on the advance of our allies still remained{226} and it was hard to say whether there were any guns in them or not, but they were commanded so completely by the works in their rear that it would have been impossible to hold them, and they would have afforded a good cover to the Russians, while the latter could fire through the embrasures of the old works with far greater ease than the enemy could get at them.

They threw up their new earthworks behind the cover of the suburb; when they were finished, they withdrew their men from the outer line, blew down and destroyed the cover of the houses, and opened fire from their second line of batteries. Their supply of gabions seemed inexhaustible—indeed, they had got all the brushwood of the hills of the South Crimea at their disposal. In front of the huge mounds thrown up by the Russians, foreshortened by the distance, so as to appear part of them, were the French trenches—mounds of earth lined with gabions which looked like fine matting. These lines ran parallel to those of the enemy. The nearest parallel was not "armed" with cannon, but was lined with riflemen. Zigzags led down from trench to trench. The troops inside walked about securely, if not comfortably. The covering parties, with their arms piled, sat round their little fires, and smoked and enjoyed their coffee, while the working parties, spade in hand, continued the never-ending labours of the siege—filling gabions here, sloping and thickening the parapets there, repairing embrasures, and clearing out the fosses. Where we should have had a thin sergeant's guard at this work, the French could afford a strong company.

It was rather an unpleasant reflection, whenever one was discussing the range of a missile, and was perhaps in the act of exclaiming "There's a splendid shot," that it might have carried misery and sorrow into some happy household. The smoke cleared away—the men got up—they gathered round one who moved not, or who was racked with mortal agony; they bore him away, a mere black speck, and a few shovelsful of mud marked for a little time the resting-place of the poor soldier, whose wife, or mother, or children, or sisters, were left destitute of all solace, save memory and the sympathy of their country. One such little speck I watched that day, and saw quietly deposited on the ground inside the trench. Who would let the inmates of that desolate cottage in Picardy, or Gascony, or Anjou, know of their bereavement?

We descended the hill slope towards Upton's house, then occupied by a strong picket of the French, under the command of a couple of officers. From the front of this position one could see the heights over Inkerman, the plateau towards the Belbek, the north side, the flank of the military town opposite the English, our own left attack, and the rear of the redoubtable Tower of Malakoff. The first thing that struck one was the enormous preparations on the north side, extending from the sea behind Fort Constantine far away to the right behind Inkerman towards the Belbek. The trenches, batteries, earthworks, and redoubts all about the citadel (the North Fort) were on an astonishing scale, and indicated an{227} intention on the part of the Russians to fall back on the north side, in case of our occupying the south side of the place.[16]

About three o'clock three strong bodies of cavalry came down towards the fort, as if they had been in the direction of the Alma or the Katcha. They halted for a time, and then resumed their march to the camp over Inkerman. In this direction also the enemy were busily working, and their cantonments were easily perceptible, with the men moving about in them. At the rear of the Round Tower, however, the greatest energy was displayed, and a strong party of men were at work on new batteries between it and the ruined suburb on the commanding hill on which the Malakoff stood.

Our own men in the left attack seemed snug enough, and well covered by their works; in front of them, on the slopes, were men, French and English, scattered all over the hill side, grubbing for roots for fuel; and further on, in front, little puffs of smoke marked the pits of the Riflemen on both sides, from which the ceaseless crack of the Minié and Liège smote the ear; but the great guns were all silent, and scarcely one was fired on the right during the day; even Inkerman and its spiteful batteries being voiceless for a wonder. As one of the officers began to rub his nose and ears with snow, and to swear they were frostbitten, and as we all felt very cold, we discontinued our reconnaissance, and returned to camp. The wind blew keenly, and at night the thermometer was at 16°. There were few cases of illness in the trenches; but sickness kept on increasing. Typhus fever, thank God! nearly disappeared.

Major-General Jones declared the position was not so strong as he expected to find it from the accounts he had heard, but it was only to the eye of a practised engineer that any signs of weakness presented themselves. The heights over the sea bristled with low batteries, with the guns couchant and just peering over the face of the cliffs. Vast as these works were, the Russians were busy at strengthening them. Not less than 3,000 men could have been employed on the day in question on the ground about the citadel. One could see the staff-officers riding about and directing the labours of the men, or forming into groups, and warming themselves round the camp fires.

I was woke up shortly after two o'clock on the morning of the 24th of February by the commencement of one of the most furious cannonades since the siege began. The whole line of the Russian batteries from our left opened with inconceivable force and noise, and the Inkerman batteries began playing on our right; the weight of this most terrible fire, which shook the very earth, and lighted up the skies with incessant lightning flashes for an hour and a half, was directed against the French.

The cannonade lasted from a quarter-past two to half-past three A.M. When first I heard it, I thought it was a sortie, and rode in the moonlight towards the fire; but ere I could get over{228} the ground to Inkerman, the tumult ceased, and it was only next morning that we found out the cause of such a tremendous exhibition of power. It appeared that the activity of the French in making their approaches against the Malakoff had rendered the Russians so uneasy that they began to make counter approaches, and pushed out trenches to rifle-pits placed on the Mamelon and on the head of Careening Creek ravine. These were observed by the French, and General Bosquet, acting by order of General Canrobert, directed General de Monet and General de Meyran to attack these works with 1,000 of the 2nd Zouaves, a battalion of the 6th of the Line, a battalion of the 10th of the Line, and a strong body of Marines; that operation was effected about two A.M. The Russians offered a very vigorous resistance, the Zouaves were not properly supported by the Marines, or the troops of the Line. De Monet was badly wounded; he lost one hand, and the other was much mutilated. In the conflict the Zouaves lost 3 officers killed, 13 wounded, 1 missing, 69 men killed and 159 wounded.

The Zouaves were exceedingly irritated against the marine infantry, whom they threatened in detail with exceedingly unpleasant "quarters of an-hour" at some time to come for their alleged retreat on the morning of the 24th. The Zouaves got it into their heads not only that the marines bolted, but that they fired into those before them, who were the Zouaves aforesaid. In their excessive anger and energy they were as unjust to their comrades, perhaps, as they were complimentary to ourselves, and I heard more than two of them exclaim, "Ah, if we had had a few hundred of your English we should have done the trick; but these marines—bah!"

On the night after this contest the enemy sunk four or five ships inside the booms, so as to present a fourth barrier across the roads.

An armistice took place for an hour on the 27th. In the orders for the day, Lord Raglan notified that at the request of General Osten-Sacken, an armistice was granted from twelve till one o'clock to enable the Russians to bury their dead. At twelve o'clock precisely, white flags were run up on the battery flagstaffs on both sides, and immediately afterwards a body of Russians issued from their new work near the Malakoff, which had been the object of the French attack of the 24th, and proceeded to search for their dead. The French were sent down from Inkerman on a similar errand. A few Russian officers advanced about half-way up towards our lines, where they were met by some of the officers of the allies, and extreme courtesy, the interchange of profound salutations, and enormous bowing, marked the interview. The officers sauntered up and down, and shakos were raised and caps doffed politely as each came near an enemy.

The exact object of the armistice it would have been hard to say, for neither French nor Russians seemed to find any bodies unburied. Shortly before one o'clock, the Russians retired inside their earthwork. At one o'clock the white flags were all hauled down in an instant, and the last fluttering bit of white bunting had scarcely disappeared over the parapet, when the flash, and roar of a gun{229} from Malakoff announced that the war had begun once more. The French almost simultaneously fired a gun from their batteries also; in a minute afterwards the popping of rifles commenced as usual on both sides. The Cossacks about Balaklava were particularly busy, and, having nothing better to do, I spent an hour watching them through my glass from the artillery camp at Kadikoi. They had a picket of ten horsemen at Kamara, from which the vedettes on the top of Canrobert's Hill were furnished, and they had a similar body of eight horsemen on the slope at the back of No. 2 Redoubt. There were a few regular Hussars in a handsome dark blue or green uniform, with white belts, on duty as sentries. The horses seemed to follow the Cossacks about like dogs. The men all wore long loose grey coats and round fur caps. They could not be very badly off for provisions, inasmuch as the fields behind them towards the slope of the hill to Mackenzie's farm were tolerably well filled with cattle.

From the top of Canrobert's Hill their vedette could see everything that went on in the plains, from the entrance to Balaklava to the ridges on which the French right rested. Not a horse, cart, or man, could go in or out of the town which this sentinel could not see if he had good eyesight, for he was quite visible to any person who gazed on the top of Canrobert's Hill. The works of the railway must have caused this Cossack very serious discomposure. What on earth could he think of them? Gradually he saw villages of white huts rise up on the hill-sides and in the recesses of the valleys, and from the Cavalry Camp to the heights of Balaklava, he could behold line after line of snug angular wooden buildings, each with its chimney at work, and he could discern the tumult and bustle of Vanity Fair. This might have been all very puzzling, but it could have been nothing to the excitement of looking at a long line of black trucks rushing round and under the hill at Kadikoi, and running down the incline to the town at the rate of twenty miles an hour. A number of the Cossacks did gallop up to the top of the hill to look at a phenomenon of that kind, and they went capering about, and shaking their lances, in immense wonderment and excitation of spirits when it had disappeared.

In addition to the old lines thrown up by Liprandi close to the Woronzoff road, the Russians erected, to the rear and north of it, a very large hexagonal work, capable of containing a large number of men, and of being converted into a kind of intrenched camp. The lines of these works were very plain as they were marked out by the snow, which lay in the trench after that which fell on the ground outside and inside had melted. There were, however, no infantry in sight, nor did any movement of troops take place over the valley of the Tchernaya. Emboldened by the success of the 24th, the Russians were apparently preparing to throw up another work on the right of the new trenches, as if they had made up their minds to besiege the French at Inkerman, and assail their right attack. They sent up two steamers to the head of the harbour, which greatly annoyed the right attack, and it occurred to Captain Peel, of the Diamond, that it would be quite possible to{230} get boats down to the water's edge and cut these steamers out, or sink them. Lord Raglan and Sir Edmund Lyons reconnoitred their position, but on reflection the latter refused to sanction an operation which would have gone far to raise the prestige of our navy, and to maintain their old character for dash and daring.{231}

BOOK V.

CHAPTER I.

IT froze on the night of the 1st of March. The thermometer was at twenty-four degrees at two A.M. next morning, the wind strong and very cold. It was scarcely to be believed that, with all our immense stores of warm clothing, boots and shoes were at that time by no means plentiful in the army. About three hundred pairs of boots were served out to the 14th Regiment, which was employed in fatigue duty in and near Balaklava; but the thick heavy clay sucked the soles off, and for a week some of the men went about without any soles to their boots—ergo, their feet were on the ground, with the thermometer at thirty degrees: that was not agreeable locomotion.

About 240 sick men were sent in from the front to Balaklava on French ambulance mules, and were received and refreshed at the Caradoc restaurant. The preparations for the renewal of our fire were pressed on; and arrangements were made to send up 2000 rounds a day to the front. About 200 mules were pressed into this service in addition to the railway, and the Highlanders and the artillery horses were employed in the carriage of heavy shell to the front, a duty which greatly distressed them. The men of the Fourth Division, the 17th and 18th Regiments, were armed with the Minié rifle.

The silence and calm were but the omens of the struggle which was about to be renewed for the possession of Sebastopol. The Russians were silent because the allies did not impede their works. The allies were silent because they were preparing for the contest, and were using every energy to bring up from Kamiesch and Balaklava the enormous mounds of projectiles and mountains of ammu{232}nition which were required for the service of the new batteries and to extend, complete, and strengthen their offensive and defensive lines and trenches.

The railway had begun to render us some service in saving the hard labour attendant on the transport of shot and shell, and enabled us to form a sort of small terminal depôt at the distance of two miles and three quarters from Balaklava, which was, however, not large enough for the demands upon it, and it was emptied as soon as it was formed by parties of the Highland Brigade, who carried the ammunition to the camp depôt, three miles and a half further on. The railway was not sufficiently long to induce Mr. Filder to avail himself of it largely for the transport of provisions to the front, as he conceived a partial use of it would impede the formation of the rail, derange his own commissariat transport, and produce endless confusion at the temporary terminus. The commissariat officers of the Second Division were, however, allowed to use the rail between six and eight o'clock every morning.

The navvies, notwithstanding the temptation of the bottle and of strange society in Vanity Fair or Buffalo-town, worked honestly and well, with few exceptions, and the dread of the Provost-Marshal had produced a wholesome influence on the dispositions of the refractory. The Croat labourers astonished all who saw them by the enormous loads they carried, and by their great physical strength and endurance. Broad-chested, flat-backed men, round-shouldered, with long arms, lean flanks, thick muscular thighs, and their calfless legs—feeding simply, and living quietly and temperately—the Croats performed daily an amount of work in conveying heavy articles on their backs which would amaze any one who had not seen a Constantinople "hamal." Their camp, outside the town, was extremely picturesque, and, I am bound to add, dirty. A rich flavour of onions impregnated the air for a considerable distance around, mingled with reminiscences of ancient Parmesan, and the messes which the nasty-handed Phillises dressed for themselves did not look very inviting, but certainly contained plenty of nutriment, and were better, I dare say, than the tough pork and tougher biscuit of our own ration. The men were like Greeks of the Isles in dress, arms, and carriage, but they had an expression of honest ferocity, courage, and manliness in their faces, which at once distinguished them from their Hellenic brethren. We had also a number of strong "hamals" in our service, who were very useful as beasts of burden to the commissariat.

Parties of men were lent to Mr. Beatty to assist in the works of the railway, and 200 men of the Naval Brigade detailed in order that the construction of it might be hastened and facilitated as much as possible. I was favoured by a striking proof of the energy of the proceedings of the navvies one day. I had left my delectable premises in their usual condition, in Balaklava, as I did each week, to spend some days going from division to division, and regiment to regiment: outside my den a courtyard of abominations unutterable, the favourite resort of Tartar camel-drivers, when they had{233} a few moments to devote to the pursuit of parasites, and of drunken sailors, who desired dignified retirement from the observation of the Provost-Marshal's myrmidons, was surrounded by a wall which enclosed a few old poplar trees and a ruined shed, in which stood some horses. I left on one post-day and returned on another, and it was with difficulty I recognised the spot. A railway was running right across my court-yard, the walls were demolished, a severance existed between the mansion and its dependencies, and just as my friends and myself entered the "saloon and bedchamber"—a primitive apartment, through the floor of which I could investigate the proceedings of my quadrupeds below—the navvies gave us a startling welcome by pulling a poplar down on the roof, which had the effect of carrying away a portion of the balcony, and pent-tiles, and smashing in my two windows elegantly "glazed" with boards.

Unusual energy was displayed in most departments. The word "must" was heard. Whether its use was attributable to the pressure of the French, to instructions from home, to the necessity which existed for it, or to any specific cause, I am unable to surmise. Certain it is that officers were told that so many guns must be in the batteries on such a day, and that such a work must be finished by such a time, and a General visited the trenches every day, and saw that the men did not neglect their duty. General Simpson, as a Chef d'Etat-Major, was expected to harmonize the operations of the Quarter-master General's and Adjutant-General's departments. A sanatorium was established on Balaklava heights.

The soil, wherever a flower had a chance of springing up, poured forth multitudes of snowdrops, crocuses, and hyacinths. The Chersonese abounds in bulbous plants, some of great beauty, and rare shrubs. The finches and larks had a Valentine's-day of their own, and congregated in flocks. Brilliant goldfinches, buntings, golden-crested wrens, larks, linnets, titlarks, tomtits, hedge sparrows, and a pretty species of wagtail, were very common; and it was strange to hear them piping and twittering about the bushes in the intervals of the booming of cannon, just as it was to see the young spring flowers forcing their way through the crevices of piles of shot, and peering out from under shells and heavy ordnance.

Cormorants and shags haunted the head of the harbour, which was also resorted to by some rare and curious wildfowl, one like the Anas sponsa[17] of Linnæus, another the golden-eyed pocher, and many sorts of widgeon and diver. Vultures, kites, buzzards, and ravens wheeled over the plateau in hundreds at a time for two or three days, disappeared, and returned to feast on garbage. Probably they divided their attention between the allies and the Russians. The Tchernaya abounded with duck, and some of the officers had little decoys of their own. It was highly exciting{234} sport, for the Russian batteries over Inkerman sent a round shot or shell at the sportsman if he was seen. In the daytime they adopted the expedient of taking a few French soldiers down with them, who, out of love of the thing, and for the chance of a bonnemain, were only too happy to occupy the attention of the Cossacks, while their patrons were after mallard. There were bustards and little bustards on the steppes near the Monastery of St. George, and the cliffs presented an appearance which led two or three officers acquainted with Australia to make fruitless searches for gold ore. The ravines abounded with jasper, bloodstone, and there was abundance of "black sand" in the interstices of the rocks, which were of exceeding hardness; but south-west of St. George, there were fountains of the fine blue limestone.

On the 4th of March the French and Russians had a severe brush about daybreak. Generals Canrobert, Niel, Bosquet, Bizot rode over to the English head-quarters in the course of the day, and were closeted with Lord Raglan, assisted by Sir George Brown, Sir John Burgoyne, and General Jones. They met to consider a proposition made by General Canrobert to attack the north side, by the aid of the Turks, as it seemed to him quite hopeless to attempt to drive the Russians from Inkerman.

On the morning of the 5th of March early there was a repetition of the affair between the French and Russians, who began throwing a new redoubt towards the Victoria Redoubt. In order to strengthen our right, which the enemy menaced more evidently every day, the whole of the Ninth Division of the French army was moved over there. Our first spring meeting took place on the 5th, numerously attended. The races came off on a little piece of undulating ground, on the top of the ridges near Karanyi, and were regarded with much interest by the Cossack pickets at Kamara and on Canrobert's Hill. They thought at first that the assemblage was connected with some military demonstration, and galloped about in a state of excitement, but it is to be hoped they got a clearer notion of the real character of the proceedings ere the sport was over.

In the midst of the races a party of Russians were seen approaching the vedette on No. 4 Old Redoubt in the valley. The Dragoon fired his carbine, and ten turned and fled, but two deserters came in. One of them was an officer; the other had been an officer, but had suffered degradation for "political causes." They were Poles, and the ex-officer spoke French and German fluently. They expressed great satisfaction at their escape, and the latter said, "Send me wherever you like, provided that I never see Russia again." They stated that they had deceived the men who were with them into the belief that the vedette was one of their own outposts, and advanced boldly till the Dragoon fired on them, when they discovered their mistake. The deserters state that a corps of about 8000 men had joined the army between Baidar and Simpheropol. On being taken to Sir Colin Campbell, they requested that the horses might be sent back to the Russian lines, for, as they did not belong to them, they did not wish to be accused of{235} theft. Sir Colin granted the request, and the horses were taken to the brow of the hill and set free, when they at once galloped off towards the Cossacks. The races proceeded after this little episode just as usual, and subsequently the company resolved itself into small packs of dog-hunters.

The weather became mild, the nights clear. Our defensive line over Balaklava was greatly strengthened, and its outworks and batteries were altered and amended considerably. The health of the troops was better, mortality and sickness decreased, and the spirits of the men were good. The wreck of Balaklava was shovelled away, or was in the course of removal, and was shot into the sea to form piers, or beaten down to make roads, and stores and barracks of wood were rising up in its place. The oldest inhabitant would not have known the place on his return. If war is a great destroyer, it is also a great creator. The Czar was indebted to it for a railway in the Crimea, and for new roads between Balaklava, Kamiesch, and Sebastopol. The hill-tops were adorned with clean wooden huts, the flats were drained, the watercourses dammed up and deepened, and all this was done in a few days, by the newly-awakened energies of labour. The noise of hammer and anvil, and the roll of the railway train, were heard in these remote regions a century before their time. Can anything be more suggestive of county magistracy and poor-laws, and order and peace, than stone-breaking? It went on daily, and parties of red-coated soldiery were to be seen contentedly hammering away at the limestone rock, satisfied with a few pence extra pay. Men were given freely wherever there was work to be done. The policeman walked abroad in the streets of Balaklava. Colonel Harding exhibited ability in the improvement of the town, and he had means at his disposal which his predecessors could not obtain. Lord Raglan was out before the camps every day, and Generals Estcourt and Airey were equally active. They visited Balaklava, inspected the lines, rode along the works, and by their presence and directions infused an amount of energy which went far to make up for lost time, if not for lost lives.

The heaps accumulated by the Turks who perished in the fœtid lanes of Balaklava, and the masses of abomination unutterable which they left behind them, were removed and mixed with stones, lime, manure, and earth, to form piers, which were not so offensive as might have been expected. The dead horses were collected and buried. A little naval arsenal grew up at the north side of the harbour, with shears, landing-wharf, and storehouses; and a branch line was to be made from this spot to the trunk to the camp. The harbour, crowded as it was, assumed a certain appearance of order. Cesspools were cleared out, and the English Hercules at last began to stir about the heels of the oxen of Augæus.

The whole of the Turks were removed to the hill-side. Each day there was a diminution in the average amount of sickness, and a still greater decrease in the rates of mortality. Writing at the time, I said a good sanitary officer, with an effective staff, might do much to avert the sickness to be expected among the myriads of{236} soldiers when the heats of spring began.[18] Fresh provisions were becoming abundant, and supplies of vegetables were to be had for the sick and scurvy-stricken. The siege works were in a state of completion, and were admirably made. Those on which our troops were engaged proceeded uninterruptedly. A great quantity of mules and ponies, with a staff of drivers from all parts of the world, was collected together, and lightened the toils of the troops and of the commissariat department. The public and private stores of warm clothing exceeded the demand. The mortality among the horses ceased, and, though the oxen and sheep sent over to the camps would not have found much favour in Smithfield, they were very grateful to those who had to feed so long on salt junk alone. The sick were nearly all hutted, and even some of the men in those camps which were nearest to Balaklava had been provided with similar comforts and accommodation.

An electric telegraph was established between head-quarters and Kadikoi, and the line was ordered to be carried on to Balaklava. The French preferred the old-fashioned semaphore, and had a communication between the camps and naval stations.

The news of the death of the Emperor Nicholas produced an immense sensation, and gave rise to the liveliest discussions as to its effect upon the contest. We were all wrong in our surmises the day the intelligence arrived. The enemy fired very briskly, as if to show they were not disheartened.

The story of the guns of position, at this time available, was instructive. It will be remembered that the Russians inflicted great loss upon us by their guns of position at the Alma, and that we had none to reply to them. Indeed, had they been landed at Kalamita Bay, it is doubtful if we could have got horses to draw them. However, if we had had the horses, we could not have had the guns. The fact was, that sixty fine guns of position, with all their equipments complete, were shipped on board the Taurus at Woolwich, and sent out to the East. When the vessel arrived at Constantinople, the admiral in charge, with destructive energy, insisted on trans-shipping all the guns into the Gertrude. The captain in charge remonstrated, but in vain—words grew high, but led to no result. The guns, beautifully packed and laid, with everything in its proper place, were hauled up out of the hold, and huddled, in the most approved higgledy-piggledy à la Balaklava ancienne, into the Gertrude, where they were deposited on the top of a quantity of medical and other stores. The equipments shared the same fate, and the hold of the vessel presented to the eye of the artilleryman the realization of the saying anent the arrangement of a midshipman's chest, "everything uppermost and nothing at hand." The officer in charge got to Varna, and in vain sought permission to go to some retired nook, discharge the cargo, and restow the guns. The expedition sailed, and when the Gertrude arrived at Old Fort, had Hercules been set to clear{237} the guns, as his fourteenth labour, he could not have done it. And so the medicines, that would certainly have done good, and the guns, that might have done harm, were left to neutralize each other!

The weather was in the early part of March so mild and fine, that it was scarcely generous to notice the few Black Sea fogs which swept over us now and then like shadows and so departed. Our siege works were a kind of Penelope's web. They were always approaching completion, and never (or at least very slowly) attaining it. The matter was in this wise:—Our engineers now and then saw a certain point to be gained by the erection of a work or battery at a particular place. The plans were made and the working parties were sent down, and after a few casualties the particular work was executed; but, as it generally happened that the enemy were quite alive to our proceedings, without waiting for their copies of The Times, we found that the Russians had by the time the work was finished, thrown up another work to enfilade or to meet our guns. Then it became necessary to do something to destroy the position and fresh plans were drawn up, and more trenches were dug and parapets erected. The same thing took place as before, and the process might have been almost indefinite but for the space of soil.

The front of Sebastopol, between English, French, and Russians, looked like a huge graveyard, covered with freshly-made mounds of dark earth in all directions. Every week one heard some such gossip as this—"The Russians have thrown up another battery over Inkerman." "Yes, the French are busy making another new battery in front of the redoubt." "Our fire will most positively open about the end of next week." We were overdoing our "positively last nights."

On the 8th a small work, armed with three heavy guns, which had been constructed very quietly, to open on the two steamers near Inkerman, under the orders of Captain Strange, began its practice early in the morning, at about 1700 yards, and drove them both away after about sixty rounds, but did not sink, or, as far as we knew, seriously disable them.

Every material for carrying on a siege—guns, carriages, platforms, powder, shot, shell, gabions, fascines, scaling-ladders—we had in abundance. The artillery force was highly efficient, notwithstanding the large proportion of young gunners. Our engineers, if not quite so numerous as they ought to have been, were active and energetic; and our army must have consisted of nearly 20,000 bayonets, owing to the great number of men discharged from the hospitals, and returned fit for duty, and to the draughts which had been received. With the exception of the Guards, who were encamped near Balaklava, reduced to the strength of a company, nearly every brigade in the army could muster many more men than they could a month before.

Of the Guardsmen sent to Scutari not more than sixty or seventy were in such a state of convalescence as to permit them to join their regiments. The men in Balaklava fared better, and the weather{238} effected a marked improvement in the health of the men in the field hospitals.

As for Jack, he was as happy as he would allow himself to be, and as healthy, barring a little touch of scurvy now and then, as he could wish; but it must be remembered that he had no advanced trenches, no harassing incessant labour to enfeeble him, and that he had been most successful in his adaptation of stray horseflesh to camp purposes, in addition to which he had a peculiar commissariat, and the supplies of the fleet to rely upon. It is a little out of place, perhaps, to tell a story here about the extraordinary notions Jack had imbibed concerning the ownership of chattels and the distinction between meum and tuum, but I may not have a better chance. A mild young officer went up one day to the sailors' camp, which he heard was a very good place to purchase a horse, and on his arrival picked out a likely man, who was gravely chewing the cud of meditation and tobacco beside the suspension bridge, formed of staves of casks, which leads across a ravine to their quarters. "Can you tell me where I can get a good horse to buy, my man!"

"Well, sir, you see as how our horse parties ain't come in yet, and we don't know what we may have this evening. If your honour could wait."

"Then you haven't got anything to sell now?"

"Ah! how I does wish your honour had a comed up yesterday. We had five regular good 'uns—harabs some on 'em was, but they was all bought up by a specklator from Ballyklava."

"So they're all gone?"

"All, that lot your honour. But," with his face brightening up suddenly, "if you should happen to want a sporting out-and-out dromeydairy, I've got one as I can let you have cheap." As he spoke, Jack pointed in great triumph to the melancholy-looking quadruped, which he had "moored stem and stern," as he expressed it, and was much disappointed when he found there was no chance of a sale.

From hunger, unwholesome food, and comparative nakedness, the camp was a sea of abundance, filled with sheep and sheepskins, wooden huts, furs, comforters, mufflers, flannel shirts, tracts, soups, preserved meats, potted game, and spirits. Nay, it was even true that a store of Dalby's Carminative, of respirators, and of jujubes, had been sent out to the troops. The two former articles were issued under the sanction of Dr. Hall, who gave instructions that the doctors should report on the effects. Where the jujubes came from I know not; but had things gone on at this rate, we might soon have heard complaints that our Grenadiers had been left for several days without their Godfrey's Cordial and Soothing Syrup, and that the Dragoons had been shamefully ill supplied with Daffy's Elixir.

"Hit high—hit low—there is no pleasing him;" but really, the fact is, that the army was overdone with Berlin wool and flannel, and was ill-provided with leather. The men wanted good boots and waterproofs, for there was a rainy season. Medicine was not deficient, and there was an unfortunately large demand for the{239} remedies against the ravages of low fever. Mutton and beef were so abundant, that the men got fresh meat about three times a-week. Some of the mutton, &c., brought to the Crimea ready killed, was excellent. Potatoes, cabbages, and carrots, were served out pretty frequently as the cargoes arrived, and the patients in hospital were seldom or never left short of vegetables. Admiral Boxer was most anxious to clear the harbour, and exerted himself to reduce the number of "adventurers" ships, and applied himself with success to the improvement of the wharfage and of the roads to the north side of the harbour. The dreamers had awakened, and after a yawn, a stretch, a gape of surprise to find that what they had been sleeping over was not a horrid nightmare, set to work with a will to clear away the traces of their sloth. But while all this improvement was taking place, the enemy were gathering strength. The Russians, on the night of the 11th, developed their works on the hill in front of the Malakoff, called the Mamelon Vert, under cover of their rapidly-increasing works at Mount Sapoune, called by the French "les ouvrages blancs." On the 12th, Omar Pasha arrived from Eupatoria, and a council of war was held, at which it was decided that 20,000 Turks should be at once landed from the latter place to co-operate in the attack on the city. The French stated they were ready to begin their fire on the 13th, but that Lord Raglan informed General Canrobert he was not prepared. Our right attack was connected by a trench with the Inkerman attack.

On the 13th General Simpson, chief of the staff, arrived; and Lord Raglan rode into Balaklava, and saw Sir John M'Neill and Colonel Tulloch, the commissioners sent out by Lord Panmure to inquire into the condition of the army.

On the 14th there was an affair with the Russians which was not so fortunate for our allies as might be desired. The Russians advanced some riflemen in front of the French on the right of our Second Division, which caused considerable annoyance. A demi-brigade went down and drove the Russians out. All the batteries opened at once with a tremendous crash, and for half an hour there was a furious cannonade directed against the darkness. In the midst of this fire a strong body of Russians advanced on the French, and obliged them to retire. Assistance was sent down, the French drove the Russians back; but lost sixty-five men, killed and wounded.

CHAPTER II.

ABOUT the middle of March we were blessed with all the genial influences of a glorious spring. Vegetation struggled for existence beneath the tramp of armed men and the hoof of the war horse,{240} and faint patches of green herbage dotted the brown expanse in which the allied camps had rested so long. The few fruit-trees which had been left standing near Balaklava were in blossom. The stumps on the hill sides were throwing out green shoots as outlets for the welling sap; the sun shone brightly and warmly from blue skies streaked with clouds, which were borne rapidly along by the breeze that never ceased to blow from the high lands. Of course, the beneficial effects of this permanent fine weather on the health and spirits of the army were very great, and became more striking day after day. The voice of song was heard once more in the tents, and the men commenced turning up their pipes, and chanting their old familiar choruses. The railway pushed its iron feelers up the hill-side to the camp. The wire ropes and rollers for the trains had been partially laid down. Every day the plains and hill-sides were streaked with columns of smoke, which marked the spots where fire was destroying heaps of filth and corrupt animal and vegetable matter as sacrifices on the altar of Health. The sanatorium was working in the most satisfactory manner, and had produced the best results. The waters of little streamlets were caught up in reservoirs to provide against drought.

Upwards of 700 huts had been sent to camp and erected. The army, animated by the constant inspection of Lord Raglan, and by the supervision of the heads of the great military departments, was nearly restored, in all but numbers, to what it was six months before. Bakeries, under the control of Government, were established and the troops were fed on wholesome bread. The silence and gloom of despondency had passed away with the snows and the deadly lethargy of our terrible winter. The blessed sounds of labour—twice blessed, but that they spoke of war and bloodshed—rang throughout the camp, from the crowded shore to the busy line of batteries.

It must not be forgotten, however, that the enemy derived equal advantage from the improvement in the weather. Valley and plain were now as firm as the finest road, and the whole country was open to the march of artillery, cavalry, infantry, and commissariat wagons. Each day the Russian camps on the north of Sebastopol increased and spread out. Each night new watchfires attracted the eye. We heard that a formidable army had assembled around Eupatoria, and it was certain that the country between that town and Sebastopol was constantly traversed by horse and foot, who were sometimes seen from the sea in very great numbers. The actual works of the siege made no progress to justify one in prophesying. Actual increase of lines and batteries, and armament there was no doubt, but it existed on both sides, and there had been no comparative advantage gained by the allies. The impression which had long existed in the minds of many that Sebastopol could not be taken by assault, considering the position of the north forts, the fleet, and the army outside, gained ground. It was generally thought that the army outside ought to have been attacked and dispersed, or that the investment of the place should be completed, before we could hope to reduce the city and the citadel.{241}

But coupled with this impression was the far stronger conviction that, had our army marched upon the place on the 25th of September, it would have fallen almost without resistance. A Russian officer, who was taken prisoner and who knew the state of the city well, declared that he could not account for our "infatuation" in allowing the Russians to throw up works and regain heart, when we could have walked into the place, unless under the supposition that the hand of the Almighty was in it, and that He had blinded the vision and perverted the judgment of our generals. "And now," said he, "He has saved Sebastopol, and we, with His help, will maintain it inviolate."

However, let bygones be bygones on this and other points as well—they will be matters for history and posterity.

Several sea-service mortars, with a range of 3,500 yards, were sent up to the front, and the new batteries, now about to open, had the heaviest armament ever used in war.

On the 17th of March the Fourth Division had races. The meeting was well attended, and had this advantage over the races at Karanyi, that the course was almost under long range fire of the forts, and that the thunder of the siege-guns rose now and then above the shouts of the crowd in the heat of the sport. Not a drunken man was visible on the course. Every face beamed with good humour and joy and high spirits. As it was St. Patrick's Day, many an officer had a bit of some sorry green substitute for a shamrock in his cap. Some thoughtful people at home had actually sent out to their friends real shamrocks by post, which arrived just in the nick of time, and an officer of my acquaintance was agreeably surprised by his servant presenting himself at his bedside with a semblance of that curious plant, which he had cut out of some esculent vegetable with a pair of scissors, and a request that he would wear it, "and nobody would ever know the differ."

A melancholy accident occurred on the same night. Mr. Leblanc, surgeon of the 9th Regiment, was coming home after dark, and got outside the French lines. He was challenged; and either did not hear or understand what the man said. The Frenchman challenged again, and, receiving no reply, shot the officer dead. Heavy firing was going on at the time, and a serious affair on our right, another struggle for the pits, which the enemy had thrown up on the right opposite the French, and which our allies carried gallantly, but did not succeed in retaining.

These rifle-pits, which cost both armies such a quantity of ammunition, and led to so considerable a sacrifice on the part of our allies, were placed in front and to the right and left of the Tower of Malakoff, about 600 yards from our works. They were simple excavations faced with sandbags, loopholed, and banked round with earth. Each of these pits contained about ten riflemen. Practice made these soldiers crack shots and very expert, so that if a man showed for a moment above the works in front of these pits he had instantly a small swarm of leaden hornets buzzing round his ears.{242}

They were so well covered and so admirably protected by the nature of the ground that our riflemen could do nothing with them, and the French sharpshooters were equally unsuccessful. It was determined to try a round shot or two at them from one of the English batteries. The first shot struck down a portion of the bank of one of the pits, the second went slap into the sandbags, right through the parapet, and out at the other side, and the riflemen, ignorant of Sir John Burgoyne's advice to men similarly situated to adhere the more obstinately to their work the more they are fired at by big guns, "bolted," and ran across the space to their works. The French sharpshooters, who were in readiness to take advantage of this moment, at once fired on the fugitives, but did not hit one of them.

As it was made a point of honour by General Bosquet that our allies should take these pits, about 5,000 men were marched up to the base of the hills in front of our position, close to the Second and Light Divisions, before dusk on the night of the 17th, and shortly afterwards sent down to the advanced trenches on our right. At half-past six o'clock they were ordered to occupy the pits. About half-past seven o'clock the Fourth Division was turned out by Sir John Campbell, and took up its position on the hill nearly in front of its tents, Sir George Brown at the same time marched the Light Division a few hundred yards forward to the left and front of their encampment. These Divisions remained under arms for nearly four hours, and were marched back when the French finally desisted from their assault on the pits. The Second and Third Divisions were also in readiness. The Zouaves advanced with their usual dash and intrepidity, but they found that the enemy were already in possession. A fierce conflict commenced, but the French could not drive the Russians out. Some misapprehension led the men in the trenches to fire before their comrades reached the pits, and the enemy dispatched a large force to the assistance of the troops already engaged with the French, so that the latter were at last forced back. The contest was carried on incessantly for four hours and a half, and roused up the whole camp. From the almost ceaseless roll and flashing lines of light in front one would have imagined that a general action between considerable armies was going on, and the character of the fight had something unusual about it owing to the absence of any fire of artillery.

Had our allies required our assistance they would have received it, but they were determined on taking and holding these pits, which, in fact, were in front of their works, without any aid. The Zouaves bore the brunt of the fight. Through the night air, in the lulls of the musketry, the voices of the officers could be distinctly heard cheering on the men, and encouraging them—"En avant, mes enfans!" "En avant, Zouaves!" the tramp of feet and the rush of men followed; then a roll of musketry was heard, diminishing to rapid file-firing—then a Russian cheer—then more musketry—dropping shots—and the voices of the officers once more. The French retired, with the loss of about 150 men killed and wounded, and a few prisoners.{243}

On the 18th a force, computed to number about 15,000 men, entered Sebastopol from the north side. Large trains of carts and waggons were seen moving round towards the Belbek, and a considerable force bivouacked by the waterside below the citadel. About the same time a portion of the army of Inkerman, numbering, according to the best calculations, 15,000, marched down towards Mackenzie's Farm, and was reported to have crossed the Tchernaya and to have gone towards Baidar.

About four o'clock, General Canrobert, attended by a small staff and escort, passed down the Woronzo Road by our right attack, and carefully examined the position of the "pits," and the works of the Mamelon and of the square redoubt to its right. At nightfall a strong force of French, with six field-guns of "12," were moved down on the left of their extreme right, and another attempt was made to take the pits from the Russians, but it was not successful. Both parties retired from the contest, after an hour's combat.

Our batteries pitched shot and shell right into the Mamelon, which the Russians were fortifying rapidly, and they also threw some excellently-aimed missiles into the new pits which the Russians had erected on the ground where the French were so severely handled some nights before. This redoubt had been armed. It was square, and mounted sixteen guns on the three faces visible to us. The fire at Inkerman, of the forts across the Tchernaya, and of the works of the Malakoff covered this redoubt, and converged on the approaches in front.

Nearly all the firing during the night of the 19th was from the French mortars. The enemy scarcely replied.

Important changes now took place among the generals. On the 21st Sir John Burgoyne left the camp and proceeded to Kamiesch, where he took passage by the mail steamer to England. All kinds of opinions and acts had been attributed to Sir John while he was superintending the earlier operations of the siege, but no one ever denied the entire devotion and zeal which the veteran General displayed in the prosecution of the works so far as he could control them. If his manner exhibited that stoical apathy and indifference which distinguish the few remaining disciples of "the Great Duke," his activity and personal energy were far beyond his years. He was succeeded by Major-General Jones, who possessed activity and energy, and it was hoped that these two appointments would contribute to the improvement of the social and internal economy of the army, and to the accomplishment of the objects of the expedition. The name of the Adjutant-General Estcourt was no longer appended to the general orders. It was the Chief of the Staff, General Simpson, who waited on Lord Raglan each day to ascertain his wishes, and to receive orders, and he communicated those orders to the Quartermaster and Adjutant-General, and saw that they were duly executed.

The Engineer officers alleged there was great difficulty in finding men to execute the necessary works, notwithstanding the improved condition of our army and the diminution of work and labour{244} which had taken place since the co-operation of the French on our right. We frequently had not more than 900 men for duty in the trenches of the left attack, although it was considered that they ought to be defended by at least 1,200 men, and that 1,500 men would be by no means too many for the duty. I saw one parallel in which the officer on duty was told to cover the whole line of work. He had about 340 men with him, and when he had extended his line they were each nearly thirty paces apart. This was in a work exposed to attack at any moment. Notwithstanding the ground taken by the French, we were obliged to let the men stay for twenty-four hours at a time in the trenches. On an average the men had not more than three nights out of seven in bed. The French had five nights out of seven in bed. With reference to the observations which were made at home on the distribution of labour between the two armies, it must be borne in mind that when the French and English first broke ground before Balaklava we were as strong as our allies, and that it was some time after the siege began ere the relative proportions of the two armies were considerably altered to the advantage of the French by the arrival of their reinforcements.

On the 22nd a furious fight raged along our front. About nine o'clock 8,000 Russians disposed themselves in the hollows of the ground, and waited patiently till nightfall. Between eleven and twelve o'clock they rushed on the French works in front of the Mamelon, and made a dash at the trenches connecting our right with the French left. Their columns came upon the men in our advanced trenches on the right attack, with the bayonet, before we were quite prepared to receive them. When they were first discerned, they were close, and, on being challenged, replied with their universal shibboleth, "Bono Franciz." Taken at a great disadvantage, and pressed by superior numbers, the 7th and 97th guarding the trenches made a vigorous resistance, and drove the Russians out at the point of the bayonet, but not until they had inflicted on us serious loss, not the least being that of Captain Vicars of the 97th.

The 7th Fusileers had to run the gauntlet of a large body of the enemy, whom they drove back à la fourchette. The 34th Regiment were attacked by great numbers, and their Colonel, Kelly, was taken prisoner, and carried off by the enemy. In the midst of the fight, on our right, where the trench guards were at first repulsed, Major Gordon, of the Royal Engineers, displayed that cool courage and presence of mind which never forsook him. With a little switch in his hand, standing up on the top of the parapet, he encouraged the men to defend the trenches, and hurl down stones upon the Russians. He was struck by a ball which passed through the lower part of his arm, and received a bullet through the shoulder. After an hour's fight the enemy were driven back; but 3 officers and 14 rank and file were killed, 2 officers and 44 rank and file wounded, and 2 officers taken prisoners. Captain Chapman of the 20th Regiment—Lieutenant Marsh, 33rd—Major Browne, 21st—Lieutenant Jordan, 34th (killed)—Captain Cavendish{245} Browne, 7th (killed), and Captain Vicars, 97th (killed), particularly distinguished themselves in the affair.

The French lost 13 officers and 171 men killed, 12 officers and 359 men wounded, and 4 officers and 83 men missing. Prince Gortschakoff admitted a loss of 8 officers and 379 men killed, and 21 officers and 982 men wounded. The hill-sides below the Round Tower and the Mamelon were covered with their dead, mingled with the bodies of the French. The dead were lying about among the gabions which had been knocked down in front of the French sap in great numbers.

At the first charge at the Mortar Battery, the Russian leader, who wore an Albanian costume, and whose gallantry was most conspicuous, fell dead.

It was not known how many Albanian chiefs there were with the Russians; but certainly the two who were killed led them on with intrepidity and ferocious courage. One of them, who struggled into the battery in spite of a severe wound, while his life-blood was ebbing fast, rushed at a powder-barrel and fired his pistol into it before he fell. Fortunately the powder did not explode, as the fire did not go through the wood. Another, with a cimeter in one hand and a formidable curved blade, which he used as a dagger, in the other, charged right into our ranks twice, and fell dead the second time, perforated with balls and bayonets. They were magnificently dressed, and were supposed to be men of rank.

When the Mortar Battery was carried, the enemy held it for about fifteen minutes. At the time the heavy fire between the French and Russians was going on, a portion of the 90th Regiment were employed on fatigue duty on the right of the new advanced works on our right attack. They were in the act of returning to their posts in the Gordon Battery just at the moment the heavy firing on the right had ceased, when a scattered irregular fusillade commenced in the dark on the left of their position close to the Mortar Battery. Captain Vaughton, who commanded the party of the 90th, ordered his men to advance along the covered way to the works. They moved at the double time, and found the Russians in complete possession of the Mortar Battery. The 90th at once opened a heavy fire of musketry, when an alarm was given that they were firing upon the French; but the enemy's fire being poured in with deadly effect, the small party of the 90th were thrown into great confusion. With a loud "hurrah," however, the gallant band sprang with the bayonet upon the enemy, who precipitately retired over the parapet. In order to keep up the fire, the men groped about among the dead Russians, and exhausted the cartridges in the enemy's pouches.

As an act of justice, the names of the officers and men of the party of the 90th Regiment whose conduct was distinguished in this affair should be recorded. They are—Clarke, Brittle, and Essex (sergeants), Caruthers, severely wounded (corporal), Fare, Walsh, Nicholson (wounded), and Nash. Captain Vaughton received a severe contusion in the affair. The courage displayed{246} by Captain Cavendish Browne, of the 7th, in another part of the works, was conspicuous. He was severely wounded at the commencement of the attack, but he refused to go to the rear, though nearly fainting from loss of blood. He led on his men, encouraging them by voice and gesture, to the front. When his body was found, it lay far in advance of our line, with three balls in the chest.

Early on Saturday morning a flag of truce was sent in by the allies with a proposition to the Russians for an armistice to bury the dead, lying in numbers—five or six Russians to every Frenchman and Englishman—in front of the Round Tower and Mamelon, and after some delay, an answer in the affirmative was returned, and it was arranged that two hours should be granted for collecting and carrying away the dead on both sides. The news spread through the camps, and the races which the Chasseurs d'Afrique had got up in excellent style were much shorn of their attractions by the opportunity afforded of meeting our enemies upon neutral ground. The day was beautifully bright and warm. White flags waved gently in the faint spring breeze above the embrasures of our batteries, and from the Round Tower and Mamelon. Not a soul had been visible in front of the lines an instant before the emblems of peace were run up to the flagstaffs, and a sullen gun from the Mamelon and a burst of smoke from Gordon's batteries had but a short time previously heralded the armistice. The instant the flags were hoisted, friend and foe swarmed out of the embrasures. The Riflemen of the allies and of the enemy rose from their lairs in the rifle pits, and sauntered towards each other to behold their grim handiwork. The whole of the space between the Russian lines and our own was filled with groups of unarmed soldiery. Passing down by the Middle Picket Ravine, which was then occupied by the French, and which ran down in front of the Light Division camp, I came out upon the advanced French trench, within a few hundred yards of the Mamelon. The sight was strange beyond description. French, English, and Russian officers were walking about saluting each other courteously as they passed, and occasionally entered into conversation, and a constant interchange of little civilities, such as offering and receiving cigar-lights, was going on. Some of the Russian officers were evidently men of high rank and breeding, their polished manners contrasted remarkably with their plain, and rather coarse clothing. They wore the invariable long grey coat over their uniforms. Many of the Russians looked like English gentlemen in face and bearing. One tall, fine-looking old man, with a long grey beard and strangely shaped cap, was pointed out to us as Hetman of the Cossacks in the Crimea. The French officers were all en grande tenue, and offered a striking contrast to many of our own officers, who were still dressed à la Balaklava, and wore uncouth head-dresses, cat-skin coats, and nondescript paletots. The Russians seemed to fraternize with the French more than with us. The men certainly got on better with our allies than with the privates of our regiments who were down towards the front.{247}

While this civility was going on, we were walking over blood-stained ground, covered with evidences of recent fight, among the dead. Broken muskets, bayonets, cartouch-boxes, caps, fragments of clothing, straps and belts, pieces of shell, little pools of clotted blood, shot—round and grape—shattered gabions and sand-bags, were visible on every side. Through the midst of the crowd stalked solemn processions of soldiers bearing their departed comrades to their long home. I counted seventy-seven litters borne past me in fifteen minutes—each filled with a dead enemy.

At one time a Russian with a litter stopped by a dead body, and put it into the litter. He looked round for a comrade to help him. A Zouave at once advanced with much grace and lifted it, to the infinite amusement of the bystanders; but the joke was not long-lived, as a Russian came up brusquely and helped to carry off his dead comrade.

Some few French, dead, were lying far in advance among the gabions belonging to the advanced trenches, which the Russians had broken down, evidently slain in pursuit. The Russian soldiers were white-faced, many of them had powerful frames, square shoulders, and broad chests. All their dead near our lines were stripped of boots and stockings. The cleanliness of their feet, and of their coarse linen shirts, was remarkable. In the midst of this stern evidence of war, a certain amount of lively conversation began to spring up, in which the Russian officers indulged in badinage. Some of them asked our officers "when we were coming in to take the place?" others "when we thought of going away?" Some congratulated us upon the excellent opportunity we had of getting a good look at Sebastopol, as the chance of a nearer view was not in their opinion very probable. One officer asked a private confidentially in English how many men we sent into the trenches? "Begorra, only 7,000 a night, and a covering party of 10,000," was the ready reply. The officer laughed and turned away. In the town we could see large bodies of soldiery assembled at the corners in the streets, and in the public places. Probably they were ordered out to make a show of their strength. Owing to some misunderstanding or other, a little fusillade began among the riflemen on the left during the armistice, but it soon terminated. The armistice was over about three o'clock. Scarcely had the white flag disappeared behind the parapet of the Mamelon before a round shot from the sailors' battery went slap through one of the embrasures of the Russian work, and dashed up a great pillar of earth inside. The Russians at once replied, and the noise of cannon soon re-echoed through the ravines.

On the night of the 26th, Captain Hill, 89th Regiment, in proceeding to post his pickets, made a mistake in the dark, and got too near the Russian pickets. He was not very well acquainted with the country, and the uncertain light deceived him. The Russians challenged, "Qui va là?" "Français!" was the reply. The two pickets instantly fired, and Captain Hill dropped. There were only two or three men with him, and they retired, taking with them the Captain's great-coat. They went a few yards to the rear{248} to get assistance, and returned at once to the place where Captain Hill fell, but his body had been removed, and the Russian pickets had withdrawn.

On Monday the 2nd of April, M. St. Laurent, Commandant of French Engineers in the right attack, was mortally wounded in the battery over Inkerman. One of the most important works of the right attack bore his name, and he did much to place that portion of our works in a most efficient state.

The Russians now frequently amused themselves by shelling the camp. On the 4th, when there was a large crowd of French and English, including some of the staff, in front of the picket-house, near the Mortar Battery, suddenly a shell fell right into the midst of the group. The greater part of the assembly threw themselves down and rolled away on the ground. At last the shell burst, and one of the fragments struck and wounded a French sentry about fifty yards off. Led horses broke loose or were let go and scampered off in all directions, and as the few officers who had nerve to remain and enjoy the discomfiture of the runaways were enjoying the joke, down came another shell into the very centre of them. The boldest could not stand this, and in a few minutes not a soul was to be seen near the ground. The Military Secretary lost his cap, owing to the eccentric evolutions of his frightened quadruped, but he speedily recovered it, and that was the only loss caused by the two shells, excepting the poor fellow put hors de combat for the time.

"Cathcart's Hill," in front of the Fourth Division camp, was the favourite resort of sight-seers. The place derived its name from General Cathcart using it as a look-out station, and as his resort of a morning. The flag of the division, a red and white burgee, floated from a staff on the left front angle of the parallelogram, and two stands were erected for telescopes in front. A look-out man was stationed to observe the movements of the enemy. To the front of the flagstaff on the left was a cave in which Sir John Campbell lived. He found it a welcome refuge during the storm of the 14th of November. It was marked by a little wooden fence resting on cannon shot, around which there was an impromptu flower-garden. The General's marquee and the tents of his staff were close at hand. It commanded a view of the extreme French left towards Kamiesch, and of their approaches to the Flagstaff Battery and the crenellated wall. Taking up the view from this point on the left, the eye rested upon the mass of ruins in front of the French lines, seamed here and there with banks of earth or by walls of gabions, dotted with embrasures. This part of Sebastopol, between the sea at Artillery Bay and the Dockyard Creek, was exceedingly like portions of old London after the first burst of the Wide-Street Commissioners upon it. There was a strip of ruin the combined work of French and Russians, about two miles long and 300 or 400 yards broad, and it swept round the town like a zone. The houses inside were injured, but the tall white store-houses, the domes of churches, the porticoes of palaces, and the public buildings, shone pleasantly in the sunshine. Tier after tier of{249} roofs rose up the crest of the hill. In front of this portion of the town the dun steppes were scarred all over by the lines of the French approaches, from which at intervals arose the smoke-wreaths of cannon or the puffs of the rifle, answered from the darker lines of the Russians in front of the city. At night this space was lighted up incessantly by the twinkling flashes of musketry. Cathcart's Hill commanded a view of the whole position, with the exception of a portion of the left attack.

The ground in rear of the dark lines, serrated with black iron teeth which marked our batteries, seemed almost deserted. The soldiers sauntered about in groups just below the cover of the parapets, and a deep greyish blue line denoted the artillerymen and covering parties. In front were the Russian entrenchments and batteries with the black muzzles of the guns peering through the embrasures. The grey-coated Russians stalked about the inner parapets, busily carrying gabions and repairing the damaged works. Suddenly a thick spirt of white smoke bursts from the face of the Mamelon, the shot bounds into Gordon's Battery, knocks up a pillar of earth, and then darts forward, throwing up a cloud of dust at each ricochet. Scarcely has it struck the parapet before another burst of smoke rushes out of one of the embrasures of the Naval Battery, and a mass of whitish earth is dashed up into the air from the Mamelon. Then comes a puff from one of the French batteries on the right, and a shell bursts right in the devoted work. "Bravo the sailors!" "Well done, French!" cry the spectators. As the words leave their lips two or three guns from the Round Tower, and as many from the Mamelon, hurl shot and shell in reply. A duel of this kind, with the occasional divertissement of a shell or round shot at working or covering parties, sometimes lasted all day.

Now and then our sea-service mortars spoke out with a dull roar that shook the earth. After what seems nearly a minute of expectation a cloud of smoke and dust at the rear of the Round Tower denoted the effect of the terrible missiles. About twelve o'clock in the day the Russians left off work to go to dinner, and our men followed their example; silence reigned almost uninterruptedly for two hours or more, and then towards four o'clock the firing began again. Meantime our officers walked about or lounged on the hill-side, and smoked and chatted away the interval between breakfast and the hasty dinner which preceded the turn-out for twenty-four hours' vigil in the trenches. Many a hospitable cigar and invitation to lunch were given, the latter with the surer confidence, and with a greater chance of a ready acceptance, after the Crimean Army Fund had been established, and one was tolerably sure of a slice of a giant game-pie, to be washed down by a temperate draught of that glorious Welbeck ale which made the Duke of Portland's name a household word in our army.

Our first railway trip, on the 5th of April, had rather an unfortunate termination. A party of the 71st Regiment, which had been sent up from Balaklava on Land Transport mules, came down before dark to Head-Quarters, where they were inspected by Lord Raglan, who kept them longer than Mr. Beatty, the{250} engineer, desired. At last, as it was getting dark, the men got into the waggons, which proceeded down the steep incline towards Balaklava. The breaks became useless, the director managed to check the waggons, but many were severely injured. One man was killed upon the spot, and several had to undergo surgical operations.[19]

CHAPTER III.

ON Easter Monday, April 9, the allied batteries simultaneously opened fire. The English works were armed with twenty 13-inch mortars, sixteen 10-inch mortars, twenty 24-pounders, forty-two 32-pounders, fifteen 8-inch guns, four 10-inch guns, and six 68-pounders. Late on the 8th, hearing that there was nothing likely to take place on Monday, I left the front, and returned to Balaklava; but in the evening I received an intimation that fire would open at daybreak the following morning. It was then black as Erebus, and raining and blowing with violence; yet there was no choice for it but to take to the saddle and try to make for the front. No one who has not tried it can fancy what work it is to find one's way through widely-spread camps in a pitch-dark night. Each camp is so much like its fellow that it is impossible to discriminate between one and the other; and landmarks, familiar in the day-time, are lost in one dead level of blackness. So my two companions and myself, after stumbling into Turkish and French lines, into holes and out of them, found ourselves, after three hours' ride, very far indeed from our destination in the front, and glad to stop till dawn, wet and tired, at the head-quarters' camp.

At four o'clock A.M. we left for the front. The horses could scarcely get through the sticky black mud into which the hard dry soil had been turned by one night's rain. Although it was early dawn, it was not possible to see a man twenty yards off. A profound silence reigned. Suddenly three guns were heard on the left towards the French lines, and then the whole line of batteries opened. The Garden and Redan Batteries came into play soon after we opened fire, but some time elapsed before the Round Tower or the Mamelon answered. The enemy were taken completely by surprise, and for half an hour their guns were weakly handled.

{251}

The Inkerman and Careening Bay Batteries were almost silent for three-quarters of an hour before they replied to the French batteries on our right.

A driving rain and a Black Sea fog whirled over the whole camp, which resumed the miserable aspect so well known to us during the winter. Tents were blown down, and the ground, as far as it was visible, looked like a black lake, studded with innumerable pools of dun-coloured water. It was not easy, so murky was the sky and so strong the wind, to see the flashes or hear the report of the Russian guns or of the French cannon on either flank, though the spot from which I watched was within a couple of hundred yards of the enemy's range; but we could tell that our batteries in front were thundering away continuously in irregular bursts, firing some twenty-five or thirty shots per minute. Early in the morning they were firing from seventy to eighty shots per minute, but they reduced the rate of fire. The sound was not so great as that of the 17th of October. Just as the cannonade opened, the sailors came over the hills from the batteries, where they had been relieved, and a few men of the Third Division turned out of the huts to the front, evidently very much astonished at the sudden opening of the fire. On the extreme left the French batteries were firing with energy on the loopholed wall, and on the Flagstaff and Garden Batteries, which were replying very feebly. Our left attack (Greenhill or Chapman's Batteries), directed its fire principally against the Redan, which only answered by five or six guns. Our right attack (Gordon's) aided by the advanced battery and by the French redoubts, had silenced the Mamelon and fired three or four shots for every one from the Round Tower. The Russian batteries to the right of the Mamelon were voiceless. So much could be seen, when rain and mist set in once more, and shut out all, save one faint blear of yellowish haze to the west. The storm was so heavy that scarcely a soul stirred out all day. It was dark as night. Lord Raglan stationed himself at his favourite place. On Cathcart's Hill only Sir John Campbell and an aide-de-camp were visible in front of the General's tent. Colonel Dacres was the only officer in front of Cathcart's Hill when I went up, with the exception of Sir John Campbell. The rain descended in torrents, there was nothing to be seen, heard, or learnt, every one withdrew to shelter after a long and hopeless struggle with the weather. The firing slackened considerably after twelve o'clock.

About five o'clock in the evening the sun descended into a rift in the dark grey pall which covered the sky, and cast a slice of pale yellow light, barred here and there by columns of rain and masses of curling vapour, across the line of batteries. The eye of painter never rested on a more extraordinary effect, as the sickly sun, flattened between bars of cloud, seemed to force its way through the leaden sky to cast one look on the plateau, lighted up by incessant flashes of light; and long trails of white smoke, tinged with fire, whirled away by the wind. The outlines of the town, faintly rendered through the mists of smoke and rain, seemed quivering inside the circling lines of fire around the familiar out{252}lines—the green cupola and roofs, long streets and ruined suburbs, the dockyard buildings, trenches and batteries.

The only image calculated to convey an idea of the actual effect is a vision of the Potteries seen at night, all fervid with fire, out of the windows of an express train.

The practice from the left of the left attack and from the right of the right attack, which was more under observation than other parts of our works, was admirable. Our shell practice was not so good as it might have been, on account of bad fuzes. A large proportion burst in the air. Some of our fuzes were made in 1802. I have heard of some belonging to the last century, but some recent manufacture turned out the worst.

A strange and almost unexampled accident occurred in one of our batteries. A 13-inch mortar burst into two pieces, splitting up longitudinally. One of the masses was thrown thirty yards to the right, and another to the left, and though the fragments flew along the traverses and parapet, not one person was killed or wounded. We were less fortunate in the case of the Lancaster gun, which was struck by a shot, killing and wounding severely six men. Several engineer officers declared their satisfaction at getting rid of the gun, in which they could place no confidence, on account of its wild and uncertain firing.

The French silenced eight or nine guns of the Bastion du Mât (Flagstaff), and almost shut up the Inkerman Batteries. On our side we had silenced half the guns in the Redan and Malakoff, and had in conjunction with the French left the Mamelon only one out of seven guns, but the Garden, the Road, and the Barrack Batteries were comparatively uninjured, and kept up a brisk fire all day. General Bizot received a fatal wound in our right attack just as he was lamenting the thinness of our parapets. He was struck by a rifle-ball under the ear, and died shortly after, much regretted by our allies and by ourselves.

The Russians, with great sangfroid, repaired the batteries, and appeared to have acquired confidence, but their fire was by no means so brisk as it was when the siege commenced. Omar Pasha visited Lord Raglan again on Wednesday, the 11th, and there was another council of war, at which General Canrobert and General Bosquet were present.

The expectation which the outsiders entertained that "the fleet would go in" on the third day was not realized. At daybreak I was up at Cathcart's Hill. The view was obscured by drizzling rain, but the hulls and rigging of the steamers and line-of-battle ships were visible; and though clouds of steam were flying from the funnels, it was quite evident that the fleet had no intention of taking part in the bombardment. Their presence there had, however, the effect of drawing off a number of the Russian gunners, for the sea batteries on the north and south sides were all manned, and we could see the artillerymen and sailors inside the parapets standing by their guns. It was evident that the Russians had more than recovered from their surprise, and laboured to recover the ground they had lost with all their might. They resorted to{253} their old practice of firing six or seven guns in a salvo—a method also adopted by the French. Large reserves of infantry were drawn up near the north forts, and the corps over Inkerman were under arms. The Russians could be seen carrying their wounded across to the north side. The cannonade continued all day uninterruptedly, but I could not see that any great change had been made in the profile of the enemy's works. Several of the embrasures in the Redan had been destroyed, and the Round Tower works were a good deal "knocked about;" but there was no reduction in the weight of the enemy's fire.

Lord Raglan visited the front and spent some time examining the effects of the fire. Sir John M'Neill, Colonel Tulloch, General Pennefather, and Sir George Brown, were frequently among the spectators on the advanced mounds commanding a view of the operations. During the night the French attacked some rifle-pits at the Quarantine Cemetery, but were repulsed after a very serious affair, in which they lost 300 men; not, however, without inflicting great loss and damage on the enemy.

At dawn on Thursday, the 12th, the allied batteries and the Russians recommenced. The enemy exerted themselves to repair damages during the night, replaced damaged guns, mended embrasures and parapets, and were, in fact, nearly as ready to meet our fire as they had been at any time for six months. On our side, four of the guns for the advanced parallel, which for the previous two nights we had failed to get into position, were brought down after dark, and it was expected that material results would be produced by their fire when they were in position. Orders were sent to restrict the firing to 120 rounds per gun each day. The 13-inch mortar battery fired parsimoniously one round per mortar every thirty minutes, as it requires a long time to cool the great mass of iron heated by the explosion of 16lb. of powder.

The bombardment did not cease during the day, but it was not so heavy on the whole as it had been on the three previous days. At fifty minutes past four the batteries relaxed firing, renewed it at six, and the fire was very severe till nightfall. Then the bombardment commenced and lasted till daybreak. The Sailors' Brigade suffered very severely. They lost more men than all our siege-train working and covering parties put together. Up to half-past three o'clock on Friday, they had had seventy-three men killed and wounded, two officers killed, one wounded, and two or three contused.

At four o'clock on Friday morning, April 13, the Russians opened a destructive fire on our six-gun battery, which was in a very imperfect state, and by concentrating the fire of twenty guns upon it, dismounted some of the pieces and injured the works severely, so as to render the battery useless. One of our 24-pounders was burst by a shot which entered right at the muzzle as the gun was being discharged. Another gun, struck by a shot in the muzzle, was split up to the trunnions, the ball then sprang up into the air, and, falling at the breech, knocked off the button. In the very heat of the fire on the 12th, a Russian walked through{254} one of the embrasures of the Round Tower, coolly descended the parapet, took a view of the profile of the work, and sauntered back again—a piece of bravado which very nearly cost him his life, as a round shot struck within a yard of him, and a shell burst near the embrasure as he re-entered.

Two divisions of Turkish infantry encamped near the English head-quarters. They mustered about 15,000 men, and finer young fellows I never saw. They had had a long march, and their sandal shoon afforded sorry protection against the stony ground; and yet few men fell out of the ranks. One regiment had a good brass band, which almost alarmed the bystanders by striking up a quick step (waltz) as they marched past, in excellent style, but the majority of the regiments were preceded by musicians with drums, fifes, and semicircular thin brass tubes, with wide mouths, such as those which may have tumbled the walls of Jericho, or are seen on the sculptured monuments of primæval kings.

The colonel and his two majors rode at the head of each regiment, and followed by pipe-bearers and servants, richly dressed, on small but spirited horses, covered with rich saddle-cloths. The mules, with the tents, marched on the right—the artillery on the left. Each gun was drawn by six horses. The two batteries consisted of four 24lb. brass howitzers, and two 9lb. brass field pieces; the carriages and horses were in a very serviceable state. The ammunition boxes were rather coarse and heavy. The baggage animals of the division marched in the rear, and the regiments marched in columns of companies three deep, each company on an average with a front of twenty rank and file. One of the regiments had Minié rifles of English make; the others were armed with flint firelocks, but they were very clean and bright. They displayed standards, blazing with cloth of gold, and flags with the crescent and star upon them. The men carried blankets, squares of carpet for prayer, cooking utensils, and packs of various sizes and substances. As they marched over the undulating ground they presented a very picturesque and warlike spectacle, the reality of which was enhanced by the thunder of the guns at Sebastopol, and the smoke-wreaths from shells bursting high in the air.

At a council of war on the 13th, the question of assaulting the place was discussed, but Lord Raglan and the other English generals who were in favour of doing so were overruled by General Canrobert and General Niel.

Omar Pasha, attended by his suite, rode round the rear of our batteries on the 15th, and Lord Raglan visited the Turkish encampment on the hills to the west of the Col de Balaklava.

On Saturday night (14th), there was a severe and protracted conflict on the left, for the French rifle-pits in front of the Quarantine Works. At first, the weight of the columns which swept out of the enemy's lines bore back the French in the advanced works, where the covering parties were necessarily thin, and many lost their lives by the bayonet. Our allies, having received aid, charged the Russians into their own lines, to which they fled with such precipitation that the French entered along{255} with them, and could have spiked their advanced guns had the men been provided with the means. As they were retiring, the enemy made a sortie in greater strength than before. A sanguinary fight took place, in which the bayonet, the musket-stock, and the bullet were used in a pell-mell struggle, but the French asserted their supremacy, and in defiance of the stubborn resistance of the Russians, evoked by the cries and example of the officers, forced them battling back across their trenches once more, and took possession of the rifle-pits, which they held all night. The loss of our allies was considerable in this brilliant affair. The energy and spirit with which the French fought were beyond all praise.

The next morning our advanced batteries were armed with fourteen guns. They opened at daybreak, and directed so severe a fire against the Russian batteries throughout the day, that they concentrated a number of guns upon the two batteries. We nevertheless maintained our fire.

At half-past eight o'clock in the evening (15th), three mines, containing 50,000 pounds of powder, were exploded with an appalling crash, in front of the batteries of the French, seventy yards in front of the third parallel. The fourth and principal mine was not exploded, as it was found to be close to the gallery of a Russian mine, and the French were unable to make such a lodgment as was anticipated; but they established themselves in the course of the night in a portion of the outer work. The etonnoirs were, after several days' hard labour and nights of incessant combat, connected with the siege works. The Russians, believing the explosion to be the signal for a general assault, ran to their guns, and for an hour their batteries vomited forth prodigious volumes of fire against our lines from one extremity to the other. The force and fury of their cannonade was astonishing, but notwithstanding the length and strength of the fire, it caused but little damage to the works or to their defenders. Next day the magazine of our eight-gun battery in the right attack was blown up by a shell, and seven of our guns were silenced, but the eighth was worked with great energy by Captain Dixon, R. A., who commanded in the battery.

On the 17th, the 10th Hussars arrived, and five hundred sabres were added to the strength of our cavalry. Our fire had much diminished by the 18th of April. The Russian fire slackened just in proportion as they found our guns did not play upon them. The French batteries also relaxed a little. In the night we carried a rifle-pit in front of our right attack, and commenced a sap towards the Redan. The Russians made sorties on the French in the third parallel, and were only repulsed after hard fighting and loss.{256}

CHAPTER IV.

A RECONNAISSANCE was made by twelve battalions of Turkish troops under the command of His Excellency Omar Pasha, assisted by French and English cavalry and artillery, on the 19th. Orders were sent to the 10th Hussars (Brigadier-General Parlby, of the Light Cavalry, in temporary command of the Cavalry Division, during General Scarlett's absence), to the head-quarters of the Heavy Cavalry Brigade, to the C troop of the Royal Horse Artillery, to be in readiness to turn out at daybreak. The Chasseurs d'Afrique and a French rocket troop accompanied the reconnaissance, and rendered excellent service during the day. As the morning was fine and clear, the sight presented by the troops advancing towards Kamara across the plain from the heights was very beautiful. So little was known about the reconnaissance, that many officers at head-quarters were not aware of it, till they learnt that Lord Raglan, attended by a few members of the staff, had started to overtake the troops. A great number of amateurs, forming clouds of very irregular cavalry, followed and preceded the expedition. The Pasha, who was attended by Behrem Pasha (Colonel Cannon), and several Turkish officers of rank, had the control of the movement.

The Turks marched in column; the sunlight flashing on the polished barrels of their firelocks and on their bayonets, relieved the sombre hue of the mass, for their dark blue uniforms, but little relieved by facings or gay shoulder-straps and cuffs, looked quite black when the men were together. The Chasseurs d'Afrique, in powder-blue jackets, with white cartouch belts, and bright red pantaloons, mounted on white Arabs, caught the eye like a bed of flowers. Nor did the rich verdure require any such borrowed beauty, for the soil produced an abundance of wild flowering shrubs and beautiful plants. Dahlias, anemones, sweetbriar, whitethorn, wild parsley, mint, thyme, sage, asparagus, and a hundred other different citizens of the vegetable kingdom, dotted the plain, and as the infantry moved along, their feet crushed the sweet flowers, and the air was filled with delicate odours. Rectangular patches of long, rank, rich grass, waving high above the more natural green meadow, marked the mounds where the slain of the 25th of October were reposing, and the snorting horses refused to eat the unwholesome shoots that sprang there.

The skeleton of an English dragoon, said to be one of the Royals, lay extended on the plain, with tattered bits of red cloth hanging to the bones of his arms. The man must have fallen early{257} in the day, when the Heavy Cavalry, close to Canrobert's Hill, came under fire of the Russian artillery. There was a Russian skeleton close at hand in ghastly companionship. The small bullet-skull, round as a cannon-ball, was still covered with grisly red locks. Farther on, the body of another Russian seemed starting out of the grave. The half-decayed skeletons of artillery and cavalry horses covered with rotting trappings, harness, and saddles, lay as they fell, in a débris of bone and skin, straps, cloth, and buckles. From the graves, the uncovered bones of the tenants started through the soil, as if to appeal against the haste with which they had been buried. With the clash of drums and the shrill strains of the fife, with the champing of bits and ringing of steel, in all the pride of life, man and horse swept over the remnants of the dead.

The relics of the Heavy Cavalry Brigade, Scots Greys and Enniskillens, 4th Dragoon Guards and 5th Dragoon Guards, passed over the scene of their grand encounter with the Muscovite cavalry. The survivors might well feel proud. The 10th Hussars were conspicuous for the soldierly and efficient look of the men, and the fine condition of their light, sinewy, and showy horses. As the force descended into the plain they extended, and marched towards Kamara, spreading across the ground in front of Canrobert's Hill from No. 2 Turkish Redoubt up to the slope which leads to the village. A party of Turkish infantry followed the cavalry in skirmishing order, and on approaching the village, proceeded with great activity to cover the high wooded hill which overhung the village to the right. The Turks were preceded by a man armed with a bow and arrows, who said he was a Tcherkess. In addition to his bow and arrows, he carried a quaint old pistol, and his coat-breast was wadded with cartridges.

The few Cossacks in the village abandoned it after firing a few straggling shots at the advanced skirmishers. One had been taken so completely by surprise that he left his lance leaning against a wall. An officer of the 71st espied it just as the Cossack was making a bolt to recover it. They both rode their best, but the Briton was first, and carried off the lance in triumph, while the Cossack retreated with affected pantomime, representing rage and despair.

I looked into the church, the floor of which had been covered an inch in depth with copper money, when the expedition first came to Balaklava. The simple faith of the poor people in the protection of their church had not been violated by us, but the Cossacks appeared to have had no such scruples, for not a copeck was to be seen, and the church was bare and desolate, and stripped of every adornment. As soon as the Turks on the right had gained the summit of the hill above Kamara, three of the columns advanced and drew up on the slope in front of the church. A detachment was sent towards Baidar, but could see no enemy, and they contented themselves with burning a building which the Cossacks had left standing, the smoke from which led some of us to believe that a little skirmish was going on among the hills.

Meantime the force, leaving three columns halted at Kamara, marched past Canrobert's Hill, the sides of which were covered{258} with the wigwams of the Russians—some recent, others those which were burnt when Liprandi retired. They passed by the old Turkish redoubts Nos. 1 and 2, towards a very steep and rocky conical hill covered with loose stones, near the top of which the Russians had thrown up a wall about 2½ feet high. A group of Cossacks and Russian officers assembled on the top to watch our movements. The Turks ascended the hill with ardour and agility, firing as they advanced, the Cossacks replied by a petty fusillade. Suddenly an arch of white smoke rose from the ground with a fierce, hissing noise, throwing itself like a great snake towards the crest of the hill; as it flew onward the fiery trail was lost, but a puff of smoke burst out on the hill-top, and the Cossacks and Russians disappeared with precipitation. In fact, the French had begun their rocket practice with great accuracy. Nothing could be better for such work as this than their light rocket troops. The apparatus was simple and portable—a few mules, with panniers on each side, carried the whole of the tubes, cases, sticks, fuzes, &c., and the effect of rockets, though uncertain, is very great, especially against cavalry; the skirmishers crowned the hill. The Russians rode rapidly down and crossed the Tchernaya by the bridge and fords near Tchorgoun. Omar Pasha, Lord Raglan, and the French generals spent some time in surveying the country, while the troops halted in rear, the artillery and cavalry first, supported by four battalions of Egyptians. At two o'clock the reconnaissance was over, and the troops retired to the camp, the skirmishers of the French cavalry being followed by the Cossacks, and exchanging long shots with them from time to time, at a prudent distance. Altogether, the reconnaissance was a most welcome and delightful interlude in the dull, monotonous "performances" of the siege. Every one felt as if he had got out of prison at last, and had beaten the Cossacks, and I never saw more cheering, joyous faces at a cover side than were to be seen on Canrobert's Hill. It was a fillip to our spirits to get a gallop across the greensward once more, and to escape from the hateful feeling of constraint and confinement which bores us to death in the camp.

On the same night a very gallant feat of arms was performed by the 77th Regiment. In front of the Redan, opposite our right attack, the Russians had established capacious pits, from which they annoyed us considerably, particularly from the two nearest to us on the left-hand side. Round shot and shell had several times forced the Russians to bolt across the open ground to their batteries, but at night they repaired damages, and were back again as busy as ever in the morning. Our advanced battery would have been greatly harassed by this fire when it opened, and it was resolved to take the two pits, to hold that which was found most tenable, and to destroy the other. The pits were complete little batteries for riflemen, constructed with great skill and daring, and defended with vigour and resolution, and the fire from one well established within 300 or 400 yards of a battery was sufficient to silence the guns and keep the gunners from going near the embrasures.

At eight o'clock the 77th, under Lieutenant-Colonel Egerton,{259} with a wing of the 33rd in support in the rear, moved down the traverses towards these rifle-pits. The night was dark and windy, but the Russian sentries perceived the approach of our men, and a brisk fire was at once opened, to which our troops scarcely replied, for they rushed upon the enemy with the bayonet, and, after a short struggle, drove them out of the two pits and up the slope behind them. It was while setting an example of conspicuous bravery to his men that Colonel Egerton fell mortally wounded. Once in the pits, the engineers set to work, threw up a gabionnade in front, and proceeded to connect the nearest rifle-pit with our advanced sap. The enemy opened an exceedingly heavy fire on them, and sharpshooters from the parapets and from the broken ground kept up a very severe fusillade; but the working party continued in defiance of the storm of shot which tore over them; and remained in possession of the larger of the pits. The General of the day of the right attack telegraphed to head-quarters that our troops had gained the pits, and received directions to keep them at all hazards. At two o'clock in the morning a strong column of Russians advanced against the pits, and the combat was renewed. The enemy were met by the bayonet, they were thrust back again and again, and driven up to their batteries. The pit was most serviceable, not only against the embrasures of the Redan, but in reducing the fire of the rifle-pits on its flank. A drummer boy of the 77th engaged in the mêlée with a bugler of the enemy, made him prisoner and took his bugle—a little piece of juvenile gallantry for which he was well rewarded.

Next night the Russians sought to reoccupy the pits, but were speedily repulsed; the 41st Regiment had fifteen men killed and wounded. The pit was finally filled in with earth, and re-abandoned.

On the 24th a council of war was held at head-quarters, and it was resolved to make the assault at 1 P.M. on the 28th. The English were to attack the Redan; the French the Ouvrages Blancs, Bastion du Mât, Bastion Centrale, and Bastion de la Quarantaine. In the course of the evening General Canrobert, however, was informed by the French admiral, that the French army of Reserve would arrive from Constantinople in a week,—it was said, indeed, the Emperor would come out to take the command in person, and the assault was deferred.

During the night of the 24th the Russians came out of the Bastion du Mât (Flagstaff battery) soon after dark, and began excavating rifle-pits close to the French. Our allies drove them back at the point of the bayonet. The enemy, stronger than before, returned to their labour, and, covered by their guns, succeeded in making some progress in the work, finally, after a struggle which lasted from eight o'clock till three o'clock in the morning, and prodigious expenditure of ammunition. The French loss was estimated at 200. The Russians must have lost three times that number, judging from the heavy rolling fire of musketry incessantly directed upon them. In the morning it was discovered that the enemy were in possession of several pits, which they had succeeded in{260} throwing up in spite of the strenuous attempts made to dislodge them.

On the 25th General Canrobert sent to inform Lord Raglan that in consequence of the information he had received of the probable arrival of the Emperor, and of the Imperial Guard and reinforcements to the strength of 20,000 men, he resolved not to make the assault on the 28th. On the 26th General Bosquet's army of observation, consisting of forty-five battalions of infantry, of two regiments of heavy dragoons, and of two regiments of Chasseurs d'Afrique, with sixty guns, were reviewed by General Canrobert, who was accompanied by a large and very brilliant staff, by several English generals, and by an immense "field" of our officers on the ridge of the plateau on which the allies were encamped. The troops took ground from the point opposite the first Russian battery over Inkerman to the heights above the scene of the battle of Balaklava on the 25th of October. The ground was too limited to contain such a body of men even in dense column, and a double wall of battalions.

General Canrobert, his hat trimmed with ostrich plumes, his breast covered with orders, mounted on a spirited charger, with a thick stick under his arm, followed by a brilliant staff, his "esquire" displaying a tricolor guidon in the air, attended by his escort and a suite of generals, passed along the lines. The bands struck up Partant pour la Syrie. The vivandières smiled their best. The golden eagles, with their gorgeous standards, were lowered.

As soon as General Canrobert had reviewed a couple of divisions, there was "an officers' call." The officers formed a square, General Canrobert, riding into the centre, addressed them with much elocutionary emphasis respecting the speedy prospect of active operations against the place, which he indicated by the illustration, "If one wants to get into a house, and cannot get in at the door, he must get in at the window."

The address was listened to, however, with profound silence. The General and staff took up ground near the centre of the position, and regiment after regiment marched past. A sullen gun from the enemy, directed towards the nearest column from the battery over the Tchernaya, denoted the vigilance of the Russians, but the shot fell short against the side of the plateau. The troops—a great tide of men—the coming of each gaudy wave heralded over the brow of the hill, crested with sparkling bayonets, by the crash of martial music—rolled on for nearly two hours. Chasseurs à pied, infantry of the line, Zouaves, Voltigeurs, and Arabs passed on column after column, till the forty-five battalions of gallant Frenchmen had marched before the eyes of him who might well be proud of commanding them. The Chasseurs Indigènes, their swarthy faces contrasting with their white turbans, clad in light blue, with bright yellow facings and slashing, and clean gaiters and greaves, showed like a bed of summer flowers; the Zouaves rushed by with the buoyant, elastic, springing tread which reminded one of Inkerman; nor was the soldier-like, orderly, and serviceable look of the line regi{261}ments less worthy of commendation. Then came the roll of the artillery, and in clouds of dust, rolling, and bumping, and jolting, the sixty guns and their carriages had gone by. The General afterwards rode along the lines of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and of the two regiments of dragoons, which went past at a quick trot. It was said that there were 2,000 horsemen in the four regiments. They certainly seemed fit for any duty that horse and man could be called upon to execute. The horses, though light, were in good condition, particularly those of the Chasseurs d'Afrique. The inspection terminated shortly after six o'clock. Each regiment, as it defiled past the General, followed the example of the colonel, and cried "Vive l'Empereur!"

Next day the General reviewed Pelissier's corps, in rear of the trenches, and passed through the 40,000 men of which it consisted, using much the same language as the day previously.

Up to the 27th there was no material change in the position of the allied armies before Sebastopol, or in the attitude of the enemy within and outside the city. Every night there was the usual expenditure of ammunition. Nothing, indeed, was more difficult to ascertain than the particulars of these nocturnal encounters. After a cannonade and furious firing, which would keep a stranger in a state of intense excitement all night, it was common to hear some such dialogue as this the following morning:—"I say, Smith, did you hear the row last night?"

"No, what was it?"

"Oh, blazing away like fury. You don't mean to say you didn't hear it?"

"Not a sound; came up from the trenches last night, and slept like a top."

"Hallo, Jones," (to a distinguished 'cocked hat' on horseback, riding past,) "tell us what all the shindy was about last night."

"Shindy, was there? By Jove, yes; I think I did hear some firing—the French and the Russians as usual, I suppose."

"No, it sounded to me as if it was in front of our right attack."

"Ah, yes—well—I suppose there was something."

Another thinks it was on the left, another somewhere else, and so the matter ends, and rests for ever in darkness unless the Invalide Russe, the Moniteur, or the Gazette throw their prismatic rays upon it. I need not say that all minute descriptions of charges or of the general operations of war conducted at night are not trustworthy. Each man fancies that the little party he is with bears the whole brunt of the work, and does all the duty of repulsing the enemy; and any one who takes his narrative from such sources will be sure to fall into innumerable errors. From the batteries or from the hills behind them one can see the flashes flickering through the darkness, and hear the shouts of the men—but that is all—were he a combatant he would see and hear even less than the spectator. In a day or two after the affair was over, one might hear what really had taken place by taking infinite pains and comparing all kinds of stories. It was, in fact, a process of elimination. Nothing afforded finer scope to the exercise of fancy than one of{262} these fights in the dark—it was easy to imagine all sorts of incidents, to conceive the mode of advance, of attack, of resistance, of retreat, or of capture, but the recital was very inconsistent with the facts. The generals whose tents were near the front adopted the device of placing lines of stones radiating from a common centre towards the principal points of the attack, so as to get an idea of the direction in which the fire was going on at night. Even that failed to afford them any very definite information as to the course of the fight.

CHAPTER V.

THE May-day of 1854 in the Crimea was worthy of the sweetest and brightest May Queen ever feigned by the poets in merry England! A blue sky, dotted with milk-white clouds, a warm, but not too hot a sun, and a gentle breeze fanning the fluttering canvas of the wide-spread streets of tents, here pitched on swelling mounds covered with fresh grass, there sunk in valleys of black mould, trodden up by innumerable feet and hoofs, and scattered broadcast over the vast plateau of the Chersonese. It was enough to make one credulous of peace, and to listen to the pleasant whispers of home, notwithstanding the rude interruption of the cannon before Sebastopol. This bright sun, however, developed fever and malaria. The reeking earth, saturated with dew and rain, poured forth poisonous vapours, and the sad rows of mounds, covered with long lank grass, which, rose above the soil, impregnated the air with disease. As the atmosphere was purged of clouds and vapour, the reports of the cannon and of the rifles became more distinct. The white houses, green roofs, the domes and cupolas of Sebastopol stood out with tantalizing distinctness against the sky, and the ruined suburbs and masses of rubbish inside the Russian batteries seemed almost incorporated with the French intrenchments.

A very brilliant exploit was performed by seven battalions of French infantry, in which the 46th Regiment were particularly distinguished, during the night and morning of the 1st and 2nd of May. The enemy, alarmed by the rapid approaches of the French, had commenced a system of counter approaches in front of the Bastion of the Quarantine, Central Bastion, and Bastion du Mât, which were assuming enormous proportions. General Pelissier demanded permission to take them. General Canrobert, whose indecision increased every day, at last gave orders for{263} the assault. Three columns rushed out of the works shortly before seven o'clock P.M. The Russians came out to meet them—a tremendous conflict ensued, in which the French, at last, forced the Russians back into the works, followed them, stormed the outworks of the Batterie Centrale, and took off nine cohorns. In this affair, which lasted till two o'clock A.M., the French had nine officers put hors de combat, sixty-three men killed, and two hundred and ten wounded.

On the 2nd of May, at half-past two P.M., Russian troops, in three divisions, each about 2,500 strong, were seen marching into Sebastopol from the camp over the Tchernaya. A very large convoy of carts and pack animals also entered the town in the course of the day, and an equally numerous string of carts and horses left for the interior. The day was so clear that one could almost see the men's faces through the glass. The officers were well mounted, and the men marched solidly and well. Numbers of dogs preceded and played about the line of march, and as they passed by the numerous new batteries, at which the Russians were then working night and day, the labourers saluted the officers and stood gazing on the sight, just as our own artisans would stare at a body of troops in some quiet English town.

About four o'clock P.M., it was observed by us that the enemy was forming in column in the rear of the Bastion du Mât. A few moments afterwards, about 2,000 men made a rush out of the Batterie Centrale, and with a loud cheer flung themselves on the French trenches. For a moment their numbers and impetuosity enabled them to drive the French out of the works as far as the parallel, but not without a desperate resistance. The smoke soon obscured the scene of the conflict from sight, but the French could be seen advancing rapidly along the traverses and covered ways to the front, their bayonets flashing through the murky air in the sun. In a few moments the Russians were driven back behind their entrenchments, which instantly opened a heavy cannonade. Several Russian officers were taken prisoners. The enemy did not succeed in their object. Next day there was a truce; 121 French were found on the ground, and 156 Russians were delivered to their burial parties. While this affair was taking place our horseraces were going on behind Cathcart's Hill. The monotony of the siege operations was now broken.

On the 3rd of May, the 42nd, 71st, and 93rd, part of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, two companies of Sappers and Miners, 700 of the 71st Highland Light Infantry, one battery of Artillery, 50 of the 8th Hussars, and the First Division of the First Corps of the French army under D'Autemarre, sailed from Kamiesch and Balaklava; the whole force being under the command of Sir George Brown. The fleet, consisting of about forty sail, with these 12,000 men on board, arrived at the rendezvous, lat. 44·54, long. 36·28, on Saturday morning. There an express steamer, which left Kamiesch on Friday night with orders from General Canrobert, directed the immediate return of the French, in consequence of a communication from the Emperor at Paris, which rendered it incumbent on him{264} to concentrate the forces under his command in the Chersonese. Admiral Bruat could not venture to take upon himself the responsibility of disregarding orders so imperative and so clear, and Admiral Lyons was not in a position to imitate the glorious disobedience of Nelson. Lord Raglan gave permission to Sir George Brown to go on without the French, if he thought proper, but that gallant officer did not consider his force large enough, and would not avail himself of such a proof of his General's confidence. This abrupt termination of an expedition which was intended to effect important services, excited feelings of annoyance and regret among those who expected to win honour, glory, and position.

The expedition returned on the 5th, and the troops were landed, and we began to hear further rumours of dissensions in our councils, and of differences between Lord Raglan and General Canrobert. The Emperor Napoleon had sent out a sketch of operations, to which General Canrobert naturally attached great importance, and from which Lord Raglan dissented. General Canrobert proposed that Lord Raglan should take the command of the allied armies. His lordship, after some hesitation, accepted the offer, and then proposed changes in the disposition of the two armies, to which General Canrobert would not accede. Finding himself thus compromised, Canrobert demanded permission from the Emperor to resign the command of the French army, and to take charge of a division. The Emperor acceded to the request, and General Canrobert was succeeded by General Pelissier, in command of the French army.

On the 8th of May, General Della Marmora and 5,000 Sardinians arrived in the Crimea, and were attached to the English army. Two or three steamers arrived every four-and-twenty hours laden with those excellent and soldier-like troops. They landed all ready for the field, with horses, carts, &c. Their transport cars were simple, strongly made, covered vehicles, not unlike a London bread-cart, painted blue, with the words "Armata Sarda" in black letters, and the name of the regiment to the service of which it belonged. The officers were well mounted, and every one admired the air and carriage of the troops, more especially the melodramatic headdress—a bandit-looking hat, with a large plume of black cock's feathers at the side—of the "Bersaglieri."

About one o'clock in the morning of the 10th of May, the camp was roused by an extremely heavy fire of musketry and repeated cheering along our right attack. The elevated ground and ridges in front of the Third and Fourth Divisions were soon crowded with groups of men from the tents in the rear. It was a very dark night, for the moon had not risen, and the sky was overcast with clouds, but the flashing of small arms, which lighted up the front of the trenches, the yell of the Russians (which our soldiers christened "the Inkerman screech"), the cheers of our men, and the volume of fire, showed that a contest of no ordinary severity was taking place. For a mile and a half the darkness was broken by outbursts of ruddy flame and bright glittering sparks, which advanced, receded, died out altogether, broke out fiercely in patches in innumerable twinkles, flickered in long lines like the electric{265} flash along a chain, and formed for an instant craters of fire. By the time I reached the front—about five minutes after the firing began—the fight was raging all along the right of our position. The wind was favourable for hearing, and the cheers of the men, their shouts, the voices of the officers, the Russian bugles and our own, were distinctly audible. The bugles of the Light Division and of the Second Division were sounding the "turn out" on our right as we reached the high ground, and soon afterwards the alarm sounded through the French camp.

The musketry, having rolled incessantly for a quarter of an hour, began to relax. Here and there it stopped for a moment; again it burst forth. Then came a British cheer, "Our fellows have driven them back; bravo!" A Russian yell, a fresh burst of musketry, more cheering, a rolling volley subsiding into spattering flashes and broken fire, a ringing hurrah from the front followed; and then the Russian bugles sounding "the retreat," and our own bugles the "cease firing," and the attack was over. The enemy were beaten, and were retiring to their earthworks; and the batteries opened to cover their retreat. The Redan, Round Tower, Garden and Road Batteries, aided by the ships, lighted up the air from the muzzles of their guns. The batteries at Careening Bay and at the north side of the harbour contributed their fire. The sky was seamed by the red track of innumerable shells. The French, on our right, opened from the batteries over Inkerman and from the redoubts; our own batteries sent shot and shell in the direction of the retreating enemy. The effect of this combined fire was very formidable to look at, but was probably not nearly so destructive as that of the musketry. From half-past one till three o'clock the cannonade continued, but the spectators had retired before two o'clock, and tried to sleep as well as they might in the midst of the thunders of the infernal turmoil. Soon after three o'clock A.M. it began to blow and rain with great violence, and on getting up next morning I really imagined that one of our terrible winter days had interpolated itself into the Crimean May.

Soon after General Pelissier took the command, another expedition against Kertch and the Russians in the Sea of Azoff was organized. The command of the British contingent was conferred, as before, on Sir George Brown. On Tuesday evening (May the 22nd) the Gladiator, Stromboli, Sidon, Valorous, Oberon, and Ardent, anchored off Balaklava. The transports, with the British on board, hauled outside.

The force consisted of 7,500 French troops, under General d'Autemarre; of 5,000 Turks, under Redschid Pasha; of 3,805 English, under Sir George Brown—namely, 864 Marines, Lieutenant-Colonel Holloway; 168 Artillery, Captains Barker, Graydon, &c.; the 42nd Highlanders, Colonel Cameron, 550 strong; the 79th Regiment of Highlanders, 430 strong, Colonel Douglas; the 93rd Highlanders, 640 strong, Lieutenant-Colonel Ainslie; the 71st Highland Light Infantry, 721 strong, Lieutenant-Colonel Denny; 50 Sappers and Miners, and 50 of the 8th Hussars, under Colonel de Salis. The staff numbered forty persons, and the Transport Corps 310{266} officers and men. A flying squadron was organized under the command of Captain Lyons, son of the Admiral, who was on board the Miranda, and consisted of the following vessels:—Vesuvius, Captain Osborn; Stromboli, Captain Cole; Medina, Commander Beresford; Ardent, Lieutenant-Commander Horton; Arrow, Lieutenant Jolliffe; Beagle, Lieutenant Hewett; Lynx, Lieutenant Aynsley; Snake, Lieutenant M'Killop; Swallow, Commander Crauford; Viper, Lieutenant Armytage; Wrangler, Lieutenant Risk; and Curlew, Commander Lambert.

There are not many people who ever heard of Kertch or Yenikale since their schoolboy days until this war directed all eyes to the map of the Crimea, but these towns represented, on a small scale, those favoured positions which nature seemed to have intended for the seat of commerce and power, and in some measure resembled Constantinople, which is placed, like them, on a narrow channel between two seas, whose trade it profited by and commanded. On approaching Cape Takli Bournou, which is the south-western corner, so to speak, of the entrance to the Straits of Kertch, the traveller sees on his left a wide expanse of undulating meadow land marked all along the prominent ridges with artificial tumuli, and dotted at wide intervals with Tartar cottages and herds. The lighthouse at the cape is a civilized European-looking edifice of white stone, on a high land, some height above the water; and as we passed it on the 24th of May, we could see the men in charge of it mounted in the balcony, and surveying the proceedings of the fleet through telescopes.

On the right of the Straits, or, in other words, at the south-eastern extremity, the coast of Taman—famed for its horses, its horsemen, and its buckwheat—offered a varied outline of steep cliffs, or of sheets of verdure descending to the water's edge, and the white houses and steeples of Fanagoria could be seen in the distance. The military road to Anapa wound along a narrow isthmus further south on the right, below the narrow Strait of Bourgas, leading to one of the estuaries which indented the land in all directions in this region of salt lakes, isthmuses, and sandbanks. From Cape Takil to the land on the opposite side of the Straits the distance is about seven miles and a half. The country on both sides, though bright and green, had a desolate aspect, in consequence of the absence of trees, and enclosures, but the numberless windmills on both sides of the Strait proved the fertility of the soil and the comfortable state of the population.

From Cape Takil to Ambalaki, where the expeditionary forces landed, the distance was about twelve miles. It was a poor place, built on a small cliff over the sea, which at the south side swept down to the beach by the margin of a salt-water lake. As there was no force to oppose the landing, the men were easily disembarked on a sandy beach, out of range of the batteries, and close to the salt-water lake. This movement threatened to take the Russians who were in the batteries in the rear, and to cut off their communication with Kertch, which was situated in a bay, concealed from the view of Ambalaki by the Cape of Ak-Bournou.{267}

At forty minutes past one P.M., on approaching Kara-Bournou, a huge pillar of white smoke rushed up towards the skies, opened out like a gigantic balloon, and then a roar like the first burst of a thunder-storm told us that a magazine had blown up. At a quarter past two another loud explosion took place, and a prodigious quantity of earth was thrown into the air along with the smoke. A third magazine was blown up at twenty-five minutes past two. A tremendous explosion, which seemed to shake the sea and air, took place about three o'clock; and at half-past, three several columns of smoke blending into one, and as many explosions, the echoes of which roared and thundered away together, announced that the Russians were destroying their last magazines. They could be seen retreating, some over the hills behind Kertch, others towards Yenikale.

A most exciting scene now took place towards the northward. One of the enemy's steamers had run out of the Bay of Kertch, which was concealed from our view by the headland, and was running for the Straits of Yenikale. She was a low schooner-rigged craft, like a man-of-war, and it was uncertain whether she was a government vessel or not. And, just as she passed the cape, two Russian merchantmen slipped out and also made towards Yenikale. A gunboat dashed after her across the shallows. At the same moment a fine roomy schooner came bowling down with a fair breeze from Yenikale, evidently intending to aid her consort, and, very likely, despising the little antagonist which pursued her. The gunboat flew on and passed the first merchantman, at which she fired a shot, by way of making her bring-to. The forts at Kertch instantly opened, shot after shot splashed up the water near the gunboat, which kept intrepidly on her way. As the man-of-war schooner ran down towards the Russian steamer, the latter gained courage, slackened her speed, and lay-to as if to engage her enemy. A sheet of flame and smoke rushed from the gunboat's sides, and her shot flying over the Russian, tossed up a pillar of water far beyond her. Alarmed at this taste of her opponent's quality, and intimation of her armament, the Russian took flight, and the schooner wore and bore away for Yenikale again, with the gunboat after both of them. Off the narrow straits between Yenikale and the sandbank as the English gunboat, which had been joined by another, ran towards them, a Russian battery opened upon her from the town. The gunboats still dashed at their enemies, which tacked, wore, and ran in all directions, as a couple of hawks would harry a flock of larks.

Sir Edmund Lyon sent off light steamers to reinforce the two hardy little fellows, the French steamers also rushed to the rescue. The batteries on the sandbank were silenced; they blew up their magazines, and the fort at Yenikale soon followed their example.

There was a pretty strong current running at the rate of about three miles an hour over the flats off the town of Yenikale, and the water was almost as turbid as that of the Thames, and of a more yellow hue, as it rushed from the Sea of Azoff. Two gunboats, carrying twelve small pieces each, were moored off the forts{268} of Yenikale, and there was a floating battery close to them armed with two very heavy guns, the floor being flush with the water, and the guns quite uncovered. One man was found dead in the battery at Yenikale, lying, as he fell, with the match in his hand, close to the gun he was about to fire, and two more Russians were found dead on the beach, but they looked as if they had been killed by the explosion of the magazine. The guns in Yenikale were new and fine. Some of them were mounted on a curious kind of swivel—the platforms were upon the American principle. One brass piece, which was lying near the guard-house, was said to have been taken from the Turks at Sinope. Two barks, armed on the main-deck with guns, and used as transports, were resting on the sand, where they had been sunk by our ships as they attempted to escape to the Sea of Azoff. It was suspected that there were few regular troops in proportion to the numbers in and about Kertch and Yenikale, and that there was a large proportion of invalids, local militia men, and pensioners among the soldiers who made such a feeble and inglorious defence. The appearance of our armada as it approached must have been most formidable. The hospital, which was in excellent order, contained sick and wounded soldiers, the former suffering from rheumatism, the latter sent from Sebastopol. The enemy fired the magazine close at hand without caring for these unfortunate fellows, and every pane of glass in the windows was shattered to pieces by the explosion. The total number of guns taken at Yenikale was about twenty-five, of which ten were in a battery inside the old Genoese ramparts, four in a detached battery, and eleven lying partially dismounted about the works.

At about half-past six o'clock the batteries in the Bay of Kertch ceased firing, and the Russians abandoned the town. Dark pillars of smoke, tinged at the base with flame, began to shoot up all over the hill-sides. Some of them rose from the government houses and stores of Ambalaki, where we landed; others from isolated houses further inland; others from stores, which the retreating Russians destroyed in their flight. Constant explosions shook the air, and single guns sounded here and there continuously throughout the night. Here a ship lay blazing on a sandbank; there a farm-house in flames lighted up the sky, and obscured the pale moon with volumes of inky smoke.

As there was nothing to be done at sea, the ships being brought to anchor far south of the scene of action with the gunboats, it was resolved to land at the nearest spot, which was about one mile and a half or two miles from Pavlovskaya Battery. A row of half a mile brought us from our anchorage, where the ship lay, in three fathoms, to a beautiful shelving beach, which was exposed, however, only for a few yards, as the rich sward grew close to the brink of the tideless sea. The water at the shore, unaffected by the current, was clear, and abounded in fish. The land rose abruptly, at the distance of 200 yards from the beach, to a ridge parallel to the line of the sea about 100 feet in height, and the interval between the shore and the ridge was dotted with houses, in patches here and there, through which the French were already{269} running riot, breaking in doors, pursuing hens, smashing windows—in fact, "plundering," in which they were assisted by all of our men who could get away.

Highlanders, in little parties, sought about for water, or took a stray peep after a "bit keepsake" in the houses on their way to the wells, but the French were always before them, and great was the grumbling at the comparative license allowed to our allies. The houses were clean outside and in—whitewashed neatly, and provided with small well-glazed windows, which were barely adequate, however, to light up the two rooms of which each dwelling consisted, but the heavy sour smell inside was most oppressive and disagreeable; it seemed to proceed from the bags of black bread and vessels of fish oil which were found in every cabin. Each dwelling had out-houses, stables for cattle, pens, bakeries, and rude agricultural implements outside. The ploughs were admirably described by Virgil, and a reference to Adams's Antiquities will save me a world of trouble in satisfying the curiosity of the farming interest at home. Notwithstanding the great richness of the land, little had been done by man to avail himself of its productiveness. I never in my life saw such quantities of weeds or productions of such inexorable ferocity towards pantaloons, or such eccentric flowers of huge dimensions, as the ground outside these cottages bore. The inhabitants were evidently graziers rather than agriculturists. Around every house were piles of a substance like peat, which is made, we were informed, from the dung of cattle, and is used as fuel. The cattle, however, had been all driven away. None were taken that I saw, though the quantity which fed in the fields around must have been very great. Poultry and ducks were, however, captured in abundance, and a party of Chasseurs, who had taken a huge wild-looking boar, were in high delight at their fortune, and soon despatched and cut him up into junks with their swords. The furniture was all smashed to pieces; the hens and ducks, captives to the bow and spear of the Gaul, were cackling and quacking piteously as they were carried off in bundles from their homes by Zouaves and Chasseurs. Every house we entered was ransacked, and every cupboard had a pair of red breeches sticking out of it, and a blue coat inside of it. Vessels of stinking oil, bags of sour bread, casks of flour or ham, wretched clothing, old boots, beds ripped up for treasure, the hideous pictures of saints on panelling or paper which adorned every cottage, with lamps suspended before them, were lying on the floors. Droles dressed themselves in faded pieces of calico dresses or aged finery lying hid in old drawers, and danced about the gardens. One house, which had been occupied as a guard-house, and was marked on a board over the door "No. 7 Kardone," was a scene of especial confusion. Its inmates had evidently fled in great disorder, for their greatcoats and uniform jackets strewed the floors, and bags of the black bread filled every corner, as well as an incredible quantity of old boots. A French soldier, who, in his indignation at not finding anything of value,{270} had with great wrath devastated the scanty and nasty-looking furniture, was informing his comrades outside of the atrocities which had been committed, and added, with the most amusing air of virtue in the world, "Ah, Messieurs, Messieurs! ces brigands! ils ont volés tout!" No doubt he had settled honourably with the proprietor of a large bundle of living poultry which hung panting over his shoulders, and which were offered to us upon very reasonable terms. We were glad to return from a place which a soldier of the 71st said "A Glasgae beggar wad na tak a gift o'."

In the evening the Spitfire buoyed a passage past Kertch towards Yenikale, and the Miranda, Stromboli, and gunboats ran up the newly marked channel. Next morning (the 25th) the troops after a fatiguing march entered Yenikale. Mr. Williams, master of the Miranda, buoyed a channel into the Sea of Azoff. The allied squadrons, commanded by Captain Lyons, Miranda, consisted of Curlew, Swallow, Stromboli, Vesuvius, Medina, Ardent, Recruit, Wrangler, Beagle, Viper, Snake, Arrow, and Lynx, entered the great Russian lake in the afternoon.

Captain Lyons' squadron, in the Sea of Azoff, meantime inflicted tremendous losses on the enemy. Within four days after the squadron passed the Straits of Kertch they had destroyed 245 Russian vessels employed in carrying provisions to the Russian army in the Crimea, many of them of large size, and fully equipped and laden. Some of these ships had been built for this specific purpose. Immense magazines of corn, flour, and breadstuffs were destroyed at Berdiansk and Genitchi, comprising altogether more than 7,000,000 rations, and the stores at Taganrog were set on fire, and much corn consumed. Arabat was bombarded, and the powder magazine blown up, but, as there were no troops on board the vessels, and as the Russians were in force, it seemed more desirable to Captain Lyons to urge on the pursuit of the enemy's vessels than to stay before a place which must very soon fall into our hands. At Berdiansk the enemy were forced to run on shore and burn four war steamers, under the command of Rear-Admiral Wolff. At Kertch the enemy destroyed upwards of 4,000,000lbs. of corn and 500,000lbs. of flour.

Yenikale derives its importance from its position on a promontory close to the entrance of the Sea of Azoff, at the northern extremity of the Straits of Kertch. Another of the singular banks to be found in this part of the world, shooting from the north-eastern extremity of the Taman Peninsula, runs through the sea in a southerly and westerly direction for seven miles and a half towards Yenikale, and contracts the strait to the breadth of a mile and three-quarters just before it opens into the Sea of Azoff. On this bank, which is full of salt-water marshes, and is two or three miles broad in some places, the Russians had a strong battery commanding the ferry station, armed with long and heavy 36-pounders, and a number of Government buildings of a mean description, and there were great numbers of fishing huts and curing sheds also upon it. The town consisted of two parts—one a suburb of houses close to the water's edge, and commanded by a ridge of high land rising{271} gradually from the sea. The church, a handsome building in the Byzantine style, stood on the hill-side, in the midst of this suburb. The other part consisted of the fort, which was formed by a quadrangular rampart, armed at the angles with bastions and small turrets. Each side of the square was about a quarter of a mile long. The side parallel to the sea-wall was on the top of the ridge, into which the ground rose gradually from the sea, and the sea-wall itself had at its base a broad quay by the water's edge. The ridge once gained, the country extended before one in a spacious plateau, with conical mounds and tumuli, forming natural advanced posts for vedettes in the distance. On the land side the ramparts were provided with embrasures, and were crenellated for musketry; the walls, though very old, were of great solidity, and were tolerably well preserved. Inside the enclosure were the hospital, the Government House, the barrack, the batteries, and the stores and magazines. One of the magazines which was blown up completely destroyed about two hundred feet of the curtain of the work on the land side. There were marks of ancient entrenchments outside the walls, and the moats, ditches, covered ways, &c., very well defined.

The march from Ambalaki to Yenikale was most distressing. The heat of the day was overpowering, and water was scanty and bad. Of 864 Marines who landed from the fleet, four-fifths fell out on the march, the men of that gallant corps not being accustomed to such exertions. The Highlanders fell out in great numbers also, and the tailing off was extraordinary, although the distance was not six miles. When the men did arrive it was found that the tents had not come, and the soldiers were exposed to the blaze of the sun, aggravated by scarcity of water and by salt meat. The officers' baggage was left behind at Ambalaki, and many of them had to lie in their clothes on the ground in a season when night dews are heavy and dangerous. The men had their blankets; the officers had nothing.

Immense quantities of caviare, of dried sturgeon, and of a coarse-scaled fish like a bream, were found in every village, and were relished by our soldiers, but they had very imperfect means of gratifying the thirst which followed, and the stores of country wine (some of it excellent, in spite of the adulteration of essence of roses) were nearly all drank up. The water of the straits was brackish, and our horses, as well as the native cattle, drank it readily, but its taste was very mawkish and disagreeable.

As there was nothing doing at Yenikale, I took an opportunity of paying Kertch a visit. It is only a run of some three or four miles by sea, but the channel is very difficult. As we approached the town, long columns of gray smoke were visible rising from the corn stores, and working parties could be made out on the shore engaged in removing various articles which could be turned to the account of the allies.

Sir George Brown took up his quarters in Yenikale. But the town was set on fire in two places, and it required all the exertions of the authorities to prevent the flames spreading and devastating the whole place. The houses were smashed open, the furniture{272} broken to pieces, and "looting" and plundering were the order or the disorder of the day. Two of the 42nd Highlanders, who were in a crowd assembled round a house, were shot in a very extraordinary manner. A French soldier struck at the closed door with the butt of his musket. The concussion discharged the piece, and the ball killed one of the men on the spot, and wounded the other severely.

The Austrian flag floated before one house, probably that of the Imperial Consul; but the more significant standards of France and England were waving at either end of the quay, and fluttered from numerous boats glancing over the water. The quays were guarded by a few sailors with drawn cutlasses stationed here and there, and with difficulty holding their own against refractory merchantmen. In every direction, wherever the eye turned, up or down the streets, men could be seen hurrying away with bundles under their arms, with furniture on their backs, or staggering under the influence of drink and bedding down to the line of boats which were lying at the sea-wall, laden to the thwarts with plunder. This kind of work is called by sailors "looting," from our Indian reminiscences. The fate of nearly every house of good condition was soon apparent. The windows were broken, the doors smashed open, and men went in and out like bees in a hive. All the smaller and more valuable articles had been removed, either by the Turks or by the Tartars, but big arm-chairs, pictures of the saints with metallic glories round their heads, large feather-beds, card-tables, and books in unknown tongues and type, seemed to possess a strange infatuation for Jack, and to move him as irresistibly as horseflesh.

There were plenty of Tartars in the streets, dressed in black sheepskin cap, or white turban, with handsome jackets and wide breeches of dark silk or fine stuff, and gaudy sashes round their waists. These fellows were of the true Calmuck type—with bullet head, forehead villanously low, dark, piggish, roguish, twinkling eyes, obtuse, obstinate noses, straight lips, and globular chin. Unlike most people, they improve in looks as they grow old, for their beards, which only attain amplitude in age, then give a grisly dignity and patriarchal air to their faces. Groups of men in long lank frock-coats, long waistcoats, trousers tucked into their boots or falling down over slipshod feet, sat on the door-steps, in aspect and attire the very image of a congregation of seedy Puseyites, if such a thing could be imagined. Most of these men wore caps instead of hats, their clothing was of sober snuffy hues, to match their faces, which were sombre and dirty and sallow. Their looks were dejected and miserable, and as an Englishman or a Frenchman came near, they made haste to rise and to salute his mightiness with uncovered head and obsequious noddings and gesticulations. These were the remnants of the Russian population, but there were among them Jews, who might have stepped on any stage amid rounds of applause, in garb and face and aspect so truly Shylock-like were they, cringing, wily, and spiteful, as though they had just been kicked across the Rialto; and there was also a{273} sprinkling of Armenians and Greeks; they were all lean and unhappy alike, and very sorry specimens of Muscovite bourgeoisie.

Tartar women, scantily covered, were washing clothes in the sea, like tamed Hecates—withered, angular, squalid, and ugly in face and form. The Russian fair, not much more tastily clad, might be seen flitting about with an air of awkward coquetry, mingled with apprehension and dislike of the intruders, their heads covered with shawls, and their bodies with bright Manchester patterns. The boys, like boys all over the world, were merry and mischievous. They hung out of the riggings of the vessels near, pelted the street dogs, "chivied" the cats and pigeons, and rioted in the gutted houses and amid the open storehouses in the highest possible spirits, or fed ravenously on dried fish and "goodies" of various kinds, which they picked up in old drawers and boxes in the houses torn open by the "looters." The houses were well supplied with poultry, nor were pigs, rabbits, cats, dogs, and other domestic animals deficient. Each mansion was complete in itself; they were like those in the older streets of Boulogne, and the interiors were furnished somewhat in the same fashion—plenty of mirrors, and hard, inflexible, highly varnished, unsubstantial furniture, no carpets, lots of windows (doubled, by-the-by, to keep out the cold) and doors, and long corridors; the windows and doors were, however, handsomely mounted with brass work, and locks, bolts, and hinges, of great solidity, of the same metal, were exclusively used in the better rooms. The Russian stove, as a matter of course, was found in each apartment. Spacious vaults underneath the houses were often used as storehouses for corn, and the piles of empty and broken bottles marked the locality of the wine-cellar. Icehouses were attached to many residences, and their contents were very welcome to the ships.

The market-place is a large piece of ground of an oval shaper surrounded by a piazza and shops and magazines of an inferior class. Most of them were shut, and fastened up, but butchers displayed some good English-looking beef, and the sounds of English revelry were very distinct from the interior of a wine-shop at the end of an arcade, where some sailors were drinking Russian champagne at 3s. a bottle, and smoking cheap and nasty cigars of native manufacture. Amid the distracting alphabetical mysteries of Cyrillus, which were stuck up on most of these doors, where all one's knowledge of other languages led him hopelessly astray, and where P was R, and H was N, there was sometimes an intelligible announcement that Mdlle. So-and-so was a modiste from Paris, or that M. Brugger was a bootmaker "of the first force" from Vienna. The greater number of the houses in the streets were entered through a large courtyard, surrounded by the offices and out-buildings, to which admission was gained by a porte-cochère. There were baths, libraries, schools, literary associations, and academies in Kertch of pretensions beyond its size.

All the military and civil archives of Kertch since 1824 were discovered in a boat towed by the steamer which the Snake had chased, huddled up with the valuables of the Governor of Kertch.{274} In general our army found but little plunder—they had been reined tightly in; while the French and the merchant sailors had the benefit of the pillage; but the 79th Regiment were a little fortunate in finding at the advanced post to which they were sent, near the Quarantine station, a considerable amount of plate in one of the houses.

The hospital was a large, well-built, clean, and excellently ventilated building. It was situated at the outskirts of the town, and was surrounded by iron railings, inside which there was a plantation, which furnished a pleasant shade from the noontide sun to the convalescents. As we entered, some women, who were standing at the gate, retreated, and an old man, with a good clear eye, and an honest soldierly air, came forward to meet us with the word "Hospital," which he had learned as a kind of safeguard and protection against intrusion. He led the way into a dark corridor on the ground floor, on the walls of which the regulations of the establishment (in Russian) were suspended. The wards opened on each side of this corridor. The old man invited us to enter the first: it was spacious and airy, but the hospital smell of wounded men was there. Five wounded Russians and one drunken Englishman were the occupants of the chamber. Two of the Russians had been blown up when the magazines exploded. Their hands and heads were covered with linen bandages, through which holes were cut for the eyes and mouth. What could be seen of these poor wretches gave a horrible impression of their injuries and of the pain which they were enduring, but they gave no outward indication of their sufferings. Their scorched eyes rolled heavily upon the visitors with a kind of listless curiosity. The other men had been shot in various parts of the body, and had probably been sent there from Sebastopol: in one or two I recognized the old Inkerman type of face and expression. The bed and bedclothes were clean and good, and at the head of each bed black tablets of wood were fixed to receive the record of the patient's name, his disease, &c.

On reaching the street we found the people returning to the town—that is, the Tartars were flocking back from the villages where they had been hiding, with bundles of property, much of which they had probably stolen from the Russian houses.

As every wrecked house bore a strong family likeness to its fellow, we entered only one or two, and then wandered through the streets, which were almost deserted by the inhabitants during the heat of the day. Towards evening a number of wounded Russians—forty-seven, I believe—were brought down from Yenikale, whither they had been taken by the gunboats from various places along the coast, and were landed on the quay. They were subsequently sent to the hospital. The Tartar arabas and droschkies were pressed into the service. As each wounded man passed, the women crowded round to look at him out of the houses; but there was more of curiosity than compassion in their looks; and they took care to inform us they were Jews, and had no sympathy with the Muscovite. Once they stared with wonder at the taste and inborn politeness of a French soldier, who joined the group as a{275} Russian was borne by on a litter. The man's eyes were open, and as he went past he caught sight of the Frenchman and smiled feebly, why or wherefore it is impossible for me to say, but the Frenchman at once removed his cap, made a bow to the "brave," and stood with uncovered head till the latter had been carried some yards beyond him.

In the evening all the inhabitants remaining in the town flocked out of their houses and conversed at the corners of the streets, or at favourite gossip-posts. They were an unhealthy and by no means well-favoured race, whether Tartars, Greeks, Jews, or Muscovites. It must be remembered, however, that all the people of rank had fled. Some of the tradespeople, with greater confidence in our integrity than could have been expected, kept their shops open. In a well-fitted apteka or apothecary's shop, we got a seidlitzy imitation of soda-water, prepared from a box, marked in English, "Improved Sodaic Powders, for Making Soda-water;" and some of our party fitted themselves at a bootmaker's with very excellent Wellingtons, for which they paid at their discretion, and according to a conqueror's tariff, 15s. a pair; the proprietor seemed rather apprehensive that he was not going to receive anything at all. Indeed it would have been well if the inhabitants had remained to guard their houses, instead of flying from them, and leaving them shut up and locked, the very thing to provoke the plunderer.

The dockyard magazines at Kertch contained quantities of military and naval stores—boiler plates, lathes, engineers' tools, paint, canvas, hemp and chain cables, bales of greatcoats, uniform jackets, trowsers and caps, knapsacks, belts, bayonets, swords, scabbards, anchors, copper nails and bolts, implements of foundry, brass, rudder-pintles, lead, &c. The French were busy for a few days in taking the clothing, &c., out of the storehouses and destroying it. The valuable stores were divided between the allies, according to their good fortune and energy in appropriation. Numbers of old boats, of large rudders, covered with copper and hung on brass, of small guns, of shot, shell, grape, and canister, were lying in the dockyard. An infernal machine of curious construction attracted a great deal of attention. Like most devices of the kind, it had failed to be of the slightest service. Outside the walls of the dockyard, which was filled with oxen and horses, was another long range of public buildings and storehouses, which had been nearly all gutted and destroyed. Soldiers' caps, belts, coats, trowsers, cartouche-boxes, knapsacks, and canteens, were strewn all over the quay in front of them. In a word, Kertch had ceased to be a military or naval station, and the possession which Russia so eagerly coveted a few years before was of no more use to her than the snows of the Tchatir Dagh.

On Friday night the work of destroying Russian stores began; the French hurled guns into the sea, tore up the platforms, and exploded the shells found in the magazines. Parties of boats were sent in all directions to secure and burn prizes, to fire the storehouses and huts on the sandbanks; by day the sky was streaked{276} with lines of smoke, and by night the air was illuminated by the blaze of forts, houses, magazines, and vessels aground on the flats for miles around us.

The Austrian Consul was found to have a large store of corn, which he concealed in magazines painted and decorated to pass as part of his dwelling-house. It was all destroyed. Amid the necessary destruction, private plunderers found facility for their work. The scene presented by the town could only be likened to that presented by Palmyra, fresh from the hands of the destroyer, or some other type of desolation. Along the quay there was a long line of walls, which once were the fronts of storehouses, magazines, mansions, and palaces. They were empty shells, hollow and roofless, with fire burning luridly within them by night, and streaks and clouds of parti-coloured smoke arising from them by day. The white walls were barred with black bands where the fire had rushed out of the window-frames. These storehouses belonged to Russians, and were full of corn—these magazines were the enemy's—these mansions belonged to their nobles and governors—and these palaces were the residences of their princes and rulers; and so far we carried on war with all the privileges of war, and used all the consequences of conquest. In the whole lengthened front facing the sea, and the wide quay which bordered it, there was not an edifice untouched but one. This was a fine mansion, with a grand semicircular front, ornamented with rich entablatures and a few Grecian pillars. The windows permitted one to see massive mirrors and the framework of pictures and the glitter of brasswork. Inside the open door an old man in an arm-chair received everybody. How deferential he was! how he bowed! how graceful, deprecatory, and soothing the modulation of his trunk and arms! But these were nothing to his smile. His face seemed a kind of laughing-clock, wound up to act for so many hours. When the machinery was feeble, towards evening, the laugh degenerated into a grin, but he had managed with nods, and cheeks wreathed in smiles, and a little bad German and French, to inform all comers that this house was specially under English and French protection, and thus to save it from plunder and pillage. The house belonged, on dit, to Prince Woronzoff, and the guardian angel was an aged servitor of the Prince, who, being paralytic, was left behind, and had done good service in his arm-chair.

The silence of places which a few days before were full of people was exceedingly painful and distressing. It reigned in every street, almost in every house, except when the noise of gentlemen playing on pianos with their boot-heels, or breaking up furniture, was heard within the houses, or the flames crackled within the walls. In some instances the people had hoisted the French or Sardinian flag to protect their houses. That poor device was soon detected and frustrated. It was astonishing to find that the humblest dwellings had not escaped. They must have been invaded for the mere purpose of outrage and from the love of mischief, for the most miserable of men could have but little hope of discovering within them booty worthy of his notice.{277}

It was decided to occupy Pavlovskaia, because it was in a fine position to command the entrance to Kertch and Yenikale, at a place where the channel is narrowed by one of the sandbanks from Taman to the breadth of a mile and a half. Defensive lines were thrown up around Yenikale of the most massive and durable character. They enclosed the ramparts of the old town, and presented on every side towards the land a broad ditch, a steep parapet defended by redoubts, and broken into batteries, which were aided by the fire of the pieces on the walls.

The point or bank of Tcherhka, opposite Yenikale, is one of the many extraordinary spits of land which abound in this part of the world, and which are, as far as I know, without example in any other country. Of all these the Spit of Arabat, which is a bank but a few feet above the water, and is in some places only a furlong in breadth, is the most remarkable. It is nearly 70 miles in length, and its average width less than half a mile from sea to sea. The bank of Tcherhka (or Savernaia Rosa), which runs for nearly eight miles in a south-westerly direction from Cape Kammenoi past Yenikale, closes up the Bay of Kertch on the west, and the Gulf of Taman on the east, is a type of these formations, and is sufficiently interesting to deserve a visit. It only differs from Arabat in size, and in the absence of the fresh-water wells which are found at long intervals on the great road from Arabat to Genitchi. It is so low that it is barely six feet above the level of the sea. A bank of sand on both sides of the spit, piled up three or four feet in height, marks the boundary of the beach. The latter, which is a bank of shingle, shells, and fine sand, is only a few yards broad, and is terminated by the sand and rank grass and rushes of the spit, which rises up a foot or two above the beach.

In the interior, or on the body of the bank, there are numerous lagunes—narrow strips of water much more salt than that of the adjacent sea. Some of these are only a few yards in length and a few feet in breadth, others extend for a quarter of a mile, and are about 100 yards broad. They are all bounded alike by thick high grass and rushes. The bottom, at the depth of a few feet—often at two or three inches—consists of hard sand covered with slimy green vegetable matter. The water abounds in small flounders and dabs, and in shrimps, which jump about in wild commotion at an approaching footstep. Every lagune is covered with mallards and ducks in pairs, and the fringes of the spit are the resort of pelicans and cormorants innumerable. The silence, the dreary solitude of the scene is beyond description. Even the birds, mute as they are at the season of my visit, appeared to be preternaturally quiet and voiceless. Multitudes of old, crustaceous-looking polypous plants sprang up through the reeds; and bright-coloured flycatchers, with orange breasts and black wings, poised over their nests below them.

The first day I went over, we landed upon the beach close to the battery which the Russians placed on the spit at the Ferry station. It consisted of a quadrangular work of sandbags, constructed in a very durable manner, and evidently not long made. In the centre{278} of the square there was a whitewashed house, which served as a barrack for the garrison. The walls only were left, and the smoke rose from the ashes of the roof and rafters inside the shell. Our men had fired it when they landed. A pool of brackish water was enclosed by the battery, which must have been the head-quarters of ague and misery. The sailors said the house swarmed with vermin, and had a horrible odour. Nothing was found in it but the universal black bread and some salt fish. The garrison, some 30 or 40 men probably, had employed themselves in a rude kind of agriculture, and farming or pasturage. Patches of ground were cleared here and there, and gave feeble indications that young potatoes were struggling for life beneath. Large ricks of reeds and coarse grass had been gathered round the battery, but were reduced to ashes. At the distance of a hundred yards from the battery there was another whitewashed house, or the shell of it, with similar signs of rural life about it, and an unhappy-looking cat trod gingerly among the hot embers, and mewed piteously in the course of her fruitless search for her old corner. The traces of herds of cattle, which were probably driven down from the mainland to feed on the grass round the salt marshes, were abundant. There was a track beaten into the semblance of a road over the sand from the battery to Taman, and it was covered with proofs of the precipitate flight of the garrison. Pieces of uniform, bags containing pieces of the universal black bread, strings of onions, old rags, empty sacks and bottles, were found along the track, and some of our party came upon a large chest, which was full of Government papers, stamps, custom-house and quarantine dockets, stamped paper for Imperial petitions and postage, books of tariff and customs in Russian, French, German, and English, and tables of port dues, which we took away to any amount. The heat of the sun, the vapours from the salt lakes, the mosquitoes, the vermin, and the odour, must have formed a terrible combination of misery in close barracks in the dog-days, and have rendered going out, staying in, lying down, and standing up, equally desperate and uncomfortable. The enemy relied considerably on the shallow water to save him from attack, but he was also prepared with heavy metal for gunboats, such as they were in the old war, and he was no doubt astonished when the large shot from the Lancaster guns began to fall upon his works from the small hulls of our despatch gunboats. One of the gunboats which lay off the fort—a mere hulk, without masts or cordage, of 150 tons burden, with embrasures through her sides on the deck for nine small guns—was found to be filled below with the most complete series of galvanic apparatus, attached to vessels full of powder, intended to explode on contact with the keel of a vessel. The submarine machines with their strange cups and exploding apparatus were recognized by Mr. Deane, the diver, as portions of the same kinds of instruments as those he employed in submarine operations. All were regularly numbered, and, as there was a break in the series, it afforded reason for believing that some of them were actually sunk; but the wires connecting them with the battery on board the ship{279} were cut the night we forced the Straits, and the vessel itself was scuttled subsequently. There were many miles of wire, and the number of cells indicated a very powerful battery.

The pillage of Kertch still went on; the inhabitants fled. Even the Tartars were in terror. For two or three days the beach was crowded by women and children, who sat out under the rays of the scorching sun to find safety in numbers. They were starving, and miserably clad, and in charity were taken on board the Ripon, which sailed with them for some Russian port. They were about two hundred in number. Mothers had lost their children, and children were without their mothers. In the confusion which prevailed they were separated, and the Caton carried some off to the Sea of Azoff, and the Ripon took others off to Odessa or Yalta. Our attempts to prevent outrage and destruction were of the feeblest and most contemptible character. If a sailor was found carrying any articles—books, or pictures, or furniture—they were taken from him at the beach and cast into the sea. The result was that the men, when they got loose in the town, where there was no control over them, broke to pieces everything that they could lay their hands on. We did not interfere with French or Turks, and our measures against our own men were harsh, ridiculous, and impotent.{280}

Prince Woronzoff's house was said to be under the protection of the English and French. Was he protected because he was a Prince, or merely because he was supposed to be friendly to the Englishmen, and connected with some English families? Sir George Brown assuredly had no natural sympathy with pure aristocracy or with anything but pure democratic soldiery and military good fortune. It might have been—nay, it was—right to save Prince Woronzoff's house, but would it not have been equally proper to protect the stock-in-trade of some miserable Russian mechanic who remained in the town trusting to our clemency, and who was ruined by a few brutal sailors? Prince Woronzoff had many palaces. His friendly feelings towards England were at best known to but few, and were certainly of no weight with Frenchmen, because those sentiments, if they existed at all, dated from a period antecedent to the true entente cordiale, and were suggestive of anything but good liking towards Frenchmen. However, the house was so far safe, and if we were sorry that the museum was sacked, we might be proud that the palace was spared. The marks of useless destruction and of wanton violence and outrage were too numerous and too distressing to let us rest long on the spectacle of this virgin palace.

The following extract from a "General After Order," which came out subsequently, gives a summary of the operations effected by our expeditionary force:—

Subsequently an attack was made on Taganrog, but the depth{281} of water off the port did not permit the larger vessels to approach near enough to cover the landing of armed parties, to destroy the immense stores of corn effectually; nevertheless a good deal of harm was done to the Russians, and public and private property largely injured. It was on the occasion of the demonstration against this important town, apparently, that the germ of the great idea of the Monitor, which has revolutionized the navies of the world, was developed by Lt. Cowper Coles, R.N. He mounted a gun on a raft and defended it with gabions, and he was enabled to bring this floating battery, which he called the Lady Nancy, into action with great effect against Taganrog. In the development of that idea called the Captain he lost his life in 1870. These operations along the coasts of the Sea of Azoff certainly caused losses to the enemy, and may have done something to create temporary inconvenience; they were effected in a legitimate if rather barbarous exercise of the rights of war, but when a few months subsequently the British Army before Sebastopol was in such need of corn that contractors were sent out to buy it in the United States, it must have occurred to the authorities that they had countenanced senseless waste, and authorized wanton destruction, to their great eventual detriment. As the naval forces were obliged to retire after each bombardment, and the landing of armed parties was only temporary, the enemy generally claimed the credit of having repulsed them, and Russia was inundated with accounts of the disasters caused by the bravery of priests and peasants, and divine interposition, to the audacious invaders who had ventured to pollute her holy soil. Cheap prints of the defence of Taganrog, &c., were published and sold by the thousand, and the people were excited by accounts of the death of innocent people, of the sacking of undefended cities, and of arson and pillage and wreck. Kertch and Yenikale were placed in a state of defence and garrisoned, and eventually the Turkish Contingent was stationed on the coast and in the town, and a small force of infantry and cavalry was detached from the British to aid them. The Contingent, composed of Turks under British officers, became a highly disciplined body, fit for any duty, but its value and conduct were not exhibited in the field, and it was employed as a corps of defence and observation on the Bay of Kertch till the war was over, when it and the other corps raised abroad under British officers, such as the Swiss Legion, the German Legion, &c., were disbanded. The Russians soon sent a corps to observe the movements of the force stationed at Kertch and Yenikale, and hemmed them in with Cossacks, and some slight affairs of outposts and reconnoitring parties occurred during the autumn and winter, in one of which a party of the 10th Hussars had difficulty in extricating itself, and suffered some loss from a larger body of the enemy. The work of the expedition to Kertch having been accomplished by the occupation of the town and straits, and by obtaining complete command of the entrance of the Sea of Azoff, the Allied fleets returned to Kamiesh and to the anchorage off Sebastopol, to participate as far as they could in the task of the siege.{282}

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

WHILST I was away with the Kertch expedition, the siege was pressed on by the French with great vigour, and our army was actively employed in preparing for the bombardment which was to precede the fall of the place, as all fondly hoped and believed. There were intervals in the day when you might suppose that "villanous saltpetre" had no more to do with a modern siege than an ancient one, and that all this demonstration of a state of conflict was merely an amicable suit upon an extensive scale. There were times at night when angry and sudden explosions sprang up as if by some unaccountable impulse or conjuration, and continued with an impetuosity which seemed as if it intended to finish the whole business in a moment. There were times when the red fusees turned and tumbled in the air like hot coals belched out of a volcano, and danced successive hornpipes upon nothing; then the clatter of small arms broke upon the ear in distant imitation of the heavy artillery, like a little dog yelping in gratuitous rivalry of a big one. The fighting was done by jerks and starts, and the combatants, like Homer's heroes, stood at ease the best part of the time, and took it coolly, meaning deadly mischief all the while. The sharpest onset was generally on the side of our allies, about the Flagstaff or the Quarantine Battery, where they were sedulously advancing their endless mileage of trench and parallel, and promising themselves a result before long.

For the third time our fire was opened along the whole range of positions on the 6th of June. At half-past two o'clock on that day 157 guns and mortars on our side, and above 300 on that of the French, awoke from silence to tumult.

The two armies—one might say the four armies, but that the Turks and Sardinians were not expected to take a very prominent part in the trench-work and assault—were in strength equal to any achievement, and in spirits ever chiding the delay, and urging that one touch of the bayonet which made all the world scamper. If the strategic necessity pointed to some more decisive{283} action this time, so, on the other hand, the intention of going beyond a vain cannonade was tolerably plain. Our fire was kept up for the first three hours with excessive rapidity, the Russians answering by no means on an equal scale, though with considerable warmth. On our side the predominance of shells was very manifest, and distinguished the present cannonade in some degree even from the last. The superiority of our fire over the enemy became apparent at various points before nightfall, especially in the Redan, which was under the especial attention of the Naval Brigade. The Russians displayed, however, plenty of determination and bravado. They fired frequent salvos at intervals of four or six guns, and also, by way of reprisals, threw heavy shot up to our Light Division and on to the Picquet-house-hill. After dark the animosity on both sides gave signs of relaxing, but the same relative advantage was maintained by our artillery. It was a sultry day, with the dull mist of extreme heat closing down upon the valleys, and with no air to rend away the curtain of smoke which swayed between the town and our batteries; and at night flashes of lightning in the north-east made a counter-illumination on the rear of our position.

A still and sluggish atmosphere, half mist, half gunpowder, hung about the town in the early morning of June the 7th, and the sun enfilading the points of view from the horizon, telescopes were put out of joint. The Redan, however, which rose up boldly in front of the hills that sloped from Cathcart's Mound, gave some evidence of having yielded to rough treatment, the jaws of its embrasures gaping, and its fire being irregular and interrupted.

At nine a cool, strong breeze sprang up, and continued throughout the day. The whole range of fire from right to left became visible in a bright sun, that for once was not scorching. The enemy either could not or would not keep up a very vigorous reply. All the early part of the day we had the work very much to ourselves.

About eleven o'clock a shell from the Russians exploded a magazine in our eight-gun battery, and a yell of delight followed. Very slight harm resulted—one man was killed, one wounded, and a few scorched a little. As the day wore on, it leaked out that the double attack would probably commence at five or six P.M. An immense concourse of officers and men was gathered on Cathcart's Hill, and along the spines of the heights which wind towards Sebastopol. The fire on our side assumed a sudden fury about three o'clock.

Between five and six o'clock Lord Raglan and his staff took up a position on the edge of the hill below the Limekiln, where it commanded our four-gun battery, and looked straight into the teeth of the Redan. About half-past six the head of the French column came into view, as it climbed to the Mamelon. A rocket was thrown up, and instantly our men made a rush at the Quarries. After one slight check they drove out the Russians, and, turning round the gabions, commenced making themselves snug; but the interest was so entirely concentrated upon the more exciting scene, full in view upon the right, that they had to wait a good while before attention was directed to their conflict.{284}

The French went up the steep to the Mamelon in loose order, and in most beautiful style. Every straining eye was upon their movements, which the declining daylight did not throw out into bold relief. Still their figures, like light shadows flitting across the dun barrier of earthworks, were seen to mount up unfailingly—running, climbing, scrambling up the slopes on to the body of the work, amid a plunging fire from the guns, which did them as yet little damage. As an officer, who saw Bosquet wave them on, said, "They went in like a clever pack of hounds." In a moment some of these dim wraiths shone out clear against the sky. The Zouaves were upon the parapet, the next moment a flag was hoisted up as a rallying-point and defiance, and was seen to sway hither and thither, now up, now down, as the tide of battle raged. It was seven minutes and a half from the commencement. Then there came a rush of the French through the angle, where they had entered, and momentary confusion outside. Groups were collected on the hither side in shelter. But hardly had the need of support become manifest, and a gun or two again flashed from the embrasure, than there was another run in, another sharp fight, and this time the Russians went out spiking their guns. Twice the Russians made head against the current, for they had a large mass of troops in reserve, covered by the guns of the Round Tower; twice they were forced back by the onsweeping flood of French. For ten minutes or so the quick flash and roll of small arms declared how the uncertain fight waxed and waned inside the enclosure. Then the back door, if one may use an humble metaphor, was burst open. The noise of the conflict went away down the descent on the side towards the town, and the arena grew larger. It was apparent by the space over which the battle spread, that the Russians had been reinforced. When the higher ground again became the seat of action,—when there came the second rush of the French back upon their supports, for the former one was a mere reflux or eddy of the stream,—when rocket after rocket went up ominously from the French General's position, and seemed to emphasize by their repetition some very plain command, we began to get nervous. It was growing darker and darker, too, so that with our glasses we could with difficulty distinguish the actual state of affairs. There was even a dispute for some time as to whether our allies were going in or out of the work, and the staff themselves were by no means clear as to what was going on. At last, through the twilight, we discerned that the French were pouring in. After the interval of doubt, our ears could gather that the swell and babble of the fight was once more rolling down the inner face of the hill, and that the Russians were conclusively beaten. "They are well into it this time," says one to another, handing over the glass. The musket flashes were no more to be seen within it. There was no more lightning of the heavy guns from the embrasures. A shapeless hump upon a hull, the Mamelon was an extinct volcano, until such time as it should please our allies to call it again into action. Then, at last, the more hidden struggle of our own men in the hollow on the left came uppermost. "How are our fellows getting on?" says one. "Oh! take my word for it, they're all{285} right," says another. And they were, so far as taking the Quarries was concerned, but they had nevertheless to fight all night.

As it grew dark our advanced battery under the Green-hill made very pretty practice by flipping shells over our men's heads at the Russians. From the misshapen outline of the Quarries a fringe of fire kept blazing and sparkling in a waving sort of curve, just like a ring of gas illuminating on a windy night; the attempt to retake them out of hand was desperately pushed, the Russians pouring in musketry, which caused us no small loss, and as it came up the gorge, contending with the fresh wind, sounded in the distance like water gulped simultaneously from a thousand bottles.

Meanwhile the fall of the Mamelon did not by any means bring the combat to an end on the side of our allies. The Zouaves, emboldened by their success, carried their prowess too far, and dreamt of getting into the Round Tower by a coup de main. A new crop of battle grew up over all the intervening hollow between it and the Mamelon, and the ripple of musket shots plashed and leaped over the broad hill-side. The combatants were not enough for victory there too, but they were enough for a sanguinary and prolonged contest, a contest to the eye far more violent than that which preceded it. The tower itself, or rather the inglorious stump of what was once the Round Tower, took and gave shot and shell and musketry with the most savage ardour and rapidity. The fire of its musketry was like one sheet of flame, rolling backwards and forwards with a dancing movement, and, dwarfed as it was by the distance, and seen by us in profile, could scarcely be compared to anything, small or large, except the notes of a piano flashed into fire throughout some rapid tune. Our gunners, observing the duration and aim of the skirmish, redoubled their exertions, and pitched their shells into the Round Tower with admirable precision, doing immense mischief to the defenders. It was dark, and every one of them came out against the heavens as it rose or swooped. From Gordon's Battery and the Second parallel they streamed and plunged one after another into the enceinte up to which the Zouaves had won their way unsupported, heralded every now and then by the prompt and decisive ring of a round shot. The Russian defence, rather than their defences, crumbled away before this tremendous fire, but, on the other hand, the attack not being fed, as it was not designed, began to languish, and died gradually away.

During the night repeated attacks, six in all, were made upon our men in the Quarries, who defended their new acquisition with the utmost courage and pertinacity, and at a great sacrifice of life, against superior numbers, continually replenished. The strength of the party told off for the attack was in all only 1,000, of whom 600 were in support. At the commencement 200 only went in, and another 200 followed. More than once there was a fierce hand-to-hand fight in the position itself, and our fellows had frequently to dash out in front and take their assailants in flank. The most murderous sortie of the enemy took place about three in the morning; then the whole ravine was lighted up with a blaze of fire, and a storm of shot was thrown in from the Strand Battery, and every{286} other spot within range. With a larger body in reserve, it was not doubtful that our men could have been into the Redan. This was asserted freely both by officers and privates, and the latter expressed their opinion in no complimentary manner. They were near enough up to it to see that it was scarcely defended, and one officer lost his life almost within its limits. On our side 365 rank and file, and 35 officers, had been killed and wounded. Our loss in officers killed was great. The 88th were the severest sufferers, having three officers killed, one missing and conjectured to be killed, and four wounded—all indeed who were engaged. The four senior officers of the 62nd were put hors de combat. On the French side nearly double the number of officers, and a total of not less than 1,500 men, probably more. It was stated as high as 3,700. When morning dawned, with the wind blowing even stronger than the day before, the position held by both parties was one of expectation. The French were in great force within and on the outer slopes of the Mamelon, and also in possession of two out of the three offsets attached to the Mamelon on the Sapoune-hill. Their dead were seen lying mixed with Russians upon the broken ground outside the Malakoff Tower, and were being carried up to camp in no slack succession. In the rear of the Mamelon their efforts to intrench themselves were occasionally interrupted by shells from the ships in the harbour, and from a battery not previously known to exist further down the hill, while, on their left front, the Round Tower, showing still its formidable platforms of defence and its ragged embrasures above, fired upon their working parties, in the western face, and upon their reserves in the background.

The ammunition waggons, the ambulance carts, the French mules, with their panniers full freighted, thronged the ravine below our Light Division, which is the straight or rather the crooked road down to the attack on the right. Troops of wounded men came slowly up, some English, the greater portion French, begrimed with the soil of battle. On the left a party of Zouaves had stopped a while to rest their burden, it being the dead bodies of three of their officers. A little lower an English soldier was down on the grass exhausted and well nigh unconscious from some sudden seizure. A party of French were gathered round him, supporting him on the bank, and offering water from their canteens, which he wildly motioned aside. On the right, lining a deep bay in the gorge, was dotted over half a mile of ground a French reserve, with their muskets piled, attending the signal to move forward. They were partially within view of the Malakoff, and the round shot and shell came plumping down in the hollow, producing every minute or so little commotions of the sauve qui peut order, replaced the next moment by the accustomed nonchalance, and the crack of stale charges, fired off by way of precaution.

A lively and even pretty vivandière came striding up the ascent, without a symptom of acknowledgment to the racing masses of iron, and smiling as if the honour of her corps had been properly maintained. At ten o'clock the little incidents of the halting war perceptible through the telescope from the crown of the hill below the{287} Picket-house were these:—At the head of the harbour the Russians were busily engaged burying their dead; outside the abattis of the Round Tower several corpses of Zouaves were to be distinguished; about the Mamelon the French troops were hard at work, some of them stripped for coolness to their drawers, and were seen creeping down the declivity on the side towards the Malakoff, and making themselves a deep shelter from its fire. Our people, meanwhile, on the right attack were calmly shelling the Malakoff in a cool matter-of-business sort of way, but the eternal gun on its right, which has been endowed with nine months of strange vitality, launched an indirect response into the Mamelon. From and after eleven o'clock the Russians, as usual, slackened fire, nor was there any duel of artillery on a great scale until after dark.

On the 9th a white flag from the Round Tower and another on the left announced that the Russians had a petition to make. It was a grave one to make in the middle of a fierce bombardment with events hanging in the balance, and success, perhaps, depending upon the passing moments; but made it was, and granted. From one o'clock until six in the evening no shot was fired on either side, while the dead bodies which strewed the hill between the Mamelon and the Round Tower, or remained in front of the Quarries, were removed from the field. Both of the French and of the Russians large numbers were scattered over the ground of the chief conflict; among the former a large proportion were swarthy indigenes of Arab blood, or, as they were popularly termed by the French soldiers, Turcos, and to their contingent of the killed some were added from the very inside of the Malakoff, showing how near the impromptu attack was delivering the place into our hands. Of the Russians there lay still upon the spot some 200, a sufficient testimony to the severity of their losses in the struggle. The third battery on the Sapoune-hill was abandoned the night before, and its guns either withdrawn or tumbled down the hill.

In the early part of the day there had been a popular impulse to believe that an end of the affair would be made at night by a combined assault upon the Malakoff and the Redan. That both were within scope of capture was considered in camp as proved to demonstration. But the news of the suspension of arms dissipated the hope, and when the divisions got their orders for the night, it was no longer thought that aggression was likely, though defence might be. The enemy, with their wonted perseverance, had been making very comfortable use of their time, and when the firing recommenced, which it did instantly on the flags being lowered, a few minutes before six o'clock, it was plain that the Malakoff and Redan had both received a reinforcement of guns. Six and eleven were the numbers of remounted bouches de feu—exactness in such a calculation was not easy, for the Russians were laboriously artful in disguising the strength of their artillery, and frequently by moving guns from one embrasure to another make a single one play dummy for two or three. From six until nine o'clock the duel continued without special incidents; then there came a sudden splash of musketry, which lasted some few minutes and died away as unexpectedly.{288} Another trifling musketry diversion took place about three in the morning, to relieve the monotony of the great artillery, which kept up its savagery throughout the night—ten guns for one of the enemy's—but slacked a little towards morning. We had a great number of casualties during the night in our new position on the left, into which the Russians kept firing grape and canister from the batteries which protect the rear of the Redan. They also occupied the dismantled houses above the ravine, and leisurely took shot at our people from the windows. Not unnaturally, it was a subject of the bitterest anger and complaint among the soldiers that they had to stand still and be riddled, losing day by day a number which was swollen in a week to the dimensions of a battle-roll of killed and wounded.

Through the occupation and arming of the White Batteries, situated on the edge of the ridge of Mount Sapoune, the head of the harbour was more or less in our power. The Russians themselves seemed to acknowledge this by taking outside the boom the vessels which had before been lying in that direction, and would have been commanded from the works which the French were then constructing on the site of the White Batteries of the Russians. But this was not all. These new works were to act against the two Strand batteries which the Russians had behind the Mamelon, and which, not being much commanded by any of our works, could do a good deal of harm without being exposed to much danger. The construction of French works on the Mamelon brought us to about 500 yards from the Malakoff works; it gave us a footing on the plateau on which these works lie; it furnished us with the means of approaching the rear of them, and at the same time of operating successfully on the annoying batteries in the rear of the Mamelon, which, taken thus in a cross fire, could not long resist. The Quarry was scarcely more than 200 yards from the Redan. The battery which it contained worked successfully on the six-gun battery in the rear between the Redan and the Malakoff Tower works; and from the advanced posts our riflemen were able to prevent a good number of the guns in the Redan from working.

But, for all this, the keeping of the Quarry was, especially in the beginning, not at all an easy thing; not so much, perhaps, from the attempts of the Russians to retake a point of such vital importance to them, but rather on account of the fire to which it was exposed from other Russian batteries besides the Redan. The Garden Battery on our flank, the six-gun battery in the rear, and the Malakoff works could touch it on nearly all sides. Moreover, the work, when it was taken being directed against us, offered very little protection against the riflemen of the Redan, until its face could be converted.

The French in the Mamelon had to maintain themselves under a not less heavy fire than the English in the Quarries. Some parts of the Malakoff works, the shipping, the Strand batteries behind, and even some of the Inkerman batteries, could bear upon them, and they suffered considerable loss in the first days after their instalment there. Night attacks were commenced by the fleets; on the 16th the Tribune, Highflier, Terrible, Miranda, Niger,{289} Arrow, Viper, Snake, and Weser, stood in at night, and opened a heavy fire upon the town, in company with some French steamers, whilst the Danube and the launches of the Royal Albert fired rockets into the place. On the 17th, the Sidon, Highflier, Miranda, Viper, Snake, and Princess Royal ran in again, but the enemy had got their range, and hulled some of the ships repeatedly; and we had to mourn the loss of Captain Lyons of the Miranda, who was wounded by a piece of shell, of which he died soon afterwards, at the Hospital of Therapia.

On the 16th of June it was decided at a council of war that, after three hours' cannonade from the whole of the allied batteries, the assault should take place on the morning of the 18th of June. Our armament consisted of thirty 13-inch mortars, twenty-four 10-inch mortars, seven 8-inch mortars, forty-nine 32-pounders, forty-six 8-inch guns, eight 10-inch guns, eight 68-pounders: total, one hundred and sixty-six guns. The French had about two hundred and eighty bouches-à-feu. The despatch of Lord Raglan, dated 19th June, states that it was decided that the fire should be kept up for two hours after dawn; but, on the evening of the 17th, Marshal Pelissier sent over a despatch to our head-quarters, to the effect that, as the French infantry could not be placed in the trenches in the morning without the enemy seeing them, he had decided on attacking the place at daybreak, without any preliminary cannonade in the morning. Lord Raglan accepted this change of the plan of attack, although it was opposed to his private judgment, and sent orders to the divisional generals to carry it out. Sir George Brown, who was understood to be of opinion that an assault against the Redan was very doubtful, was ordered to make the arrangements.

The assaulting force, which consisted of detachments of the Light, Second, and Third Divisions, was divided into three columns. Sir John Campbell had charge of the left, Colonel Shadforth, of the 57th Regiment, of the right, and Colonel Lacy Yea, of the 7th Fusileers, of the centre column. Brigadier (afterwards Sir Henry) Barnard was directed to take his brigade of the Third Division down the Woronzoff Ravine, whilst Major-General Eyre moved down his brigade of the same Division still further to the left, with orders to threaten the works on the proper right of the Redan and in front of the Dockyard Creek, and, in case of the assault being successful, to convert the demonstration of his brigade into a serious attack on the place. The right column was destined to attack the left face of the Redan between the flanks of the batteries; the centre column was to assault the salient of the Redan; and the left column was to assault the re-entering angle formed by the right face and flank of the work; the centre column was not to advance till the other columns had well developed their attack. On the French left, assaults under General de Salles were to be directed against the Quarantine Bastion, the Central Bastion, and the Bastion du Mât, each by a division 6,000 strong. On the French right, General d'Autemarre, with a column of 6,000 men, was to assault the Gervais Battery and the right flank of the Malakoff; General Brunet, with a similar force, from the Mamelon, was to{290} attack the left flank of the Malakoff and the little Redan; General Mayran, from the extreme of the French right, was to fall upon the Russian batteries near Careening Creek, and the works connecting No. 1 Bastion with the Little Redan. In order to give greater completeness to the arrangements, it was decided that the French should make a demonstration against the Mackenzie Heights; and General Bosquet, who commanded the Second Corps d'Armée, because it was known that he was unfavourable to an assault, and preferred operations in the field, was displaced from his command by General Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely. It will thus be seen that the French were to assault in six columns, constituting a force of not less than 36,000 men, with reserves of 25,000. Our assaulting columns were only 1,200 men, although there was a force in reserve of nearly 10,000 men.

The fire which opened on Sunday morning (the 17th) was marked by great energy and destructiveness. In the first relief the Quarry Battery, commanded by Major Strange, threw no less than 300 8-inch shells into the Redan, which was only 400 yards distant. Throughout Sunday 12,000 rounds, and on the following day 11,946 rounds of shot and shell were fired against Sebastopol from the British lines.

Early on Monday morning (18th of June), the troops, who had been under arms soon after midnight, moved down to the trenches. Lord Raglan and his staff were stationed in the trench in rear of the Quarries Battery. Marshal Pelissier took up his post in a battery to the rear of the Mamelon and on our right front, a considerable way from Lord Raglan. Just as some faint tinge of light in the east announced the approach of dawn, we heard a very irregular but sharp fire of musketry on our right, close to the Malakoff. In an instant all the Russian works on the right woke up into life, and the roar of artillery, mingled with musketry, became incessant. The column under General Mayran had made a premature attack! A rocket fired unintentionally misled the French general, who fell mortally wounded. In a few minutes the column was driven back with great loss. The musketry ceased. Then three rockets flew up into the gloomy sky. This was the signal for the assault, which Mayran had anticipated with such unfortunate results. General d'Autemarre's column, at the double, made a dash up the ravine which separated the Redan from the Malakoff. General Brunet led his men to attack the left of the work. The Russians received them with a tremendous fire, for the grey dawn just gave light sufficient to indicate the advance of these large masses. General Brunet fell dead, and his column was obliged to retreat, with great loss. The other column on the right of the Malakoff was somewhat more fortunate. They dashed across the ditch and over the parapet of the Gervais Battery, and drove the enemy before them. Some few get into the Malakoff itself; certainly, unless my eyes deceived me, I saw a tricolor flag waving in the centre of the work, and a few French actually reached the dockyard wall. Although it was understood that the English were not to attack until the French had carried the Malakoff, Lord Raglan resolved to assist the French{291} at this stage of the assault, and the two rockets which was the signal for the advance were sent up. At the moment, the French were fighting outside the Malakoff, but were in possession of the Gervais battery on the right flank. Brunet's column had been driven back. A second attack on the extreme right by Mayran's column, though aided by 4,000 of the Imperial Guard under General Mellinet, had completely failed. The Russians, warned by the assault on their left, were prepared; in the Redan, they held a great force in reserve. Their guns, loaded with grape, were manned, and the parapets were thickly lined with infantry.

The party to assault the left face of the Redan consisted of 11 officers and 400 men of the 34th Regiment, under Major Gwilt, preceded by a covering party of the Rifle Brigade and a ladder party from the Sailors' Brigade. When the signal was given, the men carrying the ladders and wool-bags rushed out of the trench; they were swept down at once by the tremendous fire. Major Gwilt ordered the 34th to lie down; but on the extreme right the men who did not receive the order advanced in sections at the double, and the whole of the storming party made a run at the re-entering angle of the left face of the Redan. On crossing the trench, our men, instead of coming upon the open in a firm body, were broken into twos and threes. This arose from the want of a temporary step above the berm, which would have enabled the troops to cross the parapet with regularity; instead of which they had to scramble over it as well as they could; and, as the top of the trench was of unequal height and form, their line was quite broken. The moment they came out from the trench the enemy began to direct on their whole front a deliberate and well-aimed mitraille, which increased the want of order and unsteadiness caused by the mode of their advance. Yea saw the consequences. Having in vain tried to obviate the evil caused by the broken formation and confusion of his men, who were falling fast around him, he exclaimed, "This will never do! Where's the bugler to call them back?" But, at that critical moment, no bugler was to be found. The gallant officer, by voice and gesture, tried to form and compose his men, but the thunder of the enemy's guns close at hand and the gloom frustrated his efforts; and as he rushed along the troubled mass of troops, endeavouring to get them into order for a rush at the batteries, a charge of their deadly missiles passed, and the noble soldier fell dead in advance of his men, struck at once in head and stomach by grape shot. A fine young officer, Hobson, the adjutant of the 7th, fell along with his chief, mortally wounded. They were thrown into confusion on getting up to the abattis, by finding a formidable barrier before them. When the 34th came up, there was only one ladder at the abattis.[20] Major Gwilt, who was about sixty yards from the abattis, was soon severely wounded and obliged to retire. Colonel Lysons, who now took the command, ordered the men to retire. But ere the 34th regained the trenches, Captain Shiffner, Captain Robinson,{292} and Lieutenant Hurt, were killed; Captain Jordan, Major Gwilt, Lieutenant Harman, Lieutenant Clayton, and Lieutenant Alt, were severely wounded, the last two dying of their injuries.

The column on the left told off for the attack of the re-entering angle and flank of the right of the Redan, was exposed to the same fire. There were no scaling ladders at the abattis, much less at the ditch of the Redan, nor could the Rifles keep down the enemy's artillery. Colonel Shadforth was killed whilst leading on his men most gallantly. Sir John Campbell fell dead close to the abattis. In a few moments the assaulting columns had disappeared.

On our extreme left, the brigade under Major-General Eyre, consisting of the 18th on the left of the line, of the 9th Regiment and 28th Regiment in reserve, the 38th Regiment and 44th Regiment on the right, advanced to threaten the Dockyard Creek and the Barrack Batteries. Four volunteers from each company, under Major Fielden, of the 44th Regiment, covered the advance. The brigade was turned out before dawn, and marched down the road on the left of the Greenhill Battery to the Cemetery, while the necessary dispositions were being made for the attack. General Eyre, addressing the 18th, said, "I hope, my men, that this morning you will do something that will make every cabin in Ireland ring again!" The reply was a loud cheer, which instantly drew a shower of grape. Just as the general attack began, they rushed at the Cemetery, which was very feebly defended; but the moment the enemy retreated their batteries opened a heavy fire upon it from the left of the Redan and from the Barrack Battery. They also kept up a heavy fire of musketry from a suburb close to the Dockyard Creek, by the side of the Woronzoff Road, and from a number of houses at the other side of the Creek, below the Barrack Battery. The 18th charged and carried the houses. The Russians could not depress their guns sufficiently to fire down upon our men; they directed a severe flanking fire upon them from an angle of the Redan. The 44th made a dash at the houses under the Barrack Battery, and the 38th seized hold of the suburb over the Creek Battery, so that the Russians were obliged to abandon it.

While portions of the 9th, 18th, 28th and 44th were in the houses, the 38th kept up a hot fire from the Cemetery on the Russians in the battery. One part of the brigade was exposed to a destructive fire in houses, the upper portion of which crumbled into pieces or fell in, and it was only by keeping in the lower stories, which were vaulted, that they were enabled to hold their own. The rest of the brigade, far advanced from our batteries, were almost unprotected, and were under a constant mitraille and bombardment from guns which our batteries failed to touch.

A sergeant and a handful of men actually got possession of a small work, in which there were twelve or fourteen artillerymen; but the Russians, seeing that they were alone, came down upon them and drove them out. An officer and half-a-dozen men got up close to the Flagstaff Battery, and were advancing into it when they saw that they were by themselves, and retreated. About fifteen{293} French soldiers on their left aided them, but they were unsupported and they all had to retire. Another officer with twelve men took one of the Russian rifle-pits, and held possession of it throughout the day.

This partial success, however, did not change the fortunes of the day. The French were driven out of the Gervais' Battery because they received no reinforcements, though not till they had held it for upwards of forty minutes. Marshal Pelissier made proposals to Lord Raglan to renew the assault. Lord Raglan, though agreeing with the French General in the practicability of a renewed assault, was of opinion that it ought not to be attempted till a heavy bombardment had been continued for some hours. As there was a considerable distance between them, Lord Raglan had to ride over to Marshal Pelissier, to confer with him on the arrangements for the proposed assault. During the interval, the French, who were suffering heavily from the enemy's fire, became dispirited by their losses and by the inaction which followed the check they had sustained. The Russians were evidently in great force at the Malakoff; and General d'Autemarre was so convinced that the assault would not succeed, that he sent a pressing message to Marshal Pelissier to beg that he would not expose the men in a fruitless assault. Marshal Pelissier was obliged to yield to such an expression of opinion, and, Lord Raglan coinciding with him, the renewal of the assault did not take place. Although the attack upon the Redan had been discussed at a council of war, and the Engineer officers of both our attacks (Colonel Chapman and Colonel Gordon) had been called upon to assist the Generals with their advice, the result proved that the arrangements were defective and inadequate. Our officers were outwitted by the subtlety of the Russians, who had for some time masked their guns, or withdrawn them from the embrasures, as if they were overpowered and silenced by our fire. No more decisive proof of the inefficiency of our force could be afforded than this fact—that in no case did the troops destined to assault and carry the Redan reach the outer part of the work; that no ladders were placed in the ditch; and that a very small portion indeed of the storming party reached the abattis, which was placed many yards in front of the ditch of the Redan. It cannot be said that on this occasion our men exhibited any want of courage; but so abortive and so weak was the attack, that the Russians actually got outside the parapet of the Redan, jeered and laughed at our soldiers as they fired upon them at the abattis, and mockingly invited the "Inglisky" to come nearer. A few dilettanti have since started a theory, which has not even ingenuity to recommend it, and which, if well founded, would convey the weightiest accusation ever yet made against our commanders—and that is, that our assault against the Redan was never meant to be successful, and that it was, in fact, a mere diversion, to assist the French in getting into the Malakoff. To any one acquainted with the facts, or to those who were present, this theory must appear, not only not ingenious, but ludicrous and contemptible. Indeed, the truth is, that an assault was not merely intended to be successful, but that{294} it was looked upon as certain to succeed. No one hinted a doubt of the carrying of the Redan, though there was a general expression of opinion, among those who knew the case, that the force detailed for the storm was perilously small, and some few, as I heard, also found fault with the position of the reserves, and thought they were placed too far in the rear to be of service in case of a check.

Our losses were severe, and they were not alleviated by the consolations of victory. No less than 22 officers and 247 men were killed, 78 officers and 1,207 men were wounded. The French lost 39 officers killed and 93 wounded; 1,600 rank and file killed or taken prisoners, and about the same number wounded—so that the loss of the Allies, on the 18th of June, amounted to nearly 5,000 officers and men. The Russians admitted a loss of 5,800; but it is remarkable in their return that the proportion of their officers killed is very much less than ours. In our army one officer was killed to every eleven men—one was wounded to every fifteen. In the French army one officer was killed to thirty men, and one was wounded to every sixteen men. In the Russian army the proportion of killed was about one officer to forty-nine men—of wounded, one officer to thirty-one men. General Jones was wounded over the trench. General Eyre was disabled by a severe cut on the head, but kept with his men till they were established in the Cemetery.

The detachments from the Naval Brigade consisted of four parties of sixty men each, one for each column, but only two of them went out, the other two being kept in reserve; they were told off to carry scaling-ladders and wool-bags, and to place them for our storming parties. Captain Peel, who commanded, was wounded. His aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Wood, midshipman of H.M.S. Queen, though badly wounded, got up to the abattis, and rendered himself so conspicuous for a gallantry of which he had given several proofs on previous occasions, that Lord Hardinge presented him with a commission of the 13th Light Dragoons on his expressing a desire to exchange into the army. In No. 1 party, Lieutenants Urmston, Dalyell, and Parsons, were wounded. In No. 3, Lieutenant Cave was wounded, and Lieutenant Kidd killed. No. 2 and No. 4 party did not advance, and lost no officer. When the men retreated, overwhelmed by the storm from the enemy's battery, several officers and men were left behind wounded. Lieutenant Kidd got into the trench all safe, and was receiving the congratulations of a brother officer, when he saw a wounded soldier lying out in the open. He at once exclaimed—"We must go and save him!" and leaped over the parapet in order to do so. He had scarcely gone a yard when he was shot through the breast, and died an hour after. A private soldier of the 33rd, a native of Cork, named Richard Worrell, displayed the most touching devotion on the same occasion. When the regiment returned to the trenches it was discovered that a young officer named Heyland was missing. The enemy's guns were sweeping the front of the trenches. Worrell did not hesitate for a moment. "I'll go out," said he, "and bring him in if he's{295} wounded, or die beside him." He kept his word. His body was found pierced with balls, close to that of his officer.

All the advantage we gained was the capture of the Cemetery, and the small Mamelon near it. The French sent over an engineer to examine the ground, and as that officer expressed an opinion that it was desirable to hold the place with a view to ulterior defensive works being erected upon it, General Eyre was assured that a strong body of men would be marched into it at night. As these troops never arrived, Colonel Adams retired from the Cemetery at night, leaving only a picket, which was also withdrawn in compliance with the instructions General Eyre received from head-quarters, which were to the effect that if the French did not occupy the work our troops were to withdraw. On the following morning, Lieutenant Donnelly of the Engineers heard that the position for which we had paid so dearly was not in our possession. He appreciated its value—he saw that the Russians had not yet advanced to reoccupy it, begged and borrowed some thirty men, with whom he crept into the Cemetery. As soon as the armistice began, the Russians flocked down to the Cemetery, which they supposed to be undefended, but to their great surprise they found our men posted there, and in the evening the party was strengthened, and the Allies constructed most valuable works and batteries there.

The natural consequence, in civilized warfare, of such a contest as that recorded above, is an armistice to bury the dead. It was our sad duty to demand it next day, for our dead lay outside our lines, and there were no Russian corpses in front of the Redan or Malakoff. We hoisted a white flag in the forenoon, but there was no such emblem of a temporary peace displayed by the Russians. Officers and soldiers eager to find the bodies of their comrades, waited patiently and sadly for the moment when friendship's last melancholy office could be performed. At last it became known that the armistice was to take place at four o'clock in the afternoon.

It was agonizing to see the wounded men lying under a broiling sun, parched with excruciating thirst, racked with fever, and agonized with pain—to behold them waving their caps faintly, or making signals towards our lines, over which they could see the white flag waving. They lay where they fell, or had scrambled into the holes formed by shells; and there they had been for thirty hours! how long and how dreadful in their weariness! A soldier who was close to the abattis saw a few men come out of an embrasure, and fearing he should be unnoticed, raised his cap on a stick and waved it till he fell back exhausted. Again he rose, and managed to tear off his shirt, which he agitated in the air till his strength failed him. His face could be seen through a glass; and my friend, who watched him, said he could never forget the expression of despair with which the poor fellow folded his shirt under his head to await the mercy of Heaven.

The red-coats lay thick over the broken ground in front of the abattis of the Redan. Blue and grey coats lay in piles in the raincourses before the Malakoff. I rode down with some companions past the old 13-inch mortar battery in advance of our{296} Picket-house into the Middle Picket Ravine, at the end of which began the French approaches to their old parallel, which was extended up to their recent conquest, the Mamelon. A body of light cavalry moved down the Woronzoff road a little later, and began extending their files right and left in a complete line across the whole of our front, with the object of preventing any, except those who were on duty, getting down to the neutral ground. However, my companions and myself got down into the ravine before the cavalry halted just behind the Picket-house. This ravine was paved with shot and shell. The earth gleamed here and there with bullets and fragments of lead. In one place there was a French picket posted in a bend of the ravine, sleeping under their greatcoats, raised on twigs, to protect them from the sun, smoking or talking gravely. Yes, for a wonder, the men were grave and looked almost sullen; but they were thinking of the comrades whose bodies they would have to inter. By the side of this ravine—your horse must needs tread upon them, if you were not careful in guiding him—was many a mound, some marking the resting-place of individual soldiers, others piled over one of those deep pits where rank and file reposed in their common glory.

In the ravine were mules with litters, ambulances, and Land Transport Corps. English and French were mixed together. I saw in one place two of our men, apart from the rest, with melancholy faces. "What are you waiting here for?" said I.

"To go out for the Colonel, sir," was the reply.

"What Colonel?"

"Why, Colonel Yea, to be sure, sir," said the good fellow, who was evidently surprised at my thinking there could be any other colonel in the world. And indeed the Light Division felt his loss. Under brusqueness of manner he concealed a kind heart. A more thorough soldier, one more devoted to his men, to the service, and to his country, never fell in battle than Lacy Yea. Throughout the winter his attention to his regiment was exemplary. His men were the first who had hospital huts. When other regiments were in need of every comfort, and almost of every necessary, the Fusileers, by the care of their colonel, had everything that could be procured by exertion and foresight. Writing of him, and of similar cases, I said, "At Inkerman his gallantry was conspicuous. He and Colonel Egerton are now gone, and there remains in the Light Division but one other officer of the same rank who stands in the same case as they did. Is there nothing to be done? No recognition of their services? No decorations? No order of merit?"[21] Two French soldiers approached, with an English naval officer, whom they were taking off as a spy. He told us he was an officer of the Viper, that he walked up to see some friends in the Naval Brigade, got into the Mamelon, and was taken prisoner. The Frenchmen pointed out that the Naval Brigade{297} was not employed on the Mamelon, that spies were abundant and clever; but they were at last satisfied, and let their captive go with the best grace in the world. We were close to the Mamelon, and the frequent reports of rifles and the pinging of the balls proved that the flag of truce had not been hoisted by the enemy. We were in the zigzag, a ditch about six feet broad and six feet deep, with the earth knocked about by shot at the sides, and we met Frenchmen laden with water canteens or carrying large tin cans full of coffee, and tins of meat and soup, cooked in the ravine close at hand, up to the Mamelon.

I entered along with them. The parapets were high inside the work, and were of a prodigious thickness. It was evident the Mamelon was overdone. It was filled with traverses and excavations, so that it was impossible to put a large body of men into it, or to get them in order in case of an assault. The stench from the dead, who had been buried as they fell, was fearful; and bones, and arms, and legs stuck out from the piles of rubbish on which you were treading. Many guns were also buried, but they did not decompose. Outside were plenty of those fougasses, which the Russians planted thickly. A strong case containing powder was sunk in the ground, and to it was attached a thin tube of tin or lead, several feet in length; in the upper end of the tube was enclosed a thin glass tube containing sulphuric or nitric acid. This portion of the tube was just laid above the earth, where it could be readily hid by a few blades of grass or a stone. If a person stepped upon it he bent the tin tube and broke the glass tube inside. The acid immediately escaped down the tin tube till it met a few grains of chlorate of potash. The mine exploded, and not only destroyed everything near it, but threw out a quantity of bitumen, with which it was coated, in a state of ignition. I very nearly had a practical experience of the working of these mines, for an English sentry, who kindly warned me off, did not indicate the exact direction till he found he was in danger of my firing it, when he became very communicative upon the subject. They made it disagreeable walking in the space between the works.

I turned into the second English parallel on my left, where it joined the left of the French right. What a network of zigzags, and parallels, and traverses! You could see how easy it was for men to be confused at night—how easy to mistake.

I walked out of the trench of the Quarries under the Redan, in which we had then established a heavy battery, at the distance of 400 yards from the enemy's embrasures. The ground sloped down for some few hundred yards, and then rose again to the Redan. It was covered with long rank grass and weeds, large stones, tumuli, and holes ranging in depth from three feet and a half or four feet, to a foot, and in diameter from five feet to seven or eight feet, where shells had exploded. It is impossible to give a notion of the manner in which the earth was scarred by explosions, and shot. The grass was seamed in all directions, as if ploughs, large and small, had been constantly drawn over it.

The litter-bearers were busy. Most of our dead were close to{298} the abaths of the Redan, and many, no doubt, had been dragged up to it at night for plunder's sake. Colonel Yea's body was found near the abattis on the right of the Redan. His head was greatly swollen, and his features, and a fine manly face it had been, were nearly undistinguishable. Colonel Shadforth's remains were discovered in a similar state. Sir John Campbell lay close up to the abattis. It was but the very evening before his death that I saw him standing within a few feet of his own grave. He had come to the ground in order to attend the funeral of Captain Vaughan, an officer of his own regiment (the 38th), who died of wounds received two days previously in the trenches, and he laughingly invited me to come and lunch with him next day at the Clubhouse of Sebastopol. His sword and boots were taken, but the former was subsequently restored by a Russian officer. The body was interred on Cathcart's Hill—his favourite resort, where every one was sure of a kind word and a cheerful saying from the gallant Brigadier.

The bodies of many a brave officer whom I had known in old times—old times of the war, for men's lives were short in the Crimea, and the events of a life were compressed into a few hours—were borne past us in silence, and now and then men with severe wounds were found still living. The spirit of some of these noble fellows triumphed over all their bodily agonies. "General!" exclaimed a sergeant of the 18th Royal Irish to Brigadier Eyre, as he came near the place in the Cemetery where the poor fellow lay with both his legs broken by a round shot, "thank God, we did our work, any way. Had I another pair of legs, the country and you would be welcome to them!" Many men in hospital, after losing leg or arm, said they "would not have cared if they had only beaten the Russians." The wounded lay in holes made by shells, and were fired at by the Russian riflemen when they rolled about. Our men report that the enemy treated them kindly, and even brought them water out of the embrasures. They pulled all the bodies of officers within reach up to the abattis, and took off their epaulettes and boots, but did not strip them.

A line of sentries was formed by the Russians so far in front of the abattis, that General Airey was obliged to remonstrate with an aide-de-camp of General Osten-Sacken, who ordered them to retire. These men were remarkably fine, tall, muscular fellows, and one could not but contrast them with the poor weakly-looking boys in our regiments, or with the undergrown men of the French line. They were in clean new uniforms. Many of them wore medals. Their officers turned out with white kid gloves and patent leather boots.

One stout elderly Russian of rank asked one of our officers, "How are you off for food?"

"Oh! we get everything we want; our fleet secures that."

"Yes," remarked the Russian, with a knowing wink, "yes; but there's one thing you're not so well off for, and that your fleet can't supply you with, and that's sleep."

"We're at least as well off for that as you are," was the rejoinder.{299} Another officer asked if we really thought, after our experience of the defence they could make, that we could take Sebastopol.

"We must; France and England are determined to take it."

"Ah! well," said the other, "Russia is determined France and England shall not have it; and we'll see who has the strongest will, and can lose most men."

In the midst of these brief interviews, beginning and ending with bows and salutes, and inaugurated by the concession of favours relating to cigars and lights, the soldiers bore dead bodies by, consigning the privates to the burial-grounds near the trenches, and carrying off the wounded and the bodies of the officers to the camp.

The armistice lasted for upwards of two hours.

CHAPTER II.

IMMEDIATELY after the failure of the assault, Sir George Brown, Generals Pennefather, Codrington, Buller, and Estcourt, were obliged to take to their beds, to seek change of air, or to sail for England. Lord Raglan was affected. It was observed by his staff that the failure had "affected his health;" and an officer, writing home to his friends, on the 23rd of June, remarked, "he (Lord Raglan) looks far from well, and has grown very much aged latterly."

General Estcourt, Adjutant-General of the Army, died on the morning of the 24th of June, after three days' illness.

On the 28th Lord Raglan published the following order:—

Within a very few hours after the appearance of this order, the electric telegraph brought the startling intelligence to the head-quarters of the various divisions that the Field-Marshal was dead.{300}

On Tuesday evening, after his usual devotion to the desk, he was seized with symptoms of a choleraic character, and took to his bed, where he died on the night of the following Thursday. Lord Raglan possessed qualities which, if not those of a great general, were calculated to obtain for the English army more consideration than that to which it was entitled by its numerical strength. Although he was frequently obliged to give way to their councils, in opposition to his declared convictions, his calmness in the field—his dignity of manner—his imperturbable equanimity—exercised their legitimate influence over the generals of the French army.

That Lord Raglan was an accomplished gentleman, as brave a soldier as ever drew a sword, an amiable, honourable man, zealous for the public service, of the most unswerving truth, devoted to his duty and to his profession, cannot be denied; but he appears to me to have been a man of strong prejudices and of weak resolution, cold to those whom, like Omar Pasha, he considered "vulgar," coerced without difficulty by the influence of a stronger will, and apt to depend upon those around him where he should have used his own eyes. There was something of the old heroic type in his character, which would have compensated for even graver defects, if their results had not been, in many instances, so unfortunate for our arms; his death on a foreign soil whilst in command of an English army touched the hearts of his countrymen.

The following General Orders were issued next day:—

General Simpson was destitute of those acquirements and personal characteristics which in Lord Raglan compensated for a certain apathy and marble calmness. He was a veteran who had seen a year's service in the Peninsula in 1812-13, and in the campaign of 1815, and who thirty years afterwards held the post of Quartermaster-General to Sir C. Napier, in his Indian war of 1845. Lord Raglan had, at all events, by the dignity of his personal character, secured a position for the troops he commanded to which they were not numerically entitled; but no one can say by what sacrifices that position was maintained till the battle of Inkerman forced us to abandon it. It was believed at the time, and it is now notorious, that General Simpson opposed his own appointment, and bore testimony to his own incapacity; but the Govern{301}ment—or Lord Hardinge and Lord Panmure—insisted, and General Simpson became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. Writing at the time respecting our future General I said:—

On the 21st of July, General Simpson published the following order:—

The personal Staff of his Excellency consisted of Captain Colville, Rifle Brigade; Captain Lindsay, Scots Fusileer Guards;{302} Major Dowbiggen, 4th Foot (appointed by electric telegraph). Lieut.-Colonel Stephenson was appointed Military Secretary, although Colonel Steele remained at head-quarters; and Colonel Pakenham was confirmed as Adjutant-General, at the request of Lord Raglan, in the last despatch he ever penned.

On the 21st, Captain Lushington, who had been promoted to the rank of Admiral, was relieved in the command of the Naval Brigade by Captain the Hon. H. Keppel. Commissary-General Filder, at the same date, returned home on the recommendation of a Medical Board.{303}

BOOK VII.

CHAPTER I.

THE time is not yet come for the disclosure of all the truth; but it may even now be asked, how it was that on the 6th of February, 1855, we abandoned our ground opposite the Malakoff to the French, if we really knew it to be the key of the Russian position? A change was indeed necessary, and it was evident that the English army was much too weak to occupy the space from the Dockyard Creek ravine on the left, to the valley of the Tchernaya on the right. But why, instead of allowing the French (I use that word "allowing," inasmuch as we are given to understand that Sir John Burgoyne objected to the change)—why, instead of allowing the French to take from us the favourable ground upon our right attack, did we not move to our right, and leave the French to occupy the spot held by our left, which we maintained to the end of the siege? It seems but natural that as we had defended the right of the Allied Army at Inkerman, with so much loss, and so much courage, we should have continued to occupy a position we had rendered glorious for ever. A cession of it to the French appears to be a tacit reproach. By concentrating our left on our right attack, we could have readily carried on the siege works, and have preserved to ourselves the attack against the Malakoff, which was originally opened by us on the 17th of October, 1854. It was said that the French objected to take Chapman's attack, on the plea that they could not serve our artillery. Sir John Burgoyne then offered that our artillerymen should be left to work{304} the English guns; but the objection, if ever it was made, was futile, inasmuch as at a subsequent period of the siege the French demanded and received the loan of more than twenty-four 32-pounders, which they used with great vigour at the final bombardment. The compliance of Sir John Burgoyne upon this point is the more to be wondered at, inasmuch as it was he who discovered the great importance of the position we so readily yielded, and it was he who announced that the Malakoff, of which he relinquished the attack to our Allies, was the veritable key of the whole of the defences of Sebastopol.

Between the death of Lord Raglan and the middle of July, no decided progress was made in the siege approaches, and the Russians contented themselves with strenuous preparations to meet another assault. But as sickness diminished, and reinforcements and fresh supplies of material were poured into the Crimea later in the month, the Allies set to work with renewed energy, and not only gained ground before Sebastopol, but began to feel their way towards the left of the enemy's position on the Belbek. At the same time they extended their operations in the direction of Mangoup-Kale, and Kutchuk Sevren, first by way of reconnaissance, and finally by the establishment of standing camps of sufficient strength to defy a sudden attack by any force short of an army. In these operations the French performed the active work. They were aided to some extent by the Sardinians encamped at Komara, and by the Turks, who completed the friendly investment of Balaklava from the Sardinian right to the cliffs over the sea near Cape Aiya.

After the 18th of June, 1855, it became quite evident that our left attack was utterly useless for the purposes of an assault, and accordingly one would have thought that the whole energy of the chiefs of the British Army and of the Engineers would have been directed to push on our saps in the direction of the only point of attack the British Army had to deal with; but in effect the Redan was not approached much more closely by our Engineers subsequently to the 18th than it had been previously, and most of our efforts were directed to the augmentation of the weight and vigour of our fire from batteries already established, or to the strengthening of the Quarries Battery, which we took on the 7th of June. In fact, we seemed determined to take the place by the fire of artillery alone; and yet, when the time came we combined with it an assault, which was of course an interference with, and an abandonment of, that determination. Although our officers had the Mamelon before their eyes, they overlooked the fact that the Russians could screen a very large body of men inside their casemates and bomb-proofs, and that the garrison would suffer very little from our fire so long as it failed to search out and destroy those retreats. When the garrison of these casemates was warned, by the cessation of our fire, of the coming assault, they swarmed out in masses more numerous than the assailants, who were besides broken, and almost breathless, owing to their run from the trenches, and repulsed them ere they reached the abattis. Whenever the Russians felt our energy was overpowering them at any one particular point they{305} withdrew their guns behind the traverse or parapet, and trusted to the strength of their earthworks, so that it was difficult to say what was the exact effect of our cannonade upon their guns. Thus, on the 18th of June, our soldiers were raked with grape and canister from points where we had imagined the guns were dismounted and silenced, and it was evident that our artillery had not gained that mastery over the enemies' pieces which was requisite to ensure success. We subsequently endeavoured to secure a better chance for our troops, at the next assault, by establishing batteries to crush the flanking fire of the angles of the Redan, and of the curtains in the direction of the salient; but the tackles broke in raising the guns, and these batteries were never armed.

From the attack of the 18th of June to the 10th of July, the enemy were employed in strengthening their works; they made such progress at the Redan, that it was judged expedient to open a heavy fire upon them. This commenced at five o'clock on the morning of the 10th of July, and lasted for four hours. Several embrasures were destroyed, and the enemy's reply was feeble; but they did not cease from their labours, and we were obliged to reserve our ammunition for general bombardment. The English cavalry, long inactive, began to look forward to service in the field, as hopes were held out that a movement would be made against the Russian corps on the Upper Belbek. On the 12th July, General Barnard was appointed Chief of the Staff.

Major-General Markham arrived on the 19th of July, and assumed the command of the Second Division; but he had materially injured his health by the exertions he made in travelling through India to get to the Crimea, and he did not add to the high reputation he had gained in the East.

The arrival of Sir Harry Jones to replace Sir John Burgoyne was regarded with hope, but no change in the plan of attack was originated by that officer, nor did the French engineers at any time appear to appreciate the importance of the ground between them and the Malakoff, till the Russians significantly demonstrated the value of the Mamelon by seizing upon and fortifying it in the spring of the year. Sir Harry Jones, although younger than Sir John Burgoyne, was not blest with the health of that veteran soldier, and for some time the works were carried on without the benefit of his personal supervision. If the ground in front of our trenches and saps towards the Redan was difficult, that through which the French drove their approaches close to the Bastion du Mât, and notably to the Bastion Centrale, was literally a mass of oolite and hard rock.

Our armament, on the 17th of June, consisted of thirty 13-inch mortars, seventeen 10-inch mortars, and eight 8-inch mortars; of forty-nine 32-pounders, of forty-six 8-inch guns, of eight 10-inch, and eight 68-pounder guns—an increase of thirty guns and mortars on the armament with which we opened fire on the 7th June; and 2,286 13-inch bombs, 884 10-inch bombs, 9,746 32-lb. shot, 6,712 8-inch shot, 1,706 10-inch shot, 1,350 68-pounder shot, were fired into the town, in the bombardment, previous to the assault. Still,{306} this weight of metal did not crush the fire of the place, and the enemy were enabled to continue to reply, and to mount fresh guns, owing to the constant command of men from the armies outside the town. The capture of Kertch and Yenikale, the command of the Sea of Azoff, the partial possession of the Spit of Arabat, had not produced the results we expected on the resources of the garrison; they received supplies of men and food by Perekop and Tchongar—no matter by what exertions or at what sacrifices the communications might be effected. The Allies advanced from Eupatoria, towards Simpheropol, but invariably found the enemy in superior force, in strong positions, except on the single occasion of General d'Allonville's brilliant affair with the Russian cavalry, under General Korte, near Sak, which ended in the utter rout of the latter and the loss of a battery of field artillery. The nature of the country, the difficulty of transport, and the distance of the base of operations, have all been pleaded as reasons for the failure of the attempts to advance from Eupatoria; but it seems rather strange that no effort was made to march, by either the Buljanak or the Alma, to the capital of the Crimea: the troops of Omar Pasha, instead of being kept idle at Komara or Eupatoria, could have been employed with the French and English in making a serious diversion, which would have paralyzed the energies of the enemy, and which might have led to the fall of Sebastopol. It was not till the 11th July that Omar Pasha, dispirited at the inactivity to which himself and army had been doomed, proposed to General Simpson to embark the Turks from the Crimea, and to land near Kutais, in order to relieve Kars by menacing a march upon Tiflis. On the 15th of July a conference of the Allied Generals was held at General Pelissier's to consider the position of the Turks in Asia Minor, and it was with much difficulty the Turkish Generalissimo succeeded in persuading them that 25,000 Turks operating in Asia were much better employed than if they were doing nothing at Komara. However, it was long ere he could obtain the means of carrying out his plans; and there is no doubt but that his assistance in operating from Eupatoria would have been of the utmost importance during the time he was compelled to maintain an attitude of hopeless inactivity.

It will be observed that all this while the Turks never took part in the siege. The justice of the following remarks, which was apparent enough in July, 1855, seems still more evident at the present moment:—"It is a singular thing, that while the French and British troops consider their most harassing work to be the duty in the trenches, the Turks, who are equally interested in the event of the war, and will be the most benefited by its success, do not take any share in actual siege operations, and amuse themselves with the mere pastime of foraging, or actually sitting in indolence for hours together, following the shadows of their tents as they move from west to east, smoking stolidly, or grinning at the antics of some mountebank comrade. Omar Pasha goes hither and thither without object, merely that his army may seem to be employed; its actual services are of little importance. It is said{307} that an agreement was made between the allied Generals and the Porte that the Turks were not to assist in the siege. But why not? and can such an arrangement be binding when the public good demands a different course? If the Ottoman troops be so excellent behind fortifications, there can be no objection to their relieving their hard-worked allies in some of the less important positions; or they might at least be employed in some more active manner than merely moving to and fro occasionally, as if for the purpose of impressing the mind of Europe with a false idea of activity.

"The rumour has spread within the last few days that Omar Pasha is to go to Kars, in order to relieve the place and oppose the advance of the Russians in Asia. But this, if seriously contemplated, can be intended only as a measure of preparation for next year's campaign, and the object will be rather to save Erzeroum than Kars. Should the transportation of the Turkish army to Trebizonde be determined upon, it will not take less than two months, even with the help of the British Navy, to convey it across, a longer term having been required for the transport from Varna to Eupatoria, which places are not so far apart. Allowing a month for the march from Trebizonde to Kars, it would be November before the army could reach its new position; and at that season the lofty table-land of Armenia is deep in snow, and all military operations will be suspended until the ensuing spring. But it is more than probable that the report of the movement has no foundation. It arises from a belief that the affairs of Asia have been grievously neglected, that the present year has not bettered the position of the Turks, and that there is danger lest the Russians should actually succeed in wresting away an important province as well as consolidating their reputation among the inhabitants of Central Asia."

The first great phase in the siege had been passed—we found that the Russians could resist the Allied forces with vigour, and that they were capable of acting upon the defensive with greater energy than we gave them credit for, from their conduct at the Alma. The constant passage up the Bosphorus of vessels with troops on board from France, and artillery and material from England, evinced the preparations made by the Allies for the renewal of the struggle; but there were many who thought that the siege would not be over till the following year, and that the Allies would have to undergo the miseries of another winter in the open trenches. Sir George Brown, who had ever entertained a most gloomy view of our position—the falseness and danger of which, in a military sense, he rather exaggerated than undervalued—left the army on sick certificate two days after Lord Raglan's death, and the Generals in command were new and untried men, in comparison with those who first led our army to the Crimean campaign.

On the 12th of July, the Turks and French went out foraging and reconnoitring towards Baidar. According to the officers who accompanied this reconnaissance, there was no weak point towards the Belbek, and an attack on the Russian position from Inkerman to{308} Simpheropol was considered hopeless. Nature seems as if she had constructed the plateau they occupied as a vast defensible position which 50,000 men might hold against four times their number. Writing on the 12th of July, I said,—"Of the reduction of Sebastopol proper before the winter I have no kind of doubt. The Russian generals, though brave and determined on an obstinate defence, deserve credit for prudence and forethought. As long as a place can be held with a chance of success, or even of damaging the enemy, they will hold it; but all their proceedings induce the belief that they will not allow their troops to be cut to pieces merely for the credit of having made a desperate resistance, and of having maintained, without advantage, for a short time longer, a position which, in a military sense, is untenable. When they perceive that their retreat is seriously endangered, it is not improbable that they will altogether abandon the southern side, which they can hardly hope to hold should the Allies be able to command the harbour. They, no doubt, count at least on being able to prolong their resistance until the winter sets in; if that be impossible, they will most likely withdraw to the northern side, to which it may be impracticable to lay siege before the spring of 1856."

On the night of the 22nd, the Russians, who were either under the impression that the Allies were about to make an assault, or wished to stop our working parties, opened a heavy fire of musketry along their line, and after a great expenditure of ammunition, they retired from the parapets. The casualties in the trenches became so heavy, that the Commander-in-Chief, in several despatches, expressed his regret at the loss, which he attributed to the proximity of the works, the lightness of the nights, and the rocky nature of the ground. From the 27th to the 29th July, thirteen men were killed, and five officers and 108 men were wounded, in addition to casualties in the Naval Brigade. However, some little progress was made—our advanced parallels were strengthened, and our unlucky fifth parallel was deepened. The French engineers were pressing on with indefatigable energy on the right and left of our position, and were close to the Malakoff on the right, and the Central and Flagstaff Bastion on the left; and it was evident that, at the next bombardment, it would scarcely be possible to preserve the town from destruction. The Russians prepared to strike a blow, the influence of which would be felt in the councils of Vienna, and in the Cabinets of every State in Europe.

The French had now pushed their works almost to the abattis of the Malakoff, and were so near that a man might throw a stone into the Russian position. It began to be understood by all engaged that the real point of attack would be the Malakoff works, the capture of which would render the Redan untenable, and make the surrender of the south side of the place merely a question of time.

The following letter, which was found in Laspi, near Baidar, affords a curious insight into the feeling of Russian civilians. It{309} was written from a village close to the north Fort of Sebastopol, and ran thus:—

The writer goes on to speak of her yellow dress being ready, and of her intention of going in it to Sebastopol in order to have her portrait taken. The Severnaya alluded to in the letter was what we called the Star Fort, or is more probably the name for the whole northern faubourg.

After the sortie of the 23rd of July, nothing of importance, or even of interest, occurred. The desultory fire, to which we were accustomed, continued by day, usually swelling into a roar of artillery for a portion of every night. The casualties continued much as before, not very heavy, although some days were unlucky, and on the night of the 28th the Guards had twenty-five or thirty men killed and wounded.

Soon after five o'clock on the morning of the 31st of July a most violent storm of wind and rain commenced. It caused much discomfort and actual damage in the camp, over which it raged with combined fury and obstinacy which I do not remember to have seen surpassed. The extensive portion of the camp, of which I commanded a view from my hut, was converted into a lake, the rain descending much faster than it could sink into the earth. Over the surface of this lake the rain was borne in clouds by the driving wind, and formed a sort of watery curtain through which the soaked tents looked dreary and dismal enough. The shelter which they offered, imperfect as it was, was sought, and only here{310} and there a drenched figure was to be seen struggling through the blast. In the pens the mules and horses hung their heads mournfully, enduring, with melancholy philosophy, the inevitable and unwelcome douche. In sundry nooks and corners to the leeward of tents, and under the eaves of huts, the camp fowls took refuge, with drooping plumes, and that look of profound discomfort peculiar to poultry under difficulties. Even the furious war of the elements did not arrest the strife between man and man, and from time to time, above the roar of the wind and the plash of the rain, the boom of a gun reached us.

I was told by a French officer of Artillery, that General Pelissier, on being asked when offensive siege operations would be again resumed, said, "Well, I don't know: the Russians are losing every day 300 or 400 men by sickness. If we wait a week, they will have lost a brigade; if we wait a month, they will have lost a corps d'armée." But if the Russians lost many men by sickness, they managed to replace them. Numbers of stories were in circulation about the formidable forces which had come, and kept coming, and apprehensions of an attack upon the Tchernaya line gained ground daily.

On the night of August 2nd, between ten and eleven o'clock, P.M., the Russians sallied out of the town by the Woronzoff Road, and advanced to the heavy iron frieze placed across the Woronzoff Road, between the left and right attacks. The advanced picket at the chevaux de frise was commanded by Lieutenant R. E. Carr, of the 39th Regiment, who behaved with coolness and gallantry. He fell back slowly, keeping up a fire on the Russians, to the advanced trench guard, under Captain Lackie, 39th Regiment. The trench guard on the right of the fourth parallel, under Captain Boyle, 89th, and Captain Turner, 1st Royals, checked the enemy, and they retired after ten minutes' firing, leaving a few men killed behind them, and carrying off a part of the barrier.

Piedmont, placed as it is between two great military Powers—France and Austria—has evidently watched with attention the progress and improvements which have been introduced into the military systems of these two neighbouring empires, and adapted their experiments in these matters to her own advantage. In the autumn of every year a concentration of troops takes place in Lombardy, and before the war of 1848 numbers of Piedmontese officers used to assemble there. The same was, and I think is still, the case whenever a camp is collected in the south of France. Thus they had the opportunity of studying two, in many respects, very different systems. The result is a blending of the two in arms, accoutrements, administration, and movements. For instance, the infantry is dressed in French fashion, with leather gaiters under the trousers, the long coat reaching to the knees; the only exception being the shako, which more resembles the Austrian shako than the French kepi. The cavalry and the artillery, on the contrary, wear the short tunic of the Austrian cavalry and artillery. For the movements of infantry as well as of cavalry the French manual has been exclusively adopted, and at some distance{311} one could scarcely distinguish French cavalry manœuvring from Piedmontese, were it not for the difference in the seat of the riders. The manège is decidedly Austrian.

The spirit of the Piedmontese army—I mean, the relations existing between soldiers and officers, and of the intercourse of the latter with one another—is, however, more analagous to that of the English than to that of either the French or Austrian armies. It is neither the easy familiarity which exists between the French officer and soldier, nor that "beggar-on-horseback"-like tyranny of the officer and the unwilling slavishness of the soldier which characterize the Austrian army. The officers in the Piedmontese, like those in the English Army, belong almost exclusively to the higher classes, and only rarely does an officer rise from the ranks, so that the distance between officer and soldier is not one of mere discipline, but social; and, however the spirit of Republicanism and the longing for equality may be developed in other states of Italy, Piedmont does not seem to be impregnated with it, and the system adopted of choosing for officers men from the higher classes answers very well. On the other hand, the officers themselves associate much in the same manner as in the English Army. When official business is over and social intercourse begins, the difference between the higher and lower officer entirely ceases, and they associate as gentlemen are wont to do.

On the 30th of July a medical board was ordered on Lieutenant-General Sir R. England, G.C.B., commanding Third Division, and he was recommended to return to England. He was the last of the generals who left England in command of a division. Major-General Eyre succeeded him in the Third Division.

On the 5th, Brigadier Lockyer was in orders for Ceylon, and Colonel Windham, C.B., was nominated to succeed him in the command of the Second Brigade, 2nd Division. On the 3rd of August General Canrobert was recalled.

At an early hour on the 7th, General Simpson went round the lines, examining the works. A council of war was held on Wednesday evening, 8th, at the British head-quarters. The principal medical officers of Divisions received orders to clear the hospitals, to send to Balaklava such patients as could safely be moved, and to complete the preparations for the reception of wounded men.

Leave of absence continued to be granted to a very large extent. Taking five of the then latest general orders, those of the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th of August, we find the names of no less than seventy officers who had received permission to absent themselves. Of these, twenty-nine proceeded to England—twenty-six of them in virtue of medical certificates, and three upon "urgent private affairs," or in consideration of peculiar circumstances: twenty-seven went to Scutari and Therapia for periods varying from two to five weeks; twelve on board ship, and two to the Monastery of St. George, where there were ten rooms fitted up for ailing or convalescent officers. I heard a colonel declare that he had but one captain and three subalterns on duty in his battalion, and that he, consequently, had to send one hundred men into the trenches under charge of a youth of{312} eighteen. If this state of things could not have been helped, it, at least, was very unfortunate. Enough officers did not come out to replace those who went home. The protracted siege—if siege it could be called, which in reality was a tedious struggle between two rows of detached forts—was certainly not popular with the officers of the army, few of whom cared to remain if they had a respectable pretext for returning home, while fewer still desired to return hither when they once got away. I am persuaded that if there had been more movement in the campaign—if, instead of monotonous trench duty we had been engaged in ordinary warfare, manœuvring, marching, fighting, there would have been both less sickness and fewer seeking leave. I do not attempt to decide the question whether leave was sometimes too easily granted, and more to interest than to necessity. The French were thought to fall into the other extreme, and instances were cited to me in which the lives of valuable officers would have been saved had they been allowed to exchange severe duty (one night out of three in the trenches, independently of ordinary guards and parades, cannot be considered light labour) for a period of relaxation in a more salutary climate.

On the 9th the Russians amused themselves by throwing a few round shot into the camp of the Fourth Division. Two of these buried themselves in the ground, close to a hospital hut of the 17th Regiment, shaking the edifice and astonishing the wounded, but doing no other damage; another killed a man of the field-train as he lay in his tent. It was said the missiles were intended for General Bentinck's tents, which were near the Fourth Division flagstaff on Cathcart's Hill. The Duke of Newcastle was staying there. A new kitchen, building for the General, was thought to have attracted the attention of the Muscovite gunners.

Late in the evening of the 13th of August orders were given for the troops to be under arms by three in the morning. Of course, Malakoff was immediately the word, and most persons supposed that the long-talked-of assault was to be made. This, however, was soon found not to be the case. Without tap of drum or sound of bugle, the camp was afoot at the prescribed hour, the troops forming up in profound silence. The entire army was out, including the cavalry and artillery from Balaklava. The first grey of morning found a number of officers and amateurs assembled on Cathcart's Hill, the best point of observation. There was unusually little firing the day before and during the night, and all expected that this tranquillity was quickly to be broken by the din of an engagement. The interest of the situation grew stronger as the morning advanced, and as the scarlet columns became visible, massed along the lines, motionless and expectant. Superior officers, with their staff, moved to and fro; aides-de-camp traversed the heights with orders; here and there, through the still imperfect light, which began to be tinged with the first red flush of sunrise, waved the pennons of a Lancer escort. With broad day, the brief excitement ended. Before the upper edge of the sun's disc rose above the hills, the troops were marching briskly back to their tents. The morning was beautifully clear, and the spectacle was striking. In fine order, in serried{313} columns, looking hardy, active, and cheerful, and up to any work, the Crimean army regained its canvas quarters. For the day, the danger was over—to commence again, it was believed, at night. From certain orders that were given with respect to ammunition, mules, &c., I inferred that the army would again be under arms early the next morning. The officers were warned to be ready at a moment's notice. It was believed that reinforcements had reached Sebastopol. They had been expected for some time previously. Four divisions were talked of, two of them Imperial Guards. Word was sent up from the fleet to head-quarters that large bodies of troops had been seen collecting behind the Redan, and others behind the Tchernaya, and there were grounds for expecting a general attack along our lines. The Generals of Division assembled in the afternoon at the quarters of the Commander-in-Chief. General Simpson was indisposed, and it was reported that he intended going on board ship for a few days. It is not impossible that this turn-out of the Army was a mere rehearsal, intended to ascertain whether all the actors were perfect in their parts, and in case of need would be promptly at their posts. The report in camp was, that the Archduke Michael was in Sebastopol. We learned from deserters that he had been expected. General Pelissier held 40,000 men in readiness to operate on the line of the Tchernaya, which, from its extent, was perhaps the most attackable part of our position; but it was vigilantly guarded.

The Orinoco arrived at Balaklava with Dragoons and horses. Mr. Doyne, Superintendent-in-Chief of the Army Working Corps, also arrived. He came as far as Constantinople in the Simoom, with 450 of his men, who were to follow him to the Crimea. The casualties from the 10th to the 12th were 19 killed; one officer, and 112 wounded. On the afternoon of the 13th, a distinguished young officer, Major Hugh Drummond, Scots Fusileer Guards, was killed as he was posting his sentries in front of the trenches. Drafts arrived to the Light Division; the 71st Regiment, and one squadron of 1st Dragoon Guards, landed at Balaklava.

The troops turned out every morning before dawn, and the Sardinians and French made reconnaissances. The Russian villas in the lovely valley of Baidar suffered, in which the Turks discovered, in a little country-house on the sea-shore, called Laspi, an old French doctor, who had been established many years in Russia. One fine morning a complaint was made to the French General by his countryman, that five Turkish soldiers had come to pay a visit to Laspi. They were received and fed, but before going away they asked for "madjar" (Hungarian ducats, the best known foreign money among the Turks). The old doctor, who of course understood nothing of their language, thought it was a polite inquiry about his nationality; and, wishing to rectify the mistake of his guests, pointed to the French cockade which he had fixed on his cap, saying at the same time, "Je suis Français, Français." But when one of the soldiers took hold of his watch and chain, and the others began to search the persons of the ladies of the family, he was aware that it was he, and not the Turks, who had{314} made the mistake, and the soldiers departed with objects to the value of about £200. General Pelissier addressed a complaint to the Turkish head-quarters. The answer was, that the Turks had the strictest orders not to plunder; that the marauders could not have been Turkish soldiers; and that the dress and flint muskets must have been borrowed or taken in order to make people believe that they were Turks.

After the French and English cavalry occupied the valley, the visits to the country-houses became much more systematic. The Russians having entirely withdrawn from the coast up to Yalta, the whole of the country-houses on the shore were opened to enterprising individuals, and every morning arabas and pack-horses came into camp, loaded with the most heterogeneous objects; chairs, beds, crockery, carpets, pictures, albums, ladies' work-baskets, embroidered cushions, cooking utensils, wine, and hundreds of other things, were brought back and sold all along the road. In order to put a stop to these excursions, an English cavalry picket was stationed at the Phoros Pass, which is erected on the highest point of the Woronzoff Road, just before it begins to descend towards the sea, and nobody was allowed to enter except with a pass. But this mended things only half—that is to say, no English soldier was permitted to indulge in a roaming disposition; but French marauders, as before, came duly provided with a pass, and returned with as much plunder as they could possibly carry.

CHAPTER II.

ON the 16th of August the long-threatened attack of the Russians took place, and ended in their complete defeat. Movements of large numbers of troops in the neighbourhood of Sebastopol, the unanimous reports of the deserters, of whom several came in every day, and information gained from Tartars, had given intimation that the Russians intended to try their luck once more in an offensive operation. Although, at first, the line of the Tchernaya suggested itself as the point which the Russians would most probably attack, a supposition which was moreover confirmed by all the deserters, yet, as large numbers of newly-arrived troops were seen concentrated in and about the Russian works, apprehensions were entertained that they might attempt the positions before Sebastopol.{315}

Several deserters came in on the 15th, and spoke with the utmost certainty of an intended attack on the Tchernaya; but no particular attention was paid to their reports, and no special orders were given to the troops, except "to be prepared;" and this had been so often repeated that it made no impression. In Baidar, whence the English cavalry had been withdrawn, two regiments of heavy French cavalry, and detachments of Chasseurs and Zouaves, were stationed. On the 15th, General d'Allonville sent word by semaphore, that large numbers of Russian troops were concentrated on the heights, and that he expected to be attacked. Late in the evening, notice of this message was sent to General Della Marmora and Osman Pasha. No additional precautions were taken on the Tchernaya line, and the advance was scarcely less a surprise than that of Inkerman. The first news of the attack was brought about daybreak by some Chasseurs forming part of a patrol who fell into an ambuscade and escaped, while their comrades were taken prisoners. Soon afterwards the outposts across the Tchernaya were driven in, and at daybreak the cannonade began.

The Tchernaya, issuing from the narrow gorge in which it runs after leaving the Valley of Baidar, at the Tower of Karlovka, flows between a succession of hillocks, which formed the basis of the position of the allied armies. On the extreme right, the Turks were stationed. They occupied two hillocks, between which are two roads leading from Higher Tchorgoun and the Tower of Karlovka into the Woronzoff Road. The Sardinians leant on the little mountain stream which limited the Turkish position to the left, and on the large hillock above the road from Balaklava to Tchorgoun, and occupied a position of the utmost importance in the defence of the line of the Tchernaya. In front, and divided from it by the aqueduct, was another hillock, smaller but equally steep, accessible from the first by a stone bridge on which the Sardinians had a small épaulement. They had outposts at the other side of the Tchernaya, on the hillock near the Mackenzie Road. The French occupied three hillocks to the left of the Sardinians, and guarded the road leading to Balaklava over the Traktir Bridge from Mackenzie's Farm. The first of these, to the right, was separated from the others by the road to the bridge; and the third, on the left, was protected by the basin of the aqueduct. In front of the bridge there was an épaulement, beyond which were the outposts.

The first attack of the Russians was against the outposts of the Sardinians. Corresponding to the hillocks on the south side of the Tchernaya were three plateaux from which their guns could command not only the ground opposite occupied by the Sardinians and Turks, but the plain which opens towards the French position. A company of infantry, and a company of bersaglieri, formed the Sardinian outposts. They were attacked at dawn. As the troops were not under arms, it was necessary to hold this position for a while, and General Della Marmora sent Major Govone, of the Etat-Major, with a company of bersaglieri, to reinforce the companies. They crossed the aqueduct and the river, and went up the plateau;{316} but, when they arrived on the crest, the two companies had just left the épaulement, which had become untenable, as it was swept by the guns which the Russians had brought up on the plateaux, and was exposed to be taken in the rear. The Sardinians retired in good order across the river, and went to reinforce the post which occupied the second hillock on the aqueduct.

The cannonade on both sides commenced. Scarcely had the cannonade opened when three compact columns of infantry advanced towards the French position, and attacked the bridge and the hillock to the right.

The French outpost beyond the bridge consisted of a company of the 2nd regiment of Zouaves. The other avant postes, to the right of the Zouaves up to the Sardinian outposts, were furnished by the 20th léger and the 22nd of the line. The réveillée had not yet gone in camp, when the sentinels were alarmed by hearing the tramp of men, whose forms were yet invisible in the darkness. The posts had not time to stand to their arms ere they were driven across the river; but the desultory firing had given timely warning to the main guards and to the camps, and the men turned out just as a storm of round shot began to rush over the ground.

The Russian columns, protected by the fire of their artillery, moved in excellent order down to the river side, notwithstanding the heavy fire of artillery which greeted them in front from the French, and in flank from the Sardinians. At the river the first column detached itself from the rest, and dividing into two parts crossed the river, which is easily fordable in summer.

Before the troops were properly under arms the Russians were at the bridge and at the foot of the hillock. The 20th léger and the 2nd battalion of Zouaves had to stand the first shock, and they certainly stood it gallantly. The Russians, without losing time in firing, advanced with an élan scarcely ever seen in Russian troops. They were new troops, belonging, according to the prisoners and wounded, to the 5th division of the 2nd corps d'armée, lately arrived from Poland.

The aqueduct which ran close to the foot of the hillock, formed the chief defence of the French. About nine or ten feet wide and several feet deep, it skirts the steep hills so close, that it is nearly in all places supported by a high embankment, offering considerable difficulties for an advancing force, and exposing them as soon as they reach the top of the embankment, to commanding musketry fire. Notwithstanding this, the Russians crossed it on the right, and were beginning to scale the heights, when, taken in flank by the Sardinian batteries, which fired with admirable precision, they were swept down wholesale and rolled into the aqueduct.

This first rush did not last ten minutes. The Russians fell back. Scarcely had they gone a few hundred yards when they were met by a second column, which was advancing at the pas de charge, and both united and again rushed forward. This second attempt was more successful than the first. They forded the river on the right and left, at the bridge, and forced its defenders to fall back. The moment the bridge was free two guns of the 5th Light{317} Brigade of Artillery crossed it and took position between two of the hillocks on the road which leads to the plain of Balaklava. A third gun crossed the river by a ford, and all three began to sweep the road and the heights. The infantry, without waiting for the portable bridges, the greater part of which had been thrown away during the advance, rushed breast-deep into the water, climbed up the embankment, and began to scale the heights. They succeeded in getting up more than one-half of the ascent, where the dead and wounded afterwards showed clearly the mark they reached; but by this time the French met them in the most gallant style. The Russians were by degrees forced back, and driven across the bridge, carrying away their guns.

While this conflict took place on the bridge, the other column attacked the French right in such a swarm that they could neither be kept back by the aqueduct, nor cowed by the Sardinian guns, which were ploughing long lanes through their ranks. On they came, as it seemed, irresistible, and rushed up the steep hill with such fury that the Zouaves, who lined the sides of it, were obliged to fall back. The officers might be seen leading the way and animating their soldiers. This furious rush brought the advancing column to the crest of the hillock, where it stopped to form. But the French had not been idle. Scarcely did the column of the enemy show its head, ere the guns opened upon it with grape, and a murderous fire was poured in by the French infantry. The column began to waver; but the impetus from those behind was so powerful that the head was pushed forward a few yards more, when the French, giving one mighty cheer, rushed upon the enemy, who, shaken already, immediately turned round and ran. But the mass was so great that all the hurry could not save them, and more than 200 prisoners were taken, the banks of the aqueduct, the aqueduct itself, and the river side were covered and filled with the dead and the wounded. The Sardinian and French artillery poured a murderous cross-fire into the scattered remains of the column. It was a complete rout. The French drove them far across the plain. This defeat completely depressed them; nothing more was attempted against this side.

Not so on the bridge. Notwithstanding the heavy loss suffered in the second attack, the Russians collected the scattered remains of the column which had been routed on the right of the French, and brought up all their reserves. They crossed the river, and the aqueduct too, but the French were now thoroughly prepared, and the tenacity of the Russians only served to augment their losses. This last failure was decisive, and immediately the advance of the artillery—the usual Russian preparation for retreat—showed they were on the point of retiring. Three batteries, each of twelve guns, began to open fire, while the remains of the infantry rallied behind a rising ground leading up towards the plateau of Ayker, or Mackenzie's Height.

The Sardinians, who, with the exception of the little outpost fight on the opposite side of the Tchernaya, had only supported the French by their artillery, began to move across the aqueduct. The{318} Russian riflemen, after the last defeat on the right, had retired behind the banks of the Tchernaya. A battalion of Piedmontese, preceded by a company of bersaglieri, advanced in beautiful order as if on parade, and soon drove these riflemen from their position. It even advanced some way, but it was not intended to force the heights. The French brought up a new division (Dulac's). The English and French cavalry were in readiness on the ground of the Light Cavalry charge, to receive the enemy if they should debouch on the plain. But General Morris would not risk the cavalry on the plain, intersected as it was by the branches of the river, and defended, as it was still, by the Russian guns on the height; so only two squadrons of Chasseurs d'Afrique followed the retreating enemy.

The guns which the Russians had brought up to cover their retreat suffered so much by the fire, which from our side was increased by Captain Mowbray's battery from the open ground between the Sardinian and the French positions, that they made off. As the guns retired, a brilliant line of cavalry appeared from behind the rising ground. I could distinguish five regiments—three in line and two other regiments in second line. They advanced at a gallop, and wheeling round, allowed twelve guns to pass, which again opened fire, but at half-past nine or ten o'clock black lines moving off, through clouds of the dust on the Mackenzie Road, were the only traces which remained of the so long threatened attack of the Russians.

Although not quite so obstinate and sanguinary as the Battle of Inkerman, this affair resembled it in many points. The Russians gave up manœuvring, and confided entirely in the valour of their troops. The difference was in the manner of fighting. At Inkerman the Russians fell under file firing; on the Tchernaya it was the artillery which did the greatest execution. On the banks of the aqueduct particularly, the sight was appalling; the Russians, when scaling the embankment of the aqueduct, were taken in flank by the Sardinian batteries, and the dead and wounded rolled down the embankment, sometimes more than twenty feet in height.

According to the account of the prisoners, and judging from the straps on the shoulders of the wounded and dead, three divisions were engaged in the actual attack,—the 5th of the 2nd corps d'armée (of General Paniutin), then lately arrived from Poland, under the command of General Wrangel; the 12th division of the 4th corps d'armée (Osten Sacken's), formerly under the command of General Liprandi, afterwards under General Martinolep; and the 17th division of the 6th corps d'armée (Liprandi's), under Major-General Wassielkosky. Before the attack began, General Gortschakoff, who commanded in person, read a letter from the Emperor before them, in which he expressed a hope that they would prove as valorous as last year when they took the heights of Balaklava; and then there was a large distribution of brandy. Besides the three divisions which attacked, the 7th occupied Tchorgoun and the heights, but was not engaged except in the small outpost affair of the Sardinians.{319}

The French had three divisions engaged—the Division Faucheux to the right, the Division d'Herbillon in the centre, and the Division (Camou) on the left of the bridge; their loss was about 1,000 in killed and wounded. The Sardinians had only one division engaged (the Division Trotti), and lost but a few hundred men; they had to regret the loss of a distinguished general officer, the Brigadier-General Count de Montevecchio, who died of his wounds; but they gained great confidence from the day, and were proud of holding their own so well under the eyes of their allies.

The battle had been raging for an hour ere I reached the line of the French works at Fedukhine. From the high grounds over which I had to ride, the whole of the battle-field was marked out by rolling columns of smoke, and the irregular thick puffs of the artillery. All our cavalry camps were deserted; but the sun played on the helmets and sabres of the solid squadrons, which were drawn up about two miles in advance of Kadikoi, and just in rear of the line of hills which the French and Sardinians were defending, so as to be ready to charge the Russians should they force the position. The French cavalry, chasseurs, hussars, and two regiments of dragoons, were on our left. Our light and our heavy cavalry brigades were formed in two heavy masses, supported by artillery in the plain behind the second Fedukhine hillock, and seemed in splendid case, and "eager for the fray." The Allies had, in fact, not less than 6,000 very fine cavalry that day in the field; but they were held in check, "for fear" of the artillery, which there is no doubt they could have captured, in addition to many thousands of prisoners, if handled by a Seidlitz or a Murat. But the French General would not permit a charge to be executed, though French and English cavalry leaders were alike eager for it, and so this noble force was rendered ineffective.

Having passed by the left of the cavalry, I gained the side of the hill just as a large body of French troops crowned it at the pas double, deployed, and at once charged down towards the aqueduct, where a strong column of Russians, protected by a heavy fire of artillery on the crest of the ridge, were making good their ground against the exhausted French. This new regiment attacking them with extraordinary impetuosity on the flank, literally swept the Russians like flies into the aqueduct, or rolled them headlong down its steep banks; and at the same moment a French battery on my right, belonging, I think, to the Imperial Guards, opened on the shattered crowd with grape, and tore them into atoms. This column was the head, so to speak, of the second attack on the lines, and emerging through the flying mass, another body of Russian infantry, with levelled bayonets, advanced with great steadiness towards the aqueduct once more. As far as the eye could see towards the right, the flat caps and grey coats were marching towards the Allied position, or detaching themselves from the distant reserves, which were visible here and there concealed amid the hills. As the French battery opened, a Russian battery was detached to answer it, and to draw off their fire; but{320} our gallant Allies took their pounding with great gallantry and coolness, and were not diverted for a moment from their business of dealing with the infantry column, the head of which was completely knocked to pieces in two minutes. Then the officers halted it, and tried in vain to deploy them—the column, wavering and wriggling like a great serpent, began to spread out from the further extremity like a fan, and to retreat towards the rear. Another crashing volley of grape, and they are retreating over the plain.

And now there breaks high over all the roar of battle, heavier thunder. Those are the deep, angry voices of the great English heavy battery of 18-pounders and 32-pounder howitzers, under Mowbray, which search out the reserves. These guns were placed far away on my right, near the Sardinians, and it is acknowledged by all that they did good service upon this eventful day. The advance I had just witnessed was the last effort of the enemy. Their infantry rolled in confused masses over the plain on the other side of the Tchernaya, were pursued by the whole fire of the French batteries and of the 8-inch English howitzers in the Sardinian redoubt, and by a continuous and well-directed fusillade, till they were out of range. Their defeat was announced by the advance of their cavalry, and by the angry volleys of their artillery against the positions of the Allies. Their cavalry, keeping out of range, made a very fair show, with lances and standards, and sabres shining brightly; but beyond that they did nothing—and, indeed, they could do nothing, as we did not give them a chance of action. The Russians were supported by guns, but they did not seem well placed, nor did they occupy a good position at any time of the fight. The infantry formed in square blocks in the rear of this force, and then began to file off towards the Mackenzie Road, and the French rocket battery opened on them from the plateau, and, strange to say, reached them several times. It was about eight o'clock when their regular retreat commenced, and the English cavalry and artillery began to retire also at that hour to their camps, much discontented, because they had had no larger share in the honours of the day.

The march of the Russians continued till late in the day—their last column gained the plateau about two o'clock. It must have been a terrible march for them—not a drop of water to be had; and even when they gained their arid camp, it is only too probable that they had nothing to drink; indeed, the prisoners told us the men were encouraged to the attack by being told that if they gained the Tchernaya they would have abundance of water—the greatest inducement that could be held out to them. I rode down towards the tête-du-pont. In order to get a good view of the retreat, I descended to the bridge, which was covered with wounded men. Just as I gained the centre of it, a volley of shells was pitched right upon it, and amid the French, who, with their usual humanity, were helping the wounded. Some burst in the shallow stream, the sides of which were crowded with wounded men; others killed poor wretches who were crawling towards the water,—one in particular, to whom I had just an instant before thrown{321} a sandwich; others knocked pieces out of the bridge, or tore up the causeway. As the road was right in the line of fire, I at once turned off the bridge, and pulling sharp round, dashed under an arch just as the battery opened on us a second time, and there I remained for about ten minutes, when the Russians seemed ashamed of themselves, and gave us a respite for a few moments. The next time they fired was with round shot; and as I retreated up the road, to obtain shelter behind the hills, one of these knocked a wounded Zouave to pieces before my eyes. In the rear of the hill, there was a party of about five hundred Russian prisoners en bivouac. Many of them were wounded; all were war-worn, dirty, ill-clad,—some in rags, others almost bootless. The French sentries who guarded them seemed to commiserate the poor fellows; but two or three of their own officers, who sat apart, did not look at them, but smoked their cigars with great nonchalance, or talked glibly to the French officers of the fortune of war, &c.

In a short time I returned to the front, and saw General Simpson and a few staff-officers descending from the Sardinian position, whence they had watched the battle. They were on their way back to head-quarters; but Captain Colville, aide-de-camp to the General, a young officer of ability and promise, and always of an inquiring turn of mind, turned back with me, and we rode over the bridge. The French were, however, obdurate, and would not let us cross the tête-du-pont, as we were en pleine portée of the guns posted behind a white scarp on a hillock on the opposite side. We could see that the Sardinians had recovered their old ground, and occupied the height from which their advanced posts were driven early in the day. Further, we could see the Russian cavalry, but the great mass of infantry was in full retreat; and at nine o'clock the road to Mackenzie's Farm was thronged with a close column of thirsty, footsore, beaten Russians. The aspect of the field, of the aqueduct, and of the river, was horrible beyond description;—the bodies were closely packed in parties, and lay in files two or three deep, where the grape had torn through the columns. For two days the bodies rotted on the ground which lay beyond the French lines, and the first Russian burying party did not come down till the 18th, when the stench was so very great that the men could scarcely perform their loathsome task. General Read was killed early in the battle; and the Russians lost every officer in command of an attacking column. Their total loss was, we estimated, at from 12,000 to 15,000 men.{322}

CHAPTER III.

AFTER the affair of the 16th, the siege operations monopolized, in great measure, the military interest which the Tchernaya had attracted for one moment. But the Tchernaya became a point of attraction for all curiosity-seeking persons, whose name was legion, in the Allied armies. Officers and soldiers, although numerous enough, were few in proportion to the merchant sailors, suttlers from Balaklava and Kamiesch, and other nondescript camp-followers, who formed a class of themselves, and were as sure to appear after an action was over as vultures. Everything was acceptable. They had little chance of getting hold of medals, amulets, and crosses, and other more valuable spoil, for these disappeared marvellously; but they were not particular. The Russian muskets were most in request—cartridge-boxes, riflemen's swords, bayonets, &c., were taken faute de mieux. There were some excellent rifles, with sword-bayonets, which were in great request; they were, as was usually the case with all valuable things, picked up by the Zouaves, who certainly had the best right to them, having won them by their bravery. The Zouaves sold them, and the gendarmes took them away again, leaving the purchaser free to single out the Zouave who sold the rifle, and to get back his purchase-money. But the gendarmes confiscated all arms, whether paid for or not, as, according to the regulations of the French army, they ought to have been collected on the battle-field by the Artillery—a thing which was never done.

The fire, which opened at daybreak on Friday, continued the whole of Saturday and Sunday, but slackened on Monday. The progress of the French works was considerable, and the French seemed duly sensible of the service of our cannonade. I heard a French officer say on Saturday evening that it had enabled them to do in four hours what they previously could not have done in fifteen days. Their foremost parallel, which had been begun at the two ends, could not be completed, owing to its near proximity to the Malakoff. As soon as a gabion was put up, a storm of projectiles was hurled against it and the working party; afterwards the extremities were connected under the cover of our fire. The distance was indeed so greatly reduced between the French trenches and the Russian defences, that a vigorous assault seemed certain to succeed.{323}

The Russians always considered it a point of honour to go off in great style on the first day of a bombardment; after which they ran their guns behind the parapets, covered them with sandbags, and allowed us to blaze away without making frequent reply. Although earthworks take a deal of hammering before they show its marks, both the Redan and Malakoff began to present a very battered appearance. We had, of course, no means of ascertaining the Russian loss of men. Every night our people kept up the musketry against the proper right and the curtain of the Malakoff to protect the French workmen, and shells and bouquets of shells flew all along the lines right and left—very pretty to look at, but unpleasant to meet.

At sunset on Saturday evening, the 18th of August, a party of the Naval Brigade, commanded by Lieutenant Gough, dragged a 68-pounder up to No. 11 Battery left attack to bear on the mole-head and on the bridge across the creek, but it did not appear to impede the movements of the enemy.

On the afternoon of the 20th, between five and six o'clock, the French batteries on the left opened a furious fire, to which the Russians warmly replied. General Pelissier, in his open carriage, with his aides-de-camp and usual hussar escort, passed through the English camp and went up to Cathcart's Hill. The fire lasted until nightfall, and then diminished. At midnight it had almost ceased, and one saw but an occasional shell in the air. At 2 A.M. orders came for the army to turn out. This was rapidly done; the troops moved to the front, and remained there until daylight. A line of telegraphic lights had been observed, commencing at Sebastopol, and running along the Inkerman heights, and it was supposed that an attack was intended. These "turns-outs" were frequent and harassing during this period of the siege.

The French, who were convinced that in the face of a strong force of the enemy, who might come down with his battalions in a few hours during the night, field fortifications were never de trop, threw up three redoubts to command the bridge, which was the weakest point of their defence. They were named Raglan Redoubt, Bizot Redoubt (in honour of the fallen general of Engineers), and La Bussonière Redoubt (in honour of the colonel of Artillery of that name who fell on the 18th of June).

The Sardinians strengthened their position. Their works assumed the shape of an entrenched camp, and every variation in the ground was taken advantage of. The hills were particularly suited for fortified lines.

The Turks, who occupied the extreme right of our position, and who had to guard the two roads leading from the valley of Varnutka, did nothing in the tabia line. In vain did the Sardinian engineers throw out gentle hints about the propriety of erecting a couple of épaulements, and point out divers hills and heights peculiarly suited for a redoubt; they turned a deaf ear to all these suggestions, and, except the works which had been previously thrown up by the Piedmontese, when they held some of the positions guarded by the Turks, not a shovelful of earth was{324} turned up. This would have seemed so much the more surprising, as the Turks had become notorious by their fortification, at Kalafat, Giurgevo, Silistria, and Eupatoria.

On the 25th, the Highland division under General Cameron encamped close to the Piedmontese. On the same day, General Simpson reconnoitred with great care the position of the enemy, who had massed a considerable number of troops on the Mackenzie Plateau at Taura and Korales, and had pushed forward strong parties as far as Makoul. It was understood from the spies that two regiments of the Grenadier Corps had been sent down in light carts from Simpheropol. At the same time the Russians were busy at a line of earthworks connecting all their defences from the sea to the West Inkerman Lighthouse Hill. Their bridge of boats or pontoons from north to south, across the road, was completed. It passed from the western curve of Fort Nicholas on the south, to the creek between Nachimoff Battery and Fort Michael. From the 20th to the 23rd of August inclusive, we lost 2 sergeants, 24 rank and file killed; 8 officers, 8 sergeants, 168 rank and file wounded—total, 220 hors de combat. On the 20th, Lieutenant Home, 48th, was contused on the shoulder; Lieutenant Campbell, 72nd, slightly wounded; Lieutenant McBarnet, 79th, ditto; Captain Dickson, R.A., ditto;—on the 21st, Lieutenant Smith, 28th, ditto;—on the 22nd, Lieutenant Campbell, Scots Fusileer Guards, ditto; Lieutenant Wield, 95th, severely;—on the 23rd, Lieutenant de Winton, R.A., slightly. The casualties from the 24th to the 26th of August were—24 rank and file killed; 9 officers, 6 sergeants, and 137 rank and file wounded and missing. On the 24th, Major Warden, 97th, and Lieutenant Bigge, 23rd, were slightly, and Captain J. F. Browne, R.E., was severely wounded. On the 25th, Captain R. Drummond was dangerously wounded. Colonel Seymour (who was wounded in the thumb at Inkerman) was hit in the head by a piece of a shell. Lieutenant Laurie, 34th, was slightly wounded the same day; on the 26th, Lieutenant Rous, of the 90th, and Captain Arbuthnot, R.A., were wounded severely. On the 28th, Captain Forbes, Grenadier Guards, received a very slight flesh scratch. On the 29th, Captain Farquharson, Scotch Fusileer Guards, and Major Graham, 41st Regiment, were wounded, the first slightly, the latter severely; and on the 30th, Captain Wolsley, of the 90th acting as Engineer, was severely wounded. From the 27th to the 30th August, 1 officer, 1 sergeant, and 20 rank and file were killed; 6 officers, 4 sergeants, and 152 rank and file were wounded. The casualties from 31st August to 2nd September were 1 officer, 1 sergeant, 22 rank and file killed; 6 officers, 7 sergeants, 106 rank and file wounded; 1 officer, 1 rank and file missing. Captain Fraser, 95th, was killed on the 31st, and on the same night Lieutenant Burningheim, of the 3rd Regiment, was slightly, and Lieutenant Forbes, 30th Regiment, mortally wounded; and Captain Ross, of the Buffs, was missing. On 1st September, Lieutenant Price, R.A., was slightly, and Lieutenant Cary, Rifle Brigade, was severely wounded. On the 2nd September, Lieutenant Roberts, R.A., and Captain Smith, 90th, were slightly wounded. On the{325} 4th, the 82nd Regiment disembarked from Corfu, and relieved the 13th at Balaklava.

The 56th Regiment, about 800 strong, arrived at Balaklava, and were annexed to the First Division. The army continued to get under arms before daybreak. On the 26th the cavalry turned out 2,950 sabres, and 500 or 600 more could have been brought into the field.

Reports that the Russians meditated an attack upon Balaklava caused the Admiral to order the Leander and Diamond to moor by a single cable, and the Triton was ordered to be ready to get steam up at brief notice, in order to tow them out to a position whence their guns could bear on the Marine Heights.

Notwithstanding these preparations, there were many rumours of peace. We had a peace party in camp, who reasoned that the Russians could sustain the contest no longer. According to these authorities, in a couple of months the British Army was to go home again. But there is no magic in wishes any more than in words, and these prophets of peace underrated the tenacity and endurance of the Russian Government and people. Our works on the left continued to advance. Several new batteries—one of 15 mortars—were constructed in front of what had been our most advanced positions on that part of the line.

The English cavalry came down to the valley every morning, as if haunting the ground where its comrades fell, and watching an opportunity to revenge them. The effect was imposing—perfect, one might say, if anything human could be called so. Horses and men were in excellent condition, as fit for work as any cavalry could be.

CHAPTER IV.

ALL the latter part of August passed quietly away: the Russians on the alert to resist an assault—we prepared to meet the rumoured attack upon our lines. After the failure of June 18, our cannonade languished. We talked of it as slackening, and considered it extinct. Prince Gortschakoff assured the world that it was a mere{326} squib, a feeble firework, which did those tough Russians no harm, and caused their troops no inconvenience; and yet, somehow or other, between the 18th of June and 18th of July, not less than eight thousand pretty little globules of iron, eight, ten, and thirteen inches in diameter, and falling with a weight equivalent to fifty and to ninety tons, were deposited inside the lines of Sebastopol, and every one that burst sent forth some six or eight fragments, of several pounds weight each, a distance of two or three hundred yards, unless they were stopped in transitu by traverse or sinew.

The authorities took active measures to curtail the proportions of the vast village of suttlers' houses at Kadikoi. As there was a report that the fair was a nest of spies—that strange fires were occasionally lighted up on the hills behind it, towards Karanyi, and were answered by the Russians on the Plateau Mackenzie, and people came and departed as they listed without any interference with their movements, it was resolved to keep its limits more under control and supervision.

Some divisions managed to get together a considerable accumulation of stores in advance, and almost in anticipation of the winter, but fuel was brought up de die in diem by a most thriftless process. It was no unusual thing to see a string of fine Spanish mules and ponies, each of which cost a good round sum, coming from Kasatch or Balaklava with a couple of stout boughs lashed to each side of their pack-saddles, the ends trailing on the ground, and the drivers urging them at full speed. The proper load of wood for a mule is 200lb. Judging from the loads I saw weighed, they actually carried less than 100lb., and at the same time the costly pack-saddles were ruined, and the animals distressed and injured by this clumsy mode of carriage. As I could not help exclaiming at the time, "How the money is flying! If Mr. John could but have stood upon one of the hill-tops in the Crimea, and if, after gladdening his heart with the sight of his fine fleet floating grandly on the water outside the 'beleaguered city,'—rejoicing over his brave sons whose white tents studded the brown steppe row after row,—and rubbing his hands with delight at the thunder of his batteries—he would just have wiped his glasses and looked at the less glorious and exciting portions of the scene, he would have some uneasy tinglings in his breeches-pockets, depend on it."

"Where are all these horses going to?"

"Oh, they're Spanish horses, which have been cast by the artillery, and they're going to be sold as unfit for service."

"Why, Lord bless me! it's only a few months since I paid £30,000 for that very lot, and they've done nothing, I hear, but stand at their picket ropes ever since. They cost me, I'm sure, carriage and all, £100 a-piece. What do you think I'll get for them?"

"Well, sir, to tell you the truth, I don't think as how they'll fetch more than £10 a-head, if so much."

To speak plainly, for the old gentleman's peace of mind, I would not advise him to be too inquisitive, and a visit to the camp, when{327} in its most flourishing condition and healthy aspect, might injure his nerves irremediably.

"Who are those fellows in that secluded valley, hunting among the vines for some grapes, while their horses are left to wander through the neglected gardens?"

"They belong to Division A, or B, or C, or D; see the letter branded upon the horses' flanks. They are Turks, Elamites, Affghans, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Kurds, Parthians, Canaanites, Greeks, for whose services in the Land Transport Corps you, John, pay daily the sum of 3s. per man, and they ought now to be carrying up provisions for your soldiers; but, being philosophers of the Epicurean school, they prefer the pursuit of the grape and the insouciance of the siesta to tramping over dusty roads, or urging their mad career down stony ravines on thy much be-whacked quadrupeds!"

"And those miles of mules and carts winding all along the plain, emerging from ravines, ascending hills, and that vast army of drivers in quaint attire, the concentration of the floating vagabondage of the world, the flotsam and jetsam of the social life of every nation, civil and barbarous, on earth—to whom do they belong, and who pays them and for them?"

"Even you, my dear sir, and very handsomely too, I can assure you."

"And those ships in Balaklava?"

"Yours again, sir; but don't be uneasy; things are managed better there now; occasionally the authorities root out a great demurrager, and send her off hopping after she has lain perdu some months doing nothing. The other day the Walmer Castle, a fine Indiaman, sir, was sent off at last—she had been in Balaklava since February, doing nothing but affording comfortable lodgings for a few of the authorities. But we won't talk of these things any more, for really the arrangements are much improved."

"Who are those officers in blue, with grey, yellow, and red facing's—apparently men of rank, with stars and crowns and lace on their collars?"

"They are of the Land Transport Corps—captains and quartermasters of brigade."

"Hallo! is there a theatrical company here? Who're the queer-looking chaps with the huntsmen-in-Der-Freischutz-caps and tunics, smoking short pipes, and driving their carts like so many Jehus?"

"Well, we have the Zouave Theatre and the Sailors' Theatre, but these men belong to Colonel McMurdo, and certainly they have let their hats get cruelly out of shape; they were neat enough and looked well while the rosettes were clean, but now——"

"And who are the gentlemen in grey, with black braid and swords, and pouch-belts and telescopes—some new riflemen, eh?—capital dress for sharpshooters."

"Why, dear me, sir, don't you know those are harmless civilians, who neither wish to shoot any one or to be shot at themselves?{328} They are civil engineers and civilians belonging to your recently formed Army Works Corps."

"Hallo! here's another—what's he? a felt helmet with a spike in it and brass binding—a red frock with black braid—a big horse—a cavalry man, eh?"

"Well, he's one of the Mounted Staff Corps, and he gets as much as an Ensign in the line for being ready to go anywhere—when he's wanted."

"Who's that drunken fellow—an old soldier in the odd uniform, with medals on his breast?"

"Hush! he's the last one left of the Ambulance Corps. They cost a lot of money, and did some good, but McMurdo won't have them now, unless he gets his own way with them, and——"

"I beg your pardon, but who is that foreign officer in a white bournous, and attended by a brilliant staff of Generals—him with the blue and silver stripe down his trousers I mean, and gold braid on his waistcoat, and a red and white cap; it must be Pelissier?"

"That! why, that's M. Soyer, chef de nos batteries de cuisine, and if you go and speak to him, you'll find he'll talk to you for several hours about the way your meat is wasted; and so I wish you good morning, sir, and every success in trade and commerce to enable you to pay all the gentlemen you have seen to-day, as well as a speedy entry into Sebastopol."

At one o'clock on the 30th August the camp was shaken by a prodigious explosion. A tumbrel, from which the French were discharging powder into one of the magazines near the Mamelon, was struck by a shell, which bursting as it crashed through the roof of the carriage, ignited the cartridges; 1400 rounds, 10lbs each, exploded, shattering to atoms the magazine, and surrounding-works, and whirling in all directions over the face of the Mamolen and beyond it, 150 officers and men. Of these, 40 were killed upon the spot, and the rest were scorched and burnt, or wounded by splinters, stones, and the shot and shell which were thrown into the air by the fiery eruption. A bright moon lighted up the whole scene, and shed its rays upon a huge pillar of smoke and dust, which rose into the air from the Mamelon, and, towering to an immense height, unfolded itself and let fall from its clustering waves of smoke and sulphurous vapour a black precipitate of earth, fine dust, and pebbles, mingled with miserable fragments, which dropped like rain upon the works below. There was silence for an instant, and but for an instant, as the sullen thunder rolled slowly away and echoed along the heights of Inkerman and Mackenzie. Then the Russians, leaping to their guns, cheered loudly, but their voices were soon smothered in the crash of the French and English batteries, which played fiercely upon their works. The Russians replied, but they were unable to take any advantage of our mischance, owing to the firmness of the French in the advanced trenches, and the steadiness with which the cannonade was continued. The dark cloud hung like a pall for nearly an hour over the place, reddening every moment with the reflection of the flashes of the artillery, which boomed incessantly till dawn. The mus{329}ketry was very heavy and fierce all along the advanced trenches, and as no one except those in the parallels near the Mamelon knew the precise nature of the explosion, great anxiety was manifested to learn the truth. Some persons asserted that the Russians had sprung a mine—others, that the French had blown in the counterscarp of the Malakoff—and with the very spot under their eyes, people were conjecturing wildly what had taken place; just like those at home, who did not hesitate to make the boldest assertions respecting the events which occurred in the Crimea, and of which they knew neither the scene nor the circumstance.

There were rumours that the garrison of Sebastopol was in an extremely disorganized state. The losses in the town were frightful, and notwithstanding their official and non-official declarations, the Russians suffered from want of water and of spirits. Indeed, it was confidently affirmed that, owing to the deficiency of forage, their cavalry had been compelled to fall back on the road to Bakschiserai. They threw up another battery, close to the Spur Battery, commanding a small path from the Tchernaya. The French constructed strong redoubts on the site of the old redoubts in the plain. These works were in connection with the outer line of defence from Kamara, Traktir, and Tchorgoun, and the Sardinian and Turkish batteries towards Baidar, and behind them were the old batteries defending Balaklava, which became one of the strongest positions in the world.

Our allies were losing heavily, in the White Works, which they captured on the 7th of June, where they lost one-half of the men who went into it every day. The 12-gun battery on the north side took them in flank and reverse, the Malakoff enfiladed them on the other side, and they were exposed to the direct fire of the shipping in front. They called the place "l'Abattoir." Our own losses were very heavy, but still the army were full of hope and courage.

As for Jack Tar, he can speak for himself. This was the bill of his play:—

Theatre Royal, Naval Brigade.

On Friday Evening, 31st of August, will be Performed

Deaf as a Post!

To be followed by

The Silent Woman.

The whole to conclude with the laughable Farce, entitled,

Slasher and Crasher.

Seats to be taken at 7 o'clock. Performance to commence
precisely at 8 o'clock.

God save the Queen! Rule Britannia!

And right well they played. True, the theatre was the amputating house of the Brigade, but no reflections as to its future and past{330} use marred the sense of present enjoyment. The scenes were furnished from the London, the actors from the Brigade. There was an agreeable ballet girl, who had to go into the trenches to work a 68-pounder at three o'clock in the morning, and Rosa was impersonated by a prepossessing young boatswain's mate. Songs there were in plenty, with a slight smack of the forecastle, and a refrain of big guns booming down the ravine from the front; but they were all highly appreciated, and the dancing was pronounced to be worthy of Her Majesty's ere Terpsichore and Mr. Lumley retired. Nor were fashionable and illustrious personages wanting to grace the performance with their presence, and to relieve the mass of 2,000 commoners who cheered and laughed and applauded so good-humouredly. The "Duke of Newcastle" paid marked attention to Deaf as a Post, and led the encore for a hornpipe. Lord Rokeby was as assiduous as his Grace. The sense of enjoyment was not marred by the long-range guns, which now and then sent a lobbing shot near the theatre; and if the audience were amused, so were the performers, who acted with surprising spirit and taste. What would old Benbow or grim old Cloudesley Shovell have thought of it all?

There was a sortie early on the morning of the 1st of September on the advanced trenches of our right attack, and the Russians kept up a very heavy fire upon our working parties.

As the crisis of the siege approached, it was affirmed that the enemy were about to try the chances of war once more, in one grand attack, at three or four points between Baidar and the gorge of Inkerman, and to make a sortie in force on our works. Prince Gortschakoff, Generals Liprandi, Paniutin, and Osten-Sacken were mentioned as the generals of the attacking columns. The mass was concentrated on the plateau between Kamishli and Kalankoi, on the south side of the Belbek, supported by divisions echeloned on the road to Bakschiserai. Near Kalankoi a bad and difficult mountain road to Balaklava crosses the Belbek; strikes off to the right to Mackenzie's Farm; descending thence from the plateau, crosses the Tchernaya at the bridge of the Traktir, and sweeps across the plain of Balaklava, intersecting in its course the Woronzoff Road. Several paths or indifferent roads branch from this grand causeway ere it descends the plateau of Mackenzie's Farm, leading by Chuliou and Ozenbasch towards Baidar, and it was thought that the Russians might have put these in tolerable condition, and rendered them available for the passage of troops and artillery. The Russians concentrated considerable masses in and about Upu, Ozenbasch, and Chuliou, and Prince Gortschakoff visited the army destined to operate against the Turks, French, and Sardinians on the rear, and was prodigal of promises and encouragement. The intelligence received by the English, French, and Turkish Generals coincided on these points, and was believed to be entirely trustworthy. It seemed incredible that any General would trust his army among those defiles and mountain-passes, because a failure on the part of the corps on his right to seize Tchorgoun and Kamara would have left him without support, and an active{331} enemy could have easily pursued and crushed him before he could have possibly gained the plateau from which he had descended. Nothing would have given such universal satisfaction to the whole army as another attempt by the enemy to force our position. If the Russians descended into the plain we were sure of success, and the prospect of a sanguinary engagement gave positive pleasure to both officers and men, alike weary of the undistinguished, if not inglorious, service of the trenches.

With nearly 3,000 English, and upwards of 5,000 French sabres, we should have made signal examples of our defeated foes in their retreat; and our 56 field guns, all in high efficiency and order, together with the admirable batteries of the French, would have annihilated any artillery which the Russians could have placed in position. As to their cavalry, they were inferior in number to our own, and in dash and pluck they could not have matched the men who charged at Balaklava. As to a sortie, although it might have been made with large bodies of men, it had no better chance of success, for our reserves had been kept in readiness to act at once, and the force in the trenches was greatly augmented. It had been our practice to send only 1,400 men into the trenches of the left attack, of which one-half was of the reserve; and, as the latter were allowed to go back to camp in the day, it frequently happened that only 700 men were left to guard the whole of our extensive works in Chapman's attack. But afterwards our force was increased, and the reserves were maintained in all their integrity, so as to be ready to give efficient support to the trench guard should the enemy make any serious demonstration against our lines.

I took the opportunity of referring to this matter to make the following remarks, which many officers at the time assured me conveyed their feelings on the subject: "And here I may be permitted to offer one word on behalf of such officers and men as have not had an opportunity of sharing the honours conferred on those who have been so fortunate as to be engaged in general actions during this war. I am certain that there is a very general feeling in the army that there should be some distinctive decoration for 'service in the trenches.' Men have been decorated for the battles of the Alma, Inkerman, and Balaklava, who were not in the least danger, or even more under fire than if they had remained in their club card-room; but no man goes into the trenches who is not exposed to a heavy fire and to continual danger. The Adjutant-General's returns will show that in a fortnight we lose nearly as many officers and men as are put hors de combat in a regular battle, although it will be observed that the proportion of officers to men killed and wounded is far smaller than it is on occasions of drawn battle. A man who has served thirty nights in the trenches will have undergone more fire than if he had been in the hottest fight of the campaign. Why not let him have a decoration, were it only a bit of iron with the words 'Trenches before Sebastopol' engraved upon it? The arduous nature of our trench service is best indicated by our returns, and by the fact that many young officers who come out from England are rendered unfit or unable to discharge{332} their duties after a few weeks' experience. Although there are many complaints of the rawness of the recruits, they are as nothing compared to the outcry against the crudity of the lads who are despatched as 'officers' to the Crimea, and who perforce must be sent in responsible positions into the trenches. A reference to the daily General Orders will satisfy any one of the truthfulness of that outcry. The number of officers who sicken and are ordered home, or to Scutari, or to go on board ship, is increasing, and it is not found that the recently arrived regiments furnish the smallest portion of those worn out by ennui, and reduced from good health to a state of illness by a few days' service. The old officers, of course, grumble, and the grim veterans who have remained with their regiments since the beginning of the campaign are indignant at having as comrades puling boys, who, from no fault of their own, are utterly helpless and inefficient, and soon sicken, and leave the duties of the regiment to be performed by their overworked seniors. Why should not vacancies in regiments out here be filled up from regiments stationed elsewhere? Such a course was pursued in the Chinese war, in our Indian wars, and I believe in the long war, and it secured the services of experienced soldiers. There are many ensigns of four, five, and six years' standing in the latter regiments, while it would be difficult to find many lieutenants who have seen so much service in any regiment which has been here since the beginning of the war.

"With all our experience we still permit the existence of absurdities and anomalies. About 100 doctors are sick from overwork or of disgust, and yet we have civil hospitals on the Dardanelles, maintained at some expense, in which the medical men have so little to do that they come up to camp to 'tout' for patients and practice. The surgeons say that, as it is very evident Government will never give them any honour or reward, except mere service promotion and pay, they will look to the latter alone, and it may be easily imagined in what frame of mind they will serve in cases where they can escape the necessity of energetic exertion. With a kind of refined irony, two of the medical officers were 'invited to attend' at the investiture of the K.C.B.'s the other day, as none of them were eligible as C.B.'s. Two commissariat officers were kindly invited to represent their body. These complaints are the echoes of voices in the camp, loud enough to be heard, and as such I report them."

The Sardinians, acclimatized, flushed with triumph, and anxious for another opportunity to try their steel, formed a fine corps of about 8,000 effective bayonets, and the Turks could turn out about 13,000 strong. The French, notwithstanding their losses in the capture of the Mamelon, in the assault on the 18th of June, and, above all, in the trenches, where they had on an average 150 hors de combat on "quiet nights," and perhaps twice as many when the enemy were busy, could present 55,000 bayonets to the enemy.

From the French sap in front of the Mamelon one could at this period lay his hand on the abattis of the Malakoff! It was a hazardous experiment sometimes. Major Graham lost his arm in{333} trying it en amateur, for he was hit as he was returning up the trench; indeed, it was a subject of remark that amateurs and officers who had then recently come into the trenches were more frequently hit than was consistent with the rules of proportion. Mr. Gambier, a midshipman of the Curaçoa, went as an amateur into the advanced parallel of the left attack, and took a shot at a Russian rifleman; he was rewarded by a volley from several of the enemy, and in another instant was going up on a stretcher, with a ball through both his thighs. It was a very common thing to hear it said, "Poor Smith is killed; just imagine—his first night in the trenches." "Jones lost a leg last night; only joined us this week, and his second night on duty," &c. The Russians, of course, suffered in the same way, but I doubt if they had many amateurs. They had quite enough of legitimate fighting, and their losses were prodigious.

On the 3rd of September, at a quarter past 9 P.M., a heavy fire of musketry to the left of the Malakoff showed that the enemy were attacking. The night was dark, but clear, and for half an hour our lines were a blaze of quick, intermittent light. The musketry rattled incessantly. Chapman's and Gordon's Batteries opened with all their voices, and the Redan, Malakoff, Garden, and Barrack Batteries replied with roars of ordnance. When the musketry fire flickered and died out, commenced for a quarter of an hour a general whirling of shells, so that the light of the very stars was eclipsed, and their dominion usurped by the wandering flight of these iron orbs. Twenty or thirty of these curves of fire tearing the air asunder and uttering their shrill "tu whit! tu whit! tu whit!" as they described their angry flight in the sky, could be counted and heard at once. While it lasted, it was one of the hottest affairs we have yet experienced.

A party of the 97th, under Captain Hutton, was posted in the advanced trench of the left of the Right Attack. The Russians attacked our working party and drove it in. Lieutenant Brinkley and Lieutenant Preston, with 100 of the 97th, were ordered to proceed to the right of the new sap. On arriving at the trench they found it crowded with the 23rd, that it was impossible to keep the party of the 97th together. This crowded state of the trench is said to have arisen from the 23rd not having recommenced working, and remaining in the trench with the covering party of the 77th, when the firing ceased. At 12.30 Lieutenant-Colonel Legh, 97th, was ordered to take his men to Colonel Bunbury, 23rd, who was in advance of the new sap. He collected forty-five rank and file, and telling Lieutenant Preston to advance with the rest, proceeded to the head of the sap. Here Lieutenant Preston was hit, and one man killed. About fifteen yards in front of the sap were stationed Colonel Bunbury and a party of the 77th, under Captain Pechell. That party having been relieved by the 97th, Colonel Legh placed his men in cover, sending out two parties under Sergeants Coleman and O'Grady in advance. The Russians all of a sudden gave a loud cheer, and the 97th stood up, expecting a rush. When the Russians saw the effect of their ruse, they fired a volley,{334} Lieutenant Preston, in front of Colonel Legh, was mortally wounded, and carried to the rear by Sergeant Coleman; Sergeant O'Grady fell dead just as he had demanded permission to take the enemy's rifle-pits. Lieutenants Ware and Whitehead were sent down to assist. Ware was wounded; but Lieutenant Whitehead succeeded in bringing in all the wounded, except Corporal Macks, who was lying close to the rifle-pit with two legs broken. Lieutenant Brinkley came up in support. The Russians retired from the pits before dawn, having put 3 officers and 24 men hors de combat. The Russians lost at least 600 men. The French loss was upwards of 300 men hors de combat.

CHAPTER V.

AT last, on the morning of the 5th of September, the Allied batteries opened fire for the sixth time, and the LAST BOMBARDMENT commenced. A gentle breeze from the south-east, which continued all day, drifted over the steppe, and blew gently into Sebastopol. The sun shone serenely through the vapours of early morning and wreaths of snowy clouds, on the long lines of white houses inside those rugged defences of earth and gabionnade which have so long kept our armies gazing in vain on this "august city." The ships floated on the waters of the roads, which were smooth as a mirror, and reflected the forms of these "monarchs of the main." Outside our own fleet and that of the French were reposing between Kasatch and Constantine as idly as though they were "painted ships upon a painted ocean."

From Cathcart's Hill, therefore, on the right front of the Fourth Division camp, one could gain an admirable view of certain points of the position from the sea on the left to our extreme right at Inkerman. That advantage was, however, rarely obtainable when there was any heavy firing, as the smoke generally hung in thick clouds between the earthworks, not to be easily dispelled, excepting by the aid of a brisk wind. If one of the few persons who were in the secret of the opening of the French batteries had been on Cathcart's Hill on the morning of the 5th he would have beheld then, just before half-past five o'clock, the whole of this scene marked out in keen detail in the clear morning air. The men in our trenches might have been seen sitting down behind the traverses, or strolling about in the rear of the parapets. Small trains{335} of animals and files of men might have been continually observed passing over the ground between the trenches and the camp, and the only smoke that caught the eye rose from the kettles of the soldiery, or from the discharge of a rifle in the advanced works. On the left, however, the French trenches were crowded with men, and their batteries were all manned, though the occupants kept well out of sight of the enemy, and the mantlets and screens were down before the muzzles of some of their guns. The men beneath the parapets swarmed like bees. A few grey-coated Russians might have been noticed repairing the works of the Flagstaff Battery, or engaged in throwing up a new work, which promised to be of considerable strength, in front of the second line of their defences.

Suddenly, close to the Bastion du Mât, along the earthen curtain between Nos. 7 and 8 Bastions, three jets of flame sprang up into the air and hurled up as many pillars of earth and dust, a hundred feet high, which were warmed into ruddy hues by the horizontal rays of the sun. The French had exploded three fougasses to blow in the counterscarp, and to serve as a signal to their men. In a moment, from the sea to the Dockyard Creek, a stream of fire three miles in length seemed to run like a train from battery to battery, and fleecy, curling, rich white smoke ascended, as though the earth had suddenly been rent in the throes of an earthquake, and was vomiting forth the material of her volcanoes. The lines of the French trenches were at once covered as though the very clouds of heaven had settled down upon them, and were whirled about in spiral jets, in festoons, in clustering bunches, in columns and in sheets, all commingled, involved together, and uniting as it were by the vehement flames beneath. The crash of such a tremendous fire must have been appalling, but the wind and the peculiar condition of the atmosphere did not permit the sound to produce any great effect in our camp; in the city, for the same reason, the noise must have been terrific and horrible. The iron storm tore over the Russian lines, tossing up, as if in sport, jets of earth and dust, rending asunder gabions, and "squelching" the parapets, or dashing in amongst the houses and ruins in their rear. The terrible files of this flying army, extending about four miles in front, rushed across the plain, carrying death and terror in their train, swept with heavy and irresistible wings the Russian flanks, and searched their centre to the core. A volley so startling, simultaneous, and tremendously powerful, was probably never before discharged since cannon were introduced.

The Russians seemed for a while utterly paralysed. Their batteries were not manned with strength enough to enable them to reply to such an overlapping and crushing fire; but the French, leaping to their guns with astounding energy, rapidity, and vigour, kept on filling the very air with the hurling storm, and sent it in unbroken fury against their enemies. More than 200 pieces of artillery of large calibre, admirably served and well directed, played incessantly upon the hostile lines. In a few moments a great veil of smoke—"a war-cloud rolling dun"—spread from the guns on{336} the left of Sebastopol; but the roar of the shot did not cease, and the cannonade now pealed forth in great irregular bursts, now died away into hoarse murmurs, again swelled up into tumult, or rattled from one extremity to the other of the line like the file-fire of infantry. Stone walls at once went down before the discharge, but the earthworks yawned to receive shot and shell alike. However, so swift and incessant was the passage of these missiles through the embrasures and along the top of the parapets, that the enemy had to lie close, and scarcely dare show themselves in the front line of their defences. For a few minutes the French had it all their own way, and appeared to be on the point of sweeping away the place without resistance. This did not last long, as after, they had fired a few rounds from each of their numerous guns, the Russian artillerymen got to work, and began to return the fire. They made good practice, but fired slowly and with precision, as if they could not afford to throw away an ounce of powder. The French were stimulated rather than restrained by such a reply to their astonishing volleys, and sent their shot with greater rapidity along the line of the defences, and among the houses of the town. Our Naval Brigade and siege train maintained their usual destructive and solid "hammering" away at the faces of the Redan and of the Malakoff, and aided our Allies by shell practice on the batteries from the Creek to the Redan. Now two or three mortars from Gordon's, then two or three mortars from Chapman's, hurled 10 and 13-inch shell behind the enemy's works, and connected the discharges by rounds from long 32's or 68's.

The French had obtained a great superiority in the number of their guns. On the 5th their armament was as follows:—

{337}

It may be as well to add that Batteries Nos. 1, 2, 3, 8, 11, 12, and 13 of the Right Attack bore on the Malakoff; Batteries Nos. 5 9, 10, 11, and 12 bore on front and flanks of Redan and other works. In our Left Attack, Batteries Nos. 1, 2, 7, 9, 11, 12, bore on Barrack and Redan; No. 4 on Bastion du Mât and Garden; No. 3 on Redan; No. 5 on Creek; No. 6 on Garden; No. 8 on Barrack and Lower Garden; No. 10 on Creek, Barrack, Redan, and Malakoff; No. 13 on Garden and Barrack; and No. 14 on Creek and Parrack.

It will be observed that there was a great difference in the material of this armament from that with which we began our first attack on Sebastopol. On the 17th of October, 1854, we had but ten mortars, and they were 10-inch. We had also two Lancasters; no 24-pounders. On 17th of October nearly one-half of our guns were 24-pounders. Sixty-one 32-pounders as compared with seven on 17th October, thirty-seven 8-inch guns as compared with sixteen, seven 10-inch guns as compared with nine, six 68-pounders, and three 9-pounders for the heads of the saps. We threw 12,721 bombs into the town as compared with 2,743 in the first bombardment; and we fired 89,540 shot against the place as compared with 19,879 on the same date. In the left attack our batteries had been advanced 2,500 feet towards the front of the old line of fire, but it was impossible to make any further advance by sap for the purpose of assault, as the very steep ravine by which the Woronzoff Road sweeps into the town ran below the plateau on which the attack was placed, and separated it from the Redan. The old parallel of the attack, wherein our Batteries Nos. 3, 4, and 5 were placed at the ridiculous distance of 4,000 feet from the Redan, and our Batteries Nos. 9 and 12 at the same distance from the Flagstaff Bastion works, was now a mere base from which the advanced works had proceeded. The second parallel was 15,000 feet in front of it, and in that parallel were Batteries Nos. 10 and 14, still 2,500 feet from the parapet of the Redan. The third parallel was about 700 feet in front of the second; and as it was found that we could not hope to advance much beyond that position, owing to the nature of the ground, our batteries were placed more towards the proper left face of the Flagstaff Battery, and towards the Garden Battery in the rear of it. In this parallel, Batteries Nos. 7, 8, 13, 14, and 15 were opened. Our fourth parallel, which was unarmed, was about 600 feet in advance of the third, and was filled with infantry and riflemen, who kept up a constant fire on the place, more particularly at night. The ravine in which the Woronzoff Road is made ran between our Left and Right Attack, and separated them completely. The Right Attack, which was by far the most important, was originally commenced at the distance of 4,500 feet from the Redan, and of more than 5,000 feet from the Malakoff. It contained Batteries Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; at its right was the old Lancaster Battery detached on No. 11; and in an advanced parallel on the left flank of No. 12 was Battery No. 10. In the approach from the first to the twentieth parallel was Battery No. 7. The second parallel was more than 1,000 feet in front of{338} the first parallel; and it contained Batteries Nos. 9, 14, 12, 6, and 15. The Battery No. 8 was in the third parallel, which was a few hundred feet in advance of the second. The fourth parallel, which communicated with the Quarries, was about 1,200 feet in advance of the third parallel. In the Quarries were the Batteries Nos. 16 and 17. The fifth parallel, from which the assault took place, was about 300 feet in front of the Quarries; and there was a feeble attempt at a sixth parallel a few yards in advance.

Our Quarry Battery, armed with two mortars and eight cohorns, just 400 yards below the Redan, plied the suburb in the rear of the Malakoff vigorously with bombs, and kept the top of the Redan clear with round shot and grape. Redan and Malakoff were alike silent, ragged, and torn. At most the Redan fired three guns, and the adjoining batteries were equally parsimonious. The parapets were all pitted with shot and shell, and the sides of the embrasures greatly injured, so that the gabions were sticking out, and dislodged in all directions. There was no more of that fine polishing and of that cabinet-maker's work which the Russians bestowed on their batteries; our constant fire by night, the efforts of our riflemen, and incessant shelling, having rather checked their assiduous anxiety as to external appearance.

After two hours and a half of furious firing, the artillerymen of our Allies suddenly ceased, in order to let their guns cool and to rest themselves. The Russians crept out to repair damages to their works, and shook sandbags full of earth from the banquette over the outside of their parapets. Their gunners also took advantage of the sudden cessation to open on our Sailors' Batteries in the Left Attack, and caused us some little annoyance from the "Crow's Nest." At ten o'clock, however, having previously exploded some fougasses, as before, the French reopened a fire if possible more rapid and tremendous than their first, and continued to keep it up with the utmost vigour till twelve o'clock at noon, by which time the Russians had only a few guns in the Flagstaff Road and Garden Batteries in a position to reply. We could see them in great agitation sending men and carts to and fro across the bridge, and at nine o'clock a powerful column of infantry crossed over to resist our assault, while a movement towards Inkerman was made by the army of the Belbek. Soon after our fire began, the working parties which go over to the north side every morning were recalled, and marched back again across the bridge to the south, no doubt to be in readiness for our expected assault. From twelve to five o'clock P.M. the firing was slack; the French then resumed their cannonade with the same vigour as at dawn and at ten o'clock, and never ceased their volleys of shot and shell against the place till half-past seven, when darkness set in, whereupon all the mortars and heavy guns, English as well as French, opened with shell against the whole line of defences.

A description of this scene is impossible. There was not one instant in which the shells did not whistle through the air; not a moment in which the sky was not seamed by their fiery curves or illuminated by their explosion. Every shell burst as it ought, and{339} the lines of the Russian earthworks of the Redan, Malakoff, and of all their batteries, were rendered plainly visible by the constant light of the innumerable explosions. The Russians scarcely attempted a reply. At five o'clock it was observed that a frigate in the second line, near the north side, was smoking, and, as it grew darker, flames were seen to issue from her sides. Men and officers rushed to the front in the greatest delight and excitement, and, as night came on, the whole vessel was enveloped in one grand blaze from stem to stern. The delight of the crowd upon Cathcart's Hill was intense. "Well, this is indeed a sight! to see one of those confounded ships touched at last!" These, and many different and stronger expressions, were audible on all sides, but there were some wise people who thought the Russians had set the ship on fire, or that incendiaries and malcontents were at work, and one gentleman even went so far as to say that he "thought it was merely a signal maybe to recall their cavalry from Eupatoria!" It is not known precisely how the thing was done. Some said it was done by the French; others, by ourselves; and bombs, red-hot shot, and rockets were variously named as the means by which the vessel was set on fire. In spite of the efforts of the Russians, the flames spread, and soon issued from the ports and quarter-gallery. At eight o'clock the light was so great that the houses of the city and the forts on the other side could be distinguished without difficulty. The masts stood long, towering aloft like great pillars of fire; but one after the other they came down; the decks fell in about ten o'clock, and at midnight the frigate had burnt to the water's edge.

At night a steady fire was kept up with the view of preventing the Russians repairing damages. At 10 P.M. orders were sent to our batteries to open the following morning, as soon as there was a good light, but they were limited to fifty rounds each gun. At 5.30 A.M. the whole of the batteries from Quarantine to Inkerman began their fire with a grand crash. There were three breaks or lulls in the tempest; one from half-past eight till ten; another from twelve till five; and the third from half-past six till seven—during these intervals the fire was comparatively slack.

The agitation in the town was considerable throughout the day; and the enemy seemed to be greatly distressed. They were strengthening their position on the north side—throwing up batteries, dragging guns into position, and preparing to defend themselves should they be obliged to leave the city. They evinced a disposition to rely upon the north side, and were removing their stores by the large bridge of pontoons, and by the second and smaller bridge of boats to the Karabalnayia. Notwithstanding the large number of men in the town, the enemy showed in strength from Inkerman to Mackenzie; and General Pelissier and General Simpson received intelligence which led them to believe that the enemy meditated another attack on the line of the Tchernaya as the only means of averting the fall of the place.

The bombardment was renewed on Thursday night at sunset, and continued without intermission till an hour before daybreak on{340} Friday. The trench guards were ordered to keep up a perpetual fusillade on the face of the Russian works, and about 150,000 rounds were expended each night after the opening of the bombardment. At daybreak on Friday, the cannonade was reopened, and continued as before—the Russians made no reply on the centre, but their Inkerman Batteries fired on the French Right Attack. A strong wind from the north blew clouds of dust from the town, and carried back the smoke of the batteries, so that it was very difficult to ascertain the effect of the fire; but now and then the veil opened, and at each interval the amount of destruction disclosed was more evident.

A bright flame broke out in the rear of the Redan in the afternoon, and another fire was visible in the town over the Woronzoff Road at a later period of the evening. At 11 P.M. a tremendous explosion took place in the town, but it could not be ascertained exactly where or how it occurred. At dusk, the cannonade ceased, and the bombardment recommenced—the thunder of the bombs bursting from the sea-shore to the Tchernaya sounded like the roll of giant musketry. The Russians replied feebly, threw bouquets into the French trenches, and showers of vertical grape into ours, and lighted up the works now and then with fire-balls and carcasses. Captain John Buckley, Scots Fusileer Guards, was killed in the evening as he was posting his sentries in the ravine between the Malakoff and the Redan in front of our advanced trench of the Right Attack. Major McGowan, 93rd Regiment, was taken prisoner, and Captain Drummond was killed soon afterwards at this spot. Captain Buckley was a young officer of zeal and promise. He was devoted to his profession, and although he was wounded so severely at the Alma that he could have had every excuse and right to go home, he refused to do so, and as soon as he came out of hospital, on board a man-of-war, in which he was present when the attack of the 17th October was made, he returned to his regiment and shared its privations during the winter of '54-5. In twenty-four hours, we lost 1 officer 11 rank and file killed, and 48 rank and file wounded.

In addition to the burning ship and the fires in the town, a bright light was observed at the head of the great shears of the Dockyard about four o'clock in the afternoon, and it continued to burn fiercely throughout the night. It was probably intended to light up the Dockyard below, or to serve as a signal, but it was for some time imagined that the shears had been set on fire by a shell.[22] The night was passed in a fever of expectation and anxiety amid the roar of the bombardment, which the wind blew in deafening bursts back on the Allied camp.

At midday, a council of generals was held at the British headquarters. After the council broke up, orders were sent to the surgeons to clear out the hospitals of patients, and prepare for the{341} reception of wounded. The Guards received orders to occupy the right trenches at night, and were relieved by the Highlanders in the morning—the attack was confided to the Light and Second Divisions.

Our losses indeed were becoming so heavy, that even the slaughter of an assault, if attended with success, was preferable to daily decimation. From the 3rd to the 6th, we had 3 officers, 3 sergeants, and 40 rank and file killed; 3 officers, 9 sergeants, and 180 rank and file wounded. Captain Anderson, Acting Engineer, was killed on the 4th; and Captain Snow, R.A., was killed on the 6th. On the 3rd, Lieutenant Chatfield, 49th; on the 5th, Captain Verschoyle, Grenadier Guards, and Lieutenant Phillips, 56th Regiment, were slightly wounded.

CHAPTER VI.

THE contest on which the eyes of Europe had been turned so long—the event on which the hopes of so many mighty empires depended, was all but determined. On the 9th September, Sebastopol was in flames! The fleet, the object of so much diplomatic controversy and of so many bloody struggles, had disappeared in the deep! One more great act of carnage was added to the tremendous but glorious tragedy, of which the whole world, from the most civilized nations down to the most barbarous hordes of the East, was the anxious and excited audience. Amid shouts of victory and cries of despair—in frantic rejoicing and passionate sorrow—a pall of black smoke, streaked by the fiery flashings of exploding fortresses, descended upon the stage, on which had been depicted so many varied traits of human misery and of human greatness, such high endurance and calm courage, such littleness and weakness—across which had stalked characters which history may hereafter develope as largely as the struggle in which they were engaged, and swell to gigantic proportions, or which she may dwarf into pettiest dimensions, as unworthy of the parts they played. A dull, strange silence, broken at distant intervals by the crash of citadels and palaces as they were blown into dust, succeeded to the incessant dialogue of the cannon which had spoken so loudly and so angrily throughout an entire year. Tired{342} armies, separated from each other by a sea of fires, rested on their arms, and gazed with varied emotions on all that remained of the object of their conflicts. On the 8th we felt that the great success of our valiant Allies was somewhat tarnished by our own failure, and were doubtful whether the Russians would abandon all hope of retaking the Malakoff. On the next day, ere noon, we were walking about the streets of Sebastopol, and gazing upon its ruins.

The weather changed suddenly on the 7th September, and on the morning of the 8th it became bitterly cold. A biting wind right from the north side of Sebastopol blew intolerable clouds of harsh dust into our faces. The sun was obscured; and the sky became of a leaden wintry grey. Early in the morning a strong force of cavalry, under the command of Colonel Hodge, received orders to move up to the front and form a chain of sentries in front of Cathcart's Hill, and all along our lines. No person was allowed to pass this boundary excepting staff officers or those provided with a pass. Another line of sentries in the rear of the camps was intended to stop stragglers and idlers from Balaklava, the object of these arrangements being in all probability to prevent the Russians gathering any intimation of our attack from the unusual accumulation of people on the look-out hills. If so, it would have been better to have kept the cavalry more in the rear, and not to have displayed to the enemy a line of Hussars, Lancers, and Dragoons, along our front. At 11.30 the Highland Brigade, under Brigadier Cameron, marched up from Kamara, and took up its position in reserve at the Right Attack; and the Guards, also in reserve, were posted on the same side of the Woronzoff Road. The first brigade of the Fourth Division served the trenches of the Left Attack the night before, and remained in them. The second brigade of the Fourth Division was in reserve. The Guards, who served the trenches of the Left Attack, and only marched that morning, were turned out again after arriving at their camp, and resumed their place with alacrity. The Third Division, massed on the hill-side before their camp, were also in reserve, in readiness to move down by the Left Attack in case their services were required. General Pelissier, during the night, collected 36,000 men in and about the Mamelon, to form the storming columns for the Malakoff and Little Redan, and to provide the necessary reserves.

The French were reinforced by 5,000 Sardinians, who marched up from the Tchernaya. It was arranged that the French should attack the Malakoff at noon, and, as soon as their attack succeeded, we were to assault the Redan. Strong columns of French were to make a diversion on the left, and menace the line of Bastion du Mât, Centrale and Quarantine Bastions. The cavalry sentries were posted at 8.30 A.M. At 10.30 A.M. the Second and the Light Division moved down to the trenches, and were placed in the advanced parallels as quietly and unostentatiously as possible. About the same hour, General Simpson and Staff repaired to the second parallel of the Green Hill Battery, where the Engineer{343} officers had placed them for the day. Sir Harry Jones, too ill to move hand or foot, nevertheless insisted on being carried down to witness the assault, and was borne to the trenches on a litter, in which he remained till all was over. The Commander-in-Chief, General Simpson, and Sir Richard Airey, the Quartermaster-General, were stationed close to him.[23] The Duke of Newcastle was stationed at Cathcart's Hill in the early part of the day, and afterwards moved off to the right to the Picket-house look-out over the Woronzoff Road.

At 10.45, General Pelissier and his Staff went up to the French Observatory on the right. The French trenches were crowded with men as close as they could be packed, and we could, through the breaks in the clouds of dust, which were most irritating, see our troops all ready in their trenches. The cannonade languished purposely towards noon; but the Russians, catching sight of the cavalry and troops in front, began to shell Cathcart's Hill and the heights, and the bombs and long ranges disturbed the equanimity of some of the spectators by bursting with loud "thuds" right over their heads, and sending "the gunners' pieces" sharply about them. After hours of suspense, the moment came at last.

At five minutes before twelve o'clock, the French issued forth from the trenches close to the Malakoff, crossed the seven mètres of ground which separated them from the enemy at a few bounds—scrambled up its face, and were through the embrasures in the twinkling of an eye. They drifted as lightly and quickly as autumn leaves before the wind, battalion after battalion, and in a minute after the head of their column issued from the ditch the tricolour was floating over the Korniloff Bastion. Our Allies took the Russians by surprise, very few of the latter were in the Malakoff; but they soon recovered themselves, from twelve o'clock till past seven in the evening the French had to meet repeated attempts to regain the work: then, weary of the fearful slaughter, despairing of success, the Muscovite General withdrew his exhausted legions, and prepared, with admirable skill, to evacuate the place. As soon as the tricolour was observed waving through the smoke and dust over the parapet of the Malakoff, four rockets were sent up from Chapman's attack one after another, as a signal for our assault upon the Redan. They were almost borne back by the violence of the wind, and the silvery jets of sparks they threw out on exploding were scarcely visible against the raw grey sky.

Now, it will be observed that, while we attacked the Redan with two divisions only, a portion of each being virtually in reserve and not engaged in the affair at all, the French made their assault on the Malakoff with four divisions of the second Corps d'Armée, the first and fourth divisions forming the storming columns, and the third and fifth being the support, with reserves of 10,000 men.{344} The French had, probably, not less than 30,000 men in the Right Attack on the 7th of September. The divisional orders for the Second Division were very much the same as those for the Light Division.

The covering party consisted of 100 men of the 3rd Buffs, under Captain Lewes, and 100 men of the Second Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, under the command of Captain Hammond. The scaling-ladder party consisted of 160 of the 3rd Buffs, under Captain Maude, 160 of the 97th Regiment, under Welsford. The force of the Second Division consisted of 260 of the 3rd Buffs, 300 of the 41st, 200 of the 62nd, and a working party of 100 men of the 41st. The rest of Windham's Brigade, consisting of the 47th and 49th, were in reserve with Warren's Brigade of the same division, of which the 30th and 55th were called into action and suffered severely. Brigadier Shirley was on board ship, but as soon as he heard of the assault he came up to camp. Colonel Unett, of the 19th Regiment, was the senior officer in Shirley's absence, and on him would have devolved the duty of leading the storming column of the Light Division. Colonel Unett tossed with Colonel Windham, and Colonel Unett won. He looked at the shilling, turned it over, and said, "My choice is made; I'll be the first man into the Redan." But he was badly wounded ere he reached the abattis, although he was not leading the column.

It was a few minutes after twelve when our men left the fifth parallel. In less than five minutes the troops, passing over about two hundred and thirty yards from the approach to the parapet of the Redan, had lost a large proportion of their officers. The Riflemen behaved, as usual, admirably; but could not do much to reduce the fire of the guns on the flanks and below the re-entering angles. As they came nearer, the fire became less fatal. They crossed the abattis without difficulty; it was torn to pieces and destroyed by our shot, and the men stepped over and through it with ease. The Light Division made straight for the salient and projecting angle of the Redan, and came to the ditch, at this place about fifteen feet deep. The men, led by their officers, leaped into the ditch, and scrambled up the other side, whence they scaled the parapet almost without opposition; for the few Russians who were in front ran back and got behind their traverses and breastworks, and opened fire upon them as soon as they saw our men on the top.

As the Light Division rushed out into the open, the guns of the Barrack Battery, and on the proper right of the Redan, loaded with grape, caused considerable loss ere they reached the salient.

Brigadier Shirley, blinded by dust knocked into his eyes by a shot, was obliged to retire; his place was taken by Lieutenant-Colonel Bunbury, of the 23rd Regiment, next in rank to Colonel Unett, already carried to the rear. Brigadier Von Straubenzee received a contusion on the face, and left the field. Colonel Handcock was mortally wounded. Captain Hammond fell dead. Major Welsford was killed as he entered the work through an embrasure.{347}

Captain Grove was severely wounded. Only Colonel Windham, Captain Fyers, Captain Lewes, and Captain Maude got into the Redan scatheless from the volleys of grape and balls which swept the flanks of the work.

One officer told me the Russians visible in the Redan when we got into it did not exceed 150 men, that we could have carried the breastworks at the base with the greatest ease, if we had only made a rush for it. He expressed his belief that they had no field-pieces from one re-entering angle to the other. Another officer positively assured me that when he got on the top of the parapet he saw, about a hundred yards in advance, a breastwork with gaps, through which were the muzzles of field-pieces, and that in rear of it were compact masses of infantry, the front rank kneeling with fixed bayonets as if prepared to receive a charge of cavalry, while the rear ranks kept up a sharp and destructive fire. The only way to reconcile these discrepancies is to suppose that the first spoke of the earliest stage of the assault, and that the latter referred to a later period, when the Russians, having been reinforced by the fugitives from the Malakoff, and by the troops behind the barracks in the rear, may have opened embrasures in the breastwork. Lamentable as it no doubt is, and incredible almost to those who know how well the British soldier generally behaves in presence of the enemy, the men, when they reached the parapet, were seized by some strange infatuation, and began firing, instead of following their officers, who were now falling fast. Most men stand fire much better than the bayonet—they will keep up a fusillade a few paces off much sooner than they will close with an enemy. It is difficult enough sometimes to get cavalry to charge, if they can find any decent excuse to lay by their swords and take to pistol and carabine, with which they are content to pop away for ever; and when cover of any kind is near, a trench-bred infantry-man finds the charms of the cartridge quite irresistible.

The 77th Regiment furnished 160 men for the ladder party, and 200 for the storming party. The former, under the command of Major Welsford, were to proceed to the advanced parallel, and the latter, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Handcock, were to be in the fifth parallel. At 5 A.M. the regiment paraded and marched off. Eight men were told off to each ladder, and they had orders to leave the trench when the appointed signal was made from the Malakoff. They were to be preceded by 100 of the Rifle Brigade, and by some Sappers and Miners to cut down the abattis, and they were to be followed by 160 of the 3rd Buffs, with twenty ladders also. The storming party was to follow the ladder party. A few minutes after twelve, Major Welsford, seeing the signal flying from the Malakoff, gave the word—"Ladders to the front!" The men instantly ran out of the parallel towards the salient of the Redan, and at the same time, Colonel Handcock, with his 200 stormers of the 97th, and 100 of the 90th, left the parallel. The ladders were managed with difficulty, but on entering the place there was little or no resistance. However, the Russians were soon roused out of their casemates, and flocked to{348} the traverses, from which they kept up a heavy fire on the men getting over the parapet or through the embrasures. By a rapidly increasing flanking and direct fire, converging on the salient, the Russians diminished our force; and as we were weakened they were strengthened by parties from both re-entering angles. The leader of the ladder party was killed by a gun fired as he entered the embrasure; Captain Sibthorpe was hit in two places; Lieutenant Fitzgerald and Ensign Hill were wounded; Lieutenant-Colonel Handcock was mortally wounded; M'Gregor fell inside the Redan; Captain Lumley was badly wounded; Lieutenant Goodenough died of his wounds; Captain Woods and Lieutenant Browne were also hit,—so that the 97th Regiment had five officers killed and six wounded, out of a complement of thirteen engaged; and 201 non-commissioned officers and men out of 360. Those officers of the regiment who saw Colonel Windham in the Redan say they were in ten minutes before they observed him. The 3rd Buffs and 41st came in through the embrasures immediately after the 97th and 90th, then the enemy made their rush, and drove the English into the angle, and finally over the parapet to the exterior slope, where men of different regiments of the Light and Second Divisions were packed together firing into the Redan. One hour and a half had elapsed. The Russians had cleared the Redan, but were not in possession of the parapets, when they made a second charge with bayonets under a heavy fire of musketry from the rear, and throwing quantities of stones, grape and round-shot, drove those in front back on the men in the rear, who were precipitated into the ditch. The gabions in the parapets gave way, and rolled down with those upon them; the men in the rear retired precipitately into the fifth parallel. A party of the 30th advanced from this parallel just as Colonel Windham was asking for reinforcements, and ran up to the salient of the Redan, where they suffered severe loss.[24] Captain Rowlands, 41st, made a gallant attempt with a few men, but they were nearly all killed or wounded, and he was obliged to retire. Colonel Legh, Lieutenant Whitehead, Captain Sibthorpe, Lieutenants Browne and Fitzgerald, remained, till only three privates were left in the angle.

The storming columns of the Second Division issuing out of the fifth parallel rushed up immediately after the Light Division; but when they came close to the apex, Colonel Windham brought them to the right flank of the Light Division, so as to come on the slope of the proper left face of the Redan. The first embrasure to which they came was in flames, but, moving on to the next, the men leaped into the ditch, and, with the aid of ladders and of each other's hands, scrambled up on the other side, climbed the parapet, or poured in through the embrasure, which was undefended. Colonel Windham was the first or one of the first men to enter, and with him, Pat Mahony, a great grenadier of the 41st, Kennelly and Cornellis, privates of the same regiment. As Mahony{349} entered with a cheer, he was shot through the head by a Russian rifleman, and fell dead; at the same moment Kennelly and Cornellis were wounded. (The latter claimed the reward of 5l. offered by Colonel Herbert to the first man of his division who entered the Redan.) Running parallel to the faces of the Redan there was an inner parapet, intended to shield the gunners at the embrasures from the splinters of shell. Cuts in the rear enabled the men to retire, and strong and high traverses ran along the sides.

At the base of the Redan, before the re-entering angles, was a breastwork, or, rather, a parapet with an irregular curve, which ran in front of the body of the place to the height of a man's neck. As our men entered through the embrasures, the few Russians who were between the salient and this breastwork retreated behind the latter, or got behind the traverses for protection. From these they poured in a quick fire on the parapet of the salient, which was crowded by the men of the Second and Light Divisions; and they began to return the fire without advancing or charging. There were riflemen behind the lower traverses near the base of the Redan, who kept up a galling fire. The Russians were encouraged to maintain their ground by the immobility of our soldiers and the weakness of a fusillade from the effects of which the enemy were well protected. In vain the officers, by voice and example, urged our soldiers to clear the work. The men, most of whom belonged to regiments which had suffered in the trenches, and were acquainted with the traditions of June 18th, had an impression that the Redan was extensively mined, and that if they advanced they would all be blown up. The officers fell, singled out as a mark for the enemy by their courage. The men of the different regiments got mingled together in inextricable confusion. All the Brigadiers, save Colonel Windham, were wounded, or rendered unfit for the guidance of the attack.

This was going on at the proper left face of the Redan, while nearly the same scene was being repeated at the salient. Every moment our men were diminishing in numbers, while the Russians were arriving from the town, and from the Malakoff, which had been occupied by the French. Thrice did Colonel Windham despatch officers to Sir W. Codrington, who was in the fifth parallel, to entreat him to send up supports in formation; all these three officers were wounded as they passed from the ditch of the Redan to the rear. Supports were, indeed, sent up, but they advanced in disorder, and in driblets, only to increase the confusion and the carnage. The narrow neck of the salient was too close to allow of any formation; and the more the men crowded into it, the worse was the disorder, and the more they suffered from the enemy's fire. This miserable work lasted for an hour. Colonel Windham resolved to go to General Codrington himself. Seeing Captain Crealock, of the 90th, he said,[25] "I must go to the General{350} for supports. Now, mind, let it be known, in case I am killed, why I went away." He succeeded in gaining the fifth parallel, through a storm of grape and bullets, and standing on the top of the parapet he again asked for support. Sir W. Codrington asked him if he thought he really could do anything with such supports as he could afford, and said, if he thought so, "he might take the Royals," who were then in the parallel. "Let the officers come out in front—let us advance in order, and if the men keep their formation the Redan is ours," was the Colonel's reply. But at that moment our men were seen leaping into the ditch, or running down the parapet of the salient, and through the embrasures out of the work into the ditch, the Russians following them with the bayonet, musketry, and throwing stones and grape-shot at them as they lay in the ditch.

But the solid weight of the advancing mass, urged on and fed each moment from the rear by company after company, and battalion after battalion, prevailed at last against the isolated and disjointed band, which had abandoned that protection which unanimity of courage affords, and had lost the advantages of discipline and obedience. As though some giant rock advanced into the sea, and forced back the agitated waters that buffeted it, so did the Russian columns press down against the spray of soldiery which fretted their edge with fire and steel, and contended in vain against their weight. The struggling band was forced back by the enemy, who moved on, crushing friend and foe beneath their solid tramp. Bleeding, panting, and exhausted, our men lay in heaps in the ditch beneath the parapet, sheltered themselves behind stones and in bomb craters in the external slope of the work, or tried to pass back to our advanced parallel and sap, having to run the gauntlet of a tremendous fire.

The scene in the ditch was appalling, although some of the officers assured me that they and the men were laughing at the precipitation with which many fellows plunged headlong upon the mass of bayonets, muskets, and sprawling soldiers, the ladders were all knocked down or broken, so that it was difficult for the men to scale the other side, and the dead, the dying, the wounded, and the uninjured, were all lying in piles together.

General Pelissier observed the failure of our attack from the rear of the Malakoff, and sent over to General Simpson to ask if he intended to renew it. The English Commander-in-Chief did not feel in a condition to do so. The Guards and Highlanders, the Third and Fourth Divisions, and most of the reserves, had not been engaged. As soon as we abandoned the assault, the firing slackened along our front; but in the rear of the Malakoff there was a fierce contest going on between masses of Russians, released{351} from the Redan, or drawn from the town, and the French inside the work; and the fight for the Little Redan, on the proper left of the Malakoff, was raging furiously. Clouds of smoke and dust obstructed the view, but the rattle of musketry was incessant, and betokened the severe nature of the struggle below. Through the breaks in the smoke there could be seen now and then a tricolour, surmounted by an eagle, fluttering bravely over the inner parapet of the Malakoff. The storm of battle rolled fiercely round it, and beat against it; but it was sustained by strong arms and stout hearts, and all the assaults of the enemy were vain against it. It would be untrue to say that the result of our assault was not the source of deep grief and mortification to us, which all the glorious successes of our Allies could not wholly alleviate. Even those who thought any attack on the Redan useless and unwise, inasmuch as the possession of the Malakoff would, in their opinion, render the Redan untenable, could not but regret bitterly that, having undertaken the assault, we had not achieved a decisive triumph, and that so much blood had been, if not ingloriously, at least fruitlessly, poured forth.

The French, indeed, were generous enough to say that our troops behaved with great bravery, and that they wondered how we kept the Redan so long under such a tremendous fire; but British soldiers are rather accustomed to the nil admirari under such circumstances, and praise like that gives pain as well as pleasure. Many soldiers, entertaining the opinion to which I have alluded, think that we should at once have renewed the attempt. It is but small consolation to them to know that General Simpson intended to attack the Redan the following morning, inasmuch as the Russians by their retreat deprived us of the chance of retrieving our reputation, and at the same time acknowledged the completeness of the success achieved by our Allies, and the tremendous superiority of the fire directed against them.

The Second Brigade, Light Division, stormed at noon. The 97th and 90th, 300 of each, commanded, the former by Major Welsford (whose head was blown off as he was mounting an embrasure—the gun was fired by a Russian officer, who immediately gave himself up as a prisoner to a sergeant of the 97th, that entered the moment after, throwing down his sword and saying, "I am a prisoner of war"), the latter by Captain Grove, the senior officer of the regiment present with the service companies. The salient was carried at once, and the men entered the stronghold, which is a work traced on a most obtuse angle, requiring a large mass of men to assault it, not only at the salient, but at the same moment on both flanks, so as to turn them, and to enable the salient storming party to advance down the interior space of the works at once, taking the defenders in front and flank, and indeed in rear, at the same moment. In consequence of attacking the salient only, no front could be formed, on account of the small interior space at that point; the men were forced to advance by driblets, and at the same moment fired on from traverses on either flank, where they could not see their assailants, an evil at once{352} obviated had the attack on the flanks and salient been simultaneous. The handful of men who assaulted and took the salient most gallantly held it against far superior numbers for a considerable time, until their ammunition being nearly expended, and receiving no flank support, which could alone assist them to any purpose, and being rushed on from these flanks by a vastly superior force, they retreated to the extreme side of the parapet, where they remained, and, being reinforced by some fresh men, kept up a heavy and continuous fire on the Russians in the interior of the work. They held their ground on this fast sinking parapet of loose earth, stones and broken gabions, under a most galling fire from both flanks and in front, and continuous showers of vertical grape, from inside the work, for an hour and a half at least, when a sudden rush, made by the enemy, who had crept up the faces by the traverses, obliged the troops to give way, and step by step, pelting each other with huge stones, they retired, slipping and tumbling into the ditch, where many poor fellows were buried alive, from the scarps giving way. Then came the fearful run for life or death, with men rolling over like rabbits, then tumbling into the English trench, where the men lay four deep on each other. The men once in manned the parapet, and kept up a heavy and continuous fire on the enemy on the parapets of the Redan.

The rest you know. The Rifles behaved nobly, and where they had tried to creep up the ditch to pick off the Russians on the flanks, they lay four and five deep, all together. Colonel Lysons, of the 23rd, as usual, was all energy, and, though severely wounded through the thigh and unable to stand, remained on the ground cheering on the men. Colonel Handcock, of the 97th, was shot through the head on the crest of the Redan, and died soon after arriving in camp. Captain Preston, and Lieutenants Swift and Wilmer, of the 90th, were all killed inside, where their bodies were found the next morning. Captain Vaughan, of the 90th, was shot in both legs, and taken prisoner when we left the place, it being impossible to get him over the ditch. He was found in a Russian hospital and brought to camp to die. Lieutenant and Adjutant Dyneley, of the 23rd Fusileers, was mortally wounded. Individual deeds of daring were too frequent to particularize. The first dead Russian on the extreme salient was a Russian officer shot through the mouth—a singularly handsome man, with hands and feet white and delicate as a woman's.

The 41st, which followed the Light Division storming party, whose position in advance was determined, as I have already stated by Colonel Windham and Colonel Unett "tossing up for choice," got into the Redan nearly as soon as the 90th and 97th, who formed the leading column of attack on the salient, and the parties of each division were soon inextricably mixed. I do not know the names of the first soldiers of the 90th and 97th who got in, but several soldiers of these regiments lay dead and wounded in advance near the Russian breastwork on the morning of the 9th. The men of the 41st who rushed into the Redan with Colonel Windham, were, Hartnardy, Kennelly, Cornellis, and Pat Mahony;{353} the last, a fine tall grenadier, fell dead in the embrasure by Colonel Windham's side, shot through the heart as he was shouting, "Come on, boys—come on!" His blood spouted over those near him, but the men rushed on till they became confused among the traverses, and then the scene took place which I have tried to describe. The salient, however favourable to the assailants in one sense, was extremely disadvantageous to them in another, inasmuch as it prevented them getting into any kind of formation. It was, of course, the apex of the triangle, and was very narrow, while the enemy firing from the base poured a concentrated fire upon the point, and felled every man who showed boldly from behind the traverses, and the parapet upon which our soldiers were crowded. At the first rush, had Colonel Windham been able to get a handful of men together to charge at the breastwork, the few Russians there must have been routed, and by the time their reinforcements came up our men would have been able to reverse the face of the breastwork, and to close the Redan to their assailants. But seconds of time generate great events in war. Our delay gave the enemy time both to recover from their panic when they were driven from the salient, and to send up strong bodies of men from their bomb-proofs and the cover at the back of the Redan; and by degrees this accumulating mass, advancing from the angles of the breastwork, moved up along the traverses parallel with the parapets of the Redan, and drove our men into the salient, where, by feeble driblets and incapable of formation, they were shot down in spite of the devotion and courage of their leader and the example of their officers. The salient was held by our men for one hour and fifty-six minutes!

While General Codrington, who seemed (in the opinion of those around him) to have lost for the time the coolness which characterized him, was hesitating about sending up more men, or was unable to send them up in any formation so as to form a nucleus of resistance and attack, the Redan was lost,[26] and our men, pressed by the bayonet, by heavy fusillades, and by some field guns which the enemy had now brought up, were forced over the parapet into the ditch. Colonel Eman, one of the very best officers in the army,—a man of singular calmness and bravery, who was beloved by his regiment, his officers and men, and whose loss was lamented by all who knew him,—was shot through the lungs as he was getting his men into order. His sword arm was uplifted over his head at the time, and it was thought his lungs were uninjured. The surgeon, when he was carried back, told him so, but he knew too well such{354} hopes were vain. "I feel I am bleeding internally," he said, with a sad smile. He died that night. Two Captains of the same regiment fell beside him—Corry and Lockhart. Captain Rowlands, who very much distinguished himself, had the most extraordinary escapes, and was only slightly wounded, though hit in two places. This detachment lost 184 officers and men. The 49th, who were in reserve, lost 1 officer killed, 2 wounded, 2 privates killed, and 23 wounded. For the last thirty minutes of this contest the English, having exhausted their ammunition, threw stones at their opponents, but the Russians retaliated with terrible effect by 'hand-grape' and small cannon-shot, which they hurled at our men. Captain Rowlands was knocked down and stunned by one of these missiles, which hit him right on the eye. As soon as he recovered and got up, he was struck by another grape-shot in the very same place, and knocked down again.

The 30th Regiment was formed in the fourth parallel, left in front, on the right of the 55th; and when the storming party moved out of the fifth parallel the supports occupied it, and were immediately ordered to advance on the salient angle of the Redan, by three companies at a time, from the left. The distance from the place in which they were posted up to the salient considerably exceeded 200 yards; and as the men had to cut across as quickly as they could in order to escape the raking fire of grape, and to support the regiments in front, they were breathless when they arrived at the ditch. When they arrived, all blown by this double, they found only two scaling-ladders at the scarp, and two more at the other side, to climb up to the parapet. They got over, however, and ascended the face of the Redan. By the time the supports got up, the Russians were pushing up their reserves in great force, and had already got some field-pieces up to the breastwork; and the regiment falling into the train of all around them, instead of advancing, began to fire from the parapet and upper traverses till all their ammunition was exhausted, when they commenced pelting the Russians with stones. In this condition no attempts were made to remove the reserves whatever, while the Russians accumulated mass after mass upon them from the open ground in rear of the Redan, and deployed their columns on the breastwork, whence they delivered a severe fire upon us. The whole garrison of the Malakoff and their supports also came down on the left flank of the Redan and added to our assailants; and indeed there was reason to fight, for the possession of the Redan would have destroyed the enemy's chance of escape. In this gallant regiment there were 16 officers, 23 sergeants, &c., and 384 privates. On marching down to the trenches, 1 officer was killed and 10 were wounded, 6 sergeants were wounded, 41 privates were killed and 101 privates were wounded, and 2 officers and 6 privates died of their wounds.

The 55th Regiment was the support along with the 30th, and was stationed in the fourth parallel till the assaulting columns had cleared out of the fifth parallel, which it then occupied, and left soon afterwards to mingle in the mélée at the salient of the{355} Redan. Poor Lieut.-Colonel Cuddy, who assumed the command when Lieut.-Colonel Cure was wounded in the right arm, was killed as he led his men up the open to the face of the Redan; and of the remaining ten officers who went out with the regiment, Captain Morgan, Captain Hume, Lieutenant J. R. Hume, and Lieutenant Johnson were wounded. The regiment went out less than 400 strong, and suffered a loss of 140 officers and men killed and wounded.

The 62nd Regiment went into action 245 of all ranks. They were formed into two companies, with four officers to each, and the Colonel, Major, Adjutant, and Acting. Assistant-Surgeon O'Callaghan, and formed part of the storming party. Colonel Tyler was hit in the hand crossing the open space in front of the Redan, and retired. Lieutenant Blakeston was shot in getting through an embrasure of the Redan. Lieutenant Davenport was shot through the nose. On the parapet 2 officers were killed or died of their wounds, and 4 officers were wounded out of a total of 11; 3 sergeants were killed and 4 wounded out of 16; 1 drummer was killed out of 8, and 14 rank and file were killed, and 75 were wounded, out of 210. Such was this heavy day. To show how it fell on our Allies, I give the following fact:—The 15th Regiment, Colonel Garrain, went into action 900 strong against the Little Redan, and came out 310. The 2 Chefs-de-Bataillon were killed, 11 officers were killed, and 19 officers were wounded. It was observed that an immense number of the Russian dead in the front were officers.

Our attack lasted about an hour and three-quarters, and in that time we lost more men than at Inkerman, where the fighting lasted for seven hours. At 1.48 P.M., which was about the time we retired, there was an explosion either of a tumbrel or of a fougasse between the Mamelon and the Malakoff, to the right, which seemed to blow up several Frenchmen, and soon afterwards the artillery of the Imperial Guard swept across from the rear towards the Little Redan, and gave us indication that our Allies had gained a position from which they could operate against the enemy with their field-pieces. From the opening of the attack the French batteries over Careening Bay had not ceased to thunder against the Russian fleet, which lay silently at anchor below; and a lively cannonade was kept up between them and the Inkerman batteries till the evening, which was interrupted every now and then by the intervention of the English redoubt, and the late Selinghinsk and Volhynia redoubts, which engaged the Russian batteries at the extremity of the harbour. At one o'clock wounded men began to crawl up from the batteries to the camp; they could tell us little or nothing. "Are we in the Redan?" "Oh, yes; but a lot of us is killed, and the Russians are mighty strong." Some were cheerful, others desponding; all seemed proud of their wounds. Half an hour more, and the number of wounded increased; they came up by twos and threes, and—what I had observed before as a bad sign—the number of stragglers accompanying them, under the pretence of rendering assistance, became greater also. Then the ambu{356}lances and the cacolets (or mule litters) came in sight along the Woronzoff Road filled with wounded. Every ten minutes added to their numbers, and we could see that every effort was made to hurry them down to the front as soon as they were ready for a fresh load. The litter-bearers now added to the length of the melancholy train. We heard that the temporary hospitals in front were full, and that the surgeons were beginning to get anxious about the extent of their accommodation for the wounded.

Another bad sign was, that the enemy never ceased throwing up shell to the front, many of which burst high in the air, over our heads, while the pieces flew with a most unpleasant whir around us. These shells were intended for our reserves; and, although the fusees did not burn long enough for such a range, and they all burst at a considerable elevation, they caused some little injury and annoyance to the troops in the rear, and hit some of our men. The rapidly increasing swarms of wounded men, some of whom had left their arms behind them, at last gave rise to suspicions of the truth; but their answers to many eager questioners were not very decisive or intelligible, and some of them did not even know what they had been attacking. One poor young fellow, who was stumping stiffly up with a broken arm and a ball through his shoulder, carried off his firelock with him, but he made a naïve confession that he had "never fired it off, for he could not." The piece turned out to be in excellent order. It struck one that such men as these, however brave, were scarcely a fit match for the well-drilled soldiers of Russia; and yet we were trusting the honour, reputation, and glory of Great Britain to undisciplined lads from the plough, or the lanes of our towns and villages! As one example of the sort of recruits we received, I may mention that there was a considerable number of men in draughts, which came out to regiments in the Fourth Division, who had only been enlisted a few days, and who had never fired a rifle in their lives!

As I wrote at the time—"It must not be imagined that such rawness can be corrected and turned into military efficiency out here; for the fact is, that this siege has been about the worst possible school for developing the courage and manly self-reliance of a soldier; neither does it teach him the value of discipline and of united action. When he goes into the trenches he learns to dodge behind gabions, and to take pot shots from behind stones and parapets, and at the same time he has no opportunity of testing the value of his comrades, or of proving himself against the enemy in the open field. The natural result follows. Nor can it be considered as aught but ominous of evil that there have been two Courts of Inquiry recently held concerning two most distinguished regiments—one, indeed, belonging to the highest rank of our infantry; and the other a well-tried and gallant regiment, which was engaged in this very attack—in consequence of the alleged misconduct of their young soldiers during night affairs in the trenches."

The difficulty of obtaining accurate information of the progress of an action cannot be better exemplified than by this fact, that at{357} three o'clock one of our Generals of Division did not know whether we had taken the Redan or not. Towards dusk, the Guards, who had been placed in reserve behind our Right Attack, were marched off to their camp, and a portion of the Highlanders were likewise taken off the ground. The Guards had only arrived from the trenches the very same morning; but, to their great credit be it said, they turned out again without a murmur after a rest of a couple of hours for breakfast, although they had been "on" for forty-eight hours previously. The Third Division and a portion of the Highlanders were sent down to do the trench duties in the evening and night.

From the following statement of the loss sustained by the Light Division, it will be seen that this gallant body, which behaved so well at the Alma, and maintained its reputation at Inkerman, suffered as severely as it did in gaining the former great victory; and an examination of the return will, we fear, show that the winter, the trenches, and careless recruiting did their work, and that the officers furnished a noble example of devotion and gallantry. In the Light Division there were 73 officers and 964 men wounded—total, 1,037.

The loss of this division was 1,001 in killed and wounded at the Alma.

The number of officers killed was 15; of men killed, 94—total, 109. The regiments of the division which furnished storming columns were the 90th (or Perthshire Volunteers) and the 97th (or Earl of Ulster's). In the 90th, Captain Preston and Lieutenants Swift and Wilmer were killed; only 3 men were killed. Lieutenant Swift penetrated the furthest of all those who entered the Redan, and his dead body was discovered far in advance, near the re-entering angle. Captains Grove, Tinling, and Wade, Lieutenants Rattray, Pigott, Deverill, and Sir C. Pigott, and 90 men severely; Captains Perrin and Vaughan, Lieutenants Rous, Graham, and Haydock and 35 men slightly wounded. Total killed, 3 officers, 3 men; wounded, 12 officers, 126 men. In the 97th, Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. H. R. Handcock, Major Welsford, Captain Hutton, and Lieutenant Douglas M'Gregor, and 1 man were killed. Captain Lumley and 10 men dangerously; Captain Sibthorpe, Lieutenant Goodenough, and 38 men severely; Captain Woods, Lieutenants Hill, Fitzgerald, Brown, and 40 men slightly wounded. Total killed, 4 officers, 1 man; wounded, 7 officers, 88 men. The colonel, having been shot through the head, was carried to his tent, but, the ball having lodged in the brain, he was never sensible, and expired that night. Lieutenant M'Gregor, the son of the Inspector-General of Irish Constabulary, was adjutant of the regiment, and as remarkable for his unostentatious piety and Christian virtues as for his bravery and conduct in the field. The rest of the division was engaged in supporting the storming columns.

In the 7th Royal Fusileers, Lieutenants Wright and Colt, and 11 men were killed; Major Turner, Lieutenant-Colonels Heyland and Hibbert, Captain Hickey, and Captain Jones (Alma), were wounded; 67 men were wounded. In the 23rd (Royal Welsh{358} Fusileers), Lieutenants Somerville and Dyneley were killed; Lieutenant-Colonel Lysons was slightly wounded, and the following officers more or less injured by shot, shell, or bayonet:—Captains Vane, Poole, Millett, Holding, Beck, Hall-Dare, Williamson, Tupper, O'Connor, Radcliffe, Perrott, and Beck. Total killed, 2 officers, 1 man; wounded, 13 officers, 130 men. In the 33rd, Lieutenant Donovan, a most promising and dashing officer, lost his life while looking over the parapet at the fight. He went with the regiment as an amateur, in company with his brother, all through Bulgaria, and into action with them at the Alma as a volunteer, where he so much distinguished himself that the colonel recommended him for a commission, which he received without purchase. Lieutenant-Colonel Gough, who was shot through the body at the Alma, was severely wounded; Captain Ellis and Lieutenants Willis and Trent were slightly, and the Adjutant Toseland severely, wounded; 45 men wounded. Total killed, 1 officer; wounded, 5 officers, 45 men. In the 34th, which was in the parallel behind the columns, 3 men were killed. Lieutenants Harris and Laurie were severely wounded, and 62 men were wounded. In the 19th, nearly every officer was touched more or less, 128 men were wounded, and 25 killed. The officers wounded were—Colonel Unett, severely (since dead); Major Warden, slightly; Captain Chippindall, ditto; Lieutenants Godfrey, Goren, and Massey, dangerously; Molesworth severely; Bayley, slightly; Ensign Martin, slightly; and Ensign Young, dangerously. Total killed, 25 men; wounded, 10 officers, 128 men. In the 77th, 42 men were wounded; killed not known; Captain Parker mortally wounded. Wounded, Captain Butts, slightly; Lieutenants Knowles, Leggett, and Watson, ditto. One officer killed; 4 officers, 42 men wounded. In the 88th Regiment, 105 men were wounded. Captain Grogan was killed; Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell, C.B., was wounded twice in the thigh and once in the arm severely. Captains Mauleverer and Beresford, Lieutenants Lambert, Hopton, Scott, and Ensign Walker were wounded severely. Total, 1 officer killed; wounded, 9 officers, 105 men. In the Rifle Brigade, Captain Hammond, who was only three days out from England, and Lieutenant Ryder and 13 men were killed; and Lieutenant Pellew slightly, Lieutenant Eyre severely, Major Woodford slightly, Captain Eccles and Lieutenant Riley severely wounded. Total, 2 officers, 13 men killed; wounded, 8 officers, 125 men. The loss of officers in Windham's Brigade, and in the portion of Warren's Brigade which moved to his support was equally severe.

The Second Division had on the General Staff 1 officer, Lieutenant Swire, Aide-de-camp, dangerously; 2 officers, Major Rooke and Lieutenant Morgan, Aide-de-camp, severely; 1 officer, Brigadier Warren, slight scratch in head; and 1 officer, Colonel Percy Herbert, a still slighter scratch. Total, 5 officers wounded. In 1st Royals, 2nd Battalion, 1 man was killed; 2 officers, Major Plunkett and Lieutenant Williams, and 3 men, severely; Captain Gillman, and 2 men, dangerously; Lieutenant Keate, and 13 men slightly, wounded. Total killed, 1; wounded, 4 officers, 18 men.{359}

3rd Buffs, 39 men killed, 76 wounded, 7 officers. Brigadier Straubenzee, a scratch over the eye; Captain Wood Dunbar, Lieutenant Cox, Ensigns Letts and Peachey, wounded. In 41st Foot, 2 officers, Captains Lockhart and Every, 2 men, killed; Colonel Eman, C.B., dangerously (since dead); Lieutenant Kingscote, severely; Major Pratt, Captain Rowlands, Lieutenants Maude and Hamilton, slightly wounded. Total killed, 2 officers, 2 men; wounded, 6 officers, 111 men. In 47th Regiment, 3 men killed, 27 men wounded. In 49th Regiment, Captain Rochfort and 2 men killed; Major King, Ensign Mitchell, and 26 men, wounded. In 55th Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Cuddy, killed; Major Cure, Captain R. Hume, Captain J. Hume, Captain Richards, Lieutenant Johnson, and 105 men, wounded. In 62nd Regiment, Captains Cox and Blakeston, killed; Lieutenant-Colonel Tyler, Major Daubeney, Captain Hunter, Lieutenants Dirin and Davenport, and 67 men, wounded. In 95th Foot, Captain Sergeant and Lieutenant Packinton, slightly contused, and 3 men slightly wounded.

In the First Division, 2nd Brigade, the 31st Foot lost an excellent officer, Captain Attree, before the assault took place; he was mortally wounded in the trenches. They had two men slightly wounded. In the Scots Fusileer Guards, and 56th Foot, there were only two men slightly wounded—one in each regiment; out of 256 men admitted into the General Hospital, Third Division, camp, 17 died almost immediately. In the Highland Division, the 42nd Foot had 12 men wounded; the 72nd Foot had 1 officer, Quartermaster Maidmont, mortally wounded; 1 man killed, and 17 men wounded; the 79th had 11 men wounded; and the 93rd had 5 men wounded. In the Fourth Division, the 17th Regiment had Lieutenant Thompson and Lieutenant Parker, and 19 men wounded; the 20th Regiment had 6 men wounded; the 21st, 8 men wounded; the 46th Regiment, 1 man wounded; the 48th, 6 men wounded; the 57th, 4 men wounded; the 63rd Regiment, Colonel Lindsay (severely), and 4 men wounded, and 1 killed; the 68th, 1 man wounded; The Rifle Brigade, 1st Battalion, 2 men killed, and 9 men wounded. In the Right Attack of the Royal Artillery Siege Train, Commissary Hayter and 5 men were killed; Captain Fitzroy, Lieutenants Champion and Tyler, and 34 men were wounded. In the Left Attack, Captain Sedley, Major Chapman, Lieutenant Elphinstone, R.E. and 7 Sappers and Miners, were wounded. The regiments in the trenches lost as follows:—Rifle Brigade, 2 wounded; 3rd Foot, 2 ditto; 17th, 1 ditto; 23rd Fusileers, 13 ditto; 41st, 3 ditto; 55th, 1 ditto; 62nd, 2 killed, 3 wounded; 77th, 1 killed, 1 wounded; 88th, 1 wounded; 90th, 1 killed, 11 wounded; 93rd, 1 wounded; 97th, 2 wounded; 19th, 1 killed, 1 wounded. The total given by Sir John Hall was—24 officers, and 129 men killed; 134 officers and 1,897 men wounded.{360}

CHAPTER VII.

THERE was a feeling of deep depression in camp. We knew the French were in the Malakoff only, and we were painfully aware that our attack had failed. It was an eventful night. The camp was full of wounded men; the hospitals were crowded; sad stories ran from mouth to mouth respecting the losses of the officers and the behaviour of the men.

Fatigued and worn out, I lay down to rest, but scarcely to sleep. At my last walk to the front after sunset, nothing was remarkable except the silence of the batteries on both sides. About seven o'clock, an artillery officer in the Quarries observed the enemy pouring across the bridge to the north side, and sent word to that effect to General Simpson. About eleven o'clock my hut was shaken by a violent shock as of an earthquake, but I was so thoroughly tired, that it did not rouse me for more than an instant; having persuaded myself it was "only a magazine," I was asleep again. In another hour these shocks were repeated in quick succession, so that Morpheus himself could not have slumbered on, and I walked up to Cathcart's Hill. Fires blazed in Sebastopol, but they were obscured with smoke, and by the dust which still blew through the night air. As the night wore on, these fires grew and spread, fed at intervals by tremendous explosions. The Russians were abandoning the city they had defended so gallantly and so long. Their fleet was beneath the waters. A continuous stream of soldiery could be seen marching across the bridge to the north, side. And what were we doing? Just looking on. About half past five o'clock General Bentinck came out of his hut, close to Cathcart's Hill, to "see what the matter was." Of course, that careful officer was not in any way concerned in the arrangements for the attack or for the assault. He was only a divisional officer, and could not in any way direct the action of the troops.

At 8 o'clock the night before, the Russians began to withdraw from the town, in which they had stored up combustibles, to render Sebastopol a second Moscow. The general kept up a fire of musketry from his advanced posts, as though he intended to renew his efforts to regain the Malakoff. About 12.30 A.M. the Highland Division on duty in the trenches, surprised at the silence in the Redan, sent some volunteers to creep into it. Nothing could they hear but the breathing and groans of the wounded and dying, who, with the dead, were the sole occupants of the place. As it was thought the Redan was mined, the men came back. By{361} 2 o'clock A.M. the fleet, with the exception of the steamers, had been scuttled and sunk. Flames were observed to break out in different parts of the town. They spread gradually over the principal buildings. At 4 o'clock A.M. a terrible explosion behind the Redan shook the whole camp; it was followed by four other explosions equally startling. The city was enveloped in fire and smoke, and torn asunder by the tremendous shocks of these volcanoes. At 4.45 A.M. the magazine of the Flagstaff and Garden Batteries blew up. At 5.30 A.M. two of the southern forts, the Quarantine and Alexander, went up into the air, and a great number of live shell followed, and burst in all directions. While this was going on, a steady current of infantry was passing to the north side over the bridge. At 6.45 A.M. the last battalion had passed, and the hill-sides opposite the city were alive with Russian troops. At 7.10 A.M. several small explosions took place inside the town. At 7.12 A.M. columns of black smoke began to rise from a steamer in one of the docks. At 7.15 A.M. the connection of the floating-bridge with the south side was severed. At 7.16 A.M. flames began to ascend from Fort Nicholas. At 8.7 A.M. the last part of the bridge was floated off in portions to the north side. At 9 A.M. several violent explosions took place in the works on our left, opposite the French. At 10 A.M. the town was a mass of flames, and the pillar of velvety fat smoke ascending from it seemed to support the very heavens. The French continued to fire, probably to keep out stragglers; but, ere the Russians left the place, the Zouaves and sailors were engaged in plundering. Not a shot was fired to the front and centre. The Russian steamers were very busy towing boats and stores across. His steamers towed his boats across at their leisure, and when every man had been placed in safety, and not till then, the Russians began to dislocate and float off the different portions of their bridge, and to pull it over to the north side.

This Redan cost us more lives than the capture of Badajoz, without including those who fell in its trenches and approaches; and, although the enemy evacuated it, we could scarcely claim the credit of having caused them such loss that they retired owing to their dread of a renewed assault. On the contrary, we must, in fairness, admit that the Russians maintained their hold of the place till the French were established in the Malakoff and the key of the position was torn from their grasp. They might, indeed, have remained in the place longer than they did, as the French were scarcely in a condition to molest them from the Malakoff with artillery; but the Russian general possessed too much genius and experience as a soldier to lose men in defending an untenable position, and his retreat was effected with masterly skill and with perfect ease in the face of a victorious enemy. Covering his rear by the flames of the burning city, and by tremendous explosions, which spoke in tones of portentous warning to those who might have wished to cut off his retreat, he led his battalions in narrow files across a deep arm of the sea, which ought to have been commanded by our guns, and in the face of a most powerful{362} fleet. He actually paraded them in our sight as they crossed, and carried off all his most useful stores and munitions of war. He left us few trophies, and many bitter memories. He sank his ships and blew up his forts without molestation; nothing was done to harass him in his retreat, with the exception of some paltry efforts to break down the bridge by cannon-shot, or to shell the troops as they marched over.

It was clear that the fire of our artillery was searching out every nook and corner in the town, and that it would have soon become utterly impossible for the Russians to keep any body of men to defend their long line of parapet and battery without such murderous loss as would speedily have annihilated an army. Their enormous bomb-proofs, large and numerous as they were, could not hold the requisite force to resist a general concerted attack made all along the line with rapidity and without previous warning. On the other hand, the strength of the works themselves was prodigious. One heard our engineers feebly saying, "They are badly traced," and that kind of thing; but it was quite evident that the Russian, who is no match for the Allies in the open field, had been enabled to sustain the most tremendous bombardments ever known, and a siege of eleven months; that he was rendered capable of repulsing one general assault, and that a subsequent attack upon him at four points was only successful at one, which fortunately happened to be the key of his position; and the inference is, that his engineers possessed consummate ability, and furnished him with artificial strength that made him equal to our best efforts.

It is sufficient to say that of the three or four points attacked—the Little Redan and the Malakoff on the right, and the Bastion Centrale and the re-entering angle of the Flagstaff Work on the left—but one was carried, and that was a closed work. The Great Redan, the Little Redan, and the line of defence on the left were not taken, although the attack was resolute, and the contest obstinate and bloody for both assailants and defenders. Whether we ought to have attacked the Great or Little Redan, or to have touched the left at all, was another question, which was ventilated by many, but which it is not for me to decide. It is certain that the enemy knew his weakness, and was too good a strategist to defend a position of which we held the key.

The surprise throughout the camp on the Sunday morning was beyond description when the news spread that Sebastopol was on fire, and that the enemy were retreating. The tremendous explosions, which shook the very ground like so many earthquakes, failed to disturb many of our wearied soldiers.

As the rush from camp became very great, and every one sought to visit the Malakoff and the Redan, which were filled with dead and dying men, a line of English cavalry was posted across the front from our extreme left to the French right. They were stationed in all the ravines and roads to the town and trenches, with orders to keep back all persons except the Generals and Staff, and officers and men on duty, and to stop all our men returning{363} with plunder from the town, and to take it from them. As they did not stop the French, or Turks, or Sardinians, this order gave rise to a good deal of grumbling, particularly when a man, after lugging a heavy chair several miles, or a table, or some such article, was deprived of it by our sentries. The French complained that our Dragoons let English soldiers pass with Russian muskets, and would not permit the French to carry off these trophies; but there was not any foundation for the complaint. There was assuredly no jealousy on one side or the other. It so happened that as the remnants of the French regiments engaged on the left against the Malakoff and Little Redan marched to their tents in the morning, our Second Division was drawn up on the parade-ground in front of their camp, and the French had to pass their lines. The instant the leading regiment of Zouaves came up to the spot where our first regiment was placed, the men, with one spontaneous burst, rent the air with an English cheer. The French officers drew their swords, their men dressed up and marched past as if at a review, while regiment after regiment of the Second Division caught up the cry, and at last our men presented arms to their brave comrades of France, the officers on both sides saluted with their swords, and this continued till the last man had marched by.

Mingled with the plunderers from the front were many wounded men. The ambulances never ceased,—now moving heavily and slowly with their burdens, again rattling at a trot to the front for a fresh cargo,—and the ground between the trenches and the camp was studded with cacolets or mule litters. Already the funeral parties had commenced their labours. The Russians all this time were swarming on the north side, and evinced the liveliest interest in the progress of the explosions and conflagrations. They took up ground in their old camps, and spread all over the face of the hills behind the northern forts. Their steamers cast anchor, or were moored close to the shore among the creeks, on the north side, near Fort Catherine. By degrees the Generals, French and English, and the Staff officers, edged down upon the town, but Fort Paul had not yet gone up, and Fort Nicholas was burning, and our engineers declared the place would be unsafe for forty-eight hours. Moving down, however, on the right flank of our cavalry pickets, a small party of us managed to turn them cleverly, and to get out among the French works between the Mamelon and Malakoff. The ground was here literally paved with shot and shell, and the surface was deeply honeycombed by the explosions of the bombs at every square yard. The road was crowded by Frenchmen returning with paltry plunder from Sebastopol, and with files of Russian prisoners, many of them wounded, and all dejected, with the exception of a fine little boy, in a Cossack's cap and a tiny uniform greatcoat, who seemed rather pleased with his kind captors. There was also one stout Russian soldier, who had evidently been indulging in the popularly credited sources of Dutch courage, and who danced all the way into the camp with a Zouave.

There were ghastly sights on the way, too—Russians who had{364} died, or were dying as they lay, brought so far towards the hospitals from the fatal Malakoff. Passing through a maze of trenches, of gabionades, and of zigzags and parallels, by which the French had worked their sure and deadly way close to the heart of the Russian defence, and treading gently among the heaps of dead, where the ground bore full tokens of the bloody fray, we came at last to the head of the French sap. It was barely ten yards from that to the base of the huge sloping mound of earth which rose full twenty feet in height above the level, and showed in every direction the grinning muzzles of its guns. The tricolour waved placidly from its highest point, and the French were busy constructing a semaphore on the top. There was a ditch at one's feet, some twenty or twenty-two feet deep, and ten feet broad. That was the place where the French crossed—there was their bridge of planks, and here they swarmed in upon the unsuspecting defenders of the Malakoff. They had not ten yards to go. We had two hundred, and the men were then out of breath. Were not planks better than scaling-ladders? This explains how easily the French crossed. On the right hand, as one issued from the head of the French trench, was a line of gabions on the ground running up to this bridge. That was a flying sap, which the French made the instant they got out of the trench into the Malakoff, so that they were enabled to pour a continuous stream of men into the works, with comparative safety from the flank fire of the enemy. In the same way they at once dug a trench across the work inside, to see if there were any galvanic wires to fire mines. Mount the parapet and descend—of what amazing thickness are these embrasures! From the level of the ground inside to the top of the parapet cannot be less than eighteen feet. There were eight rows of gabions piled one above the other, and as each row receded towards the top, it left in the ledge below an excellent banquette for the defenders.

Inside the sight was too terrible to dwell upon. The French were carrying away their own and the Russian wounded, and four distinct piles of dead were formed to clear the way. The ground was marked by pools of blood, and the smell was noisome; swarms of flies settled on dead and dying; broken muskets, torn clothes, caps, shakos, swords, bayonets, bags of bread, canteens, and haversacks, were lying in indescribable confusion all over the place, mingled with heaps of shot, of grape, bits of shell, cartridges, case and canister, loose powder, official papers, and cooking tins. The traverses were so high and deep that it was almost impossible to get a view of the whole of the Malakoff from any one spot, and there was a high mound of earth in the middle of the work, either intended as a kind of shell proof, or the remains of the old White Tower. The guns, which to the number of sixty were found in the work, were all ships' guns, and mounted on ships' carriages, and worked in the same way as ships' guns. There were a few old-fashioned, oddly-shaped mortars. On looking around the work, one might see that the strength of the Russian was his weakness—he fell into his own bomb-proofs. In the parapet of the work{365} might be observed several entrances—very narrow outside, but descending and enlarging downwards, and opening into rooms some four or five feet high, and eight or ten square. These were only lighted from the outside by day, and must have been pitch dark at night, unless the men were allowed lanterns. Here the garrison retired when exposed to a heavy bombardment. The odour of these narrow chambers was villanous, and the air reeked with blood and abominations unutterable. There were several of these places, and they might bid defiance to the heaviest mortars in the world: over the roof was a layer of ships' masts, cut into junks, and deposited carefully; then there was over them a solid layer of earth, and above that a layer of gabions, and above that a pile of earth again.

In one of these dungeons, excavated in the solid rock, and which was probably underneath the old White Tower, the officer commanding seems to have lived. It must have been a dreary residence. The floor and the entrance were littered a foot deep with reports, returns, and perhaps despatches assuring the Czar that the place had sustained no damage. The garrison were in these narrow chambers enjoying their siesta, which they invariably take at twelve o'clock, when the French burst in upon them like a torrent, and, as it were, drowned them in their holes. The Malakoff was a closed work, only open at the rear to the town; and the French having once got in, threw open a passage to their own rear, and closed up the front and the lateral communications with the curtains leading to the Great Redan and to the Little Redan. Thus they were enabled to pour in their supports, in order and without loss, in a continued stream, and to resist the efforts of the Russians, which were desperate and repeated, to retake the place. They brought up their field-guns at once, and swept the Russian reserves and supports, while Strange's batteries from the Quarries carried death through their ranks in every quarter of the Karabelnaïa. With the Malakoff the enemy lost Sebastopol. The ditch outside, towards the north, was full of French and Russians, piled over each other in horrid confusion. On the right, towards the Little Redan, the ground was literally strewn with bodies as thick as they could lie, and in the ditch they were piled over each other. Here the French, victorious in the Malakoff, met with a heavy loss and a series of severe repulses. The Russians lay inside the work in heaps, like carcases in a butcher's cart; and the wounds, the blood—the sight exceeded all I had hitherto witnessed.

Descending from the Malakoff, we came upon a suburb of ruined houses open to the sea—it was filled with dead. The Russians had crept away into holes and corners in every house, to die like poisoned rats; artillery horses, with their entrails torn open by shot, were stretched all over the space at the back of the Malakoff, marking the place where the Russians moved up their last column to retake it under the cover of a heavy field battery. Every house, the church, some public buildings, sentry-boxes—all alike were broken and riddled by cannon and mortar. Turning to the left,{366} we proceeded by a very tall snow-white wall of great length to the dockyard gateway. This wall was pierced and broken through and through with cannon. Inside were the docks, which, naval men say, were unequalled in the world. The steamer was blazing merrily in one of them. Gates and store sides were splintered and pierced by shot. There were the stately dockyard buildings on the right, which used to look so clean and white and spruce. Parts of them were knocked to atoms, and hung together in such shreds and patches that it was only wonderful they cohered. The soft white stone of which they and the walls were made was readily knocked to pieces by a cannon-shot.

Of all the pictures of the horrors of war which have ever been presented to the world, the hospital of Sebastopol offered the most horrible, heartrending, and revolting. How the poor human body could be mutilated, and yet hold its soul within it, when every limb is shattered, and every vein and artery is pouring out the life-stream, one might study there at every step, and at the same time wonder how little will kill! The building used as an hospital was one of the noble piles inside the dockyard wall, and was situated in the centre of the row, at right angles to the line of the Redan. The whole row was peculiarly exposed to the action of shot and shell bounding over the Redan, and to the missiles directed at the Barrack Battery; and it bore in sides, roof, windows, and doors, frequent and distinctive proofs of the severity of the cannonade.

Entering one of these doors, I beheld such a sight as few men, thank God, have ever witnessed. In a long, low room, supported by square pillars arched at the top, and dimly lighted through shattered and unglazed window-frames, lay the wounded Russians, who had been abandoned to our mercies by their General. The wounded, did I say? No, but the dead—the rotten and festering corpses of the soldiers, who were left to die in their extreme agony, untended, uncared for, packed as close as they could be stowed, some on the floor, others on wretched trestles and bedsteads, or pallets of straw, sopped and saturated with blood, which oozed and trickled through upon the floor, mingling with the droppings of corruption. With the roar of exploding fortresses in their ears—with shells and shot pouring through the roof and sides of the rooms in which they lay—with the crackling and hissing of fire around them, these poor fellows, who had served their loving friend and master the Czar but too well, were consigned to their terrible fate. Many might have been saved by ordinary care. Many lay, yet alive, with maggots crawling about in their wounds. Many, nearly mad by the scene around them, or seeking escape from it in their extremest agony, had rolled away under the beds, and glared out on the heart-stricken spectator—oh! with such looks! Many, with legs and arms broken and twisted, the jagged splinters sticking through the raw flesh, implored aid, water, food, or pity, or, deprived of speech by the approach of death, or by dreadful injuries in the head or trunk, pointed to the lethal spot. Many seemed bent alone on making their peace with Heaven.{367}

The attitudes of some were so hideously fantastic as to appal and root one to the ground by a sort of dreadful fascination. Could that bloody mass of clothing and white bones ever have been a human being, or that burnt black mass of flesh have ever held a human soul? It was fearful to think what the answer must be. The bodies of numbers of men were swollen and bloated to an incredible degree; and the features, distended to a gigantic size, with eyes protruding from the sockets, and the blackened tongue lolling out of the mouth, compressed tightly by the teeth, which had set upon it in the death-rattle, made one shudder and reel round.

In the midst of one of these "chambers of horrors"—for there were many of them—were found some dead and some living English soldiers, and among them poor Captain Vaughan, of the 90th, who afterwards died of his wounds. I confess it was impossible for me to stand the sight, which horrified our most experienced surgeons; the deadly, clammy stench, the smell of gangrened wounds, of corrupted blood, of rotting flesh, were intolerable and odious beyond endurance. But what must have the wounded felt, who were obliged to endure all this, and who passed away without a hand to give them a cup of water, or a voice to say one kindly word to them? Most of these men were wounded on Saturday—many, perhaps, on the Friday before—indeed it is impossible to say how long they might have been there. In the hurry of their retreat, the Muscovites seem to have carried in dead men to get them out of the way, and to have put them on pallets in horrid mockery. So that their retreat was secured, the enemy cared but little for their wounded. On Monday only did they receive those whom we sent out to them during a brief armistice for the purpose, which was, I believe, sought by ourselves, as our over-crowded hospitals could not contain, and our over-worked surgeons could not attend to, any more.

The Great Redan was next visited. Such a scene of wreck and ruin!—all the houses behind it a mass of broken stones—a clock turret, with a shot right through the clock; a pagoda in ruins; another clock tower, with all the clock destroyed save the dial, with the words, "Barwise, London," thereon; cook-houses, where human blood was running among the utensils; in one place a shell had lodged in the boiler, and blown it and its contents, and probably its attendants, to pieces. Everywhere wreck and destruction. This evidently was a beau quartier once. The oldest inhabitant could not have recognized it on that fatal day. Climbing up to the Redan, which was fearfully cumbered with the dead, we witnessed the scene of the desperate attack and defence, which cost both sides so much blood. The ditch outside made one sick—it was piled up with English dead, some of them scorched and blackened by the explosion, and others lacerated beyond recognition. The quantity of broken gabions and gun-carriages here was extraordinary; the ground was covered with them. The bomb-proofs were the same as in the Malakoff, and in one of them a music-book was found, with a woman's name in it, and a canary bird and a vase of flowers were outside the entrance.{368}

CHAPTER VIII.

AS the Russian steamers were intact, notwithstanding the efforts of the French battery at the head of the roads near Inkerman to touch them, it was resolved, on the day after the fall of the place, to construct a battery on the ruins of Fort Paul, within 700 yards of the northern shore, under which they had taken refuge. The steamers lay in three irregular lines to the eastward of Fort Catherine, where the deep creeks in the high cliffs gave them some sort of shelter against the fire of the French. There they had been agents of much mischief and injury to the Allies, from the time of the battle of Inkerman. There was the famous Vladimir, with her two large funnels and elegant clipper hull; the Elbœuf, the steamer which made the celebrated dash into the Black Sea through all our fleet the year before, and burnt some Turkish vessels near Heraclea, just as the Vladimir was seen in Odessa harbour in the month of July, 1854; there was the Gromonossetz, which had caused such an annoyance from the Dockyard Creek; the Chersonese, and Odessa; and there were three others with hard, and to me unknown names, as calmly floating on the water as though no eager eyes were watching from every battery to lay a gun upon them. A number of very capacious dockyard lumps and row-boats were also secured in these creeks, or hung on by the steamers.

On the morning of the 11th, about an hour after midnight, an exceedingly violent storm raged over the camp. The wind blew with such fury as to make the hut in which I was writing rock to and fro, at the same time filling it with fine dust. The fires in Sebastopol, fanned by the wind, spread fast, and the glare of the burning city illuminated the whole arch of the sky towards the north-west. At 2 o'clock A.M. the storm increased in strength, and rain fell heavily; the most dazzling flames of lightning shot over the plateau and lighted up the camp; the peals of thunder were so short and startling as to resemble, while they exceeded in noise, the report of cannon. The rain somewhat lessened the intensity of the fire at Sebastopol, but its flames and those of the lightning at times contended for the mastery. There was, indeed, a great battle raging in the skies, and its thunder mocked to scorn our heaviest cannonade. In the whole course of my life I never heard or saw anything like the deluge of rain which fell at 4 o'clock. It{369} beat on the roof with a noise like that of a cataract: it was a veritable waterspout. The lightning at last grew fainter, and the gusts less violent. At 9.45 the tornado passed over the camp once more—hail, storm, and rain. The ground was converted into a mass of mud.

In the course of the afternoon some of the Russian guns in the ruined battery below the Redan were turned on these steamers, and in a few rounds—not more than twelve, I think—succeeded in hulling them eight times. The range was, however, rather long, and it became expedient to move a little nearer. On Tuesday evening, when Lieutenant Gough, of the London—who commanded in the Naval Batteries on the Left Attack—came down with his men, he was ordered to take his relief over to the Right Attack and to accompany Lieutenant Anderson, R.E., down to the town, in order to erect a battery for two 95-cwt. guns on the right of St. Paul's Battery. The site of this battery was about 700 yards from Fort Catherine, on the opposite side. The men, although deprived of the quiet night and undisturbed repose they anticipated, set to work with a will, and began throwing up the parapet and filling gabions; and as it was possible that some interruption of the work might take place from the other side, a covering party of 120 men was ordered down from the trenches. There were French sentries in charge of this portion of the place, and the little party found that their Allies were on the qui vive, and were keeping a sharp look-out on all sides. The men had been working some time, when it was observed that one of the enemy's steamers had left the north side, and was slowly and noiselessly dropping down to the very spot where the sailors and the covering party were at their labours. The night was dark, but they could clearly make out the steamer edging down upon them, and coming closer and closer. Every moment they expected their guns to open upon them with grape and canister. The men, therefore, lay down upon their faces, and kept as near to the ground as they could, and the steamer came over gently till she was within about 100 yards of the very spot where they had been working. They heard her anchor splash into the water, and then the rattle of her cable as it ran through the hawsehole. Now, certainly, they were "going to catch it," but, no—the Russian opened no port and showed no light, but seemed to be making himself comfortable in his new quarters.

Captain Villiers, of the 47th, who commanded the covering party, ordered his men to observe the utmost silence, and the same injunction was given to the seamen. About 2.30 in the morning, when she had been an hour or so in her novel berth, a broad light was perceived in her fore hatchway. The leading steamer on the opposite side in a second afterwards exhibited gleams of equal brightness, and then one! two! three! four! five!—as though from signal guns, the remaining steamers, with one exception, emitted jets of fire. The jets soon became columns of flame and smoke—the wind blew fresh and strong, so the fire soon spread with rapidity, and soon lighted up the whole of the heavens. The{370} masts were speedily licked and warmed into a fiery glow, and the rigging burst out into fitful wavering lines of light, struggling with the wind for life: the yards shed lambent showers of sparks and burning splinters upon the water. The northern works could be readily traced by the light of the conflagration, and the faces of the Russian soldiers and sailors who were scattered about on the face of the cliff shone out now and then, and justified Rembrandt. The vessels were soon nothing but huge arks of blinding light, which hissed and crackled fiercely, and threw up clouds of sparks and embers; the guns, as they became hot, exploded, and shook the crazy hulls to atoms. One after another they went down into the seething waters.

At daybreak only one steamer remained. A boat pushed alongside her from the shore, and after remaining about ten minutes regained the shore. Very speedily the vessel began to be seized with a sort of internal convulsion—first she dipped her bows, then her stern, then gave a few uneasy shakes, and at length, after a short quiver, went down bodily, cleverly scuttled. Thus was Sinope avenged. Of the men who planned, the sailors who executed, and the ships which were engaged on that memorable expedition, no trace remained. Korniloff, Nachimoff, Istomine, and their crews, disappeared: their vessels rest at the bottom of the roadstead of Sebastopol. The Russians preferred being agents of their own destruction, and did not give the conqueror a chance of parading the fruits of his victory. We could not delight the good people of Plymouth or Portsmouth by the sight of Russian liners and steamers. We could only drive the enemy to the option of destroying or of doing the work for him, and he invariably preferred the former.

In one year we stormed the heights of the Alma, sustained the glorious disaster of Balaklava, fought the great fight of Inkerman, swept the sea of Azoff and its seaboard, wasted Kertch and seized upon Yenikale, witnessed the battle of the Tchernaya, opened seven bombardments upon Sebastopol, held in check every general and every soldier that Russia could spare; and, after the endurance of every ill that an enemy at home and abroad could inflict upon us—after passing through the summer's heat and winter's frost—after being purged in the fire of sickness and death, repulse and disaster, and, above all, in the glow of victory, the British standard floated over Sebastopol! But our army was not the same. Physiologists tell us that we undergo perpetual charge, and that not a bit of the John Smith of 1854 goes into the composition of the same respected individual in 1864; but we had managed to work up tens of hundreds of atoms in our British army between 1854 and 1855, and there were few indeed to be found in the body corporate who landed in the Crimea a twelvemonth before. Some regiments had been thrice renewed, others had been changed twice over. The change was not for the better—the old stuff was better than the new. The old soldiers had disappeared; in some regiments there were not more than fifteen men, in others there were not so many, remaining out of those who moved in magnificent{371} parade to their first bivouac. Those whom the war had swallowed up were not replaced by better men. The Light Division—those steady, noble soldiers of the Rifle Brigade; the gallant Fusileers; the 19th, the 23rd, the 33rd, the 77th, the 88th—the men who drew the teeth of that terrible Russian Battery on the bloody steeps of the Alma—how few of them were then left to think and wonder at the failure in the Redan! The Second Division, old companions of the Light in hard fighting and in hard work, were sadly reduced. The Third Division, though singularly freed from active participation in any of the great battles or sanguinary struggles of the war, had been heavily smitten by sickness, and had borne a large share of the exhausting and harassing duties of the trenches and of the siege, and its old soldiers had been used up, as those of the other corps. The Fourth Division earned for itself a high reputation. In the fierce contest of Inkerman it won imperishable laurels, which few of the winners were left to wear. As to the Guards—those majestic battalions which secured the fluttering wings of victory on the Alma, and with stubborn front withstood the surge of Muscovite infantry which rolled up the ravines of Inkerman—disease and battle had done their work but too surely, notwithstanding the respite from the trenches during our wintry spring-time, which was allowed perforce to their rapidly vanishing columns.

The silence in camp was almost alarming; were it not for a gun now and then between the town and the north side, and across the Tchernaya, it would have been appalling. The Naval Brigade was broken up and sent on board ship. Our batteries were disarmed; the Army Works Corps, assisted by soldiers, engaged in the formation of a new road from Balaklava, parallel with the line of railway. Everything around us indicated an intention on the part of the chiefs of putting the army into winter quarters on the site of their encampment.

The Sappers and Miners sank mines, to destroy the docks that had cost Russia so much anxiety, money, and bloodshed; and, if it were not that they were intended to be, and had been, accessory to violence, one would have regretted that such splendid memorials of human skill should be shattered to atoms. But the fleet of Sinope sailed thence, in them it was repaired on its return; and these vessels were built, not to foster peace and commerce, but to smite and destroy them.

There was an armistice on Tuesday, Sept. 11th, to effect an interchange of letters, for the benefit of the prisoners, and to make inquiries respecting missing officers on both sides. The Russian officer who conducted it, and who was supposed to have been the commander of the Vladimir, expressed the same opinion as the Russian Admiral did on Monday, Sept. 10th—"With this before us," pointing to the ruins of Sebastopol, "peace is farther off than ever." The Russians had very large parks of artillery on the north side of the harbour; and the piles of provisions, matériel, and coal which were visible, showed that they did not want the means of carrying on the war, as far as such things were concerned. Many{372} of the guns found here were cast at Carron, from the letters on their trunnion heads and breeches.

The enemy persisted in casting up formidable earthworks on the north side, and we looked on as we did from September 27 till October 17, 1854, and saw them preparing their defences, with the sure conviction that we should be able to carry them, or sap up to them, or take them in some way or other in a year or two. Meantime, the weather came in with a word of its own, and said to our deliberating Generals, "Stop! as you have waited so long, I won't let you move now."

It was on the 19th of September, twelve months before this was written, that the Allied armies marched from Old Fort, and that the Russians drew first blood at Bouljanak. What an eventful year had elapsed! and how few survived through all our sufferings and our glories!

The medals and ribands issued to commanding officers were distributed on the 20th of September, about ten medals for each company. As to the riband, there was but one opinion,—that it was unbecoming and mesquin to a degree. Men differed as to the merits of the medal; but a large majority abused it, and the clasps were likened generally to the labels on public-house wine-bottles. The proceedings at the distribution were tame and spiritless. A regiment was drawn up, with the commanding officer in front; beside him stood a sergeant, with a big bag. "John Smith" was called.

"Here."

The Colonel dipped his hand into the bag, took out a small parcel, and said, "John Smith, you were Alma, Balaklava, and Inkerman?"

"Yes." The Colonel handed him the parcel, and John Smith retired to his place in the ranks, carrying the said packet in his hand, which he opened at the "dismiss." Perhaps the John Smith alluded to never saw a shot fired except at a distance. He might have been on peaceful guard at Lord Raglan's head-quarters on the 5th of November; yet he wears the clasp for Inkerman. He might have been engaged in no more sanguinary work than that of killing oxen and sheep for the division in the commissariat slaughter-house, and yet he will show on his breast "Crimea," "Alma," "Balaklava," "Inkerman."

This great anniversary was celebrated enthusiastically throughout the army. There were many "Alma dinners" in the regiments, among both officers and men; and music and song kept the camp awake till long after midnight. Many a memory of the dead was revived, many an old wound reopened, at these festive meetings. The French also had their banquets and festivities. They had a grand ceremony early in the morning—a Missa Solennis for the repose of the dead.

General Pelissier was made a Marshal of France, and received from Her Majesty the Grand Cross of the Bath. Of the latter order he seemed exceedingly proud, and he signed his name "Pelissier, G.C.B." General Simpson received the distinction of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.{373}

At daybreak on the morning of the 21st of September, I saw through the mist on the Mackenzie ridge a numerous line of watch-fires, and later in the early light a strong column of the Russian infantry was visible in bivouac to our right of the telegraph station and to the left of the Spur Battery, near the Mackenzie Road. Part of these marched away again in the course of the day; the rest remained in the same place, and hutted themselves with great skill and alacrity. They were encamped in a sort of chapparell, and they converted the branches into the sides and coverings of their huts. Their arms were piled when they first arrived at the bivouac, but three hours later the glistening barrels and bayonets had disappeared, having possibly been placed in some dry and secure place. Having secured their right flank by the very formidable earthworks and batteries which we permitted the enemy to erect, in addition to their former defences and their regular forts, the Russians directed the bulk of their army to protect their centre, resting on the Tchernaya and Mackenzie, and their left at Aitodor, and on the Upper Belbek to Bakschiserai. They prepared to hold this extensive line; and as the Allies could scarcely spare men enough to send to Eupatoria, and thence to march on Simpheropol, or to force the Russian position on the Belbek by a moving corps to operate against them on the north, and as there was no apparent intention of attacking them from Inkerman or the Tchernaya, the dead lock was likely enough not to be relaxed that winter.

The quantity of stores removed by the Russians from the north side to their depôt showed that they were not in want of provisions, unless they took the trouble to carry dummy sacks and fill their carts with "make-believes." It must have been difficult for them to feed their army, but somehow or other they did so. They left considerable quantities of food behind them in the city; large flocks and herds studded the plains near the citadel. The soldiers who fell into the hands of the Sardinians and French on the 16th of August carried abundance of bread and spirits, and they had meat and plenty of everything except water, when they came down to attack the Allies; so that, altogether, I was not so very sanguine as to think the Russians would be forced to abandon their position on the approach of winter. The country around them would supply abundance of wood for fuel, and they were skilled in making comfortable and warm underground huts. The enemy, therefore, would be as well housed as the Allies, supposing the latter succeeded in getting up huts before the winter set in. "Leaving them alone" would never drive a Russian army out of the field; the only thing to do that was the French and English bayonet, and plenty of fighting.

The Muscovite generals cannot be accused of any great regard for their killed and wounded, but they have certainly much respect for the prejudices and feelings of their soldiers. We were over and over again astonished at the wonderful way in which the dead and wounded disappeared after the repulse of a sortie in which there were probably 200 of the enemy put hors de combat. Except the dead and wounded left in our trenches, none were ever to be{374} seen after such contests when day broke. A soldier of the 68th (M'Geevor), who was taken prisoner in a sortie, and who returned to his regiment after a long and (to others) interesting march in Russia, explained the mystery, such as it was. On the night alluded to it could not be ascertained what the Russian loss was, but it was certain that the firing had been very heavy and the work very warm while it lasted. As this man was being carried to the rear after a stout resistance, he observed that there were hundreds of soldiers without weapons between the reserves and the column of sortie, and that these men were employed exclusively in removing the dead and wounded, who would otherwise have been left in the hands of the British. The most extensive provision we make in such cases is sending one, or at most two, litters to a regiment, except when the ambulances go out for a pitched battle. Perhaps we do not calculate on leaving our ground, but the best General is always prepared for retreat as well as for victory, and if ever we should be placed in the same circumstances as the Russians have been, it would be advisable to follow their example.

On the 24th Sir Edmund Lyons and Admiral Stewart, with several post-captains, attended at head-quarters, and it was understood that they, in common with the whole fleet, were most anxious "to do something" ere the season was too far advanced for naval operations. At Eupatoria they found no less than 31,000 Turkish infantry in a fine state of discipline, and in perfect readiness for any military service. These soldiers were all reviewed and inspected on the occasion, and officers of rank, English and French, were alike gratified by the disciplined alertness and efficiency of these neglected and almost useless infantry. It is difficult to imagine that these Turks could not have aided us materially in driving the enemy from Sebastopol if strengthened by an English division and two French divisions, which could have been easily spared from the army before Sebastopol. Moreover, they might have been aided by all our cavalry, which were in very excellent condition, and were of no earthly service at Kadikoi or Baidar. Between French, English, and Sardinians, we could have sent a force of at least 5,500 sabres to the north side of the Alma, which certainly would have had nothing to fear from any Russian cavalry in the Crimea. The Land Transport Corps had more than 10,000 horses and mules. The allied fleet could have embarked and landed the whole force in sixty hours, at any point between Balaklava or Kamiesch and Eupatoria. Army and fleet were alike inactive—the only tokens of military life were displayed on the side of the enemy.

The celerity with which they threw up and finished the most formidable-looking redoubts on the land and sea sides was astonishing. The Russians are admirable diggers, and if Marshal Turenne's maxim, that as many battles were won by the spade as by the musket be true, they are good soldiers. The fire across the roads increased in frequency and severity every day, but the mortars of the French caused some injury and impediment to the Russian workmen, and occasionally damaged their magazines.{375}

The army, French, English, and Sardinians, as well as the few Turkish troops, prepared for the winter with energy, but no steps were taken to operate against the enemy. Balaklava presented a singular aspect. There were only some dozen of the original houses left scattered amid iron storehouses, mountainous piles of wood, heaps of coal, of corn, of forage, of shot and shell, and of stores multitudinous. The harbour was trenched upon by new quays and landing-places, and two long wooden jetties projected far into its waters at the shallow head of the harbour, and rendered good service in taking the pressure off the quays at the waterside. The quantity of corn issued for horses, mules, and ponies in the English army was 280,000lb. daily.

Many of the officers were hutted, some constructed semi-subterranean residences, and the camp was studded all over with the dingy roofs, which at a distance looked much like an aggregate of molehills. In order to prevent ennui or listlessness after the great excitement of so many months in the trenches, the Generals of Division began to drill our veterans, and to renew the long-forgotten pleasures of parades, field-days, and inspections. In all parts of the open ground about the camps, the visitor might have seen men with Crimean medals and Balaklava and Inkerman clasps, practising goose-step or going through extension movements, learning, in fact, the A B C of their military education, though they had already seen a good deal of fighting and soldiering. Still there were periods when the most inveterate of martinets rested from their labour, and the soldier, having nothing else to do, availed himself of the time and money at his disposal to indulge in the delights of the canteen. Road-making occupied some leisure hours, but the officers had very little to do, and found it difficult to kill time, riding about Sebastopol, visiting Balaklava, foraging at Kamiesch, or hunting for quail, which were occasionally found in swarms all over the steppe, and formed most grateful additions to the mess-table. There was no excitement in front; the Russians remained immovable in their position at Mackenzie's Farm. The principal streets of Sebastopol lost the charm of novelty and possession. Even Cathcart's Hill was deserted, except by the "look-out officer" for the day, or by a few wandering strangers and visitors.{376}

BOOK VIII.

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{377} 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{378} 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 œufs." 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 medi{379}cines 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{380} 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{381} 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:—

On the 25th of September the Commission held its second{382} 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,{383} 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:—

{384}

Guns in Malakoff, Redan, &c.

The return includes eight 8-inch and two 3⅞-inch brass guns.

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.

{385}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{386} 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{387} 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,{388} 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{389} 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{390} 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 con{391}stant 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{392} 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:—{394}

{395}

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{396} 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{397} 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{398} 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{399} 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{400} 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 flag{401}ship 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{402} 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{403} 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{404} 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{405} 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{406} 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:—

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{407} 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.{410} 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{411} 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.{412}

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{413} 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,{414} 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{415} 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{416} 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{417} 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{418} 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{419} 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.{420} 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.{421}

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{422} 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{423} 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{425} 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{426} 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{427} 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 under{428}taken 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.{429}

BOOK IX.

CHAPTER I.

THE month of November would seem to have been ruled by some genius unfavourable to our arms. If it gave to us the glorious remembrance of a profitless and bloody victory, it also brought with it a day of disaster and gloom—the beginning of a long series of calamities. The first anniversary of that day passed away amid mutual congratulations and reminiscences, rendered all the more joyous by the contrast between the present and the past. We had beheld a spectacle of unusual splendour and grandeur, one indeed which no native of these isles has ever yet witnessed, so far as I am aware. On the 14th of November, 1855, the purity of the air—the health of the troops—the abundance of stores—the excellence of the roads—the quantity of hutting—the hospital accommodation—the fineness of the day—the beauty of the sky—the dryness of the soil—the prospects of the army—the bright-hued future: all these were contrasted by a myriad tongues in endless difference of phrase, coloured by many a recollection of personal suffering. There was no sorrow, no calamity could reach us now, and of all things which fate could grant us, most of all were we desirous of meeting that alone with which fate seemed to threaten us—an assault by the enemy. But, suddenly, up from the very centre of our camp, so that every ear should hear and every eye should see, rushed with such a crash as may forewarn the world of its doom, and with such a burst of flame and smoke as may never yet have been seen by man, except in the throes of some primeval eruption, a ghastly pillar of sulphureous vapour. It spread as it rose, bearing aloft for hundreds of yards men, horses, fragments of limbs, rocks, shells, and cannon-shot, and then extended its folds in writhing involutions, as though it were tortured by the fire within, raining them down over the astounded soldiery below! For a moment the boldest lost heart, and "the bravest held his breath." There{430} was no safety in flight—the wings of the wind could not have left that dreadful shower of iron behind; and as one of the most collected and cool soldiers in the army said to me, "I had only presence of mind to throw myself on the ground and ask the forgiveness of God, and I received his mercy!" In fact, the effect resembled some great convulsion of nature. Many thought it was an earthquake; others fancied it was the outburst of a volcano; others, that the Russians had got hold of Lord Dundonald's invention, and that they had just given it a first trial. Indeed, one officer said to another, as soon as he recovered breath and could speak, "I say, that's a nice sort of thing, is it not? The sooner we go after that the better." He was persuaded the Russians had thrown some new and unheard-of instrument of destruction into the camp.

I was riding from head-quarters, reading my letters, and had just reached the hill, or elevated part of the plateau, at the time, and happened to be looking in the very direction of the park when the explosion took place. The phenomena were so startling as to take away one's breath. Neither pen nor pencil could describe them. The earth shook. The strongest houses rocked to and fro. Men felt as if the very ground upon which they stood was convulsed by an earthquake. The impression of these few moments can never be eradicated. One's confidence in the stability of the very earth was staggered. Suppositos incedimus ignes. What part of the camp was safe after such a catastrophe? The rush of fire, smoke, and iron, in one great pillar, attained a height I dare not estimate, and then seemed to shoot out like a tree, which over-shadowed half the camp on the right, and rained down missiles upon it. The colour of the pillar was dark grey, flushed with red, but it was pitted all over with white puffs of smoke, which marked the explosions of the shells. It retained the shape of a fir-tree for nearly a minute, and then the sides began to swell out and the overhanging canopy to expand and twist about in prodigious wreaths of smoke, which flew out to the right and left, and let drop, as it were from solution in its embrace, a precipitate of shells, carcasses, and iron projectiles. The noise was terrible; and when the shells began to explode, the din was like the opening crash of one of the great cannonades or bombardments of the siege. I clapped spurs to my horse and rode off as hard as I could towards the spot as soon as my ears had recovered the shock. As I rode along I could see thousands hurrying away from the place, and thousands hastening to it. The smoke became black; the fire had caught the huts and tents. General Windham overtook me, riding from head-quarters as hard as he could go. He was ignorant of the cause and locality of the explosion, and was under the impression that it was one of the French redoubts. Sir Richard Airey followed close after him, and General Codrington rode towards the fire a few minutes afterwards.

On arriving close to the place, I saw that the ground had been torn up in all directions. The fragments of shell were still smoking, and shells were bursting around in most unpleasant{431} proximity. Captain Piggott, in a short time, came up with the ambulances at a gallop, and urged the horses through the flames and amid the exploding shell in order to render assistance to the sufferers; and in this arduous duty he was manfully and courageously assisted by Surgeons Alexander, Muir, Mouat, and others. As we were all looking on at the raging fire, an alarm spread that the mill used as a powder magazine had caught fire. A regular panic ensued—horses and men tore like a storm through the camp of the Second Division. I did not escape the contagion, but, at my servant's solicitation, mounted my horse, and rode off like the rest. I soon came up to Colonel Percy Herbert, who was actively engaged in trying to get the men of his Division under arms, but he told me he could find neither drummers, buglers, officers, nor sergeants. The panic was soon over. The mill did not catch, though the roof and doors and windows were blown in. The officers, in the most devoted way, stripped, and placed 300 wet blankets over the powder inside just as the flames were raging behind the mill and at the side of it within 200 yards. Hundreds of rockets rushed hissing and bursting through the air, sheets of flame shot up from exploding powder, carcasses glared out fiercely through black clouds of smoke, and shells burst, tossing high in air burning beams of wood and showers of sparks, and boxes of small-arm ammunition exploded with a rattling report like musketry, and flew about in little balls of fire.

My reading in military matters is not sufficient to enable me to say, with any confidence, that there never was so terrible an explosion; but having witnessed and heard the explosions at Pavlovskaia and Kertch, at Oczakoff, of the French magazines on the 17th of October, 1854, and of the Russian forts on the 9th of September, 1855, I must say that, in volume of sound, in appalling effect, they were far exceeded in vehemence and grandeur by this tremendously abrupt and startling catastrophe. The quantity of Russian powder which went up was about 1,700 barrels, and there were about 800 barrels of French powder exploded in the three magazines. Each barrel contained about 100lb. weight of gunpowder, so that the total quantity which furnished the elements of this prodigious combustion cannot have been less than 250,000lb. But in addition to that enormous mass of powder there were vast mounds of shell, carcasses, rockets, and small-arm ammunition, contributing to the intensity and violence of the fiery blast.

Appalling as was the shock to those who were near, the effect was little diminished by distance. The roar and concussion were so great in Balaklava that the ships in harbour, and outside at anchor, trembled and quivered, and the houses shook to their foundations. The ships at Kamiesch and Kazatch reeled and rolled from side to side. Mules and horses, seven and eight miles away, broke loose, and galloped across the country, wild with fright. The noise pealed through the passes at Baidar like the loudest thunder. The sense of hearing was quite deadened in many persons, and their nervous systems have not yet recovered the shock, so that any sudden noise startles them. The French had{432} 6 officers killed and 13 wounded; 65 of their men, mostly of the artillery, were killed, and 170 wounded, of whom many will never recover. The destruction in money value of articles appertaining to the siege-train was very great. But when we came to men—to those gallant fellows who had survived the battles and the dangers of the campaign—our loss was irreparable. What value could be placed on those noble artillerymen of the siege-train who, with little praise or encouragement, stood by their guns in so many bombardments, and who had acquired skill, practice, and hardihood in the greatest siege the world ever saw?

The casualties in the Light Division were as follows:—

The Right Siege Train suffered as severely—seven poor fellows were buried the first night, and the bodies of three more artillerymen were so torn and scattered that their remains could not be collected for interment. To this loss of ten must be added that of seven artillerymen "missing." The total of the casualties in the train amounted to fifty-two. Mr. Yellon, Deputy Assistant-Commissary of the field train, a most active, zealous officer, whose name was mentioned along with that of Mr. Hayter in Colonel St. George's despatch, was blown to pieces. Lieutenant Roberts had his left arm broken, and was severely burnt; Lieutenant Dawson lost his leg above the ankle from a dead shell, which struck him as he was in the act of carrying off a live shell from the park to a place of safety. The legs, arms, and trunks of men were blown into the camps of the Rifle Brigade and of the 34th Regiment, on the extreme right of the Light Division. I saw lying amid a heap of ruins, of old iron stores, rubbish, shot, splinters of shell and beams of wood, a man's arm scorched and burnt black, on which the tattered pieces of clothing retained the traces of a sergeant's gold stripes. The dead were terrible to look upon; but the living in their agony were still more frightful. I solemnly declare, that from the lips of none of these mutilated masses which I saw stretched out in long rows in every hospital did I hear either groan or sigh. No sound escaped them, as those who could see rolled their sad orbs and gazed upon the stranger, except in one instance, when an involuntary expression of pain was uttered by a poor French soldier in the hospital of the 23rd, where he had been trepanned, and was all but beyond the reach of his misery. Although the Russians have been justly praised for their endurance of pain, I must say I never beheld them submit to such tortures as our men experienced. As I looked upon the shattered frames before me, in which such noble spirits were enshrined, I could not but remember the howls of a Russian corporal, at Kinburn, who had been wounded in the heel. The surgeons displayed the greatest{433} courage and kindness, and every man was at his post in the midst of fire and shell. Drs. Muir, Watt, Mouat, and Longmore particularly distinguished themselves.

Marshal Pelissier named a commission of inquiry to report upon the cause of the disastrous accident. Our men declared, of course, that it was the work of an incendiary. General Codrington seemed to give credence to the report, inasmuch as he ordered the army to turn out an hour before daybreak, to be prepared for the Russians if they really had calculated on crippling us.

The manner in which this great disaster was caused is said to have been this:—Some French artillerymen were engaged in shifting powder from case to case in the park, and as the operation is rather dangerous, every precaution was taken to prevent accidents. The powder was poured from one case into the other through copper funnels, and no fire was allowed near the place where the men were so employed. As one of the soldiers was pouring the powder out of a case he perceived a fragment of shell gliding out of it into the funnel, and, not wishing to let it get into the other case, he jerked the funnel to one side; the piece of shell fell on the stones, which were covered with loose powder, and is supposed to have struck fire in its fall, for the explosion took place at once. Miraculous as it may appear, this artilleryman, who was, as it were, in the focus of the explosion, escaped alive, being only slightly burnt and scorched. His comrade, who held the other case was blown to atoms. Another strange incident was the death of the French commandant of artillery for the day. He was near the park at the time of the explosion, and as soon as he had seen everything in order, he went off to have a look at the French batteries in and about Sebastopol, on which the Russians had just opened a heavy fire. As he rode along, a cannon-shot struck off his head. The escapes were astounding.—Clothes were torn off men's backs; the chairs or beds on which they sat, the tables at which they were eating, the earth on which they stood, were broken and torn by shot, shell, rocket-irons, shrapnell, grape, canister, and musket-balls, which literally rained down upon them. The distance to which fragments flew exceeds belief. It is difficult to explain it by mere names of localities. One piece of shell flew over Cathcart's Hill; another killed a horse in New Kadikoi. Some struck men and horses in the Guards' camp. In the Land Transport Corps of the Light Division fourteen horses were killed and seventeen were wounded. One flew over my hut; another struck the ground close to it; another went into the camp of the Land Transport Corps behind it. Mrs. Seacole, who keeps a restaurant near the Col, avers that a piece of stone struck her door, which is three and a half or four miles from the park. Pieces struck and damaged the huts in New Kadikoi. There had been some warnings of the dangers of carelessness already.

The day before the explosion Samuel Goodram, No. 6 Company, Coldstreams, a soldier of the same regiment, and a sergeant, were on duty in the Redan; the two men went into one of the casemates to remove powder and rubbish, while the sergeant remained outside.{434} Scarcely had the men entered before an explosion took place. Goodram was blown into the air, and then buried amid fragments of gabions and falling earth, and both men were buried in the Guards' cemetery next day. I am the more particular in giving names, that I may relate an anecdote of Goodram at the attack on the Redan. The night before the attack, the Coldstreams were on duty, and were relieved some hours before the assault. On arriving at camp, Samuel Goodram was missing; and it was feared that he had gone away to indulge in potations, or had been hit as he came from the trenches. But this gallant soldier had remained behind from a pure love of fighting, and from a desire "to have a go in at the Roosians." Knowing that the assault would take place in a few hours, Goodram, as the regiment mustered and marched off, had secreted himself in the trenches, and employed his leisure time before his comrades left in filling the breast of his coat and every available place about his person with cartridges from their boxes, fearing that his private supply of fifty rounds would fail him before he had got his fill of fighting. When the storming party was advancing from the fifth parallel, Goodram appeared, rifle in hand, and joined it as a volunteer, and his regiment claim him as being the first private soldier in the Redan on that memorable day. He was twice driven out of the Redan, and was over and over again engaged individually with the Russians, and in these encounters he received two wounds—one in the side and one in the arm—but still kept up a fire when driven back by the last rush of the enemy's infantry, and forced over the parapet with the rest of our men into the ditch. Instead, however, of retiring with the others, as opportunity offered, and keeping in the ditch or getting under cover in the parallels, Goodram made an impromptu rifle-pit on the broken glacis outside the ditch, and there he maintained his fire on the enemy till his ammunition became exhausted, and his wounds so painful that he could no longer use his rifle. Then he shouldered his arms and marched stiffly up through the trenches and across the open space till he reported himself to his regiment. He was, I believe, tried for being absent without leave and for stealing his comrades' cartridges, but Minos himself could not have condemned a soldier like this to any severe punishment for a crime which Minos's jurymen would have called heroic.{435}

CHAPTER II.

EITHER the year 1854 was remarkable in the annals of the Crimea for its severity, or we enjoyed a season of exceptional mildness in 1855. Storms lowered over us and passed away; dark skies threatened us and melted into floods of golden sunbeams. The wind seemed alone to be busied in tossing the French steamers at sea and keeping the mail late, in which it succeeded very effectually, so that our letters were behind time with the greatest regularity. The country was open in every direction to carriage, man, or beast; the trenches were dry; in fact, the weather presented contrasts of endless variety to that which prevailed the year before, and afforded ground for infinite speculation and comment. There was no reason, however, to suppose that the English army would have had much reason to congratulate itself on the fact that the clemency of the season had averted the evils which want of roads, excessive fatigue, and a false position would have entailed upon them, inasmuch as it is certain the bad weather paralyzed the enemy, cut off their reserves, impeded their transport of food and of reinforcements, and prevented their making another attempt—not at Inkerman, of which, they had to their cost learnt the strength, but from the Traktir bridge, or at some point of the Tchernaya then in their possession, from which they could have debouched into the plain of Balaklava, and made a grand attack on the rear of our lines. Although those lines had been greatly strengthened, and the profile altered and improved, they were far from being perfect or unassailable. In November, when rumours to the effect that the Russians were gathering a force towards Baidar, with the intention of assaulting us, prevailed, the country between Tchongar, Perekop, and Simpheropol was, however, in such a state that it was with the utmost difficulty the garrison of Sebastopol could be fed, and very strong reinforcements were kept for weeks waiting at Odessa, Nicholaieff, and Cherson, till the spring of 1855. But for these impediments, the Russians would have had a prodigious army about Sebastopol early in December, 1854, and if they had been indisposed to try another Inkerman, they could certainly have pressed us much harder in the trenches, and wearied our men by strong and repeated sorties. At times it was difficult for even a single battalion to march from the army of the Belbeck or Mackenzie's Farm into the city, or to effect the usual reliefs.

If to these considerations be added the notorious sentiments and opinions of persons high in authority, who advocated the abandon{436}ment of the siege,[31] and the retreat of the army from the Crimea after the battle of Inkerman, it will be seen that our prospects would not have been much better had weather like that we enjoyed in the latter part of 1855 prevailed last winter. The inconvenience to which the famous flank march subjected the army became more apparent every day after the failure of the first bombardment. The flank march was opposed, or was viewed with disfavour, by officers of great authority, and by one whose sagacity and skill are seldom deceived in military operations, although he is not a soldier, and does not command on land.[32] The descent on the Crimea itself was a bold stroke; it was the first step towards the capture of Sebastopol. The battle of the Alma left the approach to the city open to us whenever we liked. Prince Menschikoff's flank march to Bakshiserai and Simpheropol, although somewhat ridiculed at the time, is now considered a judicious and daring movement, but it certainly uncovered the north of Sebastopol, the Tchernaya, and Balaklava; and as it was determined by our generals to abandon the dashing character of the expedition, and to assume for our operations a strategical character, to which they had no previous pretensions, we were obliged to look out for harbours, and the inlets of Balaklava, Kamiesch, and Kasatch met the eye and fixed our destiny. Then came the period during which, without let or hindrance, or attempt at interference or prevention, the Russians were allowed to recover from their alarm and flock back to Sebastopol, under the direction of a man of extraordinary genius. Then they began the rudiments of the vast works which baffled our efforts for eleven long months of trial, suffering, and bloodshed, heroically endured and overcome.

It is now perceived that if the advice of Sir George Cathcart had been followed, the city might have been ours by a vigorous assault on the day after we arrived on the plateau. The ships alone could never have defended the place, and the greater portion of the feeble garrison, such as it was, consisted of the equipages, or crews, of those very ships. The enemy, when they retreated to the north side, would have been as impotent as they were when they had crossed over in the autumn of 1855, and Sebastopol, in all its beauty, and with all its vast stores and riches, would have been in our possession. That is the hypothesis as to the result of vigorous action from the south side. But had we approached the city from the north side, there can be no doubt that the forts would speedily have fallen; the fire of the shipping could have affected our operations but very slightly, and the only inconvenience would have been the want of a harbour at which to land siege-trains and stores, in case any mishap prevented the army carrying the place. The{437} anchorage is good all along the coast up to Eupatoria, and, except on the great gale of the 14th of November, no damage would have occurred to our merchantmen or men of war riding off the coast. The mouths of the Katcha, or even of the Belbek, when the fire of the battery which just reached the latter was reduced, could have been made available for landing such stores and matériel as we required. With the northern forts, the whole city of Sebastopol and the remainder of the fleet would have been ours;[33] our army could have reposed on its laurels for the winter in an impregnable position; a year would have been saved in the war; and the Crimea would have been cleared of the Russians early in the spring of 1855.

Such is the hypothesis respecting operations from the north side; such were the discussions which arose in the army when it had rested from its labours and saw a vanquished enemy gathering strength in a position which appeared impregnable or unassailable. The Russian General must have been a man of extraordinary confidence if he thought that on the return of spring he could have extricated his army from the grasp of an enemy which clutched the whole of his coast, was established at two points in his rear, and had four distinct bases of operation, with sufficient troops to use them all, and to concentrate a prodigious force on any point he pleased. The Russian infantry, in spite of its stubborn endurance and passive courage, is not equal to either French, Sardinian, English, or Turkish troops. Every day showed us that it had no chance even against the latter when they were led and officered by Englishmen or brave and skilful European soldiers. Their cavalry, in equal numbers, will be ridden down like grass whenever they stand against English or French squadrons; and notwithstanding the excellence of their artillery, compared with other arms of their service, it cannot compete with ours as regards rapidity of motion or precision of fire. In reference to future operations I wrote at this time some remarks, which even now are not uninteresting. I said:—"Prince Gortschakoff will be a grand strategist opposed to very weak generals if he succeeds in saving his army and marching them scatheless from the Crimea. The health of our troops is excellent; the draughts which arrive are rather younger than is desirable, but they will obtain experience and instruction during the winter. They are admirably clothed, and fed as no army was ever fed before—fresh meat, bread, and vegetables are issued to all. Henceforth the men are to receive fresh meat only three times a week, and bread only three times a week, instead of every day. On the other days they will have pork or salt beef, and excellent biscuit. In respect of winter clothing, hutting, and feeding, our men are immeasurably better off than our Allies, and it is not unusual to see the latter eating in the English camp of the excess of our soldiers' cooking kettles. Little friendships have sprung up in{438} this way. 'Franceese' comes over with his spoon, a smile, an onion, and a bit of salt, or a savoury condiment, to some sapper or grenadier, day after day, about dinner-time, indulges in pantomimic conversation, interlarded with many 'bonos,' and regales on good soup and broth, to the great delight of his entertainer. Thus both are satisfied—a true entente cordiale is established through the medium of the stomach, and no one is a loser. The reinforcements to our ally contain, like our own, many very young men, and I was particularly struck with the youthful appearance of the men of a regiment which arrived at Kamiesch on Monday." It is somewhat mortifying to add that all speculations on the probable conduct of the war were rendered abortive by the peace, which left Russia in military possession of the north side of Sebastopol.

Whilst the army was waiting patiently till spring should give it freedom of action, it set itself to work to provide for the winter. The spoils of Sebastopol materially contributed to our comfort and efficiency in this respect. Kitchen-ranges, boilers, iron-bars, Stourbridge bricks—I had some in a chimney built into the side of my hut, which were marked "Harpers, Stourbridge"—ovens, brass, iron, and copper stoves, pots and pans, flues, kettles, and hundreds of similar articles, were seized and utilized with wonderful tact. Fine well-built cook-houses were constructed from the cut stone of Sebastopol, which was found in large blocks around unfinished houses or was taken from the ruined edifices and walls about the place. Mechanical ingenuity was largely developed in the adaption of materials. One officer converted the funnel of a small steamer into a chimney; another used one of the pipes of an engine as a hot-air apparatus to heat his hut; a third arranged a portion of machinery so that he could communicate from his salon, sleeping-room, and dining-room (three single gentlemen rolled into one), with his cook in the adjacent kitchen, and dinner was handed through direct from the fire to the table, after the fashion of those mysterious apparatus which obey the behests of London waiters in the matter of roast meats, boiled beefs, and their satellites. Many officers distinguished themselves by the trouble they took in showing the men how to make themselves comfortable. The number of those employed on the roads and in various other ways rendered it difficult to get on with these works, and in many cases the officers were unable to complete their huts for want of wood and labour, and the unfinished walls stood in grim ruin here and there about the camp. Wood, canvas, little bits of glass, tar and pitch, and, above all, nails and tacks, were eagerly sought after. At the headquarters' sale, on General Simpson's departure, a hammer, hatchet, and saw sold for £2 15s. A bag of nails was disposed of by auction the same week for 40s., and on counting the contents it was found there were only 130 nails in the bag. Friendly little felonies of planking and such things were not unheard of, and the greatest favour you could do a friend was "to let him have a piece of board about six feet long by a foot wide;" or "The Captain says, sir, as how he'd be very grateful if you could give him a bit of glass about three inches square, sir, for his{439} winder." The heart soon grew hardened under constant pressure, and one was at last obliged to refuse "a couple of tenpenny nails" or "the loan of a hammer for an hour" with the sternness of a Brutus.

Pictures of saints, the erotic scripture pieces, in which the Muscovites delight, fat Potiphar's wives and garmentless Josephs, very plump Susannahs and very withered elders, and "subjects" of the kind, as well as straight-backed uncomfortable arm-chairs of walnut, heavy tables, and chests of drawers, were not uncommon in the officers' tents. Cats from Sebastopol abounded in camp, and were very useful, inasmuch as the huts were overrun with rats and mice, not to speak of other small deer, which disappeared before the march of King Frost. Dogs came in from the deserted city, and domesticated themselves, whether you would or not. There were always an odd half-dozen about my hut and tent, which made night hideous with their quarrels—greyhounds, mastiffs, and sheep-dogs, and their descendants, of very mixed and indistinct types; and for two whole days my peace was menaced by a huge double-humped Bactrian camel, which took a fancy to the space before the door of my hut and lay there constantly, so that our legs as we went out and in were within easy reach of his prodigious teeth. But he was a good-natured brute, and never attempted to bite unless one tried to mount him, when he disgorged his food, and spat it out at the assailant or snapped his jaws at him in terrorem. However, no one was sorry when he heard that the "ship of the desert" had got under way owing to the deposit of a piece of live coal and some matches on his back, and had sailed off on a piratical excursion against other infidel habitations. There were, however, thefts committed in camp more serious than those of planks or nails. Blankets were not safe those chilly nights on horses in outlying stables, and the regiments that came back from Kinburn found their huts broken into and robbed on their return. The officers' furniture and clothing were gone. On three occasions this week my horses were turned loose, and on two they were deprived of their blankets and clothing: a spade and a hatchet were stolen from the outside of the hut, and the thieves entered the stables of the Land Transport Corps of the division close at hand, turned some horses loose, and stole their blankets. Geese arrived at a fair state of obesity, or turkeys and fowls, were not safe for a moment, and it was almost impossible to identify the robbers.

The Sardinian officers who visited our ambulances declared that they were superior to the French, and took much interest in the cases of conservative surgery, which exhibited great skill and professional knowledge. In some instances, the elbow-joint having been injured, the surgeon made clean surfaces on the bones of the lower and upper arms, cut away the fractured pieces, and then brought the surfaces together, and the bones joined by a false joint, or by a sort of ligamentous union, making a stiff short arm indeed, but with a serviceable hand attached to it. The principle was extended to other injuries of limbs, and was never, perhaps,{440} adopted to such an extent in the field as it was by our English army surgeons.

CHAPTER III.

THERE were now four months of winter before us, and the drill-sergeant was busy all day. Every camp resounded to his voice and to the tramp of the awkward squad. Recruits had little time to spend in idleness and drinking, and steps were taken to provide soldiers with the means of reading, which they so much needed and enjoyed in the long winter nights. Why could not Government have been a little more liberal in the matter of candles? The issue of light was one ration to every twelve men—that is, one ration for each tent or sergeant's guard. Now, good Public, do you know what one ration consists of? It is just two-thirds of an ounce of sperm candle, or two ounces of tallow candle—that is, of a bit very like what economic housewives are familiar with under the name of "save-alls." No one need ever say, "Put out the light" in a British camp, for the candle is not lit very long before it dies of its own accord. An officer receives the same ration as is given to twelve men, but he can afford to buy candles, and if he is a field-officer his rations are increased, on the principle, I suppose, that there is more necessity for his keeping wide awake than exists in the case of a subaltern. The libraries were well filled with books, but there was little time to use them by day, and it fell dark before six o'clock; twelve men were not likely to make much progress in a novel, a tract, or an entertaining miscellany by the aid of two-thirds of an ounce of candle. They clubbed their little pieces of candle together, and resorted to many ingenious devices for keeping the lights in. Some of them, like the Russian or Dutch sailors at Spitzbergen, of whose very uncomfortable residence we all have read, used the extra fat of mutton in lamps, but in general they were obliged to purchase what extra candles they required. And all this time there were the canteens alight till an hour or more after "retreat." We had "ball" at Kamiesch, which were distinguished by remarkably good conduct on the part of all present. There were hotels established at Kamiesch, and restaurants, at which excellent fare was to be had at high but not extravagant prices.

My hut commanded a view of a considerable portion of the plateau at the other side of the Tchernaya, and overlooked the spurs at Mackenzie's Farm, the Russian encampments at Inkerman, and{441} between it and the Lower Belbek; from the windows, the movements of the enemy were plainly visible in moderately clear weather. On the 23rd of November we observed the whole of the enemy in motion along the plateau, and from an early hour in the morning till two o'clock in the afternoon their battalions were marching to and fro, but it was evident they were only changing their troops, and that the regiments which left Mackenzie were replaced by regiments from the camp in the rear. The new comers at the spur huts seemed to be dressed better, to be taller men, and to wear darker coats than those who were relieved by them, and that appearance gave rise to the notion that the troops so close to us belonged to the Imperial Guard. Their various camps were rapidly losing the look of snowy neatness of canvas, and were being converted into dingy rows of huts. We could see their telegraphs at work with the greatest facility, and I could make out the flags with my glass. It was a pity one could not have got the Imperial Code Book of Signals and a dictionary.

During November excellent warm clothing was issued to the men, and so uniform was it in style that no one could distinguish officers from men, unless by the difference of style and bearing. Our Allies were astonished at the profuseness of our military wardrobe, which not only contained a waterproof suit, helmet and all, but fur coats and caps, cowhide boots, tweed coats lined with cat or rabbit skin, &c., and for the officers, suits of sealskin, sold at moderate prices. The French only received from their Government an ordinary cloth capote, and were obliged to buy any waterproofs or furs which they found necessary.

The roads indeed, even then, when we had no trenches, no prospects of an attack, no want of labour—the roads were even then objects of much interest to us all. The whistling locomotives on the railway—the "Alliance," the "Victory"—which recalled to us the familiar sounds of Wolverhampton or of Swindon, and made us believe for the moment that we were in a civilized country, were not to be taken as material guarantees for the possession of material comforts in the coming winter. Mr. Beatty, with small means at his command, placed the railway on an excellent basis, as far as wood, iron, and stone could secure it.[34] The soundness of his judgment in laying out the line was confirmed by Mr. Doyne's adoption of a course very nearly parallel to it throughout for the grand main road between Balaklava and the camp. Mr. Beatty was obliged to retire from a post in which he rendered services not only to the army collectively, but to many individuals in it, who will always retain a deep sense of his kindness and friendly assistance in times of domestic difficulty about huts and transports, in consequence of ill-health, which not long after proved fatal to him.

Mr. Doyne, after careful examination, found that it would require much less labour to make a new and good road between{442} Balaklava and Kadikoi by a different route, than to attempt to repair the old one while the traffic was passing over it. Accordingly, a main drain was cut down the centre of the valley, running into the head of Balaklava harbour, to intercept all water flowing from the east of it, and free the road and railway drains rapidly from the rain-water. The road was made parallel to the railway, the material over which it passed being deep, spongy, vegetable soil, easily drained in its natural state, but very retentive if worked up under wet; drains four feet deep were cut at forty feet apart, and the surface between rounded to a foot higher at the centre. Cross-drains were cut at every forty-four yards, connecting main-drains, and the large stone pitching, twenty-eight feet wide, was filled in with smaller stones, and afterwards macadamized. Before laying on the pitching, the whole traffic of the camp was turned over the formed surface for five days to beat it down, and to consolidate it, a strong force of navvies being employed in the morning and evening to keep up the proper form. This course proved perfectly successful—the surface was quite smooth when the metalling was laid on, and consequently the rain ran freely off without penetrating the soil. On this section there was laid down about 13,000 tons of hard limestone pitching and metalling on a length of one mile.

From Kadikoi to the stationary engine the old road up the Vinoy ravine was so steep (1 in 12), and thus liable to be washed away, and the ground over which the down line was prepared to pass was so bad (in some places 1 in 7), that Mr. Doyne determined to abandon both, and to make a new road, round the eastern base of Frenchman's Hill, nearly parallel with the railway, and Sir Richard Airey gave his assent to the change. Here for a considerable distance the road was terraced out in the hill-side, formed of hard carboniferous limestone rock, and a clear metalled roadway was obtained from twenty to twenty-five feet wide throughout. In the next section, to Mrs. Seacole's hut, the old French road was widened, deep drains cut, the centre raised, and a deep coat of limestone metalling laid on.

In the next section, up to the Col, the ground again sloped very rapidly, and the road was terraced out for a mile, partly in rock, sandstone, and clay, and was then formed and metalled as before. From Balaklava to the Col the chief difficulty to be contended with in maintaining a road was the numerous courses of water which came down the hill-sides. To protect the road against this, trenches were cut on the upper side, zig-zagging according to the line of the ground, so as to intercept the water and convey it into large culverts constructed under the road at every dip in the undulation of the hill. Thus no water could get upon the road except that which actually fell upon its surface, and that small quantity was rapidly carried away into the side-drains. To relieve a road in every way from the destructive action of water, both by sub and surface drainage, is the first principle of road-making; without attention to this, any amount of labour will prove fruitless. From Balaklava to the Col, about three miles and a half, the works{443} throughout were of a very heavy character, and the provisions for drainage were upon an extensive scale; besides about ten miles of open ditching, there were between 150 and 200 culverts constructed; from the great want of materials these were formed in every variety of way—many with Army Works Corps' water-barrels, some with Commissariat pork-casks, others with Royal Engineer's fascines and green platform timber.

But the work which required the greatest amount of labour was the metalling, there having been over this three and a half miles nearly 40,000 tons of hard limestone rock quarried, collected, and laid upon the road. Above the Col the main trunk proceeded over the plateau of Sebastopol, following nearly the direction of the railway, crossing the Woronzoff road up to the camp of the Light Division, on the extreme right. Here the difficulties were of a different character, and the surface and geographical formation changes from deep clay valleys and plains, and carboniferous limestone rock hills, to a comparatively uniform surface of a very plastic retentive clay; on examination, Mr. Doyne found this did not exceed an average of eighteen inches deep, and that underneath there is a light rubbly oolitic limestone rock, similar to that found in the neighbourhood of Stroud, in Gloucestershire.

The whole of the clay was removed for a width of thirty-two feet, and a solid foundation was discovered, upon which the road was securely constructed by paving and metalling it with the parts of the oolite rocks which had become harder by exposure to the weather, and for the worst parts hard metal was brought from the other district. It was opened for traffic in forty-eight days from the time of its commencement. There was no gradient upon it worse than 1 in 17.

I ventured to express an opinion almost immediately after the capture of the south side, that the enemy's preparations indicated the intention of wintering where they lay. It was not because St. Vladimir was converted in the Crimea that Prince Gortschakoff held Mackenzie's Farm and the plateau of the Belbek and Tchernaya. But he knew that until he was dislodged, the Allies were paralyzed, and that they could establish no safe basis of operations against Nicholaieff or Cherson while he was at Simpheropol, for it would be contrary to common sense to leave such an army in their rear and flank. He hoped, therefore, either to be able to hold the Crimea during the next campaign, or to be able to make such dispositions in the event of a great defeat as would ensure the safe retreat of his army to Perekop and Tchongar, and perhaps by a third road, of the existence of which across the Sivash there were very strong indications. The electric telegraph kindly aided him in establishing himself all the more securely, for the rumour of a Russian attack, to which it gave official weight, prevented the occupation of Kaffa and the destruction of Arabat that autumn. Talk of the harm done by newspaper correspondents compared with that which was done by the electric telegraph! The first expedition to Kertch, the despatch of the Highlanders to Eupatoria, and the expedition to Kaffa were all prevented by our electric{444} batteries at London and Paris, and it is very questionable if they did not do the Allies more harm than the Russian guns. The French were, indeed, adverse to the Kaffa movement, and Admiral Bruat was, it appears, more especially opposed to it; but there is no reason to doubt that it would have been successful, and the occupation of that place and the destruction of Arabat would have most materially complicated the difficulty of the Russian position, and contributed to the strength of the Allies.

The needy knife-grinder, had he been a resident in our camp during the last week of November, would not have been in possession of more abundant materials for anecdote than he was when he met Mr. Canning, several years ago, in the neighbourhood of Eton. We were all ankle-deep in mud. Ankle-deep! No! that would have been nothing! It would have been no great matter of complaint or grievance if we had had to deal with the ordinary material, so familiar to all Londoners, before the scavengers remove the formidable soft parapets which line the kerbstones after a day or two of rain. That can be scraped off, cleaned, rubbed away, or washed out. This Crimean preparation nothing but long and persevering efforts, continually renewed, and combining all the former operations, could remove. It stuck in pasty clods to the shoes, and would insist on being brought into clean huts and tents to visit your friends. It had a great affection for straws, with which it succeeded in working itself up into a gigantic brick, somewhat underdone, in which condition it threatened to build your legs into the ground if you stood long enough in one place to give it a chance; and it mightily affected horseshoes also, and sucked them off, with a loud smack of relish, in those little ravines between rocky hill-sides in which it exercised the greatest influence. Literally and truly, it was like glue half boiled and spread over the face of the earth for the depth of several feet. It was no joke for a soldier to see his sleeping-place, in hut or tent, covered with this nasty slime; yet they could not be kept clean. Take but one step outside, and you were done for. The mud was lying in wait for you, and you just carried back as much on your feet as if you had walked a mile. Carts stuck immovably in the ground, or the wheels and axles flew into pieces from the strain of the horses and mules.

The waste of property as of life in war is prodigious, and much of it seems unavoidable. I firmly believe that for three feet deep the whole of the quay at Balaklava, near the Commissariat landing-place, was at this time a concrete of corn. It was no uncommon thing to see a Croat or Turkish labourer waddling slowly along with a sack on his back, from which the corn descended in streams against his heels, till he arrived from the ship at the store, and then to behold him depositing the collapsed and flaccid bag on the heap with great gravity and satisfaction at his success in diminishing his load at every step. In the various Divisional Commissariat depôts an enormous loss of grain occurred from similar causes, and from shifting the sacks and the distribution of the rations. But it seemed to be impossible to prevent these losses, which were regarded as incidental to a state of war. Our{445} authorities waged a war of extermination against spirit vendors, and, above all, against rakee importers. This villanous spirit inflamed men's brains and set them mad; it had all the abominable properties of fresh-run rum or new whisky, but it affected the nervous system more mischievously, and produced prostration, which frequently ended in death. It was dreadfully cheap, colourless like gin, with a taste of bad anisette and a fiery burning smack on the tongue, and was alcohol all but pure, with the exception of the adulteration, which contributes the flavour. The owners were compelled to start the poison into the sea, and then to leave the Crimea instanter.

Every canteen-keeper or storekeeper on whose premises a drunken soldier was seen, no matter what the excuse might be, was fined £5 for each, and the Provost-Marshal had more money than he knew what to do with from this source alone. But they are a wealthy race, these social vultures—many of them king vultures—respectable birds of prey, with kempt plumage and decent demeanour—others mere "adjutants," dirty and predaceous. The sutlers of Kadikoi cared little for £5 fines while they could get 6d. a dozen for tacks, and 2s. a pound for lard sub nomine butter, and they paid their taxes like lords, or rather much more willingly, now that the income-tax is pressing on the poor nobility. Taxes!—what is the man talking about? It is quite true, nevertheless. There was an unchartered corporation in the town of Kadikoi, with a Mayor and Aldermen, or Town Councillors, and a vigorous administrative staff that would astonish the elder brethren about Guildhall. They had a machinery of scavengers and the sewer-men, and they paid about £120 a month for keeping their city in order. But sutlers, and canteens, and provisions were of no use without roads, and the word was heard of oftener, and the thing thought of more than anything else, in the autumn of 1855.

Notwithstanding the numerous good roads through the camps, there were exceedingly deep and heavy tracts to be traversed by thousands of animals under their burdens. There were two men to every three horses or mules, and it was scarcely possible for them to perform long marches, from the divisional camps to Balaklava and back again, and afterwards to attend to the animals and clean them properly. In some muddy pool or in some deep scarp on the hill-side the poor animal, which perhaps stood in uncovered stables all night, and was badly groomed, or not rubbed down at all, sank beneath its load and died there in lingering agony. No one was permitted to shoot these wretched creatures. I well remember the skeleton spectre of a wretched grey horse, with a sore back, which haunted Fourth Division camp for weeks before it fell into a ditch and died. It had been turned loose to live or perish, and it was a shocking sight to behold the dogs leaping up against it to lick its sores; but there it remained for days, with its legs drawn close together, and no one dared to put it out of pain. These spectacles recalled the terrors of the previous winter. Every one exclaimed, "How fortunate that Sebastopol has fallen! What should we have done had we to guard the trenches this winter!"{446} Not that there could have been an equal amount of physical suffering, but that there would have been a great deal of unavoidable misery, and disease, and death incident on another winter's active operations, despite railroads, depôts, roads, warm clothing, and abundant food. It must not be supposed that there are no inconveniences in living in the open air during a Crimean winter. A bed with a lively little sewer intersecting it is not the most agreeable thing in winter time; but the camp view of such a catastrophe is that "it serves them right for not pitching their tents better." At the same time there were loud outcries against the new huts, and the letters "O.L.B.," with which they were marked, were said to mean "Officers' Leaky Bunks." It is considered that if the Government had sent out hammers, nails, planks, and felt, the men would have done much better. Early in December the siege artillery was ordered home—and the batteries were filled up to their full complement. The staff officers of the train returned to Woolwich.

CHAPTER IV.

The monotony of life in the huge military colony before Sebastopol was broken slightly by the appearance of the Russians on the heights of Ourkousta, and by some demonstrations of an intention on their part to try the strength of the French positions in the Baidar Valley. As the French retired in the presence of winter, the enemy threw forward their advanced posts at Koluluz and Markul to the north-east, and from Aitodor and Ozembash to the north of Baidar. On Sunday morning, the 9th of December, the Russians, with their feline aptitude for surprises, crept round the little village of Baga in the dark, and just at the dawn rushed in upon the small party of the French which occupied it. For a time the surprise was complete; but our gallant allies soon got together, and after a smart fusillade, drove out the enemy at the point of the bayonet. The Russians had many horsemen with them. In the pursuit of the Cossacks our Allies managed to capture some forty horses, for the former gentry fled by a road which in old times was good enough for a run, but they were astonished to find themselves stopped by a deep scarp at a pretty spot, where a wall of rock closed the road at the right-hand side, and a precipice formed the left-hand boundary, so they had nothing for it but to dismount and{447} scramble across, leaving the horses, accoutrements and all, to their fate. In this affair the French had 1 officer mortally wounded, 7 men killed, and 13 wounded, and the Russians left 70 dead on the ground, and 20 men prisoners in the hands of the French.

On Monday, December 10, a High Mass, at which many English officers attended, was performed on board the French flagship for the soul of Admiral Bruat. The decease of the Admiral was heard of by our navy with sincere regret.

About the same time we heard of the fall of Kars. Criticism on military matters by civilians is worthless when the questions agitated relate to the details of manœuvres or to pure strategy, but military men cannot expect to be exempted from the criticism of civilians on general questions relative to the conduct of the war. Captain Smith may have his Grenadier company in perfect order and discipline, and may lead them with the greatest gallantry; but the civilian who from some eminence sees Captain Smith taking his men into broken ground, filled with riflemen or swept with grape, where their order and discipline are of little service to them, is entitled to exclaim, "What a fool that fellow is!" When Kars had fallen, every one said, "What the deuce were Omar Pasha and his Turks doing so long at Baidar, or encamped on the tumuli overlooking the plains of Balaklava and the English head-quarters? Of what use were they perpetually in transitu between Eupatoria and the Col of Balaklava, or on the tramp between Kamara and Phoros? Why was Kars allowed to fall, and why was Omar Pasha sent to Asia Minor so late in the year?" The defence of Kars was honourable, but so was the defence of Sebastopol, and Kars was not less Russian because it was won by so much of their best blood. The Turks, indeed (according to the testimony of all acquainted with them), were most miserably mismanaged and badly handled, and no use was made of them except to garrison Eupatoria, which they would have been able to do with at most half of their army. Thus the remaining half might have been set free for active operations. Although the fate of Kars could not materially influence the result of the struggle in the Crimea, active operations directed against the enemy from Kars might, in the opinion of most excellent judges, have produced very considerable results on the calculations of the next campaign, and on the prospects of the war. But the fall of Kars produced no surprise—the wonder rather seemed to be that it held out so long, and every one admitted that he had a secret presentiment that the city must, sooner or later, fall into the hands of the Russians. Every one who knew the country felt persuaded that Omar Pasha's expedition set out too late, and yet we all fell into ecstasies at the passage of the Ingour, and talked of the march on Kutais as if these things could save Kars, and no one cared to look at the map or consider the chances of such a result.

The winter at last set in, but cold and frost had lost their terrors for the army then. There is an old saying, that "a green Christmas makes a full churchyard," and it might have been realized, inasmuch as the cholera appeared in the Highland regiments—{448}notable sufferers in epidemics of the kind—and some cases occurred in other regiments, before the thermometer fell below freezing-point. On Tuesday forenoon (Dec. 11th) the thermometer was at 55°; on Wednesday (Dec. 12th) it was 50°; on Thursday (Dec. 13th) it fell to 28°; on Friday (Dec. 14th) it was 22°; on the 15th it marked 20° Fahrenheit. With moderate exercise, hard ground, good footing, good feeding, warm clothing, and occupation, there was little reason to entertain any apprehension for the troops during the winter. It must be stated, however, that the complaints against the new huts were numerous and well founded, and during the wet weather it was seriously proposed to remove the men, and put them into double tents. They never were intended, I presume, to keep out water without some felt or waterproof covering, and none had been provided: not even the tar and pitch in one of the vessels at Balaklava could be landed. Still this promised to be a joyous Christmas. Solitary subalterns rode out to Miskomia, and gazed gloomily on the beautiful mistletoe which grows on all the wild pear and apple trees in these lovely valleys. Their contentment returned when they thought of the fat goose, which, tied by the leg, was waiting his doom by the kitchen tent or bakehouse, or of the tender pig, which had been reared up from his childhood for the sole object of doing honour to the coming feast, and was "just fit to be killed."

Contrasts were drawn between dinners in the trenches, on dreary outposts, on remote guards and pickets the year before, and the luxuries which were then forthcoming for the grand English festival. Men remembered "that tough old turkey, which cost 40s., and that turned the edge of the carver like plate glass," and laughed over the fate which seemed somehow to attend most efforts to be jolly that Christmas, and then turned and looked round their huts, which generally, it must be confessed, were very like retail grocers' establishments, backwood stores, or canteen-men's magazines. The shelves placed along the walls in layers, the cupboards made of packing-cases or powder boxes, filled with pâtés in Strasburgh ware, hams, tins of soups and preserves, made dishes, vegetables, long-necked bottles of French manufacture, and the stumpier sturdier work of the English glass-blower. There was a stove or some substitute for a fireplace in each hut, which always enjoyed the advantage of a famous draught from the door and walls. As to the latter, the embellishments upon them whiled away many an idle hour, and afforded opportunities for the exercise of taste, good and bad, the monuments of which perished with the spring. They consisted chiefly of illustrations from the pictorial papers and Punch, transposed ingeniously by the introduction of faces, figures, and bits of different engravings, with the view of giving them a ludicrous or whimsical character, and the result was often very amusing. The walls were covered with them; a pastepot, a pair of scissors, some old papers, and a little fancy—these were materials of which a man could make wonderful use in enlivening and decorating the wooden walls of his temporary residence.

On the night of the 12th of December, the storm howled and{449} raged fearfully over the camp, and brought a deluge of rain, which it discharged in water-spouts, driving it through huts and tents, and forcing it in streams through the minutest interstices. The gusts were extremely violent, and the beating of the rain kept many a one awake with only one topic of consolation, namely, that there was "No trench guard to-night." Until four o'clock the wind seemed to come from the south-west, but at that hour it veered round towards the north, and became bitterly cold. All at once the rain was converted into hail and snow; the wet ground began to freeze; and at eight o'clock, by one of those magical changes which can only be equalled by the chymical landscapes of our childhood, the whole camp, which, at sundown the night before, was an expanse of blackish mud, dotted with white tents and huts, became a sheet of dazzling white, marked with lines of dusky, greyish habitations of canvas and wood. The wind was exceedingly cold and penetrating. The unfortunate natives of Southern Europe or of Asia, employed in such myriads in the service of the army, suffered greatly on such occasions, and perished like flies in frost. The huge swarm of camp-followers, who, to the number of some ten thousand, hovered about the canteens and round Balaklava, Kadikoi, and the fairs, also felt the effects of this weather.

There were not less than 25,000 camp followers, including those of the French, Sardinians, and English, belonging to the Allied army, or hanging on their skirts. In the pursuit of gain, most of these people exposed themselves to considerable hardships and privations. How they provided fodder for the beasts they drove was one of the secrets of their peculiar existence, and the variety of vehicles belonging to these Bashi-Bazouks of trade and commerce constituted a curious detail of the wonders of the camp. One might witness the incidents of the scenes of the last year repeated in the winter of '55. I saw an old Turk in a moribund state carried into Balaklava on the back of a native almost as wretched-looking as himself; and riding on to the Land Transport camp, between Kadikoi and the Col, I beheld a native bearing in the same way a living skeleton from one tent into another. These men were provided by Government with long Turkish gregos, but, somehow or other, exposure to bad weather produced disastrous results upon them, although their frames seemed very vigorous. I am afraid the Temperance Society won't forgive me if I express a private opinion that a little stimulant might have been "exhibited" on these poor fellows, who ate largely of vegetables, and were saturated with onions, garlic, and leeks; and that, under the circumstances, they might, without injury, have partaken of a moderate quantity of spirits. If I am not mistaken, Sir Philip Crampton is of opinion that so long as the Irish are a potatophagous race, a predilection for whisky will be found among them, in obedience to a secret sympathy of nature, which seeks an ally in alcohol against the effects of her esculent enemy. I do not know for certain that the gallant Surgeon-General ever expressed that opinion, nor would I invoke teetotal wrath and water on his head by saying so;{450} and I beg to disclaim, also, the smallest intention of theorizing, for I think of the Hindoos and rice, of Yankee whalers and hot coffee, and I tremble and am silent. Sometimes a very pretty little rebellion sprang up among the native drivers of the Land Transport Corps of the Fourth Division. They would not stir, in spite of eloquent exhortations in the best Hindostanee addressed to them by Captain Dick, who, standing knee-deep in snow and mud, harangued them as they lay inside their tents. They "sahibbed" away and shrugged their shoulders, and plaintively expressed a decided desire to be flogged, accompanied by suggestions also that they should be at once executed; but they one and all declared that work they would not on such a raw and gusty day.

The discipline of the harbour was strict, but it sometimes happened that unruly Turks or Greeks ran their vessels right in slap-dash among the shipping, neither comprehending signals nor regulations. The order of mooring was preserved strictly by English ships. The vessels lay with sterns to the quay, in three rows, the inner line consisting of ships with cargoes of first necessity, and so on; the large ships in deep water at the Diamond Wharf, higher up the harbour on the western side. The Sardinians had a portion of the harbour near the cattle wharf, and the French a reserved quay close to them. With its forest of masts closely packed together—its wall-like sides of rock—its wooden houses—its railway—its parti-coloured population—its Babel of tongues—its huge mountains of stores piled for many feet high by the water's edge—its tremendous traffic—its mud—its locomotive whistling through the main street, and regarded by the rude Tartar from distant holes as a wild beast of inconceivable power and ferocity—and its picturesque old ruins, Balaklava was well worth a visit. By the bye, any antiquary desirous of seeing the castle ought to have gone out quickly; it was undergoing demolition fast, and the work of the Genoese was from time to time being transferred to the holds of merchantmen in the ignoble form of "ballast!" It is lucky, perhaps, that the Piræus was not the scene of our operations, for in that case the Acropolis in a fragmentary state might have been en route for Newcastle, as the centre of gravity of the Black Diamond transport, and the Parthenon might have been employed to trim the John Smith of London. But, if we destroyed, so did we create. A splendid military road from Balaklava to the front, with numerous branches and arms, was no bad equivalent for the walls of a ruined fortress.

The air was full of drumming and fifing and trumpeting. The regiments were getting up their bands again, and the exertion was generally distressing to the neighbourhood; but there was no use in writing to the Times on the subject. It was, however, irritating to the last degree to be surrounded by drummers, who were sent to my part of the camp as a favourable spot for practice, and I was compelled for hours to be the unwilling auditor of first lessons on the bugle and French horn. The French were indefatigable at this work. Every one recollects the three little drummers who were{451} always "dubbing" away like mad on that little spot at Capecure, near the south pier of Boulogne. They were out in the Crimea multiplied exceedingly, and as active in elbow and wrist as ever. It would be a curious subject for the statist to ascertain when the French drummer is perfect in his art. As far as I can perceive, he must be a tolerably elderly man before he leaves off practice, and can only be enjoyed in perfection for a very brief period before he retires from the service altogether.

The Russians kept up a pertinacious fire upon the town. Sebastopol was a disagreeable place to go to on pleasure, for shot and shell were continually lobbing along the streets, houses falling piecemeal, and stones flying about from the shock of cannon-balls. The casualties, however, were very few, and the French displayed great ingenuity in erecting comfortable magazines and shops in out-of-the-way parts of the town, where one could get a cup of coffee and a cigar without much danger. But to the uninitiated the roar of a ball and the twittering hiss of a shell fail to give zest to these luxuries. It was no longer an occurrence of every week to go down to Sebastopol, and few people resorted to the docks unless they were on duty, or had just come out, and were under the painful necessity of going en amateur. The whole establishment of a cantinière went smash one day through the operation of a shell, and, although it was tolerably well filled, the only damage done was to the poor proprietress, who lost her hand and an immense amount of crockery, comestibles, and customers.

Writing under the date December 13, I said, "It is to be hoped that if an Order of Merit be established, it will bear the name of the Queen in whose reign it was instituted, and with the signification of whose royal prænomen it would so thoroughly harmonize. There is a strong desire that bronze crosses should be prepared bearing inscriptions relating to the number of bombardments, so that each man should bear a distinctive mark of the amount of trench-duty he has done. When Kenealy, one of the privates of the 41st who entered the Redan with Major-General Windham, was asked whether he would have the £5 or a decoration, he replied he would much sooner have the latter; and this feeling is shared by all good soldiers: whereas, the notion with the home authorities seemed to be, that money was more welcome than anything else."

The frost continued, and on December 14 the thermometer marked 22°, but there was a clear fine sky and a bright sun above. The mud became a rigid furrowed lake, with iron waves cast up by old cart-tracks and horses' hoofs, and the roads were crowded and blocked up by the vast numbers of fourgons, carts, horses, and pack animals so suddenly forced upon them.

The destruction of the far-famed docks of Sebastopol was an event in the annals of military engineering. A regular diary of the operations was kept by the officers engaged, and this, should it ever be published, cannot fail to be most interesting. War has stern necessities, but there was something lamentable in seeing such{452} great and magnificent works as these docks were, thus pitilessly destroyed. It may give some idea of the labour necessary to reconstruct these docks, to say that after clearing away the ponderous ruins it would be necessary to dig down some twenty feet below the original bottom—so much has the earth been disturbed by the successive explosions—to drive piles and use concrete, and form an entirely new foundation.

During the latter part of December the weather was extremely cold, but all that month and the following January preparations were urged forward for the destruction of the docks of Sebastopol. Although to most persons the general aspect of these docks has probably become well known from descriptions and drawings, I will briefly explain their position and arrangement. They extended nearly due north and south (a little to the east of north and west of south), and consisted of three inner docks, a basin, and two outer docks, with a lock between them. The French undertook the destruction of the outer docks, the lock, and the northern half of the basin; the English that of the inner docks and the southern half of the basin. The lock, although capacious, was easier to destroy than a dock, its circumference being a plain stone wall, instead of heavy stone steps fit for a giant's staircase. The French did their share of the work very effectually. For various reasons the English works were more gradual in their progress, but were not less thoroughly carried out, and, if a non-professional but highly-interested observer might express an opinion, they did great credit to the scientific skill of the engineers to whom they were entrusted. I believe the first idea was to blow up the whole at once, which would probably have given a more picturesque appearance, and have produced a more thorough ruin. But this plan was abandoned by reason of the dampness of the ground. Water flowed in from the ravine in the rear of the docks, and rose in the shafts of the mines. It is probable that, had the engineers waited to explode the numerous mines until all of them were complete, the powder would have become damp in many of them, and would not have ignited; so it was resolved to blow up a little at a time. It was difficult for any one who has not seen these docks both before and after their destruction, fully to appreciate the magnitude of the operations, and the force that must have been applied to root up and utterly overthrow such massive constructions, such huge blocks of granite so firmly cemented, such mighty timbers, which now lie snapped asunder like reeds or rent into huge splinters.

There were probably two reasons for the care with which the engineers measured their charges. One, that by leaving the docks encumbered and filled up with their own ruins they bequeathed a harder task to any future rebuilder than if they scattered the stone linings far and wide, and left the chasms comparatively clear. The second reason, that by more violent explosions they would probably have shaken down buildings, overthrown the dockyard wall (which already totters and loses stones from its summit when a mine is let off), and perhaps caused accidents. The Russians{453} fired a great deal at times, but although their fire was occasionally accurate enough, shell after shell falling into the docks, they caused little loss. Of accidents occurring from the explosions, one was of a peculiar nature. The explosion by the dock-gate had taken place, and some sappers were busy at the bottom of a shaft forty or fifty feet off, when a noxious gas, generated by the explosion, entered the gallery, filtering through the intervening earth. The effect was gradual—one after another the men became giddy, and some of them insensible. With infinite alacrity and courage non-commissioned officers and soldiers descended the shaft, braving a danger which seemed the greater because its extent and nature were unknown, to succour their comrades, and as they got down they in turn were overpowered by the offensive gas. Major Nicholson and Lieutenant Graham also went down, and suffered in consequence. The former was insensible, when, supported by his men, he reached the top of the shaft, and it was some time before he recovered. To sum up the accident: one man perished, and seven or eight were seriously affected, but recovered. A man went down into the mine after the accident, holding in his mouth the extremity of a tube down which air was pumped to him, and he walked about with perfect impunity, and collected the men's caps and things they had left behind.

The quantity of powder used in the explosion of Fort Nicholas was 50,000 kilogrammes, or 100,000 French pounds. Double that quantity was found under the fort when the engineers commenced their operations. This was not the only concealed store of powder the French discovered in their part of Sebastopol. The intention was that all the mines should explode simultaneously, and that they did not do so was attributable to some fault in Beckford's fuse, known among the French as le cordon Anglais. The effect, however, was very fine, and nothing could be more complete than the destruction. The operations against the docks may be said to have commenced at the end of November, for although a beginning was made at an earlier period, the works were quickly suspended, and resumed only at the above date. The French did their work in four explosions; the English had six, besides minor ones of small extent.

Fort Alexander was blown up, in three explosions, at one o'clock on February 11th. The destruction was complete, but the place did not look such a perfect level as the site of Fort Nicholas, and the sea face was intentionally left standing. The day was dry, but not bright, and the absence of sun detracted from the striking nature of the spectacle, which was, however, sufficiently imposing, but not equal to that of Fort Nicholas's downfall. The Russians, who had been firing a little from the Inkerman Batteries just before the fort blew up, were perfectly silent for some time after the explosion, apparently thinking it more dignified to contemplate the destruction of their fortresses calmly than to exhibit impotent wrath and to expend their ammunition unprofitably. At a later period of the day they fired more than usual from the north side.

A stroll about the environs of Sebastopol, and the sight of the{454} enormous cannon-balls and fragments of monster shells that strew the ground in all directions, impressed one with a respectful idea of the power of powder; but the respect was vastly increased by a view of the havoc it played in such stupendous works as the docks—structures formed to last for ages, and to the duration of which no limit could be assigned. The difficulty of destruction was enhanced in the case of the docks allotted to the English by the fact that these were in part hewn out of solid rock. The basin thus formed was lined with huge masses of stone, and between rock and stone earth was filled in. The engineers availed themselves of the soft interval for their mines, and blew the walls and counterforts inwards, but the rock remains, marking in places the outline of the docks. The counterforts were of prodigious strength and thickness. Then there was a deep covered drain outside the docks, for the purpose of emptying them when desired, of which the engineers, of course, made use. Greatly incommoded at first by the water that flowed down the ravine in their rear, they overcame this difficulty at no small expense of labour. Their mode of operating against the docks varied according to circumstances, but seems to have consisted in a great measure of regular mines, with shaft and gallery. Two of these shafts down which I looked were about thirty feet deep. The engineers had blown up the eastern pier, or extremity of that side of the dock, to which a gate was attached—one of the jaws of the dock; and this explosion seems to have been as complete in its effect as any that have taken place. The huge mass was lifted up and dislocated, and the enormous transverse beams, masses of black timber of incalculable strength, were torn from their fastenings, snapped in twain, and remained with their splintered ends resting against each other, in the shape of a house-roof. Below the pointed arch thus formed was a black chasm, and heaped around, piles of stone and dusty ruins. Everything was removed and riven without being scattered; and this was the object at which our engineers constantly aimed. They sought all along, and generally with much success, so to proportion the charges of their mines that, while everything should be overturned, rooted out, and thrown into the utmost confusion (literally topsyturvy), as little as possible should be thrown out of the crater. And accordingly most of their explosions had not the appearance which would popularly be anticipated from the letting off of two, three, or more thousand pounds of powder. There was no diverging gush of stones, but a sort of rumbling convulsion of the ground; a few blocks and fragments were cast up to a moderate height, but the effect upon the spectator was that of some gigantic subterranean hand just pushing the masses a short distance out of their places, turning them upside down, and rolling them over each other in a cloud of smoke and dust.

On the 25th of February 25,000 of our infantry were there assembled for inspection and review by the Commander-in-Chief, and the bayonets of forty-six British battalions bristled upon Telegraph Hill, overlooking the valley of the Tchernaya. The morning{455} was so cold, that some who impatiently awaited the spectacle feared it would be again postponed, but the earth and air were dry, and after church service the divisions were seen marching from their camps in the direction of the parade-ground. As the troops marched up, the pioneers busied themselves with filling the small circular trenches where tents had formerly stood; and, when the review was over, the whole surface had been trodden by hoof and foot as level as a bowling-green.

Those English officers, of various arms and departments, whom duty did not call out or keep in, flocked in hundreds to witness the review of a larger number of British troops than has been held for forty years. There was every variety of French and Sardinian and even Spanish uniform. Marshal Pelissier came on the ground in his carriage and four, by which is not to be understood a handsome vehicle and showy team, with well-kept harness and neat postilions—but a very rough, nearly paintless drag, with harness partly of rope, horses that matched the carriage as regards roughness, and soldiers in artillery saddles on the near wheeler and leader. His little escort of Chasseurs contrasted with the English Hussars who followed Sir William Codrington. Marshal Pelissier alighted from his carriage, and took his station at the foot of a hillock, opposite the centre of the line, of the whole of which he then commanded a good view. The array of the troops was nearly completed when a shell was seen to burst high in the air above the valley of the Tchernaya. Our Russian friends politely informed us that they were present and attentive, reckoning that we should see their messenger, though they could not expect him to reach us.

The line was formed in continuous columns of companies, with intervals of six paces between each regiment. Its face was towards the Russian positions beyond the valley. On the right were the Guards and the regiments forming the First Division; then came the Highlanders; then the Second, Third, and Fourth Divisions; and finally the Light Division. When the inspection was completed, General Codrington took up his station in front, to the right of the knoll where Marshal Pelissier was posted, and the troops marched past in open column. The Guards came by, of course with their own favourite tune, "The British Grenadiers;" the pipes of the Highlanders squeaked, squealed, and droned forth that strange combination of sounds so dear to Scotch ears, and so discordant to those of Saxon or Gaul; one brigade marched on to "Partant pour la Syrie," in compliment to the French.

The Second Brigade of the Fourth Division had one of the best bands, and played a spirited march, but, generally speaking, the music of this army had not recovered the losses of the war. The troops marched past in front of the ground on which they had just stood in line. The morning had been grey and dull up to the commencement of the review, but the clouds then grew thinner and dispersed a little, and a few fitful gleams of sunshine shone upon British legions as they descended the slope in most perfect order, a broad steady torrent of bayonets, not rapid but irresistible. A finer military sight could hardly be seen than was presented by{456} that matchless infantry. The healthy appearance of the men testified to good keep and much care taken of them; their soldierly carriage and perfect dressing proved that their officers had profited by the unusually fine and open winter to hasten the military education of the numerous recruits.

The Rifles were much praised by the foreign officers. Many were the tattered and shot-rent banners borne by. The colours of the 23rd Fusiliers were like a sieve, pierced with countless bullets, and telling the eloquent and bloody tale of the Alma and of Inkerman. Those of the 77th and 97th were much riddled, and many regiments were fain to keep their banners furled, their torn condition not allowing of their display to the breeze. The whole of the troops having marched past in open column, formed up at some distance to the north of Telegraph Hill, on lower ground, nearer to the camp, and thither General Codrington proceeded. People were chilled with sitting still on their horses, and delighted to get a canter; the ground was good, the air fresh, the opportunity tempting, and away went high mettled English chargers, fleet Arabs, and tough Turkish and Tartar ponies at a smart pace. The field was a large one, and two or three small ditches towards the end of the course gave animation to the chase, until at last the General was run to earth, hard by where sat the French Marshal in his carriage, and all passed up to witness the second défilé, which was in close column. After this the divisions marched straight away to their various camps, and the country on all sides was seen thickly sprinkled with horsemen cantering homewards, bent, in most cases, on taking to themselves something of a warming nature, for the cold had really been sharp, and no speculative canteen-man had thought of sending emissaries with well-lined baskets to the scene of the review.

When all was over, Marshal Pelissier went up to General Codrington, and complimented him in the highest terms on the appearance of his troops. The numbers on parade would have been considerably larger had the whole of our effective infantry turned out, but General Warren's brigade, stationed at Balaklava, was not ordered up, neither were the 72nd Highlanders and the two battalions of the 1st Royals, which were encamped some way beyond Kamara; and then there was the garrison of Sebastopol, and the Redan picket, camp guards, &c.; so that, altogether, there were many battalions and parts of battalions absent. It was purely an infantry review—no artillery, nor cavalry, save the handful of Hussars employed in escorting the General and keeping the ground.{457}

CHAPTER V.

THE Morning of February 28th brought us news of the conclusion of an armistice. The Russians had it first, by telegraph from St. Petersburg, and the mail from Constantinople brought its confirmation to the Allies. At 8 A.M. a boat, bearing a flag of truce, put off from the north side, and was met half-way across the harbour by one from the French. The Russians brought a communication from General Lüders. As if to celebrate the armistice, the so-called White Buildings were blown up in the afternoon. Soon after three o'clock, spectators began to assemble at the Redan, in front of Picket-house Hill, on Cathcart's Hill, and in other commanding positions. There was not a very strong muster at any of these places, for we were rather blasé in the matter of explosions; and, although the day was bright and sunny, the ground was very heavy with mud and snow, and the cold too sharp to be pleasant. There was a certain amount of snowballing among the pedestrians, which doubtless contributed to keep up a supply of caloric, and one or two base attacks were made upon unfortunate equestrians, who, not having snow within their reach, or a supply of ready-made snowballs in their pockets, had no choice but to charge their assailants or resort to ignominious flight. Half an hour passed; feet were very cold, noses very blue, fingers hardly felt the reins, grumbling was heard: "It is nearly four o'clock; why the deuce doesn't it go off?" Patience, I fear, was not a very common virtue in the Crimean army. An impromptu "shave," suggested by the circumstances of the moment, was passed about. "Pelissier is coming; they wait for him."

Now it so happened that Pelissier was not coming. The armistice gave him something to do and think of, and moreover, he had been disappointed a few days before, when it had been notified to him that the White Buildings were to be blown up. So he no longer put his faith in the unpunctual engineers of perfidious Albion. Some French and other foreign officers came, waiting patiently and confidingly in the Redan, and in front of Picket-house Hill, just over the ravine. Another half-hour passed. A quarter-past four, and no explosion. Strong language began to be used; wishes were uttered, the fulfilment of which would certainly not be desired by the engineers, at whose door, rightly or wrongly, the delay was laid. The third half-hour had not quite elapsed when the report{458} spread that the explosion was "put off." According to some accounts, it would occur in an hour and a half; according to others, next day, while a third party talked of the next week; there was a general movement campwards. A few Artillery officers still stuck to the Redan; Picket-house Hill was quickly cleared, except of one or two obstinate expectants, Cathcart's Hill was abandoned by many. Just at a quarter to five, when few of the weary who had departed could have reached their quarters, and some could have been but a hundred or two yards on the wrong side of the hill-crests, out gushed a small puff of white smoke from the White Buildings—then came a big puff of black smoke. There was a slight explosion, a grumbling roar; stones were hurled into the air and pitched high over the eastern wall into the docks, and after a silence which seemed to last nearly a minute, came a series of pops and puffs as mines went off in rapid succession, an immense volume of smoke appeared, not in dense sluggish masses slowly surging up, as at the explosion of Fort Nicholas, but in a thinner cloud, which rose so high that the summit of the murky column was visible over Picket-house Hill to persons some way down the Woronzoff Road, where it passed through the Light Division camp. After the explosions of the buildings, Fort Constantine sent a solitary shell into the French side, so the armistice was not considered to be perfect until after the conference.

Major George Ranken, of the Royal Engineers, was killed at the explosion of the White Buildings. A mine having failed to explode, Major Ranken sent his men to a distance and entered the place to renew the train. From the position in which his corpse was found it was supposed that he had completed his perilous task, and was about getting through a window when the explosion took place and the building fell in. His arm was broken, and there were injuries to the skull and spine which must have occasioned instant death. Major Ranken commanded the ladder party in the last attack on the Redan. He was a most promising officer, a great favourite with his comrades, and his loss was deplored by all who knew him. It was hard to have escaped the murderous fire of the 8th of September only to die, less than five months later, crushed beneath a shattered wall. The unfortunate officer was buried with military honours, at the Engineers' Cemetery, Left Attack. He was followed to the grave by General Eyre, commanding the Third Division; by Colonel Lloyd, commanding the Royal Engineers; and by a large number of officers of his own corps and of other arms. Major Ranken had the melancholy distinction of being the last Englishman killed in the Crimea. The last Frenchman killed there fell in a duel.

On the morning of February the 29th there was a lively and novel scene at ten o'clock at Traktir Bridge. At its further end a white flag was hoisted, and just beyond it some five-and-twenty Cossacks halted, who had escorted thither the Russian General Timovoieff and his staff. At a few minutes past ten General Barnard and some staff officers rode down through the ravine between the two hills on which the battle of the Tchernaya was fought,{459} and crossed to the other side of the river. The Generals who met to arrange the details of the armistice occupied two tents, pitched on a strip of greensward in the rear of the bridge. They were, General Timovoieff, Chief of the Staff of the 4th Corps of the Russian army, which was in front and furnished the advanced posts; Generals de Martimprey and Windham and Colonel Count Pettiti, Chiefs of the Staffs of the French, English, and Sardinian armies. The three latter were deputed by their Generals-in-Chief to present the proposals of armistice which these had discussed and decided upon. Their mission extended no further, and General Timovoieff, not being authorized to accept those proposals without referring them to his General-in-Chief, merely took a copy of them to transmit to General Lüders.

There were, perhaps, half a dozen other English officers, about as many French, and a much larger number of Sardinians. All these went over the bridge, and a sort of fraternization ensued between them and some Russian officers—that is to say, there was a good deal of civility, and some ill-treatment of the French and German languages; but, as to carrying on much conversation with our Muscovite friends, it was not an easy matter, for there seemed a mutual embarrassment as to what subject to pitch upon. Horses were a natural theme, and the Russians expressed admiration of some of those present, and were probably rather astonished at their good condition.

The great object of curiosity to us was the fur-capped Cossacks, around whom the allied officers assembled, examining their arms; and equipments and entering into conversation, which, in most cases, was carried on by signs. They were slender, wiry men—ugly enough, most of them—mounted on small, rough, active horses, and carrying, besides sword and carbine, flagless lances, whose long black poles terminated in a small but very sharp-pointed steel head. They seemed well pleased to cultivate the acquaintance of their enemies, and also had evidently an eye to the main chance. One of the first things I saw was a Cossack corporal proposing a barter to a Sardinian officer. The latter had a tolerably good riding-whip, for which the astute child of the Don insisted on swapping a shabby sort of instrument of torture, of which his pony was doubtless rejoiced to be rid. The Sardinian hesitated, the Cossack persisted, and the exchange was effected, the officer looking, as I thought, rather ruefully after his departed cravache, and somewhat contemptuously at the shabby but characteristic stick and thong he had received for it. The signal thus given, the whip trade soon acquired great activity. Probably some of the officers present were ready enough to part with a tolerably good whip for a bad Cossack one, as a souvenir of the day's proceedings and of the commencement of the armistice.

It had been expected that vedettes would be placed, and that very little freedom of intercourse would be allowed beyond the bridge of Traktir, and people at first thought themselves fortunate in getting over the bridge and having a good view of the Cossacks and a chat with some stray Russian officer. Later, however, as{460} the morning, which had previously been cold and raw, advanced, and the sun shone bright and warm, the dry, grassy, and shrub-grown plain of the Tchernaya looking tempting for a canter, officers began to get restless, and to move away from the bridge across a small stream or ditch, and up a strip of level ground leading to a sort of monument, a square pedestal of rough stones surmounted by a dwarf pillar, of no particular order of architecture, and concerning whose origin and object the Russians, of whom inquiry was made, could say nothing. Some more Sardinian and French officers had by this time come down, but besides those engaged in the conference and attached to General Windham's staff, I do not think there were a dozen English officers on the ground. The general disposition of all seemed to be to move outwards in the direction of the Russian lines. People did not know how far they might go, and accordingly felt their way, cantering across a bit of level ground, and up a hill, and then pausing to look about them and reconnoitre the country and see whether there was any sign of obstacles to further progress. The soil was of a lighter and more sandy nature than it was generally found to be within our lines; in some places it was rather thickly sprinkled with bushes, saplings, and tall weeds. Several brace of red-legged partridges were sprung, some of them so near our horses' feet that a hunting-whip would have reached them.

As the day advanced, the field grew still larger. A French General arrived with his Staff and several French Hussar officers. Numbers of Sardinians came, but the English were detained in camp by a muster parade, and many also had been misinformed that the meeting of the Generals was not to take place until twelve or one. The horses, long accustomed to sink to the fetlock in horrid Balaklavan and Sebastopolitan mire, seemed to enjoy the change to the firm, springy turf beyond the Tchernaya; more partridges were sprung, to the immense tantalization of some there present, who would have given a month's pay for a day's shooting over such ground; some hares also were started, and one of them was vigorously pursued by a subaltern of a sporting turn, whose baggage pony, however, was soon left far in rear by puss's active bounds. By this time we were getting far on towards the Russian lines and batteries, when the field began to spread out, some taking to the right, and getting very near to a Cossack vedette, who seemed rather puzzled to account for the presence of so many strange horsemen within musket-shot of his post, and who, after beginning to circle once or twice in signal of an enemy's approach, received a reinforcement in the shape of another Cossack, who rode down the hill as if to warn the intruders off forbidden ground. Another party of gallopers went close up to the battery known as No. 49, and held communion with some vedettes, with whom they smoked an amicable cigarette, until a Russian officer came up and politely informed them in French that his orders were to allow no one to come any further, and that he hoped they would retire, which they of course did. More to the left a numerous body of horsemen, followed by a{461} straggling array of Zouaves, Chasseurs, Bersaglieri, and other infantry soldiers, who had made their way to the ground, rode up to the ridge just below the spur of the hill to the south of Inkerman. Here they were very near the Russian pickets, and within particularly convenient shot of various batteries, had these thought proper to open, and there most of them paused, for to go further really looked like abusing the good-nature of the enemy, who had thus allowed us to profit by the conference to enjoy a ride further into the Russian territory than any one has been since this camp was formed, and to take a near view of their positions and defences. Only half a dozen adventurous and inquisitive spirits pushed ahead, and seemed as if they intended charging a Russian battery, and the vedettes in this direction began to move uneasily about also, when up came a Sardinian staff officer at full speed, his blue plume streaming in the wind, and gave chase to the forward gentlemen, shouting to them to return. They, seeing themselves thus cut off in the rear, and perhaps to avoid a rebuke, made a retrograde flank movement, escaped their pursuer, and rejoined the main body; and, as orders were then given that no one should go further, a return towards the bridge became pretty general. On reaching the bridge a halt was again called round the group of Cossacks, and all eyes were fixed upon the two neat blue and white-striped tents, with awnings over their entrances. Some of the Generals were standing outside, and it was evident that the conference was drawing to a close.

A short delay ensued, which I perceived that the Cossack corporal availed himself of to exchange his Sardinian whip for a much better French one, the receiver of the former doubtless imagining he had secured a genuine Russian article. Then cocked hats and feathers were seen moving among the horses near the tents; orderlies and escorts mounted; the Cossacks did the same, and presently English, French, Sardinian, and Russian Generals and Staff rode over the bridge and between a double line formed by the spectators. General Timovoieff, a soldierly-looking man of agreeable physiognomy, rode first, and smilingly returned the salutes with which he was received. General Windham was close beside him, a little in the rear. There was an escort of French Chasseurs-à cheval and a small one of the 11th Hussars, and the big horses and tall well-fed men of the latter strikingly contrasted with the puny, although hardy steeds, and with the meagre frames of the Cossacks, who seemed to regard them with some wonderment, while the Hussars glanced at them as if they thought that one squadron of theirs would have an easy bargain of half a dozen sotnias of such antagonists. The cortége proceeded a short distance into the plain, and then the allied portion took leave of "nos amis l'ennemi" and retraced their steps to the bridge. They had passed over it, and the crowd of spectators was following, when they were met by a throng of officers from the English camp, coming down "to see the fun," which, unfortunately, was over. Nevertheless, they were pressing forward across the bridge, and would, doubtless, had they been allowed, have ridden up to the{462} Bilboquet battery, or across to Mackenzie's Farm—for it is an axiom that nothing will stop an English infantry officer, mounted on his favourite baggager; but a French Staff captain, seeing what was likely to ensue, ordered the sentries to allow no one to cross the bridge. As we rode up the ravine between the two mamelons, which witnessed such sharp fighting on the 17th of August, 1855, we met scores more of English officers coming down, only to be turned back.

At one on the afternoon of March 14th, the Staff of the allied and Russian armies again met at Traktir Bridge—on this occasion to sign the conditions of the armistice, which were finally agreed to, the Russians having shown themselves tolerably pliant. The day was raw, dull, and disagreeable, with a sharp northerly breeze blowing, but nevertheless a considerable number of English, French, and Sardinian officers found their way to the bridge, doubtless in hopes of a repetition of the canter of the 29th of February; but if that was the bait that lured them there they were completely disappointed.

Altogether, there was a good number of Russian officers at or near Traktir Bridge. Some of them were strolling by twos and threes in the field, at a short distance beyond, and when these were descried there was usually a regular charge down upon them by the allied officers, eager to make their acquaintance. Their manner was generally grave and rather reserved, but they conversed readily, and all had the tone and appearance of well-bred men. Some of them were very young. There was one youth of eighteen, who named to us the regiment of Hussars in which he was an officer, and seemed knowing about horses, pointing out the English ones from among the French, Italians, and Arabs that stood around. All—cavalry as well as infantry, and the General and his Staff—wore the long uniform greatcoat of a sort of brown and grey mixture, and seemed to have no other insignia of rank than the different colours and lace of the shoulder-strap. There was also a difference of fineness in the cloth of their coats from that of the soldiers, but this at a very short distance was not apparent. The Staff wore white kid gloves, and I noticed some of them with smart patent leather boots—elegancies rarely seen in our part of the Crimea.

This time there was no scouring the plain and gossiping with vedettes; the aqueduct was the limit, observance of which was enforced by a chain of Zouave sentries patrolling to and fro. A Russian picket was stationed at about rifle-shot distance beyond the river, along the further bank of which Cossack and Dragoon vedettes were posted at short intervals. There was nothing else of any interest to observe, and most of the persons whom curiosity led to the spot soon grew tired of standing at the edge of a ditch, and gazing at a distant handful of Muscovites; so they turned their horses, and tried to warm themselves by a canter back to the camp.

But so far as Sebastopol was concerned there was little for the Russians to gain by covering it with the thin cloak of an armistice.{463}

Had fire been rained down from Heaven upon the devoted city its annihilation could not have been more complete. The shells of princely mansions which remained on the French side of the town had been knocked to atoms by the Russian batteries on the north side; the theatre was demolished, and the beautiful church of St. Peter and St. Paul laid in ruins by the same implacable foe; and they directed particular volleys of round shot and shell on a monument to one of their naval heroes, which stood conspicuously placed in front of a beautiful little kiosk in the midst of a garden, to which there was a fine approach from the place behind Fort Nicholas by a handsome flight of steps, now destroyed. On a quadrilateral pedestal of some pretensions, supporting entablatures with allegorical devices, and ornamented at the summit by a puppis, were inscribed, when first I saw it, the name of "Kazarski," and the dates 1829 and 1834, with an intimation that the monument was erected in his honour. Most of the letters were stolen and knocked away; and had not the fire from the north ceased, the pedestal itself would have disappeared likewise. The French garrison, somewhat harassed by the incessant fire on the town, which, however, did them or us but little mischief, constructed out of the débris of the houses a very neat quartier inside the walls. The huts of which it was composed consisted of wood, ranged in regular rows, with the usual street nomenclature in these parts of the world. The stranger who halted to survey it from the neighbouring heights, deceived by the whitewashed and plastered walls of the houses, might think that Sebastopol was still a city; but when he walked through its grass-grown, deserted streets, formed by endless rows of walls alone, of roofless shells of houses, in which not one morsel of timber could be seen, from threshold to eaves; when he beheld great yawning craters, half filled with mounds of cut stone, heaped together in irregular masses; when he gazed on tumuli of disintegrated masonry, once formidable forts, and shaken, as it were, into dust and powder; when he stumbled over the fragments of imperial edifices, to peer down into the great gulfs, choked up with rubbish, which marked the site of the grand docks of the Queen of the Euxine; beheld the rotting masts and hulls of the sunken navy which had been nurtured there; when he observed that what the wrath of the enemy spared was fast crumbling away beneath the fire of its friends, and that the churches where they worshipped, the theatres, the public monuments, had been specially selected for the practice of the Russian gunners, as though they were emulous of running a race in destruction with the allied armies—he would, no doubt, come to the conclusion that the history of the world afforded no such authentic instance of the annihilation of a great city. It is certainly hard to believe that the site can ever be made available for the erection of houses or the construction of docks; but I am by no means certain that the immense resources in the command of manual labour possessed by the Government of Russia, of which this very struggle afforded us all such striking proofs, in the Quarantine Battery, the Bastion Centrale, the Bastion du Mât, the{464} Redan, the Mamelon, and the Malakoff, may not be made available in time to clear away these modern ruins, and to rebuild houses, theatres, palaces, churches, forts, arsenals, and docks, as before.

In the Inkerman ravines are inexhaustible supplies of building material, which can be floated by the Tchernaya into the waters of the harbour with very little trouble. The immense quantity of cut stone lying in piles at the upper end of the harbour showed that the Allies interrupted the Russians in the development of the splendid architectural plans which it was the ambition of emperors to accomplish, and which engaged every thought and energy of the Muscovite governors of the Crimea.

Notwithstanding the very cold weather which prevailed, numbers of our officers and men descended to the Tchernaya every day to communicate with the Russians, to examine the new race-course, or to wade after the wild-fowl which abound in the marshes. There was nothing new in these interviews, except that the Russians grew more cordial, or less sullen. The number of officers who came down to our side bore a very small proportion to that of the allied officers who attended these réunions. The men seemed never to tire of looking on each other. French, English, and Sardinians swarmed down to the banks of the Tchernaya, in spite of the cold and bitter winds, to confabulate with the Ruskis, to exchange money with them, and to stare at their dogged, and, it must be added, rather dirty-looking enemies, who were not quite so eager or so active in their curiosity as the allied soldiery, and who needed the stimulus of turning a dishonest penny in the exchange of small coins to tempt them from grass cutting, and the pursuit of wild ducks and hares by the flats beneath Mackenzie's Farm to the banks of the stream. The men I saw on the warm 20th of September on the slopes of the Alma seemed repeated and multiplied in every direction across the Tchernaya. There was a wonderful family likeness among the common soldiers. The small round bullet-head, the straight light hair, high cheek-bones, grey keen eyes, rather deeply set beneath straight and slightly defined eye-brows, undemonstrative noses, with wide nostrils, large straight mouths, square jaws, and sharp chins, were common to the great majority of them. Their frames seemed spare and strongly built; but neither in stature nor breadth of shoulder did they equal the men of our old army of 1854. Many of the officers could scarcely be distinguished from the men in air, bearing, or dress, except by the plain, ill-made, and slight swords, which they carried from an unornamented shoulder-belt; but now and then one met with a young fellow with the appearance of a gentleman, in spite of his coarse long coat; occasionally a great tall lumbering fellow, who seemed to be of a different race from the men around him, slouched along in his heavy boots. The clothing of the troops appeared to be good. Their boots, into which they tucked their loose trousers, were easy and well-made, and the great-coats worn by the men fitted them better than our own fitted the English infantry. The colour, not so much a grey as a dunnish drab, is admirably suited{465} not only to conceal the wearers in an open country, but to defy dust, mud, or rain to alter its appearance.

It was but natural that the two armies should be interested in each other's condition. The better-informed Russian officers were of course aware of the nature of our purchase system, but to most of them, that system was incomprehensible as novel. Its anomalies were, however, so strongly felt that the debates in Parliament which took place about this time on the subject were read with deep interest, and repeated and re-argued over and over again in camp. The friends of the system took it for granted that the arguments used against it must emanate from men of democratical and unconstitutional tendencies, and from enemies to the army and to the aristocracy, and Captain Figgs or Colonel Cottontwist were as fierce in their denunciations of Lord Goderich, Sir De Lacy Evans, and even Lord Palmerston, because he made some theoretical admissions against the system, as Lord Plantagenet or the Earl of Saxo-Grammaticus. They protested loudly that the object of these innovators was to drive "gentlemen" out of the army; while their opponents declared that the effect of the system was to keep "gentlemen"—those fiery cadets of old families who in other times were the true soldiers of fortune, the descendants of the gentry cavaliers—out of the army. If the ex-Sergeant Jones, holding a commission in one of our corps or regiments, was noisy in his cups and over-elated with his good fortune, his peccadilloes were the subject of rejoicings, and were regarded as sufficiently conclusive evidence that we could not open our commissions to the rank and file; and if he happened to be brought to a court-martial and reprimanded or cashiered, the demonstration was complete.

At the time I wrote, "It must be admitted that the training of our barrack-rooms is not favourable to the acquirement of decent manners and gentlemanlike demeanour, and that until we elevate the profession of arms in England, and remove the stigma popularly impressed from the rank of a private soldier, we cannot expect to induce the needy members of the more respectable classes in society to enter as volunteers; and the high rate of rewards for skill in all mechanical and industrial arts will ever offer an obstacle to the efforts of the recruiting sergeant to enlist a better sort of recruits so long as the present scale of pay and ration stoppages is maintained. The advocates for the abolition of purchase are impressed by the force of such objections as are presented by the general constitution of our army; but, after all, what the country keeps up its army for is, not that it may consult the wishes or the tastes of any class whatever, however numerous, powerful, and wealthy, but that the army may fight its battles, and maintain its liberties and its glory against all comers. Pompey's dandies were, no doubt, greatly displeased at being slashed in the face by Caesar's rough legionaries, and thought them very low fellows; nor had Rupert's cavaliers any great opinion of the good breeding or politesse of Old Noll's Ironsides; but the camp has never been regarded as any special school for demeanour or the inculcation of etiquette, however favourable it may be to the development of some of the nobler{466} qualities of humanity; and if we really can procure brave, intelligent, zealous, and deserving officers by some enlargement of the limits which have hitherto circumscribed our choice, we must submit to the inconvenience, though they may have a smack of the barrack-room about them. It must be recollected that our boasted mess system utterly breaks down in active campaigning, and that, in the field, the officers live separately or in very small groups, so it is only in times of peace that those whom Providence finxit meliore luto will be obliged to come in contact with the commissioned grossier, who will, after all, always represent a very small minority. It is forgotten by the friends of the system of "rank for money," that there has as yet been no officer from the ranks whose conduct before the enemy has been the subject of unfavourable notice, and that not one of them has been obliged to leave the service for refusal to perform his duty in the trenches; nor has it always been officers from the ranks who have been subjected to courts-martial, by the sentences of which they were forced from the army. In fact, many of those who take this side of the question are arguing, not for aristocracy, but for aurocracy; they are sacrificing to Plutus when they think they are worshipping Mars, and they confound the two questions—in themselves entirely distinct, but so mingled in camp dialogue as to be inseparable—of the purchase system with that of promotion from the ranks. There are such difficulties in the way of an abolition of the former system, that its most intrepid advocate may well pause before he suddenly demolishes it, and the devotion, the courage, and the endurance of the British officer of the army, and the respect of the men for him, are very weighty considerations in the way of the theoretical reformer.

"But if it have its advantages, the system has also its great, its crying evils, of which every mouth is full, and which are only met by the remark that there are evils in every system. Look at the case of Lieutenant-Colonel Cuddy, of the 55th. At the battle of Inkerman, he, as senior Captain, took the command of his regiment, when his senior officers were either killed or wounded. Throughout the whole of that terrible winter he served in the trenches, kept his handful of men together, and in all respects proved himself as careful as he was brave, and as prudent as he was zealous. Although lieutenant-colonel in the army, he was only captain in his regiment, and after having gone through the winter of 1854 and the spring of 1855, with all their hardships and conflicts, when the regimental majority was for purchase, owing to the retirement of the gallant Major Coats (whom I saw so badly hit at the Alma, that I thought he could scarce recover), Colonel Cuddy had the mortification of seeing Captain Cure, who was seven years his junior in the list of captains, and who had served at home with the depôt during the beginning of the campaign, pass over his head by purchase, and take the command of the regiment out of his hands. And can the country now heal the wound in that proud spirit? No; poor Cuddy fell at the Redan, and his cares and his sorrows are over for ever.{467}

"Cases somewhat similar are not wanting in other regiments. Right or wrong, had this war gone on, the purchase system was doomed. General Orders were crowded with notices that Captain So-and-So, having done the duty of field officer, that Lieutenant Such-a-One, having acted as Captain, and that Sergeant-Major Nobody, having acted as quartermaster of his regiment from such a date, would draw pay and allowances accordingly. War pushed our system horribly out of shape, and gave its delicate frame such squeezes, and deranged it so terribly, that its dearest friends scarcely knew it when we carried it home. Some of the young and intelligent officers on the Staff did not hesitate to express a hearty wish for the abolition of the system. To the French it was utterly incomprehensible, and it is a fixed idea in the mind of Private Jean François Marie that General Codrington paid enormous sums for the honour of commanding the army—otherwise he cannot understand it."

CHAPTER VI.

AT two o'clock P.M. on Wednesday, the 2nd of April, proclamation of peace was made to the Allied armies by salutes of 101 guns, fired by the field batteries of the Light and Second Divisions, from the heights over the plain of Balaklava; by the French batteries at the Quartier Générale; by the Sardinian redoubts at Fedukhine; and by the men-of-war at Kamiesch and Kazatch; but an early General Order and a very widely-spread rumour had diffused the intelligence among officers and men long before the cannon exultingly announced it by their thundering voices.

The news was known at Balaklava by eight o'clock A.M., and the Leander, Captain Rice, bearing the flag of Admiral Fremantle, "dressed," and the merchant shipping followed her example, by order, so that the harbour presented a gayer scene than human eye ever witnessed since it was first discovered by some most investigating, shore-hugging, and fissure-pursuing navigator. It was a fine day—at least it appeared so by contrast with its recent predecessors,—and the effect of the firing from so many points, all of which were visible from the heights of the plateau near the Woronzoff Road, was very fine. The enemy saw the smoke and heard the{468} roar of our guns, but they maintained a stern and gloomy silence. One would have thought that they, above all, would have shown some signs of satisfaction at the peace which they sought, and which they had made such sacrifices to obtain, while no one would have wondered if the batteries of the English and Sardinians expressed no opinion on the subject. However, there was not a Russian shot fired or flag hoisted from Fort Constantine to Mackenzie, nor, although we had ceased to be enemies, did any increase in our intimacy take place.

The preparations for the evacuation of the Crimea were now pressed on with rapidity and energy. Each division collected about 4,000 shot a-day from the iron-studded ravines and grounds in front of our camp, and they were carried to Balaklava as fast as the means at our disposal—railway and land transport—permitted. Our soldiers were about to leave the scene of their sufferings and of their glory. Alas! how many of those who landed lie there till the judgment-day! Who can tell how many lives were wasted which ought to have been saved to the country, to friends, to an honoured old age? These questions may never be answered, least of all were they answered at Chelsea Hospital. Heaven lets loose all its plagues on those who delight in war, and on those who shed men's blood, even in the holiest causes. The pestilence by day and night, deadly fever, cholera, dysentery, strategical errors, incompetence and apathy of chieftains, culpable inactivity, fatal audacity—all these follow in the train of armies, and kill more than bullet or sword. But war has its rules. The bloody profession by the skilful exercise of which liberty is achieved or crushed—by which States are saved or annihilated, has certain fixed principles for its guidance; and the homœopathic practitioner in the art, the quack, the charlatan, or the noble amateur, will soon be detected and overwhelmed in the horrors of defeat and ruin. Perhaps on no occasion was the neglect of the course of regular practice so severely punished, even although in the end the object was gained, as in the siege of Sebastopol.

Every statement made by the Russian officers in conversation with us concurred in this—that we might have taken Sebastopol in September, 1854; that they were not only prepared to abandon the city to its fate, but that they regarded it as untenable and incapable of defence, and had some doubts of their position in the Crimea itself, till our inaction gave Menschikoff courage, and raised in him hopes of an honourable defence, which might enable him to hold us in check, or to expose us to the attack of overwhelming masses. They admitted that their great error was the assumption of a simply defensive attitude after the battle of Inkerman, and they felt that they ought to have renewed the attack upon our enfeebled army, notwithstanding the terrible loss they suffered in that memorable action. It might have been mere military fanfaronade on their part to put forward such an assertion, but the Russians one and all declared they could have retaken the Malakoff under the fire of their ships, but it had been clearly demonstrated since the fire opened on September the 5th, that it would be impossible to hold{469} the south side under the increasing weight and proximity of the bombardment. "It was a veritable butchery, which demoralized our men so far as to make them doubt the chances of continuing the struggle. We lost 3,000 a-day. No part of the city was safe, except the actual bombproofs in the batteries. We were content to have beaten the English at the Redan, to have repulsed the French at the Bastion of Careening Bay (the Little Redan), the Gervais Battery, and the Bastion Centrale and to leave them the credit of surprising the Malakoff; but, even had we held it, we must soon have retired to the north side, and we had been preparing for that contingency for some days."

The battle of the Alma had produced such an effect that there seemed to be no chance of offering resistance to the Allies, and the fall of Sebastopol was regarded as certain. The Russians, however, meditated a great revenge, and, knowing the weakness of our army, and that it could not hold the heights and storm the town at the same time, they intended to take the very plateau on which we were encamped, to fall on our troops while we were disorganized by our success, and get them between the fire of the Russian shipping, of the northern forts, and of the field artillery outside the place. At first they could not understand the flank march to Balaklava, except as a manœuvre to escape the fire of the north forts, and to get at the weak side of the city, and for three or four days they waited, uncertain what to do, until they learned we were preparing for a siege. It was then—that is, about five days after we appeared before the place—that they commenced the work. Men, women, and children laboured at them with zeal, and for the first time a hope was entertained of saving Sebastopol, or of maintaining the defence till the corps d'armée destined for its relief could march down to raise the siege.

It was the first instance on record of such a place having been taken by the mere fire of artillery; for it was admitted by the Russians that even if the assault on the Malakoff had been repelled, they must have abandoned a position exposed at every nook and chink and cranny to such a fire that the very heavens seemed to rain shot and shell upon them. We lost an army in establishing that fire, and we did not (notwithstanding the honeyed words of Lord Palmerston, every soldier of the Crimea feels what I say is the truth)—we did not add to our reputation—nay, we did not sustain it—in the attacks of the 18th of June and the 8th of September. And will it be said that because the particulars of those conflicts have been made known to the world, and because the daring, the devotion, the gallantry, the heroism of our officers and men have been displayed before its eyes, that the English nation has lost its military prestige? Would it have been possible to have concealed and slurred over our failures? Would it have been better to have let the story be told in Russian despatches, in French Moniteurs, in English Gazettes! No; the very dead on Cathcart's Hill would be wronged as they lay mute in their bloody shrouds, and calumny and falsehood would insult that warrior race, which is not less Roman because it has known a Trebia and a Thrasymene.{470} We all felt well assured that it was no fault of our officers that we did not take the Redan. We could point to the trenches piled deep with our gallant allies before the Careening Bay and the Central Bastion, and turn to the Malakoff, won without the loss of 200 men, and then invoke the goddess Fortune! Alas! She does not always favour the daring; she leaves them sometimes lifeless at the blood-stained embrasure, before the shattered traverse, in the deadly ditch and she demands, as hostages for the bestowal of her favours, skill and prudence, as well as audacity and courage.

There was a song on the incidents of the war very popular in the Russian camp, in which Prince Menschikoff was exposed to some ridicule, and the Allies to severe sarcasm. Menschikoff was described as looking out of the window of a house in Bakshiserai, and inquiring for news from Sebastopol; courier after courier arrives and says, "Oh! Sebastopol is safe."—"And what are the Allies doing? "—"Oh! they are breaking down the houses of Balaklava and eating grapes." The same news for a day or two. At last a courier tell him the Allies are cutting twigs in the valleys, and that they are digging great furrows three-quarters of a mile from the place. "I declare they are going to besiege it," says he; "and, if so, I must defend it." And so he sends for his engineers. They at first think the Allies, misled by ancient traditions about the mines, must be digging for gold; but at last they make a reconnaissance, and, finding that the Allies are really making approaches, they say, "Why, we shall have time to throw up works, too;" and so they draw up their plans, and Todleben says, "Give me five days, and I'll mount three guns for their two;" and Menschikoff dances and sings, "Ha, ha! I've saved Sebastopol!" The Russians were astonished at their own success; above all, they were surprised at the supineness and want of vigilance among the Allies. They told stories of stealing upon our sentries and carrying them off, and of rushing at night into our trenches, and finding the men asleep in their blankets; they recounted with great glee the capture of a sergeant and five men in daylight, all sound in slumber (poor wretches, ill-fed, ill-clad, and worked beyond the endurance of human nature!) in one of the ravines towards Inkerman.

Among many stories of the kind which I heard, one is remarkable. When the attack on Inkerman was projected, it was arranged that one strong column, having crossed the bridge of the Tchernaya, near the head of the harbour, should march along the road which winds up above the Quarries ravine, and which leads right upon the ground then occupied by Evans's Division; but this was conceived to be the most daring part of the enterprise, "as no doubt, strong pickets would be posted on that road, and guns commanding the bridge, or raking the road, would be placed behind the scarps, and these guns would have to be taken, and the pickets and their supports driven in. Judge of our astonishment when we found no scarps at all, and not a single gun on this point! Our General cried, as he gained the level of the plateau without a shot being fired, 'We have them—Sebastopol is saved!' The bridge over the Tchernaya was not repaired for the passage of men and{471} guns till past five o'clock in the morning of the 5th, and the men did not begin till after dark on the preceding evening."

But, after all, we were probably saved from severer trials by our own want of enterprise. When the conflict before Sebastopol assumed such gigantic proportions it became the war itself. The armies of Russia were absorbed into it, and perished in detail. Had we taken Sebastopol at the outset, we must have been prepared, with our small armies, to meet those corps d'armée which lost tens of thousands in their hasty march to relieve the place, but who, in the event of its capture, would have closed slowly round us, and the same incapacity which prevented our reaping the fruits of our coup-de-main in attempting the Crimean expedition, might have led to more serious evils in a protracted campaign in the open field against a numerous and well handled, if not a daring, enemy. Success was indeed obtained, but its cost had been great. What shall be said if much of that cost can be shown to have been a gratuitous outlay of time and money? To me, next to the graveyards, verdant oases in the dark plateau, the most melancholy and significant object was our old parallel opened against the Malakoff, which the French took from us as the basis of their attack in the spring of 1855.

One man who came into Balaklava after the peace was observed to be very anxiously peering about the walls of a new store. On being asked what he was about, he confessed he was searching for the site of his house, in the cellar of which he had deposited a good deal of plate and valuables. I fear he had but a Flemish account of them. The Russian military band (150 strong) at Mackenzie was a great object of attraction. It played at four o'clock every afternoon. At the hymn of "God preserve the Czar," or whatever the exact translation of the title may be, all the Russians took off their caps. I could have wished that our officers who were present, and who understood the occasion, had done the same, for immediately afterwards, when the band played "God save the Queen," the Russians uncovered their heads, and paid to our national anthem the same mark of respect as they had paid to their own. A Russian officer—a very young man—covered with orders, was pointed out to some of the officers as one who had never left the Flagstaff Bastion for eleven months. He had been shot through the body, and had been wounded in the head, in the arm, and in the thigh, on different occasions; he had insisted on remaining in the bastion, nor would he permit himself to be removed to hospital. Many of the soldiers wore the cross of St. George and other orders. What a phenomenon would a British private be with the riband of the C.B. on his breast! The Russians were very anxious to get some of our medals, and there were some stories afloat concerning the cleverness with which men sold florins at high prices for Sebastopol medals.

Some officers soon penetrated to Bakshiserai, and returned with alarming accounts of the price of eatables, drinkables, and accommodation—porter twenty francs a bottle, champagne thirty-five francs a bottle, dinner and bed a small fortune. There were some{472} very hospitable fellows among the Russian officers, and they gave and took invitations to lunch, dinner, and supper very freely. One of our Generals[35] up at Mackenzie, was asked to stay to tea by a Russian officer, whose hut he was visiting, but Madame, who presided at the tea-table, darted such a look at her peccant spouse when he gave the invitation, and glared so fiercely at the heretical Englishmen, that our General and Staff turned tail and bolted, leaving the Ruski to the enjoyment of the lecture which Madame Caudelska would no doubt inflict upon him. Perhaps the poor lady was short of spoons, or trembled for her stock of sugar.

As there was nothing doing in camp I proceeded on a week's excursion to Simpheropol, the Tchatir Dagh, Bakshiserai, Orianda, Yalta, and by Aloupka. The Russians sent passes to head-quarters, with one of which I was furnished. It was as follows: "Carte de passe pour les avant postes" (in print), "General de Service Tchervinsky;" then in Russian MS., "Allowed to pass—General Major."

Before I left I went over the north forts, and carefully examined the defences of the place. Fort Constantine bore very few marks of the bombardment and cannonade of the 17th of October, 1854. The crown of the arch of one embrasure was injured, and supported by wood, and the stone-work was pitted here and there with shot; but the "pits" had been neatly filled in and plastered over. Fort Catherine, or Nachimoff (formerly Suwaroff), was uninjured, but St. Michael's, which was badly built, suffered from the French mortar fire after we got into the town. The citadel was covered on all sides by earthworks, and the hill-sides furrowed up by lines of batteries bearing on every landing-place and every approach. In line from Fort Constantine to the Quarantine and Alexander Forts were sunk, before the 17th of October, three eighty-fours, then one hundred-and-twenty, then two eighty-fours, and then one fifty-four. Inside this line was a strong boom, which would have brought up any vessels that had succeeded in bursting through the sunken ships. This outer line and the boom itself were so much damaged, however, by the gale of the 14th of November as to be of little use. The second boom, consisting of chain cables floated by timber, extended from Fort Nicholas on the south to the west of St. Michael's Fort on the north. Inside this boom were sunk, commencing from the north side, a sixty-gun ship, an eighty-four, a one-hundred-and-twenty, an eighty-four, and a sixty-gun frigate. Then came the bridge of boats from Fort Nicholas to St. Michael's. Inside that, in two lines, lay the rest of the Russian fleet. The first was formed of three eighty-fours, a one-hundred-and-twenty, and one hundred-and-ten-gun line-of-battle ship; the second consisted of a seven-gun steamer, a six-gun ditto, a thirteen-gun ditto, and an eighty-four, close to the ruins of Fort Paul. Nearer to Inkerman, in the creeks and bays on the north side, were sunken steamers, five brigs of war and corvettes, and a schooner yacht sunk or aground.{473}

The boats of the men-of-war were safe in one of the creeks which our guns could not reach.

The Russians shouted at us lustily as we were engaged in examining the timbers. Although the teredo had not attacked the wood, it was covered with barnacles and slime, and from what we saw of the ships, it did not seem likely they would ever be raised as men-of-war again. The famous "Twelve Apostles" the "Three Godheads" the "Tchesme" the "Wratislaw" and the "Empress Maria" were unseaworthy before they were sunk, and the only ship for which the Russians expressed any sorrow was the "Grand Duke Constantine," one-hundred-and-twenty, the finest ship in their navy. She seemed quite content with her berth on the bottom, and it will be some time before a timber of her floats again.

The impression left upon the mind of every person who made the little tour round the coast was that the resources of Russia in men were reduced to a low ebb in the course of this war, and that she would have been utterly unable to maintain an army in the Crimea, or to continue in possession of it, had we made an aggressive movement with all our forces from Theodosia or Eupatoria, or even left her in an attitude of watchfulness along the extended line from the north side of Sebastopol to Simpheropol. That she possessed considerable means of transport, and had arabas, telegas, and horses sufficient, in ordinary times and on good roads, for the service of her army, was evident enough; but I was assured, on authority beyond question, that for two whole days in the winter the troops at Mackenzie were left without food, in consequence of the state of the roads. The prices of provisions, allowing very amply for the extortions of needy Tartars, of famished innkeepers, and for an extremely liberal spirit on the part of English tourists, were enormous, and it was almost impossible in many places to procure barley or corn for horses at any sum whatever. The country was deserted, the fields uncultivated, agriculture unheeded. A few flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were to be seen here and there in the course of a week's ride, but these were the property of the Government or of contractors, and were not for sale; along the south coast fresh meat was unknown, and salt fish and salt pork were the food of those in good circumstances. A mouthful of hay for a horse cost half a rouble or fifty copecs—eggs were 5d. a-piece—fowls utterly beyond the means of Crœsus.

But amid all these evidences of desolation, the Cossack was seen here, there, everywhere—singly—in twos and threes—in pickets—in patrols—in grand guards—in polks—trotting, walking, or galloping, mounted high on his quaint saddle over his shaggy, long-tailed pony, flourishing with one hand his cruel whip, while with the other he guided the docile animal, above which he towered like a giant, his dirty grey coat fluttering in the breeze and his lance-point shining brightly in the sun. He was sown broadcast all over the Crimea. But you did not see regular soldiers in any numbers till you entered the typhus-haunted{474} streets of Simpheropol, or waded through the mud of Bakshiserai; and even here the miserable, jaded, utterly spiritless, ill-clad, ill-fed, and broken-down militiamen were in the proportion of two to one to the soldiers of the line.

In order to judge of the state of the country, I shall transcribe from my diary during the tour such portions of it as appear likely to afford information respecting the effects of the war, or give an insight into the condition of the Crimea. Some other portions, referring to matters of less importance, may, however, prove amusing, if not instructive, more from the novelty of the circumstances to which they relate than from any merit of narration or powers of description.

"April 12th.—Started at ten o'clock from camp. The party consisted of four officers, two civilians—one of them myself, the other a travelling gentleman—an interpreter, two soldier servants, and one civilian servant. We took with us a strong two-wheeled light cart, drawn by two mules and a pack-pony, and carried in the cart a canteen, a few bottles of spirits and sherry, cases of preserved beef, two tents, fowling-pieces, a fishing-rod, picks and spades, blankets and horse-cloths. The cart was started early, with orders to halt at Baidar till we arrived, and the party were trotting along the Woronzoff Road towards Kamara by eleven o'clock. The day was most favourable—a clear sky, genial sun, and light southerly wind. I met the 4th Hussars (French) on their march in from their cantonments about Baidar, where they have been long exposed to most trying work on outpost duty, and in the ordinary occupation of light cavalry in war time. They were fine soldierly fellows, and were 'quite ready as they sat to ride either to the Great Wall of China or St. Petersburg.' Each man carried a portion of the cooking utensils of his mess, forage for his horse, blankets, and necessaries for the march, and seemed heavily charged, but on examination he would be found to weigh a couple of stone less than an English Hussar—otherwise, indeed, his small horse, however high-tempered, could not carry him. The Sardinians were also on the move, and sending in baggage to Balaklava. The large village of sheds and sutlers' shops on the road at the Fedukhine heights, which was called 'Woronzoff,' was in considerable excitement at the prospect of losing its customers, notwithstanding that the Russians flocked in to supply their place. The French camp here is built like that of their neighbours the Sardinians, very much on the Tartar or Russian plan, and the huts are semi-subterranean. They present in appearance a strong contrast to the regular rows of high wooden huts belonging to the Highland Division opposite, at Kamara, but the money saved to France and Sardinia by the ingenuity and exertions of their soldiers in hutting themselves must have been very considerable in amount. To counteract the mesquin look of these huts, our Allies—more especially the French—planted the ground with young firs and evergreens, brought a considerable distance from the hill-sides of Baidar, so that, after all, their camp is more pleasant to look at than that of the English. They have also made gardens, which{475} promise to bear fruit, flowers, and vegetables for Tartars and Muscovites, and they have turned a large portion of ground by the banks of the Tchernaya, and close to the Traktir Bridge, into a succession of gardens, each appropriated to different companies of the regiments encamped in the neighbourhood. Sic vos non vobis.

"As we entered the gorge which leads into the valley of Varnutka we met some Tartar families, men and children, on the road, looking out possibly for some place to squat on. These poor creatures are menaced with a forced return to their nomadic habits of centuries ago. Civilization has corrupted them. The youngsters run alongside your horse, crying out, if you are English, 'I say, Johnny, piaster! give me piaster, Johnny!' if you are French, 'Doe dong (intended for dites donc), donnez moi piaster'—when young, a bright-eyed, handsome race, with fine teeth and clear complexions; and when old, venerable-looking, owing to their marked features and long beards, but in manhood sly, avaricious, shy, and suspicious. The Russians give bad accounts of them, and say they are not to be trusted, that they are revengeful and ill-disposed—the slave-owner's account of his nigger. Most of the fruit-trees in the pretty valley of Miskomia and Varnutka have been cut down for fuel. Crossing the ridge which separates this valley from that of Baidar, we pass the gutted and half-ruined chateau dit 'Peroffsky.' For a long time this charming little villa supplied French and English cavalry outposts with delicious, wine from its cellars, and was spared from ruin; but bit by bit things were taken away, and at last a general spoliation of all the place contained was made—the furniture was smashed to atoms, the doors broken, the windows carried away. One officer attached to the light cavalry regiment quartered there took away a handsome china service, and most of these dangerous visitors brought off some memento of their visits. The Tartars were rather rejoiced at the ruin of the place, for Count Peroffsky was no favourite with them, but they always express the greatest regard and affection for Prince Woronzoff. Baidar itself—a middling Tartar hamlet at the best of times—looks worse than ever now; garance dyed breeches were hanging out of the window-holes on all sides, and outside one very shaky, tumble-down wattle-house, there was a board declaring that there was good eating and drinking in the 'Café Pelissier.' The village has one advantage, of which no Tartar village is ever destitute—a stream of clear water flows through it, and there are two or three fine springs close at hand. The people are miserable; the men are employed by the French as woodcutters and as drivers of arabas, but the money they receive is not sufficient to procure them full supplies of food or proper clothing.

"From Baidar the road ascends by the mountain ridges to the Foross or Phoros Pass, and affords many delightful views of the great valley of Baidar, which is, as it were, a vast wooded basin, surrounded by mountain and hill ranges covered with trees, and sweeping right round it. Blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales, large gaudy jays, wood-pigeons, doves, rock-pigeons, hawks, falcons, and{476} great numbers of magpies, frequent the valley, and those which have good voices make it right musical towards sunset. Nightingales are very numerous, and so are varieties of flycatchers, titmice, and buntings. In winter, the hills are full of woodcock, the springs are haunted by snipe, wild duck, widgeon, and teal; and the woods give shelter not only to roe-deer, but, if certain reports promulgated this winter are to be believed, to wolves and bears. The road to Phoros is not good, and in winter must have been of little use. The summit of the pass at Phoros is surmounted by a stone arch which crosses the road at a place guarded by walls of rock, hundreds of feet in height. There is a French guard here, and, of course, we had to exhibit our passes. That was but a little matter, but on entering the archway we found it was fortified after the first rules of art: there were traverses and parapets of great height and thickness, and at the other side of the arch were similar obstacles. The mules were taken out of the cart; then it was unloaded, and the things carried one by one to the other side of these entrenchments; then the wheels were taken off, and by the united strength of our whole party, aided by some good-natured French soldiers, the cart itself was lifted up bodily and carried across all the gabions, earthworks, and traverses, and landed with a cheer on the narrow road at the other side of the pass.

"The scene which bursts upon the eye on emerging from the arch is one of the finest I have ever witnessed—indeed, I am not sure that it is not the most beautiful and grand that can be seen anywhere. You find yourself standing in a very narrow road, on the left hand of which a sheer slab of rock rises to the height of 600 or 700 feet above—its surface rent with fissures, here and there dotted by stunted firs, which cling like weeds to its surface, diversified with all the tints for which volcanic rocks are remarkable. At the base of this cliff, which stretches further than the sight can trace it, there is a ragged fringe of mighty boulders, of fragments of mountains tossed down in the wildest confusion amid the straggling brushwood. On your right, nearly 1,000 feet below, is the sea, washing the narrow selvage of land which, covered with thick groves and dotted with rocks, tumbles down beneath your feet in waves of verdure, so rapidly that the dark blue waters, which are really nearly a mile distant, seem to be only a few hundred yards from the road. This narrow shelving strip of land, which lies beneath the cliff and descends to the sea, formed of the débris of the mountain-chain above it, extends along the coast from Phoros to Demur Kapu, or the Iron Gate, widening as it runs eastward, and losing its distinctive character completely ere it reaches Aloushta, in consequence of the great wall of cliff on the left hand receding rapidly inland and northwards from the point opposite Yalta. The length of this strip is thirty miles. It is nearly a mile broad at Phoros, and thence it gradually expands, till at Aloupka it attains a breadth of three miles from the sea to the base of the cliff, and at Yalta is five miles. The road winds for many miles along the foot of these stupendous{477} crags, but there is a lower road, reached by zig-zags, which leads to the villas situated in the lovely valleys by the coast. This strip of shelving land is of the most varied formation. It is tossed about into hill and dale, and is seamed with shady ravines and deep woody dells, which are watercourses in winter. As it is quite sheltered by the cliff from northerly winds, and is exposed to the full power of the sun, the climate here is beautifully mild until the heats of summer begin, and the land produces in great perfection an astonishing variety of vegetable productions.

"The Crimea has a Flora of its own, but the lady is dressed so quaintly, uses such strange language, and is called so many hard, long names, that in my ignorance I am afraid to approach her, or to do anything more than to praise her general effect and appearance at a distance. But here indeed is a horrid reality to talk about. Some half-mile from Phoros, the road runs through a solid rock by means of a tunnel about thirty yards long. I happened to be riding in advance, and saw that this tunnel was blocked up by a wall seven feet in height and eight feet in thickness. All passage for the cart seemed hopeless. We never could lift it up so high. There was no getting round the rock, and so I smote my breast and returned to the party. But there were two or three among us not easily to be deterred from their purpose. An examination was made; a council of war was held; and it was decided that over the wall we must go, and that the obstacle intended to prevent the march of Cossack cavalry and the carriage of mountain guns, was not to impede six British tourists. Under the direction of our acting engineer, to work we went. The party got on the wall, and proceeded to dislodge the stones on both sides with regularity and precision, rolling them down so as to form a kind of solid arch out of the centre of the wall. Shins were cut, toes were smashed, spurs were bent, but the work went on, and at the end of three-quarters of an hour the way was declared to be practicable. The mules were taken out of the cart, and walked by a footpath round the rock; the heavy articles were unloaded, and then, with main strength, the cart was spoked up to the top of the mound of rocks and stones, after a desperate struggle, and then, with immense difficulty, was backed down to the road on the other side. Maybe the old tunnel did not re-echo three tremendous cheers when the work was over, and the mules emerged with their triumphant chariot! But our troubles were not half over. The French were uneasy at Phoros—they had scarped the road, and what they had spared, two winters of neglect had very nearly demolished. Before we moved six miles we executed, in addition to these labours, the following great public works, in order to get our cart over: No. 1. Built a wall to bank up the roadside at a precipice; No. 2. Filled up a crevice with brushwood and loose stone; No. 3. Made the road practicable with fascines; No. 4. Cut away hill-side, so as to widen the road by the side of a precipice where it had given way; No. 5. Unloaded cart and spoked it over a bad bit, and loaded it again.

"It is about twenty-two miles from the camp to Phoros pass,{478} and our halting-place for the night is the ruined chateau of Isarkaia, which is about six miles from Phoros. We reached this secluded spot about seven o'clock in the evening. The walls and roof alone are left. The windows are smashed in, woodwork and all, and the only thing untouched in the place is a mangle in the kitchen. We stable our horses in the parlours and library, for all I know to the contrary, unpack the cart, and carry in saddles and bedding to the room designed for dining and sleeping. There are no boarded rooms, but the clay floor is soft, a fountain and a stream of water run hard by. The horses are groomed and supplied with hay and corn, and we prepare for dinner. A horrid announcement is made—'The Major has forgot to bring either kettle, gridiron, or saucepan! The tea and the sugar have got mixed! But that is no consequence.' What is to be done? Ingenious engineer suggests that my tinned iron dish shall be used as a frying-pan; carried nem. con. As to saucepan, some ingenious person drives two holes in a potted beef tin case, thrusts a piece of wood through them as handle, and proceeds to make soup therein over a blazing fire lighted up in one of the ruined fireplaces of the drawing-room. Just as soup is ready, handle burns through, and soup upsets into the fire, a disaster quite irretrievable, and so we proceed to devour tough ration-beef done in steaks on the tin dish. Sherry is forthcoming, bread, and preserved vegetables. Water is boiled in a small teapot, and produces enough for a temperate glass of grog; the blankets are spread on the floor, and preparations are made for sleep. First, however, the watch is appointed. Each man takes an hour in the alphabetical order of his name, from eleven to five o'clock, to watch the horses, to keep in the fire, and to guard against theft. The mangle is broken up for firewood. In doing so, the best made London axe, bought from an eminent saddler, flies in two at the first chop!—useful article for travelling! Odd legs of chairs and tables, bits of drawers, and dressers, and cupboards, are piled up for the same purpose, and our first watch is left on his post. We muster three double-barrelled guns and four revolvers between us, a total of thirty shots; the night passes quietly.

"Below the walls of the house in which we encamped, buried amid orchards and vineyards, is a ruined villa with marble fountains and handsome rooms. It is pillaged and wrecked like the rest, but it tempts our party to plunge down through the brushwood and thick scrubby woods, interlaced with 'Christ's thorn' and long creepers, to the ledge on which it stands above the sea. The silence, broken only by the cry of the eagles which soar about the cliffs, the surge of the wave on the rocks, and the voices of the birds in the groves, is rather a source of pain than of pleasure. 'Malheur à la dévastation' is inscribed on the walls. But who were the devastators? The Russians allege it was the Allies—the Tartars declare it was the Russians themselves. There are many who believe that these very Tartars had no small share in the plundering and wrecking of their taskmasters' and conquerors' summer palaces. We know from experience that on the march to Sebastopol,{479} every village, every little villa and farmhouse, was sacked and destroyed by the enemy, and Bourliouk, Eskel, Mamashai, Belbek, &c., were in ruins before our outposts reached them. The evidence so far is against the Russians. As the walls and roofs of these houses are untouched, they look as picturesque and pretty from a distance as ever they did, and it is only on nearer approach that traces of the hand of the spoiler become visible.

"We had a very excellent breakfast, notwithstanding the extraordinary rich flavour of onions in the tea, which was accounted for by the circumstance that the water had been boiled in the soup-kettle. Some officers of the Guards who had followed us, and bivouacked near the post-house which we had passed on the road, came in as we were at 'our humble meal,' and relished their share of it exceedingly. Their cart pushed on in advance of ours, and as they profited by our labours of yesterday, so did we in a smaller degree (our cart was larger than theirs) reap the advantage of their preceding us part of the way to-day. We started about eleven o'clock, and our hard work soon commenced. Between the enemy, the French, and the winter, the road scarcely existed; it had been swept down into the ravine. However, our motto was 'vestigia nulla retrorsum,' and the colonel, the major, the captain, the D.A.C.G., the civilians, and the soldiers, worked as if for their lives and succeeded, in the course of the day, in executing the following useful public works: No. 1. Road blocked up by rocks from mountain—cut down trees, made levers, and cleared the way—major's leg nearly broken, every one dirtied with wheel grease, finger-nails broken, hands cut, &c. No. 2. Road repaired by Guards (who left us a bit of paper on a stick to commemorate the fact) was found too narrow, the hill-side was dug-out, stones laid, and road extended. No. 3. Landslip—edge of the road gone. We built up a wall of stones to support the edge, and passed over triumphantly. No. 4. Were riding along at a smart pace down the road, which winds like a piece of tape (not red, but white) along the mountain side, when frantic cries from the next turn recalled us to our cart—found it had gone down over a gulley, shooting out beds and bundles some hundreds of feet below, and was lying right over in the mud of the aforesaid gulley atop of the wheel mule. No one hurt. Took off wheels, cut fastenings, and unharnessed mule, which escaped without a hurt, but was covered with mud; raised cart, carried up beds, &c., out of ravine; unpacked cart and carried baggage across bad parts of landslip; set cart on wheels, loaded it, and went on our way rejoicing.

"Just after this accident we met General Eyre and his staff, attended by a Russian officer and several Cossacks, on his way to Phoros. The gallant General had been round to Bakshiserai, Simpheropol, and Aloushta, and was just reversing our route, which our party had the honour of being the first to drag a cart over. The General had been assisted up to this point by a village full of Tartars, who were caught by the Russians, to get his cart over the bad places. No. 5. Came upon the Guards and their servants, who were busy mending the road where it was cut by a mountain water-course:{480} aided them and ourselves; got over our cart first and preceded them on the road. No. 6. Cut fascines and filled in a gap in the road. Let it be understood, all this time, that there is the sea below us on the right, the quaint wall of cliffs, 600ft. or 700ft. high, on our left, and at times, as it were, toppling over on our heads, and a rugged slope of wood and vineyard dotted with villas between us and the beach. No. 7. Having come up to a party of Guardsmen who were bivouacking with some artillerymen on their way back to Baidar, we were told that the road was utterly impassable; it had been carried away by a landslip. Resolved to go on; soon afterwards repaired road, and proceeded cautiously through mud from the ice rills which had bored through and broken up the path in many places.

"It was becoming late, and yet we had not got more than eight or nine miles from Asarkaia; and Aloupka, for which we were bound, was still as many miles ahead of us. The cliff at this part of the coast, which is somewhere between Kikineis and Limena, recedes further from the sea, and there is a considerable tract of hills from its base to the road. These hills are covered with brushwood, and our vedette in front reported to us that two round knobs, which, no doubt, served as heads to as many Cossacks, were visible in advance, amid the young foliage. As we approached, the knobs disappeared, but presently two lance-points peered above the rocks at the turn of the road, and in another moment or two we were in the presence of three mounted Cossacks of the Don, who by signs demanded our passes in a very civil and agreeable manner. As none of them could read, this formality seemed useless, but they gave us to understand by signs that one of our party must go to the officer of the post, and the Major and his interpreter were accordingly handed over to the care of an individual with one eye, and were out of sight very speedily. Our cart was ordered back, and it was explained that we had to drag it over the slope of the hills on our left, as the road before us had actually gone over the cliffs. Our friends were intelligent, good-looking young fellows, and while waiting for the Major we spent some time rather agreeably with them in a mutual examination of arms and interchange of tobacco. They wore heavy curved swords, without guards to the handles, in large sheaths of wood covered with leather. Their heads were covered with sheepskin caps, the top being formed of red cloth, and slightly conical in shape. Their coats were like those of the infantry of the line—long garments of grey cloth, fastened by a strap at the back, and their trousers were tucked into their boots more Muscovitorum. Each man had a long carbine slung over his shoulder, and I was rather surprised to observe that they had percussion locks. This armament was completed by a long and very light lance. The edges of their swords were as sharp as razors—their lance-points were equally keen. Their hair was closely cut, and they had the whiskerless cheek, the beardless chin, and the mustachioed lip of the "regulation." Their horses were barely fourteen hands high, and were high in the bone and low in the flesh, but their speed and endurance are undeniable. The{481} Cossack rides high above his horse—he sits in the hollow of a saddle which looks like two pillars of black leather, at such a height that his heels are against the horse's flank, and when the animal trots, his rider's head is thrown forward over the shoulder, so that a right line let fall from his head would be in advance of his toes by some inches. The manes of the Cossack horses are very long, and their tails often sweep the ground. We soon found they were very quick walkers, and got over the ground with rapidity and ease.

"As the Major did not return, we concluded, after a long stay, that he was on the road before us, and we resolved to urge the cart over the hill. The Cossacks helped us in this (which was no easy matter) as soon as their comrade came back with an intimation, as we understood, which would be interpreted in English that 'it was all right.' The cart was once more unloaded, and its contents were dragged by us across the steep hill; then the cart was spoked up over the spongy ground, was loaded again, and the drivers were conducted to the road by the Cossacks, while we were shown a shorter cut, and descended under escort of our amiable, but strongly scented friends, down through shady ravines to the Tartar village of Simeis. Simeis, like all Tartar villages, is built by the side of a brook, which brawls pleasantly through a succession of little cascades as it leaps down from the mountains to the sea. The ravine in which the village is situate is shaded from the sun by enormous walnut and chestnut trees, and by the humbler branches of pear, apple, and peach trees. The houses are built on the slope in layers, with broad flat roofs, which are rendered watertight by a thick covering of sand and bitumen, and on looking down on it, or on any of the Tartar villages, not a house is visible; all that can be seen is a succession of little brown square patches with one hole in each, descending the slope in regular terraces, the backs being formed by the hill-side itself. In Simeis we were halted till the curiosity of a strong Cossack picket and some regulars was satisfied. About sixty men passed us in review, and then we were let to climb the hill up to the road, at which we found another Cossack waiting to relieve our silent friend who had so far accompanied us.

"It was getting dark; there was no sign of the Major; but, for a wonder, one of the Cossacks spoke German, and he told us an English officer was on in front. In a few moments our guide began to ride down a steep zigzag road towards the sea. The cart had come up all right, and we found we were on our way down to Aloupka, which is close to the sea-shore. The zigzag was as steep and sharp in its turns as any Swiss mountain path, and the horses, already tired by the nature of the day's journey, showed signs of distress very visibly. The descent lasted for an hour; it seemed a night; the young moon just lighted up the Cossack's white horse, and the feathery tips of tall poplars and branches of grey olive-trees and all else was in darkness. We heard the roar of the sea close at hand at last, and a low white building peered above the trees. We cantered into the open space before it by a nice avenue with a regular{482} paling on each side. The Cossack dismounted, fastened up his horse, and went into the house, leaving us in profound ignorance and great hunger outside. The sounds of very noisy and drunken singing, which roused the night owls through the windows, led us to believe the house was a Cossack barrack, but after some time the door opened, and out came a brisk little man, who spoke good French, and a decent body, his wife, who astonished us with excellent English, and we found that we were at 'the hotel' at Aloupka. The cause of the noise was soon found. It was the work of a drunken Russian Colonel, chief of the police at Yalta, who had introduced himself to some English officers at that place, and had, in spite of them, accompanied them so far on their way to Phoros. 'Violà,' said a little voice in our ears, as the door of the dining-room was opened,—'Violà la noblesse Russe—il est noble parcequ'il est Colonel.' The room in which we found ourselves was a comfortable apartment, with sofas and easy-chairs, engravings of Count Potocki, of the Czar (of course), of Prince Woronzoff, of very warm subjects from French burins, on the walls, and a table well covered with bottles and glasses. At the end of the table was seated a Russian officer, screaming at the top of his voice some inscrutable snatches of song, for which he prepared himself by copious doses of brandy, sherry, and Crim wine. He was offensively drunk, but the terror which he inspired in the landlord and landlady was not the less on that account, and was evidently only equalled by their hatred of him. We are told that the Russians read the London papers so diligently that they know everything that passes as well as we do ourselves. I do not wish to get our good host and his wife, or even the inebriated Muscovite, into a scrape, or I would relate a few particulars respecting their demeanour which might prove amusing. The Colonel of the Aloupka district, when he heard of the condition of his brother 'authority,' gave orders that he should be turned out, but these were not carried into effect till late in the evening. He spoke a little French, and I think he understood English, though he professed not to know a word.

"Our dinner consisted of salt meat and an omelette au lard, washed down with plenty of Crim wine. We had also a tin of preserved beef. It was very fat, and we all put away the excess of adipose matter on a plate, where it formed a pretty large pile. The Colonel, who had been eating the meat, suddenly seized upon this plate, and stuffed huge mouthfuls of the fat and grease down his throat on the point of a knife with infinite gusto. A Cossack brought us in our passes. In spite of his standing at attention, the man's look betrayed a feeling of greater disgust at the Colonel's condition than I should have given him credit for. Our horses, which were put in a distant stable, could only be fed by the intervention of some others of our Dons, who also undertook to guard them all right—'the Greeks were such robbers.' Our beds were clean and comfortable, and we slept well till morning, although the Colonel kicked up at intervals a dreadful row outside.

"Distance lends enchantment to the view of Prince Woronzoff's{483} palace from the sea. Hence it seems a splendid combination of Tartar and Norman architecture, donjons and keeps, and battlemented walls, strangely intermingling with minarets and the dome of a mosque. It is quite close to our hotel, and is approached by a beautiful walk, like the back lodge avenue in an English estate. The path is marked by a wooden paling, inside which are olives and fruit-trees and evergreens, and immense chestnut and walnut trees and silvery poplars. We pass a quiet chateau with a verandah and terraced front. It was the Prince's residence before he built his palace, and it is now used as a summer retreat by his son. The furniture is simple and handsome, and there is a beautiful view from the windows. A Russian servant (the only one we saw about the place) readily showed us over the premises.

"From Aloupka we continued our course by the coast as far as the village of Alushta, whence we turned off towards the north, crossing the Tchater Dagh and descending to Simpheropol. From that town we made our way to Bakshiserai, and so home to camp."

CHAPTER VII.

ERE I left the Crimea I went twice to the Alma, and examined the battle-ground. I shall reproduce my account of the excursion in the language in which it was written at the time. "The road from the plateau, on which for one long year the hopes and fears and anxieties of civilized Europe were concentrated, leads down from the ridge on which the battle of Inkerman was mainly fought to the deep ravine out of which the materials for the mansions, quays, harbours, docks, and forts of Sebastopol have been hewed. It presents a wild and desolate aspect. The graves of the slain are numerous. The slabs of oolite tower perpendicularly for several hundred feet on the right hand and the left to the verge of the elevated plateau, and rise, like great white walls of masonry, aloft from a base of huge blocks and disintegrated masses of the same substance. This ravine, deepening as it descends, falls at right angles to the valley through which the Tchernaya eats its way to the head of the Roads of Sebastopol. At the lower end of the ravine the aqueduct spans it, and then is carried on a light and handsome bridge of masonry, supported on some ten or twelve arches right across, and disappears in a tunnel through the solid{484} rock on the left-hand side. Passing underneath, through one of the arches, you find yourself by the banks of the sluggish Tchernaya, and a ride of 500 yards or so past the perpendicular cliffs, perforated with caves, which bound the margin of the valley, leads you to the causeway across the marsh towards Inkerman. An excellent wooden bridge, built by our engineers, stretches across the river, and the marsh beyond is crossed by a high causeway. At the near end are our guard-tents; and the pass is kept by the Russian and English sentries, who seem on very good terms with each other. Arrived at the end of the causeway, the cliffs of northern Inkerman are above you, and the road winds up to a ravine which leads you to their recesses. A curious chapel and monkery in the caves are visible in the face of the cliff. Embrasures are above, before, and on each side of you on entering these fastnesses. The black pupils of these dull eyes have been removed, but there is enough of the works left to show how hot and frequent they could have flashed on you in their anger. There are five batteries on various points of this ravine, and the slopes of the plateau afford many fine sites for field artillery or guns of position. The road is good. On the right, about a mile from the entrance of the ravine, are numerous deep shafts in the clay, from, which the Russians draw their supply of water. The road winds gradually upwards till it leads you to the level of the north plateau of Inkerman, just as the Quarries road took you down from the south plateau to the level of the valley of the Tchernaya, from which you are now ascending. Here is the Russian camp, at which we have so often gazed from the heights on the right of our position. It is now very much altered in appearance. The huts have been abandoned, and the men are living in a very pretty, clean, and well-kept camp of canvas, but the purlieus are very dirty, and have the usual disagreeable smell of Russian quarters. The tents are square in shape, and at the top, which tapers to a point from the side of the wall, there is a knob, gilt or painted, which gives them an air of finish. The path or streets of the camp are bordered with wild flowers and fir branches. The regiments stationed here belong to the Seventh Division, which forms the First Division of the third corps d'armée, and are, as well as I could ascertain, the 13th (Smolensko) and 14th (Politsch), and number about 6,000 men. There is a brigade of field artillery—two batteries—close to this camp, and the pieces are very well kept, and in excellent condition.

"The cantonments extend as far as the heights over the valley of the Belbek on the left-hand side, and could have contained about 18,000 men, which considerably exceeds the strength of the whole of the Seventh Division. A steep road descending from the verge of the plateau, at the point where the Russian bazaar is established, leads to the Belbek, which is crossed by two bridges. One of these is a fine, well-built new structure of wood; the other is that by which the army crossed in the flank march, and the post-house near which Sir George Cathcart took up his quarters still remains intact. The Fourth Division bivouacked here the night{485} before we entered Balaklava, when Lord Raglan slept at Traktir, on the Tchernaya, and Sir George was very uneasy, on account of his isolated position, separated, as he was, from the rest of the army, and believing that a body of Russians intervened between them. It was from this that General Windham rode with despatches to the Katcha, anticipating Commander Maxse's arrival from the Tchernaya by more than half an hour, and from this neighbourhood the army turned towards Mackenzie. Lord Raglan reconnoitred Sebastopol from a hillock close to the road on the right, a short time before we fell in with the rear-guard and baggage of the enemy. The village of the Belbek is greatly changed since then—the trees have been cut down, and the valley, once so beautiful, blooms no more. The villas have been used as hospitals, and there are many Russian graves, marked with black wooden crosses, in the neighbouring ravines. From this valley you ascend another steep hill to the top of the plateau which lies between it and the valley of the Katcha. The ground is covered with dwarf trees and thick brushwood, full of lizards and small birds, which are persecuted by numerous falcons and hawks. There are patches of naked ground and ashes scattered over the plateau, which show where parties of the enemy were encamped; but the country is not suited for large bodies of men, as water is not to be had except at the rivers. The plateau is intersected by numerous woody ravines, and the tracks followed by the allied armies are plainly visible. They have been much used by the Russians.

"A ride of three-quarters of an hour takes us to the valley of the Katcha, still beautiful and rich with verdure, for this part of it is too far from the immediate operations of war, and too much out of the track from Bakshiserai, to have suffered much. The place which we approach was once the village of Eskel; it is now in ruins. The Tartar houses are pulled down or unroofed; the population have fled; and the Russian houses are just as they were left by the Cossacks on our approach after the Alma. The church gleams brightly through the dense branches of the fruit-trees, which are covered with blossoms, but the large tracts of vineyards which welcomed us nearly three years ago, are now uncultivated. The Doctor's house is in a sad plight—one of the first we entered after the Alma—and is still the picture of neglect and ruin. Lord Raglan's comfortable residence is in the custody of an old Tartar, who shows the broken furniture, the sofas ripped open, the chairs smashed, and the beds cut up, with great pride, and leads one to infer pretty plainly that Ruskie did all the mischief. It was at this village that the Russians halted to recover breath after their headlong flight from the Alma, and from it they fled the same night in panic on the cry being raised that the Allies were coming.

"The Katcha is a deep narrow stream with rotten banks, and some people think it would have afforded a better position than the Alma; but, in fact, it is too near Sebastopol. We found a few Russian soldiers in the houses; and on the first occasion it happened to be the Greek Easter Sunday, and we were most{486} hospitably entertained by a poor Russian family, who insisted on our partaking of painted eggs, of salt pork steeped in vinegar, and cabbage, of brown bread, butter, vodka, or white home-made brandy, and Crim tobacco, and then on embracing us because we were Christians—a severe punishment, which, if often repeated, might lead to recantation. Crossing the Katcha by the bridge over which our army filed into Eskel, we find ourselves on the steppe—the dry barren plain studded with tumuli, which extends in wavy folds right away to Perekop. At this season of the year it is glorious with large beds of wild flowers, sweet-pea, roses, mignonette, thyme, orchids of all kinds, sweet-william, and many other varieties, whose tame and developed species are the ornaments of our gardens at home; it is musical, too, with the song of birds singing to their mates in the nest; but in September it is an arid, scorched waste, covered with coarse hay, and as it is devoid of water, it is unfit for pasturage. The ride to the Alma from the Katcha is not more than eight miles, but it seems twice the distance. The white telegraph station over the river, which stood on the Russian left, can be seen for many miles on a clear day, but on the steppe mirage is very common, and the horizon is rarely well defined. It is often lost in a fantastic margin resembling the sealine of an agitated ocean. Bustards, on the qui vive about their young ones, soar slowly before us, and eagles, vultures, and many species of falcons are visible in pursuit of their prey, which must consist for the most part of hares, which are very large and numerous. Some of these hares have been found to weigh ten or twelve pounds, and I have heard of a monster who turned the scale at fourteen pounds. In one of the hollows in the steppe, about three miles from the Alma, there is a small hamlet, but, with this exception, not a habitation is visible over the whole of this vast expanse of land. It is famous ground for a long canter, or as much of a gallop as your horse will stand; so with the help of an occasional scurry after a hare the distance melts away, and as we go crashing through the sweet flowers, the telegraph rises higher and clearer till we pull up at the foot of the mound on which it stands. This was the scene of a fierce struggle, and it was here the French had some really hard fighting before they forced the enemy to fly.

"The telegraph is a quadrilateral figure of white stone, and it has never been finished. It is covered with names; and one side is engraved 'La Bataille d'Alma, 8 Septembre.' The French had put the right date, the 20th; but the Russians obliterated it, and altered it to their own style. There are fifteen large sepulchral mounds around the telegraph, wherein lie French and Russians, and the ravines are still full of bones, and of fragments of clothing and accoutrements. Cannon-shot appear to have been carefully removed. There is an excellent view of the French position and attack from the edge of the plateau. The enemy must have had every movement of the Allies under their eyes from the time they left Bouljanak till they halted to form for battle; and the spectacle could not have been one to have given them much courage, or to have inflamed their ardour. The Russians declare they had only{487} 33,000 or 34,000 on the field; but, admitting that to be so, they made a bad fight, considering the position they occupied, and their cavalry exhibited that passive and unenterprising character which it maintained throughout the war. An officer of the old Pestal regiment told me that he charged our first attacking body when they were checked with the bayonet, and that if all the troops inside and on the flanks of the redoubts had rushed out simultaneously, the day would have been lost to us; but he was rather surprised when he heard that our Third and Fourth Divisions were still intact, and that the Guards, whom he supposed to have been routed, were never broken except in the centre, where the Scots Fusiliers wavered for a time in their advance under the heavy fire of the Russians and the pressure of the disjointed groups of the Light Division. The French are disposed to think that the English were too slow in beginning the attack, which it was agreed should not take place till our allies had gained the left of the Russian position. It is certain that Lord Raglan received one, if not two, pressing messages from Marshal St. Arnaud to hasten his columns: but one may ask how it was that here, as everywhere else, the honour of taking the initiative was ceded to our allies, and the opportunity given to them of saying 'The English were too late.' They only numbered 23,000, whereas we had 27,000. If it resulted from their position on our right, why did they take the left when we halted before Sebastopol?

"The assaults on the place were made on the same principle—the French first, the English afterwards; and, whether it be true or false that we were 'too late,' there can be no doubt there was from the beginning a tendency to say so. It is beyond question, in the opinion of many officers, that the Light Division were not followed closely enough by the First in their advance up the hill at the Alma. In other words, the latter were too slow or 'too late.' The French did their part admirably, and their intelligence and personal activity were wonderfully displayed in their progress up the steep ravines and sides of the high banks of the plateau, but their loss in killed and wounded was under 700 men, while ours was just 2,000. The Admiral Bouet Willaumez, in his recent so-called 'History of the French Navy,' distinctly avers that the English General would not permit the victory to be followed up by marching next day, and that the French were retarded by their allies. A different impression prevails in our army; but this is one of the points which must be cleared up for history by those who were in the confidence of Lord Raglan. The statement, at all events, shows what was the belief of the chef d'état major of the French navy in the Black Sea. Of the necessity and of the motives for the delay, of its results, of the practicability of getting such aid from the fleet as would have relieved us entirely from the charge of sick, wounded, and prisoners, I shall not speak; but it is to be remarked that the feebleness and imbecility of our arrangements in this portion of our administration became apparent at the very first pressure by the abandonment of our ambulances just at the very time they were most needed, by the disgraceful exhi{488}bition of the Kangaroo crowded with sick and wounded till she had to make the signal that she was unmanageable and unsafe in the sight of the whole fleet, by the sufferings of her miserable cargo, left to the charge of one surgeon, who could not attend to a tithe of his patients, and who could not even get at them if he could have dressed their wounds, and by the foolish and cruel expedient of leaving another surgeon, Dr. Thompson, and his servant on the field to take care of 700 wounded men. Dr. Thompson felt the hopelessness and positive cruelty of such a proceeding, and remonstrated against it, but he was told it had been 'ordered,' and that if the 'Cossacks' came down his 'professional character' would protect him.

"The battle of the Alma was one of the most brilliant in the world—the shortest and sharpest, and our army, young in action, but veteran in service, displayed the best qualities of British infantry. We have since heard of the incredulity, of the dismay, with which the news was received in St. Petersburg, and of the subsequent eagerness of the Russian army to avenge the defeat and to hurry to the Crimea, to drive the Allies into the sea. They found a barrier they could not break at Inkerman; but they are a people prone to put faith in their own invincibility, and slow to credit defeat. They believe in themselves yet. The position of the Alma is so well marked that it can never be mistaken by any future visitors. The French attacked the steep and almost perpendicular cliffs, which are broken here and there by ravines which mount upwards from the river. Their columns were divided from our regiments by the most marked and extensive of those ravines, and eastward of that boundary the whole of the ground suddenly falls, and, instead of rising abruptly from the Alma, gains the high level of the hills by a series of sweeping undulations, offering many positions for guns, with extensive glacis to the front.

"Descending from the plateau, some of our party crossed the bridge, and went out on the plain towards Bouljanak to the tumuli which stud the plains, and which denote the extreme range of the Russian guns. On turning round towards the south, the eye takes in the whole scene of battle, from the sea on the right to the low slopes which formed the right of the Russian position. Their left was separated from their right by a deep ravine running at right angles toward the Alma, and this ravine also is the boundary between the high and steep cliffs which, on the south bank, overhang the tortuous course of the Alma from the ford to the sea, and the gentler rising grounds on which the enemy's left lay, strengthened by the epaulements and by the mass of the Russian artillery. It will then be seen how the Russian left depended on the nature of the ground as its best defence, and what a fatal mistake Menschikoff committed when he omitted to take into consideration the effect of the fire of the ships. That fire soon drove back their left, and forced it to reform on the centre, which it put into confusion, and the French, ascending by the ravines with the utmost courage and activity, made good their footing on the right and turned the Russian left completely, with comparatively little loss.{489} The advance of our allies was covered to a great extent by the thick foliage on the banks of the Alma, and the cliffs are so high and rotten that the enemy's guns could not be used with success against them. The course of the river is much further from the base of these cliffs than it is from the slopes on the Russian right, where the British attacked, so that it would be scarcely commanded by guns on the top of the plateau; whereas, we were under fire for several hundred yards before we reached the Alma at all.

"A mound, composed of fifteen graves, at the distance of 400 or 500 yards from the river on its north side, denotes the resting-place of those who fell before the army crossed the stream, or who died after the fight in the ambulances. The road by which we advanced to the bridge was just as it was on the 20th of September, and on the right, close to the stream, were the blackened ruins of the village of Bourliouk. It will be remembered that the enemy partially destroyed the bridge, but that it was repaired during the action by the Royal Engineers and a party of Sappers and Miners. The bridge has been substantially rebuilt, by means of a strong wooden way thrown across the stone arches, and supported by beams and uprights. The old post-house, on the right of the road before you come to the bridge, was about being reconstructed, and a guard of soldiers were lodged in its ruins. It will be, to all appearances, a handsome house of fine white freestone when it is finished. I surveyed its ruins with peculiar interest, for I know a person very intimately who took shelter in this house, part of which was on fire, to get out of a fire still hotter, till he was driven out by a shell falling through the roof, and it was at the wall outside, which was yet torn by shot, that I met the first two wounded officers I saw that day—two officers of the 30th, one hit through the chest or side; the other wounded, I think, in the leg or arm. They were helping each other from the river, bleeding and weak, and I was fortunate enough to be able to bring to their aid a Staff surgeon, belonging, I believe, to the Cavalry Division, who kindly examined their wounds under fire. Close to this I had previously seen the first man killed—a drummer, who was carrying a litter, and who was struck by a round shot which bowled slowly along the road and hit him, with a peculiar squashing sound, on the hip. He fell, and never moved; nor did his comrade, who was carrying the other end of the litter, stop to mourn over his death.

"After the intrepid rush of the Light Division up the hill, its wavering, its broken and unwilling halt, the bold advance of Pennefather's Brigade, and the billow-like march of the Guards, I pressed on immediately in the rear of the Light, and in front of the Third Division, and I was able to warn Colonel Waddy, as he approached at the head of the 50th, that he was moving right along the line of fire of the enemy's guns, and, as there was a very conclusive proof given of the correctness of the statement just as I spoke, that gallant officer moved off his men, who were in dense column, a little to the left, and got off the road to the fields. All these things and many more came back upon me as I looked{490} around. I could recall that narrow road filled with dead and dying—old friends jesting at scars and wounds, and exulting in victory, and awaiting with patience the arrival of men to carry them away to the surgeons—a white-haired field-officer (of the 55th), whose name I don't know, badly wounded through the body, who could only moan bitterly, 'Oh, my poor men! oh, my poor men! they hadn't a chance;' then the river stained here and there with blood, still flowing from the dead and dying who lay on the shallows and the banks, lined nevertheless by hundreds, who drank its waters eagerly; the horrid procession of the dripping litters going to the rear of the fight; the solid mass of Adams' brigade, halted by Lord Raglan's orders as it emerged from the smoke of Bourliouk: the Staff itself and the Commander-in-Chief, gathered on the rising ground close by; that ghastly battle-field where so many lay in so small a place putrescent with heat and wounds; the grey blocks of Russians melting away like clouds, and drifted off by the fierce breath of battle; the shriek and rush of the shells from the brass howitzers in the battery, the patter of the rifle, the rattling roll of the musketry, the frantic cheers of our men as they stood victors on the heights, drowning the groans and cries which for a moment succeeded the roar of battle; the shrill flourish of the French bugles, and the joyous clamour of their drums from the other side of the ravine—all came back upon the ear again, and the eye renewed its pleasure as it gazed from the ridge upon the plain where it had before seen the Russians flying in disorder, with their rear still covered by the threatening squadrons of their cavalry. Then one recalled the spot where one had seen some friend lying dead, or some one—friend or foe—whom it were no mercy to strive to keep alive. Watkin Wynn, stretched on the ground in front of the trench, with a smile on his face—Chester, with a scornful frown, and his sword clenched in the death grasp—Monck, with the anger of battle fixed on every feature—these and many another friend in the peaceful camp of Aladyn or Devno rose up as they lived in the memory. The scowling Russians who glared so fiercely on their conquerors and seemed to hate them even as they supplied their wants, then seen for the first time, left an impression respecting the type of the Muscovite character which has scarcely been effaced now that they have ceased to be enemies. I recalled the two days passed as no army ought to pass two days—on the field of battle amid the dead—the horrid labours of those hours of despondency and grief where all should have been triumph and rejoicing, and the awakened vigour with which the army broke from its bivouac on the Alma and set out with no certain aim, no fixed project, on its chance march which fate made successful.

"The intrenchment can be distinctly seen for a mile north of the river. It is placed half-way down the slope of the little hill-side. There were no other works, trenches, redoubts, or field-works of any description except one more epaulement and a few sods of earth turned up to afford cover to a few skirmishers; and all the accounts of such defences filled with riflemen and guns which have been{491} made public were erroneous. The enemy had very few riflemen, and the ground, except on the extreme left, was of such a nature that good cover for guns could be had for the seeking. For many years to come the battle-field is likely to remain as it is now, the only difference being that the vines which flourished on the 20th of September, 1854, and which are now destroyed, may be cultivated once more. On ascending from the river towards the intrenchment, you find yourself on the left completely covered by a rise of the hill in front from the parapet, so that men could form in this hollow for the attack, without being exposed to fire; but the Russians, aware of this, sent down on their extreme right large bodies of infantry, who fired at the Left Brigade of the Light Division as they were trying to get into order after crossing the river.

"On the right, nearer to the bridge, the ground is more exposed to guns from the parapet of the trench, and on advancing a few yards the fair open glacis, gently sloping upwards to their muzzles, gives a terrible solution of the reason why for a time the Light Division was held in check, and lost in a few moments upwards of 1,000 men. At the base of this glacis, and scattered along the ridge towards the river, are mounds of earth about thirty feet long by fifteen in breadth, which are covered with large stones and slabs of slate. There are fifteen or sixteen of these mounds, and many of them contain the remains of friends and foes. Some small black wooden crosses are placed here and there among these mounds, which rise to the height of two or three feet above the level of the plain, and are all covered with rank vegetation and wild flowers. The parapet of the work is still about three feet outside, and a foot deeper in the trench inside. Near the centre is placed a handsome monument of white stone, with the following inscription:—

"In the ditch of the field-work there are about twenty large graves covered with long grass and wild flowers. The trench is about 150 yards long, and it is filled with earth which has tumbled down into it from the parapet; the traces of the embrasures still remain. There are two stone crosses erected inside the trench on heaps of dead. This was all that remained to betoken the scene of the action on our side, except a few pieces of threadbare rags and bits of accoutrements, leathern straps, old shakos, and fragments of cowhide knapsacks. Some miserable Tartars prowled about the ruins of Bourliouk to act as unintelligible guides, and to pick up the{492} fragments left after the river-side meal of the visitors. Starting at six o'clock A.M. from Sebastopol, one can go to the Alma, spend, three hours there, and return to the city or to Balaklava by dinner-time on a good horse. It is under fifty miles. The last time I was there I threw a fly over the waters, having heard that there were trout in the stream, but only a few 'logger-headed chub' and a kind of dace, responded to the effort. And so I take leave of this little river, which shall henceforth be celebrated in history to the end of time."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE departure of General della Marmora and the Sardinian Staff, which occurred on Monday, 19th May, was the signal for strong demonstrations of the regard and esteem in which they were held by our army. The ships in harbour hoisted the Sardinian flag, the Leander manned yards, and the General set his foot on the deck of the vessel which was to bear him home amid enthusiastic cheers. The good feeling which existed between the Sardinians and the allies was never marred for one moment by untoward jealousies or rivalry; more especially were they ever on terms of friendship with the English, although their knowledge of French gave them greater facilities for communicating with our allies. The position at Fedukhine brought them into constant contact with French and Highland Brigades, and they left behind many kindly remembrances. In all my rambles I rarely, if ever, saw a drunken Sardinian; their behaviour in camp, in the canteens, at Kadikoi, and on the roads was exemplary.

The English Commander-in-Chief issued the following General After-Order:—

As we were about to part, our anxiety to learn more of our late foes increased. The Russians surveyed our camps, we visited their hospitals, studied their commissariat, inquired into their military system, and inspected their positions; our engineers minutely examined the works of our allies, with which they were necessarily but slightly acquainted during the progress of the attack.

The approaches to the place afforded no opportunity to our English engineers of developing the use of mines. We were never sufficiently near to the Redan, and our works were not assailable by the same agency for the same reason. The French system of mines in front of the Bastion du Mât presented a most astonishing display of labour and skill. To the Russians, however, belonged the credit of performing the most extensive operations. The enemy's mines consisted of two series of galleries and magazines, the first being twenty-seven feet below the surface, the second being forty feet below the first. The workmen were supplied with air by means of force-pumps. In one magazine at the end of one of the galleries there was found 8,500 lbs. of powder, all tamped in and ready for firing by electric wires. This magazine would have formed an étonnoir far in the rear of the French advance; and the explosion was intended to destroy not only the French parallels, but the works of the Bastion du Mât itself, so as to prevent the French turning the guns. The destruction of the docks was effected by a smaller quantity of gunpowder. The Russians intended to fire some of these mines in case of an assault on the Bastion being repulsed under circumstances which gave them a chance of occupying the enemy's advanced saps; others would only have been fired in case of a retreat from the city, in order to destroy as many of the enemy as possible and to check pursuit. There were two or three mines inside the Redan, and there were some extensive galleries and mines in front of the Malakoff, but it was at the Bastion du Mât, or Flagstaff Battery, that the French and Russians put forth their strength in mine and countermine. The galleries were pushed for fifty yards oftentimes through the solid rock. These labours were of the most stupendous character, and must have proved very exhausting to the garrison. Many of the shafts sprang out of the counterscarp, there were numerous chambers cut into the ditch of the bastion, which were used as bombproofs. It was also discovered that the Russians had cut a subterranean gallery from inside the parapet, under the ditch, to an advanced work which they used as a place d'armes in making sorties, and the French, who had been puzzled to understand how the men used to collect in this work without being seen, now perceived the modus operandi.{494}

The effect produced by the French mines could only be conceived by those who looked down the yawning craters of the étonnoirs, the wild chaos of rocks cast up all around by the explosion, as though Titans and Gods had met there in deadly combat. Some of these gulfs resembled the pits of volcanoes.

The British army, relieved from the pressure of military duties, and warned of their approaching departure, laboured, regiment by regiment, for many long weeks, to erect memorials to the comrades whose remains would be left behind. The works of this nature, which the hasty embarkation did not permit the army to complete, were undertaken by the few skilled soldier-labourers belonging to us. The Chersonese from Balaklava to the verge of the roadstead of Sebastopol was covered with isolated graves, with large burial-grounds, and detached cemeteries. Ravine and plain—hill and hollow—the roadside and secluded valley—for miles around, from the sea to the Tchernaya, presented those stark-white stones, singly or in groups, stuck upright in the arid soil, or just peering over the rank vegetation which sprang beneath.[36]

The French formed one large cemetery. The Sardinians erected a pedestal and obelisk of stone on the heights of Balaklava, close to their hospital, to the memory of General della Marmora and of their departed comrades; we erected similar monuments on the heights of Inkerman and on the plain of Balaklava to commemorate the 5th of November and the 25th of October.

A tour made by Major Hammersley, Captain Brooke, and Mr. St. Clair in the north of the Crimea demonstrated the enormous difficulties experienced by the Russians in maintaining their position. It satisfied every one, that if the Allies had advanced after the 8th of September, and followed the enemy, the Russian army of the South must have surrendered, and Cherson, Berislaff, Nicholaieff, and Odessa would have been seriously menaced. All the north side, its guns, its garrison, all the matériel, all the provisions and magazines of Bakshiserai and Simpheropol, must have fallen into our hands, and about 60,000 or 70,000 men. "But why so?" some one will ask. "Could they not have got away?" Most certainly not. There are but two outlets from the Crimea; the first is by the isthmus at Perekop, the second is by the bridge over the Putrid Sea at Tchongar. The approaches to these outlets lie over waterless, foodless plateaux, broken up by deep salt lakes. The wells, which yield a scanty supply of disagreeable water, are profound pits, of which the shallowest is 100 feet, and many are as deep as 150 to 250 feet. They are scattered over the country very sparsely, and they contain but little water. Under such circumstances, the Russians were obliged to send in their reinforcements by driblets, to carry water whenever they wanted to push on a single regiment. It would have been impossible for them to have marched a body of 5,000 or 6,000 men by either of those routes in dry weather. Imagine how helpless would have been{495} the position of an army of 70,000 or 80,000 men of all arms, hemmed in by this salt prairie, and by the waters of the Sivash, under a burning sun, and pressed by a victorious enemy. They could not have marched, nor, if they had once got away, could we have pursued; but no General in his senses would have risked the entire destruction of his army by retreating under circumstances like those from the south of the Crimea; and the Russians confessed their position was hopeless had they been attacked and beaten at any point along the line.

When our travellers arrived at Perekop, they observed that the defences consisted of redoubts directed against an advance from Russia Proper, and not from the south of the Crimea; they made a similar discovery at Tchongar, where the tête-de-pont was strongly fortified towards the north, and was open towards the south. These works were mostly thrown up at the time of the Kinburn expedition, which the Russians very naturally believed to be the precursor of an immediate operation against the Crimea, to which they looked with very great apprehension.

General Von Wrangel received them with much hospitality and kindness at Perekop. The old Tartar citadel and the remains of a wall and parapet were visible; but the defences of the place were very weak; water was very scarce, and very bad; but the climate is healthy, except when the wind blows across the Sivash. No less than 25,000 men died of sickness at and near Perekop. There were large hospitals and ambulances, but they were far too small for the demands upon them, and many convoys had to be sent on to Cherson, Berislaff and Nicholaieff. At Tchongar the tourists were refused permission to pass the bridge, and that refusal was confirmed by the General commanding at Genitchi, to whom they applied to rescind the decision of his subordinate. They examined the bridge, however, and found it was well and substantially built of wood. The waters of the Sivash are as clear as crystal, and are so intensely bitter that no fish frequent them except small flounders. The bottom consists of a stratum of fine shells, of two or three inches in thickness, just sufficient to bear a man treading lightly upon it, but if one presses with all his weight this crust breaks, and up rushes black mud and stinking gas, probably sulphuretted hydrogen.

The banks are high and steep, and all the way from Genitchi to the bridge of Tchongar, in the centre of the stream, there is a channel, about nine feet deep. This sea presents the curious phenomenon of a steady current running from Genitchi west to Perekop, where there is no outlet whatever, so that there must be an under current out again, or, as the natives believe, a prodigious evaporation on the shoals at the extremity of the sea. The salt lakes are very conspicuous features in the desolate scenery of Northern Crimea. They are surrounded by very high precipitous banks; and the waters seem black from their great depth. One of these, Lake Veliki, is connected with Perekop by the line of redoubts, seven in number, recently constructed. Wherever these abound, fresh water is rare, and the wells are deep. Each village{496} has about two wells, and the supply is so small that it would take a day at any one station to water a regiment of cavalry. In the south there is abundance of fresh water, of blooming valleys, of fruit, corn, vines, and forest trees; but for the cultivation and growth of these Russia is mainly indebted to the industrious German colonists. Kronthal, Neusatz, Friedenthal, Rosenthal, Zurichthal, Heilbronn, and other villages founded by these industrious people, are patterns of neatness and frugal comfort. Most of the emigrants came from Wurtemburg, and they spoke fondly of "fatherland." The Russians gave them small ground for complaint. They are exempt from all military service for 100 years, and their only tribute to the State is a capitation-tax of twenty silver roubles, which they are in general well able to pay. Another interesting point visited was the Fortress of Arabat, which was bombarded for several hours by the Allied squadron. The fact is, however, that not only was little or no harm done to the fortress, but that the Russians claim it as a victory, and have promoted the officer who commanded for "beating off the Allied fleet." Such will always be the result of an attack by sea on any land-defences so long as the enemy retain one gun to fire when the attack has ceased.

The Spit of Arabat was very little used at any time, and a curious instance of the ignorance of chart-makers was discovered on referring to the sites of wells marked on the maps. There were no wells, for the simple reason that they were not required. The water of the Sea of Azoff close to the Spit is quite fresh, and can be drunk with safety by man or beast.

Vast as the population of Russia is in the aggregate, the extent of her territory is such that, in the state of her internal communication, it was difficult for her to concentrate troops, notwithstanding the conscription and compulsory levies. Towards the end of the war, Sebastopol swallowed up her armies by whole divisions, a battalion a day was engulfed in the yawning craters of our shells. The march of a regiment through a country such as has been described was as fatal as a battle, and it was customary to estimate the reduction in strength caused by moving from Odessa to Sebastopol at 35 per cent. During the worst days of its trials the Russian army in the Crimea lost 500 men a day! This did not include casualties caused in the siege. The attention of their medical men was directed to the enormous losses of their army, and to its extreme unhealthiness in campaigns; and a Board, consisting of a few of their most eminent men, made minute inquiries into the medical administration of the Allied armies. They were greatly impressed with what they saw at Balaklava, and one of them exclaimed, "We heard you were prepared for a three years' war; we find you are ready for twenty."

The uttermost efforts were made by the Allies to remove the stores and matériel accumulated on the plateau, and to embark the troops for their different destinations, but so vast was the mass of warlike necessaries, and so large the force congregated in the Crimea, that it was not till July they had so far succeeded as to be{497} able to name a day for the formal cession of the last position held by them on Russian soil. On the 12th of July the 50th Regiment furnished a rear-guard which was posted outside Balaklava to await the Russian officer who was to take over charge of the town. He came across the plain with 50 Cossacks, and the two parties saluted and then returned to the town, where the Russians posted their sentries, and the English troops embarked on board H.M.S. Algiers. The General in command of the British forces, Sir W. Codrington, and his staff left the Crimea at the same time.

During the expedition the English lost—killed in action and died of wounds, 3,500; died of cholera, 4,244; of other diseases nearly 16,000;—total (including 270 officers), 24,000; 2,873 officers and men were disabled. The French loss was estimated at 63,500 men, killed in action or died in camps. The loss of the Russians was estimated as high as 500,000. The war added to the National Debt £41,041,000.

FINIS.

{498}

{499}

CATHCART'S HILL

(1856.)

In times to come this Cathcart's Hill will be a chosen terminus of Saxon pilgrimage. Whether the traveller beholds from its humble parapet the fair aspect of the Imperial city, guarded by threefold mightier batteries than before, or sits upon the Cemetery wall to gaze upon the ruins of Sebastopol, he must, if he has any British blood in his veins, regard with emotion that little spot which encloses all that was mortal of some of the noblest soldiers that ever sprang from our warrior race. He will see the site of those tedious trenches where the strong man waxed weak day after day, and the sanguine became hopeless, and where the British soldier fought through a terrible winter with privation, cold, frost, snow, and rain, more terrible and deadly than the fire of the enemy. With the Redan, the Malakoff, the Quarries, the Mamelon, Gordon's Attack, Chapman's Attack, under his eyes, he will revive with the aspect of the places where they stood the memories of this great struggle, and in his mind the incidents of its history will be renewed.

The Cemetery is a parallelogram of about forty yards long by thirty broad, formed by the base of a ruined wall, which might in former days have marked the lines of a Tartar fort, or have been the first Russian redoubt to watch over the infancy of Sebastopol. Although many a humble tumulus indicated to the eye of affection the place where some beloved comrade rests till the last reveillée, the care and love of friends had left memorials in solid stone of most of those whose remains were buried in this spot. The first grave towards the front and west of the Cemetery consisted of a simple mound of earth. I know not whose remains lie below. The second was marked by a simple slab, with the following inscription:—"Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant H. Tryon, Rifle Brigade, killed in action on the 20th of November, 1854." He was a thorough soldier, brave, cool, and resolute, and in the terrible crisis of Inkerman he used a rifle with more deadly certainty and success than any of his men. In the struggle for the "Ovens" on the 20th of November, in which a small body of the Rifle Brigade dislodged a force of the enemy much greater than their own, he displayed such gallantry that General Canrobert paid him the rare honour of a special mention in the next "General Order of the Day" for the French army. Next to his reposed the remains of a lamented officer. The stone recorded his name, "Sacred to the memory of Brigadier-General Thomas Leigh Goldie, commanding the first Brigade of the 4th Division of the British army, Lieutenant-Colonel of the 57th Regiment, who fell at Inkerman, November 5, 1854." No. 4 was a rude cross of stone, without mark or name. The fifth grave was distinguished by a stone cross at the feet, and at the head was a slab with an ornamental top, beneath which was written, "Sacred to the memory of Brigadier-General Fox Strangways, killed in action November 5, 1854." A few lines in Russian asked the Christian forbearance of our enemies upon our departure for the bones of one whom they would have admired and loved had they known him. No. 6 was conspicuous by a large tombstone, with an ornamental cross at the top, and some simple efforts at the chisel at the sides and base. Come and read! "Here lieth the mortal remains of Captain Edward Stanley, 57th Regiment, killed at the battle of Inkerman, November 5, 1854, to whose memory this stone is erected by the men of his company—'Cast down but not destroyed,' 2 Corinthians, iv. 9." Who will not look with respect on the tombs of{500} these poor soldiers, and who does not feel envy for the lot of men so honoured? There were fourteen other graves in the same row, of which only one could be identified.

Sir George Cathcart's resting-place was marked by a very fine monument, for which his widow expressed her thanks to those who raised it to the memory of their beloved commander. There was an inscription upon it commemorating the General's services, and the fact that he served with the Russian armies in one of their most memorable campaigns—the date of his untimely and glorious death, and an inscription in the Russian language stating who and what he was who reposed beneath. In the second row to the east there were two graves, without any inscription on the stones; the third was marked by a very handsome circular pillar of hewn stone, surmounted by a cross, and placed upon two horizontal slabs. On the pillar below the cross in front was this inscription: "To Lieutenant-Colonel C. F. Seymour, Scots Fusileer Guards, killed in action, November 5, 1854." Beneath these words were a cross sculptured in the stone, and the letters "I.H.S.;" and a Russian inscription on the back, requesting that the tomb might be saved from desecration. At the foot of the tomb there was an elaborately carved stone lozenge surmounting a slab, and on the lozenge was engraved the crest of the deceased, with some heraldic bird springing from the base of a coronet, with the legend "Foy pour devoir, C.F.S. Æt. 36." How many an absent friend would have mourned around this tomb! Close at hand was a handsome monument to Sir John Campbell, than whom no soldier was ever more regretted or more beloved by those serving under him; and not far apart in another row was a magnificent sarcophagus in black Devonshire marble, to the memory of Sir R. Newman, of the Grenadier Guards, who also fell at Inkerman. With all these memorials of death behind us, the front wall at Cathcart's Hill was ever a favourite spot for gossips and spectators, and sayers of jokes, and raconteurs of bons mots or such jeux d'esprit as find favour in military circles.{501}

APPENDIX.

DISPATCHES AND DOCUMENTS.

THE LANDING IN THE CRIMEA.

Lord Raglan To the Duke of Newcastle.

(Received September 30.)

Camp Above Old Fort Bay, September 18, 1854.

My Lord Duke,—I do myself the honour to acquaint your Grace that the combined fleets and their convoys appeared in the Bay of Eupatoria on the 13th instant, and in the course of the following night proceeded some miles to the southward, where the Allied Armies commenced disembarking early in the morning of the 14th,—the French in the bay below Old Fort, the English in the next bay nearer to Eupatoria,—and before dark the whole of the British infantry and some artillery, and most of the French troops were on shore.

Shortly before dark, the weather unfortunately changed, and it became hazardous to attempt to continue landing either troops or guns.

The surf on the beach impeded the operation the following morning; and since, on more than one occasion; but thanks to the great exertions of the Navy, under the able and active superintendence of Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, who was charged with the whole arrangement, every obstacle has been overcome, and I am now enabled to report to your Grace that the disembarkations have been completed.

I should not do justice to my own feelings, or to those of the troops I have the honour to command, if I did not prominently bring to the knowledge of your Grace the deep sense entertained by all, of the invaluable services rendered by Her Majesty's Navy.

The spirit by which both officers and men were animated, made them regardless of danger, of fatigue, and indeed of every consideration but that of performing an arduous and important duty; and that duty they discharged to the admiration of all who had the good fortune to witness their unceasing efforts to land horses and carriages, with the utmost expedition and safety, under frequently the most trying circumstances.

I have, &c.,
(Signed) Raglan.

{502}

LORD RAGLAN'S DESPATCH AS TO THE BATTLE OF
THE ALMA.

Lord Raglan To the Duke of Newcastle.

(Received October 8.)

Head-quarters, Katscha River, September 23, 1854.

My Lord Duke,—I have the honour to inform your Grace that the Allied Troops attacked the position occupied by the Russian Army, behind the Alma, on the 20th instant; and I have great satisfaction in adding that they succeeded, in less than three hours, in driving the enemy from every part of the ground which they had held in the morning, and in establishing themselves upon it.

The English and French Armies moved out of their first encampment in the Crimea on the 19th, and bivouacked for the night on the left bank of the Bulganac, the former having previously supported the advance of a part of the Earl of Cardigan's brigade of light cavalry, which had the effect of inducing the enemy to move up a large body of Dragoons and Cosaques, with artillery.

On this, the first occasion of the English encountering the Russian force, it was impossible for any troops to exhibit more steadiness than did this portion of Her Majesty's cavalry.

It fell back upon its supports with the most perfect regularity under the fire of the artillery, which was quickly silenced by that of the batteries I caused to be brought into action.

Our loss amounted to only four men wounded.

The day's march had been most wearisome, and under a burning sun the absence of water, until we reached the insignificant but welcome stream of the Bulganac, made it to be severely felt.

Both armies moved towards the Alma the following morning, and it was arranged that Marshal St. Arnaud should assail the enemy's left by crossing the river at its junction with the sea, and immediately above it, and that the remainder of the French divisions should move up the heights in their front, whilst the English Army should attack the right and centre of the enemy's position.

In order that the gallantry exhibited by Her Majesty's troops, and the difficulties they had to meet, may be fairly estimated, I deem it right, even at the risk of being considered tedious, to endeavour to make your Grace acquainted with the position the Russians had taken up.

It crossed the great road about two miles and a half from the sea, and is very strong by nature.

The bold and almost precipitous range of heights, of from 350 to 400 feet, that from the sea closely border the left bank of the river, here ceases and formed their left, and turning thence round a great amphitheatre or wide valley, terminates at a salient pinnacle where their right rested, and whence the descent to the plain was more gradual. The front was about two miles in extent.

Across the mouth of this great opening is a lower ridge at different heights, varying from 60 to 150 feet, parallel to the river, and at distances from it of from 600 to 800 yards.

The river itself is generally fordable for troops, but its banks are extremely rugged, and in most parts steep; the willows along it had been cut down, in order to prevent them from affording cover to the attacking{503} party, and in fact everything had been done to deprive an assailant of any species of shelter.

In front of the position on the right bank, at about 200 yards from the Alma, is the village of Bouliouk, and near it a timber bridge, which had been partly destroyed by the enemy.

The high pinnacle and ridge before alluded to was the key of the position, and consequently, there the greatest preparations had been made for defence.

Half way down the height, and across its front, was a trench of the extent of some hundred yards, to afford cover against an advance up the even steep slope of the hill. On the right, and a little retired, was a powerful covered battery, armed with heavy guns, which flanked the whole of the right of the position.

Artillery, at the same time, was posted at the points that best commanded the passage of the river and its approaches generally.

On the slopes of these hills (forming a sort of table land) were placed dense masses of the enemy's infantry, whilst on the heights above was his great reserve, the whole amounting, it is supposed, to between 45,000 and 50,000 men.

The combined armies advanced on the same alignement, Her Majesty's troops in contiguous double columns, with the front of two divisions covered by light infantry and a troop of horse artillery; the 2nd Division, under Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans, forming the right, and touching the left of the 3rd Division of the French Army, under His Imperial Highness Prince Napoleon, and the Light Division, under Lieutenant-General Sir George Brown, the left; the first being supported by the 3rd Division, under Lieutenant-General Sir Richard England, and the last by the 1st Division, commanded by Lieutenant-General His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge.

The 4th Division, under Lieutenant-General Sir George Cathcart, and the cavalry under Major-General the Earl of Lucan, were held in reserve to protect the left flank and rear against large bodies of the enemy's cavalry, which had been seen in those directions.

On approaching to near the fire of the guns, which soon became extremely formidable, the two leading divisions deployed into line, and advanced to attack the front, and the supporting divisions followed the movement. Hardly had this taken place, when the village of Bouliouk, immediately opposite the centre, was fired by the enemy at all points, creating a continuous blaze for three hundred yards, obscuring their position, and rendering a passage through it impracticable. Two regiments of Brigadier-General Adams' brigade, part of Sir De Lacy Evans' division, had, in consequence, to pass the river at a deep and difficult ford to the right under a sharp fire, whilst his first brigade, under Major-General Pennefather, and the remaining regiment of Brigadier-General Adams, crossed to the left of the conflagration, opposed by the enemy's artillery from the heights above, and pressed on towards the left of their position with the utmost gallantry and steadiness.

In the meanwhile, the Light Division, under Sir George Brown, effected the passage of the Alma in his immediate front. The banks of the river itself were, from their rugged and broken nature, most serious obstacles, and the vineyards, through which the troops had to pass, and the trees which the enemy had felled, created additional impediments, rendering every species of formation, under a galling fire, nearly an impossibility. Lieutenant-General Sir George Brown advanced against the enemy under great disadvantages.

In this difficult operation he nevertheless persevered, and the 1st Brigade, under Major-General Codrington, succeeded in carrying a redoubt,{504} materially aided by the judicious and steady manner in which Brigadier-General Buller moved on the left flank, and by the advance of four companies of the Rifle Brigade, under Major Norcott, who promises to be a distinguished officer of light troops.

The heavy fire of grape and musketry, however, to which the troops were exposed, and the losses consequently sustained by the 7th, 23rd, and 33rd Regiments, obliged this brigade partially to relinquish its hold.

By this time, however, the Duke of Cambridge had succeeded in crossing the river, and had moved up in support, and a brilliant advance of the brigade of Foot Guards, under Major-General Bentinck, drove the enemy back, and secured the final possession of the work.

The Highland Brigade, under Major-General Sir Colin Campbell, advanced in admirable order and steadiness up the high ground to the left, and in co-operation with the Guards; and Major-General Pennefather's brigade, which had been connected with the right of the Light Division, forced the enemy completely to abandon the position they had taken such pains to defend and secure.

The 95th Regiment, immediately on the right of the Royal Fusiliers in the advance, suffered equally with that corps an immense loss.

The aid of the Royal Artillery in all these operations was most effectual. The exertions of the Field Officers and the Captains of troops and batteries to get the guns into action were unceasing, and the precision of their fire materially contributed to the great results of the day.

Lieutenant-General Sir Richard England brought his division to the immediate support of the troops in advance, and Lieutenant-General the Honourable Sir George Cathcart was actively engaged in watching the left flank.

The nature of the ground did not admit of the employment of the cavalry under the Earl of Lucan; but they succeeded in taking some prisoners at the close of the battle.

In the details of these operations, which I have gone into as far as the space of a despatch would allow, your Grace will perceive that the services in which the General and other Officers of the Army were engaged, were of no ordinary character; and I have great pleasure in submitting them for your Grace's most favourable consideration.

The mode in which Lieutenant-General Sir George Brown conducted his division under the most trying circumstances demands the expression of my warmest approbation. The fire to which his division was subjected and the difficulties he had to contend against, afford no small proof that his best energies were applied to the successful discharge of his duty.

I must speak in corresponding terms of Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans, who likewise conducted his division to my perfect satisfaction, and exhibited equal coolness and judgment in carrying out a most difficult operation.

His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge brought his division into action in support of the Light Division with great ability, and had for the first time an opportunity of showing the enemy his devotion to Her Majesty, and to the profession of which he is so distinguished a member.

My best thanks are due to Lieutenant-General Sir R. England, Lieutenant-General the Honourable Sir George Cathcart, and Lieutenant-General the Earl of Lucan, for their cordial assistance wherever it could be afforded; and I feel it my duty especially to recommend to your Grace's notice the distinguished conduct of Major-General Bentinck, Major-General Sir Colin Campbell, Major-General Pennefather, Major-General Codrington, Brigadier-General Adams, and Brigadier-General Buller.{505}

In the affair of the previous day, Major-General the Earl of Cardigan exhibited the utmost spirit and coolness, and kept his brigade under perfect command.

The manner in which Brigadier-General Strangways directed the artillery, and exerted himself to bring it forward, met my entire satisfaction.

Lieutenant-General Sir John Burgoyne was constantly by my side, and rendered me, by his counsel and advice, the most valuable assistance; and the Commanding Royal Engineer, Brigadier-General Tylden, was always at hand to carry out any service I might direct him to undertake.

I deeply regret to say that he has since fallen a victim to cholera, as has Major Wellesley, who was present in the affair of the previous day, notwithstanding that he was then suffering from serious illness. He had, during the illness of Major-General Lord de Ros, acted for him in the most efficient manner. I cannot speak too highly of Brigadier-General Estcourt, Adjutant-General, or of Brigadier-General Airey, who, in the short time he has conducted the duties of the Quartermaster-General, has displayed the greatest ability as well as aptitude for the office.

I am much indebted to my military secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel Steele, Major Lord Burghersh, and the officers of my personal staff, for the zeal, intelligence, and gallantry they all, without exception, displayed.

Lieutenant Derriman, R.N., the Commander of the Caradoc, accompanied me during the whole of the operation, and rendered me an essential service by a close observation of the enemy's movements, which his practised eye enabled him accurately to watch.

I lament to say that Lieutenant-Colonel Lagondie, who was attached to my head-quarters by the Emperor of the French, fell into the enemy's hands on the 19th, on his return from Prince Napoleon's division, where he had obligingly gone at my request, with a communication to his Imperial Highness.

This misfortune is deeply regretted, both by myself and the officers of my personal staff.

The other officer placed with me under similar circumstances, Major Vico, afforded me all the assistance in his power, sparing no exertion to be of use.

I cannot omit to make known to your Grace the cheerfulness with which the regimental officers of the Army have submitted to most unusual privations.

My anxiety to bring into the country every cavalry and infantry soldier who was available prevented me from embarking their baggage animals, and these officers have with them at this moment nothing but what they can carry, and they, equally with the men, are without tents or covering of any kind.

I have not heard a single murmur. All seem impressed with the necessity of the arrangement, and they feel, I trust, satisfied that I shall bring up their bât horses at the earliest moment.

The conduct of the troops has been admirable. When it is considered that they have suffered severely from sickness during the last two months; that since they landed in the Crimea they have been exposed to the extremes of wet, cold, and heat; that the daily toil to provide themselves with water has been excessive, and that they have been pursued by cholera to the very battle-field, I do not go beyond the truth in declaring that they merit the highest commendation.

In the ardour of attack they forgot all they had endured, and displayed that high courage, that gallant spirit for which the British soldier is ever distinguished and under the heaviest fire they maintained the same{506} determination to conquer, as they had exhibited before they went into action. I should be wanting in my duty, my Lord Duke, if I did not express to your Grace, in the most earnest manner, my deep feeling of gratitude to the officers and men of the Royal Navy for the invaluable assistance they afforded the Army upon this as on every occasion where it could be brought to bear upon our operations.

They watched the progress of the day with the most intense anxiety; and as the best way of evincing their participation in our success, and their sympathy in the sufferings of the wounded, they never ceased, from the close of the battle till we left the ground this morning, to provide for the sick and wounded, and to carry them down to the beach; a labour in which some of the officers even volunteered to participate, an act which I shall never cease to recollect with the warmest thankfulness.

I mention no names, fearing I might omit some who ought to be spoken of; but none who were associated with us spared any exertion they could apply to so sacred a duty.

Sir Edmund Lyons, who had charge of the whole, was, as always, most prominent in rendering assistance and providing for emergencies.

I enclose the return of killed and wounded. It is, I lament to say, very large; but I hope, all circumstances considered, that it will be felt that no life was unnecessarily exposed, and that such an advantage could not be achieved without a considerable sacrifice.

I cannot venture to estimate the amount of the Russian loss. I believe it to have been great, and such is the report in the country.

The number of prisoners who are not hurt is small, but the wounded amount to 800 or 900. Two General officers, Major-Generals Karganoff and Shokanoff, fell into our hands. The former is very badly wounded.

I will not attempt to describe the movements of the French Army—that will be done by an abler hand; but it is due to them, to say that their operations were eminently successful, and that under the guidance of their distinguished commander, Marshal St. Arnaud, they manifested the utmost gallantry, the greatest ardour for the attack, and the high military qualities for which they are so famed.

This despatch will be delivered to your Grace by Major Lord Burghersh, who is capable of affording you the fullest information, and whom I beg to recommend to your especial notice.

I have, &c.,

Raglan.

MARSHAL DE ST. ARNAUD'S DESPATCH AS TO
THE ALMA.

Field of Battle of Alma, September 21, 1854.

Sire,—The cannon of your Majesty has spoken; we have gained a complete victory. It is a glorious day, sire, to add to the military annals of France, and your Majesty will have one name more to add to the victories which adorn the flags of the French army.

The Russians had yesterday assembled all their forces, and collected all their means to oppose the passage of the Alma. Prince Menschikoff{507} commanded in person. All the heights were crowned with redoubts and formidable batteries. The Russian army reckoned about 40,000 bayonets, from all points of the Crimea. In the morning there arrived from Theodosia 6,000 cavalry and 180 pieces of heavy and field artillery. From the heights which they occupied, the Russians could count our men man by man, from the 19th to the moment when we arrived on the Bulganak. On the 20th, from six o'clock in the morning, I carried into operation, with the division of General Bosquet, reinforced by eight Turkish battalions, a movement which turned the left of the Russians and some of their batteries. General Bosquet manœuvred with as much intelligence as bravery. This movement decided the success of the day. I had arranged that the English should extend their left, in order at the same time to threaten the right of the Russians, while I should occupy them in the centre; but their troops did not arrive until half-past ten. They bravely made up for this delay. At half-past twelve the line of the Allied army, occupying an extent of more than a league, arrived on the Alma, and was received by a terrible fire from the tirailleurs.

In this movement the head of the column of General Bosquet appeared on the heights, and I gave the signal for a general attack. The Alma was crossed at double-quick time. Prince Napoleon, at the head of his division, took possession of the large village of Alma, under the fire of the Russian batteries. The Prince showed himself worthy of the great name he bears. We then arrived at the foot of the heights, under the fire of the Russian batteries. There, sire, commenced a battle in earnest, along all the line—a battle with its episodes of brilliant feats of valour. Your Majesty may be proud of your soldiers: they have not degenerated: they are the soldiers of Austerlitz and of Jena. At half-past four the French army was everywhere victorious. All the positions had been carried at the point of the bayonet, to the cry of "Vive l'Empereur!" which resounded throughout the day. Never was such enthusiasm seen; even the wounded rose from the ground to join in it. On our left the English met with large masses of the enemy, and with great difficulties, but everything was surmounted. The English attacked the Russian positions in admirable order, under the fire of their cannon, carried them, and drove off the Russians. The bravery of Lord Raglan rivals that of antiquity. In the midst of cannon and musket-shot, he displayed a calmness which never left him. The French lines formed on the heights, and the artillery opened its fire. Then it was no longer a retreat, but a rout; the Russians threw away their muskets and knapsacks in order to run the faster. If, sire, I had had cavalry, I should have obtained immense results, and Menschikoff would no longer have had an army; but it was late, our troops were harassed, and the ammunition of the artillery was exhausted. At six o'clock in the evening, we encamped on the very bivouac of the Russians. My tent is on the very spot where that of Prince Menschikoff stood in the morning, and who thought himself so sure of beating us that he left his carriage there. I have taken possession of it, with his pocket-book and correspondence, and shall take advantage of the valuable information it contains. The Russian army will probably be able to rally two leagues from this, and I shall find it to-morrow on the Katcha, but beaten and demoralized, while the Allied army is full of ardour and enthusiasm. I have been compelled to remain here in order to send our wounded and those of the Russians to Constantinople, and to procure ammunition and provisions from the fleet. The English have had 1,500 men put hors de combat. The Duke of Cambridge is well: his division, and that of Sir G. Brown, were superb. I have to regret about 1,200 men hors de combat, three officers killed, fifty four wounded, 253 sub-officers and soldiers killed, and 1,033 wounded.{508} General Canrobert, to whom is due in part the honour of the day, was slightly wounded by the splinters of a shell, which struck him in the breast and hand, but he is doing very well. General Thomas, of the division of the Prince, is seriously wounded by a ball in the abdomen. The Russians have lost about 5,000 men. The field of battle is covered with their dead, and our field hospitals are full of their wounded. We have counted a proportion of seven Russian dead bodies for one French. The Russian artillery caused us loss, but ours is very superior to theirs. I shall all my life regret not having had with me my two regiments of African Chasseurs. The Zouaves were the admiration of both armies: they are the first soldiers in the world.

Accept, sire, the homage of my profound respect and of my entire devotedness.

Marshal R. de St. Arnaud.

FRENCH ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT OF
SEBASTOPOL.

From General Canrobert.

M. le Maréchal,—Yesterday, at sunrise, we opened our fire in concert with the English army. Matters were going on well, when the explosion of a battery powder magazine, unfortunately of considerable size, somewhat disturbed our attack. This explosion produced the greater effect from the number of the batteries in proximity to the spot where it occurred. The enemy took advantage of this incident to increase his fire, and the General in command of the artillery agreed with me, that we were under the necessity of suspending our fire in order to make our repairs, as well as to complete the system of attack towards our right by the construction of new batteries to approach those of the English army. This delay is certainly much to be regretted, but we are compelled to submit to it, and I am making every arrangement necessary for shortening it as much as possible.

Sebastopol has sustained the fire far better than was expected; the enclosed space, throughout its enormous development in a straight line, carrying all it can hold of heavy sea-guns, renders it capable of prolonging the contest. On the 17th, our troops took possession of the plateau that faces the point of attack, called the Bastion du Mât; they now occupy it. This evening we shall construct there the mask of a 12-gun battery, and, if possible, that of a second battery, on the extreme right, above the ravine. All our means of attack are concentrated on this bastion, and we shall, I trust, dismantle it rapidly, with the assistance of the English batteries that are battering its left front.

Yesterday, about ten in the morning, the Allied fleets attacked the outer batteries of the place, but I have not yet received information that will enable me to give you an account of the results of this attack.

The English batteries are in the best possible state: they have received nine new mortars, which will, it is supposed, produce great effect.{509} Yesterday there was an immense explosion in the battery surrounding the tower situate to the left of the place. It must have injured the enemy a great deal. Since then this battery has fired but little, and this morning there were only two or three pieces able to fire.

I have no precise news of the Russian army. Nothing tends to show that it has changed the positions it held, and in which it expected its reinforcements. I have received almost the whole of the reinforcements I expected in infantry from Gallipoli and Varna. General Levaillant has just arrived with his staff, which raises to five divisions the effective force in infantry of the army that I have here under my orders. The sanitary state is highly satisfactory, the spirit of the troops excellent, and we are full of confidence.

Canrobert.

LORD RAGLAN'S BALAKLAVA DESPATCH.

Lord Raglan To the Duke of Newcastle.

(Received November 12.)

Before Sebastopol, October 28, 1854.

My Lord Duke,—I have the honour to acquaint your Grace that the enemy attacked the position in the front of Balaklava at an early hour on the morning of the 25th instant.

The low range of heights that runs across the plain at the bottom of which the town is placed, was protected by four small redoubts hastily constructed. Three of these had guns in them, and on a higher hill, in front of the village of Camara, in advance of our right flank, was established a work of somewhat more importance.

These several redoubts were garrisoned by Turkish troops, no other force being at my disposal for their occupation.

The 93rd Highlanders was the only British regiment in the plain, with the exception of a part of a battalion of detachments composed of weakly men, and a battery of artillery belonging to the Third Division; and on the heights behind our right were placed the Marines, obligingly landed from the fleet by Vice-Admiral Dundas. All these, including the Turkish troops, were under the immediate orders of Major-General Sir Colin Campbell, whom I had taken from the First Division with the 93rd.

As soon as I was apprised of this movement of the enemy, I felt compelled to withdraw from before Sebastopol the First and Fourth Divisions, commanded by Lieutenant-Generals His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge and the Honourable Sir George Cathcart, and bring them down into the plain; and General Canrobert subsequently reinforced these troops with the First Division of French Infantry and the Chasseurs d'Afrique.

The enemy commenced their operation by attacking the work on our side of the village of Camara, and, after very little resistance, carried it.

They likewise got possession of the three others in contiguity to it, being opposed only in one, and that but for a very short space of time.

The farthest of the three they did not retain, but the immediate aban{510}donment of the others enabled them to take possession of the guns in them, amounting in the whole to seven. Those in the three lesser forts were spiked by the one English artilleryman who was in each.

The Russian cavalry at once advanced, supported by artillery, in very great strength. One portion of them assailed the front and right flank of the 93rd, and were instantly driven back by the vigorous and steady fire of that distinguished regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Ainslie.

The other and larger mass turned towards Her Majesty's heavy cavalry, and afforded Brigadier-General Scarlett, under the guidance of Lieutenant-General the Earl of Lucan, the opportunity of inflicting upon them a most signal defeat. The ground was very unfavourable for the attack of our Dragoons, but no obstacle was sufficient to check their advance, and they charged into the Russian column, which soon sought safety in flight, although far superior in numbers.

The charge of this brigade was one of the most successful I ever witnessed, was never for a moment doubtful, and is in the highest degree creditable to Brigadier-General Scarlett and the officers and men engaged in it.

As the enemy withdrew from the ground which they had momentarily occupied, I directed the cavalry, supported by the Fourth Division, under Lieutenant-General Sir George Cathcart, to move forward and take advantage of any opportunity to regain the heights; and not having been able to accomplish this immediately, and it appearing that an attempt was making to remove the captured guns, the Earl of Lucan was desired to advance rapidly, follow the enemy in their retreat, and try to prevent them from effecting their object.

In the meanwhile the Russians had time to re-form on their own ground, with artillery in front and upon their flanks.

From some misconception of the instruction to advance, the Lieutenant-General considered that he was bound to attack at all hazards, and he accordingly ordered Major-General the Earl of Cardigan to move forward with the Light Brigade.

This order was obeyed in the most spirited and gallant manner. Lord Cardigan charged with the utmost vigour; attacked a battery which was firing upon the advancing squadrons; and, having passed beyond it, engaged the Russian cavalry in its rear; but there his troops were assailed by artillery and infantry, as well as cavalry, and necessarily retired, after having committed much havoc upon the enemy.

They effected this movement without haste or confusion; but the loss they have sustained has, I deeply lament, been very severe in officers, men, and horses, only counterbalanced by the brilliancy of the attack, and the gallantry, order, and discipline which distinguished it, forming a striking contrast to the conduct of the enemy's cavalry, which had previously been engaged with the Heavy Brigade.

The Chasseurs d'Afrique advanced on our left, and gallantly charged a Russian battery, which checked its fire for a time, and thus rendered the British cavalry an essential service.

I have the honour to enclose copies of Sir Colin Campbell's and the Earl of Lucan's reports.

I beg to draw your Grace's attention to the terms in which Sir Colin Campbell speaks of Lieutenant-Colonel Ainslie, of the 93rd, and Captain Barker, of the Royal Artillery; and also to the praise bestowed by the Earl of Lucan on Major-General the Earl of Cardigan and Brigadier-General Scarlett, which they most fully deserve.

The Earl of Lucan not having sent me the names of the other officers who distinguished themselves, I propose to forward them by the next opportunity.{511}

The enemy made no further movement in advance, and at the close of the day the brigade of Guards of the First Division, and the Fourth Division, returned to their original encampment, as did the French troops, with the exception of one brigade of the First Division, which General Canrobert was so good as to leave in support of Sir Colin Campbell.

The remaining regiments of the Highland Brigade also remained in the valley.

The Fourth Division had advanced close to the heights, and Sir George Cathcart caused one of the redoubts to be reoccupied by the Turks, affording them his support, and he availed himself of the opportunity to assist with his riflemen in silencing two of the enemy's guns.

The means of defending the extensive position which had been occupied by the Turkish troops in the morning having proved wholly inadequate, I deemed it necessary, in concurrence with General Canrobert, to withdraw from the lower range of heights, and to concentrate our force, which will be increased by a considerable body of seamen, to be landed from the ships under the authority of Admiral Dundas, immediately in front of the narrow valley leading into Balaklava, and upon the precipitous heights on our right, thus affording a narrower line of defence.

I have, &c.,

Raglan.

LORD RAGLAN AT INKERMAN, Nov. 5.

Lord Raglan To the Duke of Newcastle.

(Received November 22.)

Before Sebastopol, November 8, 1854.

My Lord Duke,—I have the honour to report to your Grace that the army under my command, powerfully aided by the Corps of Observation of the French Army, under the command of that distinguished officer, General Bosquet, effectually repulsed and defeated a most vigorous and determined attack of the enemy on our position overlooking the ruins of Inkerman, on the morning of the 5th instant.

In my letter to your Grace of the 3rd, I informed you that the enemy had considerably increased their force in the valley of the Tchernaya. The following day this augmentation was still further apparent, and large masses of troops had evidently arrived from the northward, and on two several occasions persons of distinguished rank were observed to have joined the Russian camp.

I have subsequently learnt that the 4th corps d'armée, conveyed in carriages of the country, and in the lightest possible order, had been brought from Moldavia, and were to be immediately followed by the 3rd corps.

It was therefore to be expected that an extensive movement would not be long deferred.{512}

Accordingly, shortly before daylight on the 5th, strong columns of the enemy came upon the advanced pickets covering the right of the position. These pickets behaved with admirable gallantry, defending the ground foot by foot against the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, until the 2nd Division, under Major-General Pennefather, with its field guns, which had immediately been got under arms, was placed in position.

The Light Division, under Lieutenant-General Sir George Brown, was also brought to the front without loss of time; the 1st Brigade, under Major-General Codrington, occupying the long slopes to the left towards Sebastopol, and protecting our right battery, and guarding against attack on that side, and the 2nd Brigade, under Brigadier-General Buller, forming on the left of the 2nd Division, with the 88th Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffreys, thrown in advance.

The Brigade of Guards under His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge and Major-General Bentinck, proceeded likewise to the front, and took up most important ground to the extreme right on the alignement of the 2nd Division, but separated from it by a deep and precipitous ravine, and posting its guns with those of the 2nd Division.

The 4th Division, under Lieutenant-General Sir George Cathcart, having been brought from their encampment, advanced to the front and right of the attack; the 1st Brigade, under Brigadier-General Goldie, proceeded to the left of the Inkerman road; the 2nd Brigade, under Brigadier-General Torrens, to the right of it, and on the ridge overhanging the valley of the Tchernaya.

The 3rd Division, under Lieutenant-General Sir Richard England, occupied in part the ground vacated by the 4th Division, and supported the Light Division by two regiments under Brigadier Sir John Campbell, while Brigadier-General Eyre held the command of the troops in the trenches.

The morning was extremely dark with a drizzling rain, rendering it almost impossible to discover anything beyond the flash and smoke of artillery and heavy musketry fire.

It, however, soon became evident that the enemy, under cover of a vast cloud of skirmishers, supported by dense columns of infantry, had advanced numerous batteries of large calibre to the high ground to the left and front of the 2nd Division, while powerful columns of infantry attacked with great vigour the Brigade of Guards.

Additional batteries of heavy artillery were also placed by the enemy on the slopes to our left; the guns in the field amounting in the whole to 90 pieces, independently, however, of the ship guns and those in the works of Sebastopol.

Protected by a tremendous fire of shot, shell, and grape, the Russian columns advanced in great force, requiring every effort of gallantry on the part of our troops to resist them.

At this time two battalions of French infantry, which had on the first notice been sent by General Bosquet, joined our right, and very materially contributed to the successful resistance to the attack, cheering with our men, and charging the enemy down the hill with great loss.

About the same time a determined assault was made on our extreme left, and for a moment the enemy possessed themselves of four of our guns, three of which were retaken by the 88th, while the fourth was speedily recaptured by the 77th Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Egerton.

In the opposite direction the Brigade of Guards, under His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, was engaged in a severe conflict.

The enemy, under the cover of thick brushwood, advanced in two heavy bodies, and assaulted with great determination a small redoubt{513} which had been constructed for two guns but was not armed. The combat was most arduous, and the Brigade, after displaying the utmost steadiness and gallantry, was obliged to retire before very superior numbers, until supported by a wing of the 20th Regiment of the 4th Division, when they again advanced and retook the redoubt.

This ground was afterwards occupied in gallant style by French troops, and the Guards speedily re-formed in the rear of the right flank of the 2nd Division.

In the meanwhile, Lieutenant-General the Honourable Sir George Cathcart, with a few companies of the 68th Regiment, considering that he might make a strong impression by descending into the valley, and taking the enemy in flank, moved rapidly forward, but finding the heights above him in full occupation of the Russians, he suddenly discovered that he was entangled with a superior force, and while attempting to withdraw his men, he received a mortal wound, shortly previous to which Brigadier-General Torrens, when leading the 68th, was likewise severely wounded.

Subsequently to this, the battle continued with unabated vigour and with no positive result, the enemy bringing upon our line not only the fire of all their field batteries, but those in front of the works of the place, and the ship guns, till the afternoon, when the symptoms of giving way first became apparent; and shortly after, although the fire did not cease, the retreat became general, and heavy masses were observed retiring over the bridge of the Inkerman, and ascending the opposite heights, abandoning on the field of battle 5,000 or 6,000 dead or wounded, multitudes of the latter having already been carried off by them. I never before witnessed such a spectacle as the field presented, but upon this I will not dwell.

Having submitted to your Grace this imperfect description of this most severe battle, I have still two duties to discharge, the one most gratifying, and the last most painful to my feelings.

I have the greatest satisfaction in drawing your Grace's attention to the brilliant conduct of the Allied troops. French and English vied with each other in displaying their gallantry and manifesting their zealous devotion to duty, notwithstanding that they had to contend against an infinitely superior force, and were exposed for many hours to a most galling fire.

It should be borne in mind that they have daily for several weeks undergone the most constant labour, and that many of them passed the previous night in the trenches.

I will not attempt to enter into the details of the movements of the French troops, lest I should not state them correctly; but I am proud of the opportunity of bearing testimony to their valour and energetic services, and of paying a tribute of admiration to the distinguished conduct of their immediate Commander, General Bosquet, while it is in the highest degree pleasing to me to place upon record my deep sense of the valuable assistance I received from the Commander-in-Chief, General Canrobert, who was himself on the ground and in constant communication with me, and whose cordial co-operation on all occasions I cannot too highly extol.

Your Grace will recollect that he was wounded at the Alma. He was again wounded on the 5th, but I should hope that he will not long feel the effects of it.

I will in a subsequent despatch lay before your Grace the names of the officers whose services have been brought to my notice. I will not detain the mail for that purpose now, but I cannot delay to report the admirable behaviour of Lieutenant-General Sir George Brown, who was unfortunately shot through the arm, but is doing well; of Lieutenant-General His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, who particularly distinguished himself; and of Major-General Pennefather, in command of the Second Division, which received the first attack, and gallantly maintained{514} itself under the greatest difficulties throughout this protracted conflict; of Major-General Bentinck, who is severely wounded; Major-General Codrington, Brigadier-General Adams, and Brigadier-General Torrens, who are severely wounded; and Brigadier-General Buller, who is also wounded, but not so seriously.

I must likewise express my obligations to Lieutenant-General Sir Richard England for the excellent disposition he made of his division, and the assistance he rendered to the left of the Light Division, where Brigadier-General Sir John Campbell was judiciously placed, and effectively supported Major-General Codrington; and I have great pleasure in stating that Brigadier-General Eyre was employed in the important duty of guarding the trenches from any assault from the town.

Lieutenant-General Sir De Lacy Evans, who had been obliged by severe indisposition to go on board ship a few days previously, left his bed as soon as he received intelligence of the attack, and was promptly at his post, and though he did not feel well enough to take the command of the division out of the hands of Major-General Pennefather, he did not fail to give him his best advice and assistance.

It is deeply distressing to me to have to submit to your Grace the list of the killed, wounded, and missing on this memorable occasion. It is, indeed, heavy; and very many valuable officers and men have been lost to Her Majesty's service.

Among the killed your Grace will find the names of Lieutenant-General the Honourable Sir G. Cathcart, Brigadier-General Strangways, and Brigadier-General Goldie.

Of the services of the first it is almost unnecessary to speak. They are known throughout the British empire, and have within a short space of time been brought conspicuously before the country by his achievements at the Cape of Good Hope, whence he had only just returned when he was ordered to this army.

By his death Her Majesty has been deprived of a most devoted servant, an officer of the highest merit, while I personally have to deplore the loss of an attached and faithful friend.

Brigadier-General Strangways was known to have distinguished himself in early life, and in mature age, throughout a long service, he maintained the same character.

The mode in which he had conducted the command of the artillery, since it was placed in his hands by the departure through illness of Major-General Cator, is entitled to my entire approbation, and was equally agreeable to those who were confided to his care.

Brigadier-General Goldie was an officer of considerable promise, and gave great satisfaction to all under whom he has served.

It is difficult to arrive at any positive conclusion as to the actual numbers brought into the field by the enemy. The configuration of the ground did not admit of any great development of their force, the attack consisting of a system of repeated assaults in heavy masses of columns; but judging from the numbers that were seen in the plains after they had withdrawn in retreat, I am led to suppose that they could not have been less than 60,000 men. Their loss was excessive, and it is calculated that they left on the field near 5,000 dead, and that their casualties amount in the whole, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, to not less than 15,000.

Your Grace will be surprised to learn that the number of British troops actually engaged little exceeded 8,000 men, while those of General Bosquet's division only amounted to 6,000, the remaining available French troops on the spot having been kept in reserve.

I ought to mention that while the enemy was attacking our right, they assailed the left of the French trenches, and actually got into two of their{515} batteries; but they were quickly driven out in the most gallant manner with considerable loss, and hotly pursued to the very walls of Sebastopol.

I have, &c.,

Raglan.

THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN.

Head-Quarters before Sebastopol, November 7, 1854.

M. le Maréchal,—I have the honour to confirm my telegraphic despatch of the 6th of November, couched in these terms:—"The Russian army, increased by reinforcements from the Danube, and the reserves in the southern provinces, and animated by the presence of the Grand Dukes Michael and Nicholas, yesterday attacked the right of the English position before the place. The English army sustained the combat with the most remarkable solidity. I caused it to be supported by a portion of the Bosquet division, which fought with admirable vigour, and by the troops which were the most easily available. The enemy, more numerous than we were, beat a retreat with enormous losses, estimated at from 8,000 to 9,000 men. This obstinate struggle lasted the whole of the day. On my left General Forey had, at the same time, to repulse a sortie of the garrison. The troops, energetically led on by him, drove the enemy from the place, with the loss of 1,000 men. This brilliant day, which was not concluded without loss to the Allies, does the greatest honour to our arms."

The action, of which the above telegraphic despatch forms the summary, was most animated and warmly contested. At the first shot, the deserters who came to us revealed the real situation of the Russian army in regard to numbers, and enabled us to calculate the reinforcements it had successively received since the battle of the Alma. They are—1st contingent, from the coast of Asia, Kertsch, and Kaffa; 2nd, six battalions and detachments of marines from Nicolaieff; 3rd, four battalions of Cossacks from the Black Sea; 4th, a great portion of the Army of the Danube; and the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth divisions of infantry forming the fourth corps, commanded by General Dannenberg. These three divisions were transported by express, with their artillery, from Odessa to Simpheropol, in a few days. Afterwards arrived the Grand Dukes Michael and Nicholas, whose presence could not fail to produce great excitement among this army, which forms, with the garrison of Sebastopol, a total of at least 100,000 men.

It was under these circumstances that 45,000 men of this army attacked by surprise the heights of Inkerman, which the English army could not occupy with a sufficient force. Only 6,000 English took part in the action, the rest being engaged in the siege works. They valiantly sustained the attack until the moment when General Bosquet, arriving with a portion of his division, was able to render such assistance as to insure their success. One does not know which to praise the most—the energetic solidity with which our allies for a long time faced the storm, or the intelligent vigour which General Bosquet (who led a portion of the Brigades Bourbaki and D'Autemarre) displayed in attacking the enemy, who rushed upon their right.

The third regiment of Zouaves, under the chiefs of battalion, Montandon{516} and Dubos, supported, in the most striking manner, the ancient reputation of that force. The Algerian riflemen (Colonel de Wimpfen), a battalion of the 7th light (Commander Vaissier), and the 6th of the line (Colonel de Camos), rivalled each other in ardour. Three charges were made with the bayonet, and it was only after the third charge that the enemy surrendered the ground, which was covered with his dead and wounded. The Russian field artillery and artillery of position was much superior in number, and occupied a commanding position. Two horse batteries, commanded by M. de la Boussinière, and a battery of the second division of infantry, commanded by M. Barval (the whole under the orders of Colonel Forgeot), sustained the struggle during the whole day, in conjunction with the English artillery.

The enemy decided upon beating a retreat, leaving more than 3,000 dead, a great number of wounded, a few hundred prisoners, and also several caissons of artillery, in the possession of the Allies. His losses, altogether, cannot be estimated at less than from 8,000 to 10,000 men. While these events were being accomplished on the right, about 5,000 men made a vigorous sortie against our attacks to the left, favoured by a thick fog and by ravines which facilitated their approach. The troops on duty in the trench, under the orders of General de la Motterouge, marched upon the enemy, who had already invaded two of our batteries, and repulsed him, killing more than 200 men within the batteries. The general of division, Forey, commanding the siege corps, by rapid and skilful arrangements, arrived with the troops of the fourth division to support the guards of the trenches, and marched himself at the head of the fifth battalion of foot chasseurs. The Russians, beaten along the whole of their line, were retreating precipitately upon the place with considerable losses, when General de Lourmel, seeing them fly before him, and urged by a chivalric courage, dashed in pursuit of them up to the walls of the place, where he fell severely wounded. General Forey had much difficulty in withdrawing him from the advanced position to which his brigade had been hurried by excess of bravery. The Brigade d'Aurelle, which had taken up an excellent position to the left, protected this retreat, which was effected under the fire of the place with considerable loss. Colonel Niol, of the 26th of the Line, who lost his two chiefs of battalion, took the command of the brigade, whose conduct was admirably energetic. The enemy, in this sortie, lost 1,000 men in killed, wounded, or prisoners, and he received a very considerable moral and material check.

The battle of Inkerman, and the combat sustained by the siege corps, were glorious for our arms, and have increased the moral power which the Allied armies have attained; but we have suffered losses to be deplored. They amount, for the English army, to 2,400 men killed or wounded, among whom are seven generals, three of whom were killed; and, for the French army, to 1,726 killed or wounded. We bitterly lament the loss of General de Lourmel, who died from his wound, and whose brilliant military qualities and conduct in private life seemed to promise future renown. I also have the regret to announce to you the death of Colonel de Camos, of the 6th of the Line, killed at the head of his troops at the moment when engaged with the enemy.

The vigour of the Allied troops, subjected to the double trials of a siege, the difficulties of which are without a precedent, and to actions of war which recall the greatest struggles of our military history, cannot be too highly eulogized. I enclose my order of the day to the army for the battle of the 5th.

Accept, &c., Canrobert,

General-in-Chief.

{517}

ASSAULT ON REDAN, JUNE 18.

Lord Raglan To Lord Panmure.

(Received July 2.)

Before Sebastopol, June 19, 1855.

My Lord,—I informed your Lordship on the 16th that new batteries had been completed, and that in consequence the Allies would be enabled to resume the offensive against Sebastopol with the utmost vigour.

Accordingly, on the 17th, at daylight, a very heavy fire was opened from all the batteries in the English and French trenches, and maintained throughout the day, and the effect produced appeared so satisfactory that it was determined that the French should attack the Malakoff works the next morning, and that the English should assail the Redan as soon after as I might consider it desirable.

It was at first proposed that the artillery fire should be resumed on the morning of the 18th, and should be kept up for about two hours, for the purpose of destroying any works the enemy might have thrown up in the night, and of opening passages through the abattis that covered the Redan; but on the evening of the 17th it was intimated to me by General Pelissier that he had determined, upon further consideration, that the attack by his troops should take place at three the following morning.

The French, therefore, commenced their operations as day broke, and, as their several columns came within range of the enemy's fire, they encountered the most serious opposition, both from musketry and the guns in the works, which had been silenced the previous evening; and observing this, I was induced at once to order our columns to move out of the trenches upon the Redan.

It had been arranged that detachments from the Light, 2nd, and 4th Divisions, which I placed for the occasion under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir G. Brown, should be formed into three columns; that the right one should attack the left face of the Redan between the flanking batteries; that the centre should advance upon the salient angle; and that the left should move upon the re-entering angle formed by the right face and flank of the work; the first and last preceding the centre column.

The flank columns at once obeyed the signal to advance, preceded by covering parties of the Rifle Brigade, and by sailors carrying ladders and soldiers carrying wool-bags; but they had no sooner shown themselves beyond the trenches than they were assailed by a most murderous fire of grape and musketry. Those in advance were either killed or wounded, and the remainder found it impossible to proceed. I never before witnessed such a continued and heavy fire of grape combined with musketry from the enemy's works, which appeared to be fully manned; and the long list of killed and wounded in the Light and 4th Divisions, and the seamen of the Naval Brigade, under Captain Peel, who was unfortunately wounded, though not severely, will show that a very large proportion of those that went forward fell. Major-General Sir John Campbell, who led the left attack, and Colonel Shadforth, of the 57th, who commanded the storming party under his direction, were both killed, as was also Colonel Yea, of the Royal Fusiliers, who led the right column.

I cannot say too much in praise of these officers. Major-General Sir{518} J. Campbell had commanded the 4th Division from the period of the battle of Inkerman, till the arrival very recently of Lieutenant-General Bentinck. He had devoted himself to his duty without any intermission, and had acquired the confidence and respect of all; I most deeply lament his loss.

Colonel Shadforth had maintained the efficiency of his regiment by constant attention to all the details of his command, and Colonel Yea was not only distinguished for his gallantry, but had exercised his control of the Royal Fusiliers in such a manner as to win the affections of the soldiers under his orders, and to secure to them every comfort and accommodation which his personal exertions could procure for them.

I shall not be able to send your Lordship correct lists of the killed and wounded by this opportunity, but I will forward them by telegraph as soon as they are made out.

I have not any definite information upon the movements of the French columns, and the atmosphere became so obscured by the smoke from the guns and musketry, that it was not possible by personal observation to ascertain their progress, though I was particularly well situated for the purpose; but I understand that their left column, under General d'Autemarre, passed the advanced works of the enemy, and threatened the gorge of the Malakoff Tower; and that the two other columns, under Generals Mayran and Brunet, who both, I regret to say, were killed, met with obstacles equal to those we encountered, and were obliged in consequence to abandon the attack.

The superiority of our fire on the day we opened, led both General Pelissier and myself, and the officers of the Artillery and Engineers of the two services, and the Armies in general, to conclude that the Russian Artillery fire was, in a great measure, subdued, and that the operation we projected could be undertaken with every prospect of success. The result has shown that the resources of the enemy were not exhausted, and that they had still the power, either from their ships or their batteries, to bring an overwhelming fire upon their assailants.

Whilst the direct attack on the Redan was proceeding, Lieutenant-General Sir R. England was directed to send one of the brigades of the 3rd Division, under the command of Major-General Barnard, down the Woronzow Ravine, with a view to give support to the attacking columns on his right; and the other brigade, under Major-General Eyre, still further to the left, to threaten the works at the head of the Dockyard Creek.

I have not yet received their reports, and shall not be able to send them to your Lordship to-day; but General Eyre was very seriously engaged, and he himself wounded, though I am happy to say not severely, and he possessed himself of a churchyard, which the enemy had hitherto carefully watched, and some houses within the place; but as the town front was not attacked, it became necessary to withdraw his brigade at night.

I shall make a special report upon this by the next mail, and I shall avail myself of the same opportunity to name to you the officers who have been particularly mentioned to me.

I am concerned to have to inform you, that Lieutenant-Colonel Tylden, of the Royal Engineers, whose services I have had the greatest pleasure in bringing so frequently to your Lordship's notice, is very severely wounded. The account I received of him this morning is upon the whole satisfactory, and I entertain strong hopes that his valuable life will be preserved.

I feel greatly indebted to Sir G. Brown for the manner in which he conducted the duties I entrusted to him; and my warmest acknowledgments are due to Major-General Harry Jones, not only for his valuable{519} assistance on the present occasion, but for the able, zealous, and energetic manner in which he has conducted the siege operations since he assumed the command of the Royal Engineers.

He received a wound from a grape-shot in the forehead yesterday, which I trust will not prove serious.

I brought up the 1st Division from the vicinity of Balaklava as a reserve, and I shall retain them on these heights.

The Sardinian troops, under General La Marmora, and the Turkish troops, under Omer Pasha, crossed the Tchernaya on the 17th instant, and occupy positions in front of Chorgouna. They have not come in contact with any large body of the enemy.

I have, &c.,

Raglan.

GENERAL PELISSIER'S DESPATCH.

Head-quarters before Sebastopol, June 22.

Monsieur le Maréchal,—Since the capture of the external works on the 7th of June I had rapidly made every arrangement to make them the basis of our attack against the enceinte itself of Karabelnaia. We armed them with powerful artillery; the Russian communications and place d'armes were turned to our own use; the ground plan of attack studied in detail; the Allied armies had their respective tasks allotted to them. The English were to storm the Great Redan, and we were to carry the Malakoff Tower, the redan of the Careening Bay, and the intrenchments which cover that extremity of the faubourg. It is superfluous, M. le Maréchal, to point out to your Excellency what would have been the result of such an operation if it had succeeded. Since our last successes the attitude of the enemy and the enthusiasm of our troops promised victory. There was no time to be lost.

In concert with Lord Raglan, on the 17th we poured a crushing fire into Sebastopol, especially into the works we intended storming. At an early hour the enemy ceased replying from the Malakoff and from the Redan. It is probable they were economizing their batteries and fire, and that they did not suffer so much from the effects of our artillery as we were led to presume.

However that may be, the superiority of our guns confirmed us in our plan for making an assault on the 18th, and on the night before we made all the necessary arrangements for a general movement on the morrow.

Three divisions were to take part in the combat—the divisions of Mayran and Brunet, of the 2nd corps; the Division d'Autemarre of the 1st. The division of the Imperial Guard formed the reserve.

Mayran's division had the right attack, and was to carry the intrenchments which extend from the battery of the point to the redan of Careening Bay.

Brunet's division was to turn the Malakoff on the right.

D'Autemarre's division was to manœuvre on the left to carry that important work.{520}

General Mayran's task was a difficult one. His First Brigade, commanded by Colonel Saurin, of the 3rd Zouaves, was to advance from the ravine of Careening Bay as far as the aqueduct, to creep along the left hill side of the ravine, avoiding as much as possible the fire of the enemy's lines, and to turn the battery of the point by the gorge.

The Second Brigade, commanded by General de Failly, was to make an attempt on the right of the redan of Careening Bay. They were provided with everything necessary to scale the works.

The special reserve of this division consisted of two battalions of the 1st Regiment of the Voltigeurs of the Guard.

All these troops were ready at their post at an early hour. Brunet's division had one of its brigades in advance and to the right of the Brancion Redoubt (Mamelon), the other in the parallel in the rear and to the right of that redoubt.

A similar arrangement was made as regards D'Autemarre's division—Niol's brigade in advance and to the left of the Mamelon; Breton's brigade in the parallel in the rear.

Two batteries of artillery, which could be served à la bricole, were placed behind the Brancion Redoubt (Mamelon), ready to occupy the enemy's positions in case we succeeded in carrying them.

The division of the Imperial Guard, forming the general reserve of the three attacks, was drawn up in a body in the rear of the Victoria Redoubt.

I selected the Lancaster Battery for my post, from which I was to give the signal by star rockets for the general advance. Notwithstanding great difficulties of ground, notwithstanding the obstacles accumulated by the enemy, and although the Russians, evidently informed of our plans, were on their guard and ready to repel an attack, I am inclined to think that if the attack could have been general and instantaneous on the whole extent of the line—if there had been a simultaneous action and the efforts of our brave troops had been united—the object would have been achieved. Unhappily, it was not so, and an inconceivable fatality caused us to fail.

I was still more than 1,000 mètres from the place whence I was to give the signal, when a violent fire of musketry, intermixed with grape, apprised me that the combat had commenced seriously on the right. In fact, a little before 3 A.M., General Mayran fancied he recognized my signal in a shell with a blazing fuse sent up from the Brancion Redoubt. It was in vain that he was informed of his mistake.

This brave and unfortunate General gave the order for the attack. The Saurin and De Failly columns immediately rushed forward. The first rush was magnificent, but scarcely were these heads of columns in march when a shower of balls and grape was poured in upon them. This crushing fire came not only from the works which we wished to carry, but also from the enemy's steamers, which came up at full steam and manœuvred with great skill and effect. We, however, caused them some damage. This prodigious fire stopped the efforts of our troops. It became impossible for our soldiers to advance, but not a man retired one step. It was at this moment that General Mayran, already hit in two places, was knocked down by a grapeshot, and was compelled to resign the command of his division.

All this was the work of a moment, and General Mayran was already carried off the field of battle when I sent up the signal from the Lancaster Battery. The other troops then advanced to support the premature movement of the Right Division. That valiant division, for a moment disconcerted by the loss of its General, promptly rallied at the voice of General de Failly. The troops engaged, supported by the second battalion of the 95th of the Line, and by a battalion of the Voltigeurs of{521} the Guard, under the orders of the brave Colonel Boudville, hold a footing in the bend of the ground where the General places them, and boldly maintain their position there. Informed, however, of this position, which might become critical, I ordered General Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely to send four battalions of the Voltigeurs of the Guard, taken from the general reserve, to the support of that division. Generals Mellinet and Uhrich marched with that fine body of men, rallied the stragglers in the ravine of Careening Bay, and gave a solid support to General de Failly, by occupying the bottom of the ravine.

General Mellinet in person advanced to the right of General de Failly at the head of a battalion of Grenadiers, placed the evening before to defend the ravine, and was of great service to him by covering his right.

The attack on the centre had not a better fate. General Brunet had not yet completed all his arrangements when the signal-rockets were fired. The whole of the right was already prematurely engaged for more than twenty to twenty-five minutes. The troops, nevertheless, resolutely advanced, but their valour was of no avail against the well-sustained fire of the Russians and against unforeseen obstacles. At the very outset General Brunet fell mortally wounded by a ball in the chest. The flag of the 91st was cut in two by a ball, but it is needless to add that its fragments were brought back by that gallant regiment.

General Lafont de Villiers took the command of the division, and intrusted that of the troops engaged to Colonel Lorencez. The latter held firm while the remainder of the division occupied the trenches to provide against the eventualities of the combat.

To the left, General d'Autemarre could not go into action before Brunet's division, nor could he explain the hasty fusillade he heard in the direction of Careening Bay; but at the signal agreed upon for the attack he threw forward with impetuosity the 5th Chasseurs-à-Pied and the first battalion of the 19th of the Line, which, following the ridge of the Karabelnaia Ravine, arrived at the intrenchment which connects it with Malakoff Tower, scaled the intrenchment, and entered the enceinte itself. The sappers of the Engineers were already placing the scaling-ladders for the remainder of the 19th and 26th Regiments, who were hurrying up by order of General d'Autemarre to follow his gallant column. For an instant we believed in success. Our eagles were planted on the Russian works. Unhappily, that hope was promptly dispelled. Our allies had met with such obstacles in their attack on the Grand Redan, they had been received with such a fearful shower of grape, that, despite their well-known tenacity, they had already been obliged to beat a retreat. Such was the spirit of our troops that, despite this circumstance, they would have pushed on and charged down upon the enemy, but the want of unity in the attack of our divisions permitted the Russians to fall upon us with their reserves and with the artillery of the Great Redan; and the enemy did not lose a moment in advancing all the other reserves of the Karabelnaia against our brave Chasseurs-à-Pied.

Before so imposing a force Commandant Garnier, of the 5th battalion, already struck by five balls, endeavoured, but in vain, to maintain the conquered ground. Compelled to give way to numbers he re-crossed the intrenchments. General Niol came up to support his brigade, reinforced by the 30th of the Line. A new offensive movement was attempted to assure the success of the new effort, and on a message from General d'Autemarre to the effect that his reserve was reduced to the 74th of the Line, I sent him the regiment of Zouaves of the Guard; but on the arrival of those hardy veterans of our African campaigns, as the movement had no longer any desirable ensemble for so vigorous a blow, with a single division without support either on the right or on the left, and cut up by{522} the artillery of the Redan, the attack upon which had been relinquished by our allies, I at once saw that all chance of success was over. Another effort would only have led to useless bloodshed. It was half-past eight o'clock, and I ordered a general retreat to the trenches. This movement was carried out proudly, with order and coolness, and without the enemy following us on any point. A portion of the Russian trenches remained even occupied by some of our men, who evacuated them gradually, without the enemy daring to turn their advantage to account against them.

Our losses have been great. We took care at the very commencement of the action to carry off most of our wounded. But a certain number of those glorious dead remained lying on the glacis or in the ditches of the place. The last duties were rendered to them the following day.

Besides General Brunet and General Mayran (who died during the night) we have to deplore the loss of an officer beloved and appreciated by the whole army, the young and brave Lieutenant-Colonel of Artillery De Laboursinière, killed while scaling the reverse of a trench obstructed by troops on his way from one of his batteries to the Brancion Redoubt. It is a great loss. In him were the germs of future promise. A number of brave superior officers have been wounded while showing the most noble example. The officers of the staff and of the troops worthily performed their duties, and the conduct of the men was admirable everywhere.

We had 37 officers killed, and 17 taken prisoners; 1,544 non-commissioned officers and privates killed or missing. On the evening of the 18th, 96 officers and 1,644 men went to the ambulances.

Many wounds, at first thought very serious, will ultimately prove not to be so. The bearers of these honourable scars will shortly rejoin their colours.

These losses have not shaken either the ardour or the confidence of these valiant divisions. They only ask to make the enemy pay dearly for this day's work. The hope and the will to conquer are in every heart, and all count upon it that in the next struggle fortune will not play false to valour.

Pelissier,
Commander-in-Chief.

THE BATTLE OF THE TCHERNAYA.

Head-quarters, before Sebastopol, August 18.

Monsieur le Maréchal,—You will have learnt by my telegraphic despatches of yesterday and of the day before the general results of the battle of the Tchernaya; to-day I send your Excellency a detailed report of that battle, so glorious for our arms.

For some days, although the enemy abstained from any apparent movement, certain indications made us suppose he would attack our lines on the Tchernaya. You know those positions, which are excellent, and which are covered to the full extent by the Tchernaya itself, and by a canal, which forms a second obstacle. The Sardinian army occupies the whole of the right, opposite Tchorgoun; the French troops guard the centre and the left, which joins after a declivity our plateaux of Inkerman. Independently of a few fords, which are bad enough, there are{523} two bridges across the Tchernaya and the canal. One, a little above Tchorgoun, is under the guns of the Piedmontese; the other, called Traktir Bridge, is below, and almost in the centre of the French positions. Looking straight before one towards the other bank of the Tchernaya, you behold to the right the heights of Tchouliou, which, after extending themselves in undulating plateaux, fall somewhat abruptly towards the Tchernaya below Tchorgoun, opposite the Piedmontese. These heights diminish opposite our centre, and starting from that point to the rocky sides of the Mackenzie Plateaux, there is a plain about three or four kilomètres in width. It is by that plain that the Mackenzie Road leads across the Tchernaya at Traktir Bridge, and, after passing through our pontoons, leads into the Balaklava plain.

A strict watch was kept all along our lines—the Turks, who occupy the hilly grounds of Balaklava, were on the alert, and watched Alsou; and General d'Allonville, also put on his guard, doubled his vigilance in the high valley of Baidar. My mind was quite at rest, moreover, as regards the extreme right; it is one of those mountainous regions where it is impossible to manœuvre large bodies of men. The enemy could only make false demonstrations there—in fact, that is what occurred. In the night between the 15th and 16th of August, General d'Allonville notified that he had troops opposite him; but his attitude imposed upon the enemy, who attempted nothing on that side, and dared not attack him. During this time, the main body of the Russian troops, which had descended from the Mackenzie Heights with the intention of debouching near Ai Todor, advanced, favoured by night, on the Tchernaya; to the right, the 7th, 5th, and 12th Divisions crossed the plain; and to the left, the 17th Division; a portion of the 6th and the 4th followed the plateau of Tchouliou. A strong body of cavalry and 160 pieces of artillery supported the infantry.

A little before daybreak the advanced posts of the Sardinian army, placed as vedettes as far as the heights of Tchouliou, fell back, and announced that the enemy was advancing in considerable force. Shortly afterwards, in fact, the Russians lined the heights of the right bank of the Tchernaya with heavy guns (pièces de position), and opened fire on us.

General Herbillon, who commanded the French troops on this point, had made his arrangements for battle. To the right of the Traktir Road, Faucheux's division, with the 3rd battery of the 12th artillery; in the centre, his own division, with the 6th company of the 13th; to the left, Camou's division, with the 4th battery of the 13th. On his side, General Della Marmora had ranged his troops in order of battle. At the same time, General Morris's fine division of Chasseurs d'Afrique, speedily joined by General Scarlett's numerous and valiant English cavalry, took up a position behind the hills of Kamara and Traktir. This cavalry was to take the enemy in flank, in case he should succeed in forcing a passage by one of the three outlets of Tchorgoun or Traktir, or at the incline to the left of General Camou.

Colonel Forgeot, in command of the artillery of the Tchernaya lines, kept six batteries of horse artillery, two of which belonged to the Imperial Guard, ready to act as a reserve. Six Turkish battalions of Osman Pasha's army, led by Sefer Pasha, came to lend us their assistance. Finally, I ordered forward Levaillant's division of the 1st corps, Dulac's division of the 2nd corps, and the Imperial Guard, comprising reserves capable of remedying the most serious contretemps. The thick mist which covered the depths of the Tchernaya, and the smoke of the cannonade which had just commenced, prevented us distinguishing against which particular point the chief effort of the enemy would be directed;{524} when, on our extreme left, the 7th Russian division came tilt against Camou's division. Received by the 50th of the Line, the 3rd Zouaves, who charged them with the bayonet, and by the 82nd, which took them in flank, the enemy's columns were compelled to make a demivolte to recross the canal, and could only escape the fire of our artillery by getting out of range to rally. That division did not appear again during the day.

In the centre, the struggle was longer and more desperate. The enemy had sent two divisions (the 12th supported by the 5th) against Traktir Bridge. Many of their columns rushed at once upon the bridge, and the temporary passages they constructed with ladders, pontoons, and madriers. They then crossed the Tchernaya, the trench of our lines, and advanced bravely on our positions. But, assailed by Generals Faucheux and De Failly, these columns were routed, and the men recrossed the bridge occupied by the 95th, and were pursued beyond it by the 2nd Zouaves, the 97th of the Line, and by a portion of the 19th battalion of Chasseurs-à-Pied.

However, while the artillery was roaring on both sides, the Russians re-formed their columns of attack, the mist had cleared, and their movements became distinctly visible. Their 5th division reinforced the 12th, which had just been engaged; and the 17th was preparing to descend the heights of Tchouliou to support these two first divisions.

General Herbillon then ordered General Faucheux to be reinforced by Cler's Brigade, and gave the 73rd as a reserve to General de Failly. Colonel Forgeot, moreover, placed four batteries of horse artillery in position, which gave him on this front a total of seven batteries to be brought to bear upon the assailing masses. The result was, that the second attempt of the Russians, in spite of its energetic character, proved of no avail against us; and they were compelled to retreat with great loss.

The 17th Russian Division, which had come down throwing out large bodies of riflemen as skirmishers, had no better success. Received with great resolution by General Cler's Brigade, and by a half battery of the Imperial Guard, harassed on the left by the troops of Tretti's Division, who pressed it closely, that division was compelled to recross the Tchernaya, and to fall back behind the batteries of position which lined the heights from which it had started.

From this moment, 9 A.M., the defeat of the enemy was inevitable. Their long columns withdrew as fast as they could, under the protection of a considerable body of cavalry and artillery.

For a moment I felt inclined to order a portion of the cavalry to charge and cut down the remnant of the 17th Russian Division, between the Tchouliou and Traktir Bridges. With this object in view, I had prepared some squadrons of Chasseurs d'Afrique, who were joined by some Sardinian squadrons, and by one of General Scarlett's regiments, the 12th Lancers (from India); but the retreat of the Russians was so prompt, that we could only have made a small number of prisoners, and this fine cavalry might have been reached by some of the enemy's batteries still in position; I deemed it preferable not to expose it for so small a result. General Della Marmora did not, moreover, stand in need of this support boldly to retake the advanced positions which his small posts occupied on the heights of Tchouliou.

At three o'clock the whole of the enemy's army had disappeared. The Division of the Guard and Dulac's Division relieved the divisions engaged, as they stood in need of some rest. I sent back the first corps of Devaillant's Division, and the cavalry returned to its usual bivouac. This splendid action does the greatest honour to the infantry, to the horse artillery of the Garde, to that of the reserve, and to the artillery of{525} divisions. I will shortly ask your Excellency to place before the Emperor the names of those who have deserved rewards, and to submit to the approbation of his Majesty those which I may have awarded in his name. Our losses are doubtless to be regretted, but they are not in proportion to the results obtained, and to those we have inflicted upon the enemy. We have eight superior officers wounded, nine subaltern officers killed, and fifty-three wounded; 172 non-commissioned officers and soldiers killed, 146 missing, and 1,163 wounded. The Russians have left 400 prisoners in our hands. The number of their killed may be estimated at more than 3,000, and of their wounded at more than 5,000, of which number 1,626 men and thirty-eight officers have been taken to our ambulances. Among the slain found by us are the bodies of two generals, whose names I have not been able to ascertain.

The Sardinian army, which fought so valiantly at our side, has about 250 men hors de combat. It inflicted a much greater loss upon the enemy. One hundred prisoners, and about one hundred and fifty wounded, remain in its hands. I am sorry to announce to your Excellency that General Della Marmora has informed me that Count de Montevecchio, whose character and talents he greatly appreciated, was killed gloriously at the head of his brigade.

I must point out to your Excellency the rapidity with which General Scarlett's cavalry, placed at my disposal by General Simpson, came up. The martial appearance of these magnificent squadrons betrayed an impatience which the happy and prompt result of the battle did not allow me to gratify.

The English and Sardinian position batteries, and the Turkish battery which Osman Pasha had sent to Alsou, fired with great precision and success. I thanked Osman Pasha for the promptitude with which he sent me six Turkish battalions under Sefer Pasha (General Koscielzki), four of which during the day occupied the passage near Tchorgoun.

Nothing remarkable took place during the day on the Sebastopol side. Generals De Salles and Bosquet were, however, prepared to drive back with energy any attack of the besieged. I send your Excellency with this report the copy of the plan for the battle of the 16th, found upon the body of a Russian general, supposed to be General Read, who commanded the enemy's right, and was especially entrusted with the attack on Traktir Bridge.

I am, &c., &c.,

Pelissier,

Commander-in-Chief.

As this battle really decided the fall of the place, inasmuch as it enabled the Allies to continue without fear of molestation the armament of those tremendous batteries which would have annihilated the whole forces of Russia inside the walls of Sebastopol, it may not be uninteresting to add the despatches of General Simpson, who was late on the field, and of General Della Marmora, who took an active part in directing the operations of the Sardinians on this memorable day. General Simpson wrote as follows:—{526}

Before Sebastopol, August 18.

My Lord,—In my despatch of the 14th instant, I informed your Lordship that I had reason to believe that the Russians would attempt by a vigorous attack to force us to raise the siege! This they endeavoured to do on the morning of the 16th, but the result was most glorious to those of the Allied troops who had the good fortune to be engaged.

The action commenced before daylight, by a heavy column of Russians under the command of General Liprandi, and composed of the 6th and 17th Divisions, with the 4th and 7th Divisions in reserve, attacking the advanced posts of the Sardinians. The ground occupied by them is on commanding hills on the right of the position, on the left bank of the Souhaia river, where it forms its junction with the Tchernaya, with two advanced posts on the opposite side. These were held with very determined gallantry for a considerable time; but being separated from their supports by the river, and not having the protection of artillery, they were compelled to leave the most advanced one.

About the same time, the 5th and 12th Divisions, to which was added a portion of the 17th, advanced against the bridge of Traktir, held by one battalion of French infantry of the Line, who were for a short time obliged to yield and fall back upon the main supports; with these, however, they quickly retook the bridge at the point of the bayonet. Again the Russians attacked with persevering courage, and were enabled to follow up their advantage by gaining the heights which rise precipitously on each side of the road; their success was but momentary—they were driven back across the river, leaving the ground covered with dead and wounded.

The Russian General, in no way daunted by the failure of his two attempts, ordered a second column, of equal force to the first, to attack; they advanced with such impetuosity, covered by the fire of their numerous artillery, that a third time the bridge was carried, and the heights above it crowned, but they were again repulsed, and retired in great confusion into the plain, followed by the bayonets of our gallant allies. The General Officer who commanded the Russian column, and who is supposed to be General Read, was killed, and in his possession was found the orders for the battle, signed by Prince Gortschakoff, who commanded in person. From these it would appear that it was a most determined attempt to force us to raise the siege. Had they succeeded, Balaklava was to have been attacked by one portion of their army, whilst the heights on which we now are were to have been stormed with the other; at the same time a vigorous sortie was to have been made from the town on the French works on our extreme left from the Quarantine, and another on the works on our extreme right on Mount Sapoune.

The action which I have endeavoured to describe is most glorious to the arms of the French and Sardinian troops. To meet the force of the Russians, the former had but 12,000 infantry and four batteries of artillery engaged; the latter had 10,000 men in position, 4,500 actually engaged, and twenty-four pieces of cannon.

The Russian force consisted of from 50,000 to 60,000 men, with 160 pieces of artillery, and cavalry to the amount of 6,000. This disparity of numbers will readily explain to your Lordship the difficulty that would have been experienced had an attempt been made to follow up the advantage by a pursuit. The Russian retreat, moreover, was protected by the fire from the heavy guns in position on the Mackenzie Heights.

The loss sustained by the Russians is estimated at between 5,000 and{527} 6,000 men, including 600 prisoners, whilst on the part of the Allies it does not amount to more than 1,000 men.

This brilliant affair has caused the greatest delight amongst the ranks of the Allied army; and while it adds fresh lustre to the gallant achievements of the French arms, it is with the utmost pleasure that I have to record the intrepid conduct and gallant bearing of the Sardinian troops, under General Della Marmora, who have for the first time met, conquered, and shed their blood against our common enemy, who is now disturbing the peace of Europe.

Captain Mowbray's battery of 32-pounder howitzers was placed in advance with the Sardinian troops, and did most excellent service in preventing the advance of the enemy's artillery.

Our cavalry, under Lieutenant-General Sir J. Scarlett, K.C.B., was placed in the plain of Balaklava, prepared to take advantage of any circumstance that might present itself, but the opportunity did not arise for calling upon their services.

I regret that I am unable to give a more detailed account of the part performed by the Sardinians, as up to this time I have not received General Della Marmora's report.

I have, &c.,

James Simpson,

General Commanding.

Lord Panmure, &c. &c. &c.

Before Sebastopol, August 21.

My Lord,—In my despatch of the 18th instant I was unable to give as detailed an account of the part taken by the Sardinian troops, in the battle of the Tchernaya, as I could have wished. I have since received General La Marmora's report, of which I have now the honour to send you a copy.

The killed and wounded of the Russian army exceed, if anything, the number I originally stated. An armistice was granted, to enable the enemy to bury the dead, and vast quantities were carried away.

The fire from the batteries of the Allies has been very effective, and the result attained has been sufficient to enable the works against the place to progress satisfactorily.

I beg to enclose the list of casualties to the 19th instant.

Major M'Gowan, 93rd Highlanders, who was reported by me as missing in my despatch of the 11th August, I have since ascertained was attacked whilst posting his sentries in advance of the trenches, wounded severely, and made prisoner.

I have, &c.,

James Simpson,

General Commanding.

The Lord Panmure, &c. &c. &c.

{528}

[Translation.]

Sardinian Army.—Head-quarters of the Expeditionary
Forces in the East, Kadikoi, August 17.

Sir,—The interest which you are so kind as to evince in everything relating to the Sardinian Expeditionary Army makes it imperative upon me to inform your Excellency of the share taken by the troops under my command in the engagement on the Tchernaya yesterday.

Upon receiving the report of Colonel Dessaint, attached to the French head-quarters, which you were good enough to communicate to me on the evening of the day before yesterday, and by which we were led to expect very shortly an attack on the line of the Tchernaya, I at once gave orders that my troops should be under arms yesterday morning at an earlier hour than usual.

At break of day our outposts stationed on the Mamelon, which commands Tchorgoun, were enveloped in a well-sustained fire of artillery, which proceeded from three batteries posted opposite to the breastworks by which our outposts were covered, and on the two Mamelons further to the right, which form the two banks of the Souliou. They were at the same time vigorously charged by three Russian columns, which came on with fixed bayonets, and attacked our breastworks in front and rear. The men composing these columns carried ladders with them to scale the parapets. The preconcerted signal of alarm was immediately given; and the troops took up the positions which had been assigned to them in anticipation of this attack.

I begged his Excellency Hosman Pasha to bring up the Turkish troops which were stationed furthest off; and I ordered the 4th battalion of Riflemen (bersaglieri) to the support of our outposts, which only consisted of three companies, in order that these latter might be enabled to hold their ground as long as possible, and thus give us time to complete our arrangements.

Attacked in the rear by the enemy's artillery, and charged by three columns of infantry, the outposts, after an hour's firing, fell back, the reinforcements I had sent to them greatly facilitating their retreat. At the same time I made every effort to silence the enemy's guns. In this endeavour I was assisted by the Turkish field-pieces from Alsou, and by the English battery, with which you were good enough to reinforce us. Several of the enemy's ammunition wagons exploded between seven and eight o'clock.

In the meantime the Russians had stationed fresh batteries near the centre of their position, and had opened a most effective fire of artillery on the tête-de-pont at Traktir, and on the French positions on our left. A column of infantry, under cover of this fire, attacked the Mamelon, which formed the extreme right of General d'Herbillon's Division. The first column had crossed the Tchernaya, and surmounted the steep ascent of the Mamelon in spite of the fire of the tirailleurs, when it was vigorously attacked by the French troops in support, and hurled back, broken and disordered, into the Tchernaya.

As I considered, from the subsequent dispositions of the enemy's forces, that he only intended to make a demonstration of artillery before our position, while he concentrated his infantry chiefly on the extreme right of the Third Division (Faucher's), on which point a second column was now advancing, I ordered a portion of my 5th Brigade, under the command of General Mallard, to march to the support of the right wing{529} of the French, and I posted two of our batteries in a position from whence they could maintain an oblique fire upon the Russians. At the same time I requested the English cavalry to move down into the plain to be in readiness to charge. I had given similar orders to my own cavalry.

When the soldiers of my 5th Brigade arrived at the Mamelon, they found that the enemy's attack had been already repulsed; but the fire of the two batteries of the 2nd Division (Trotti's) appeared to do great execution on the 2nd Russian column, which, checked in front by the French troops, and harassed in the rear by the fire of our batteries and the musketry of our battalions, fell back in the greatest disorder. I then ordered some of our battalions to advance under cover of the Riflemen (bersaglieri), but I was requested to countermand this movement.

The enemy, repulsed at all points, commenced his retreat. One column, which appeared to me to consist of a division, retreated by the valley of the Souliou. Another division, the one which had attacked our outposts and the French right in the morning, fell back upon the zigzag Mamelon; while a third division followed the road which leads to Mackenzie's Farm.

I took advantage of this state of things to reoccupy with my troops the zigzag Mamelon; in which design I succeeded perfectly, in spite of the imposing force which the enemy still retained on that point. In the meantime, three battalions of Turkish troops advanced into the Valley of Tchorgoun, to replace the battalion of Cialdini's Brigade, which was occupying the heights of Karlooka.

Later in the day I crossed the Tchernaya with four squadrons, and marching in a parallel line with the zigzag Mamelon, came upon the old Russian redoubt, whence I could easily discern, at a little distance before us, a very fine array of regular cavalry, supported by horse artillery. It was distributed in twelve separate bodies, and must have been composed of at least fifty squadrons. This cavalry did not fall back on Mackenzie Road till the whole of the infantry and artillery had effected their retreat.

The losses sustained by our troops, a portion only of whom was engaged, were very inconsiderable. They amount to about two hundred men placed hors de combat; and I impute the fact of our not having lost more men mainly to the works with which we fortified our position, and to the batteries of heavy guns which you were so obliging as to lend us for their defence. It is, however, my painful duty to announce to your Excellency that Count Montevecchio, the General commanding the 4th Brigade, is mortally wounded; a ball passed through his chest.

Pray accept, General, the assurance of my high consideration.

The General Commanding-in-Chief the
Sardinian Expeditionary Forces,

(Signed) La Marmora.

To his Excellency the General Commanding-in-Chief
the English Army.

{530}

GENERAL SIMPSON'S DESPATCH.

General Simpson To Lord Panmure.

(Received September 22.)

Before Sebastopol, September 9, 1855.

My Lord,—I had the honour to apprise your Lordship in my despatch of the 4th instant, that the Engineer and Artillery Officers of the Allied Armies had laid before General Pelissier and myself a report recommending that the assault should be given on the 8th instant, after a heavy fire had been kept up for three days.

This arrangement I agreed to, and I have to congratulate your Lordship on the glorious results of the attack of yesterday, which has ended in the possession of the town, dockyards, and public buildings, and destruction of the last ships of the Russian Fleet in the Black Sea. Three steamers alone remain, and the speedy capture or sinking of these must speedily follow.

It was arranged that at twelve o'clock in the day the French columns of assault were to leave their trenches, and take possession of the Malakoff and adjacent works. After their success had been assured, and they were fairly established, the Redan was to be assaulted by the English; the Bastion, Central, and Quarantine Forts, on the left, were simultaneously to be attacked by the French.

At the hour appointed our Allies quitted their trenches, entered and carried the apparently impregnable defences of the Malakoff with that impetuous valour which characterizes the French attack; and, having once obtained possession, they were never dislodged.

The Tricolor planted on the parapet was the signal for our troops to advance.

The arrangements for the attack I entrusted to Lieutenant-General Sir William Codrington, who carried out the details in concert with Lieutenant-General Markham.

I determined that the second and light divisions should have the honour of the assault, from the circumstance of their having defended the batteries and approaches against the Redan for so many months, and from the intimate knowledge they possessed of the ground.

The fire of our artillery having made as much of a breach as possible in the salient of the Redan, I decided that the columns of assault should be directed against that part, as being less exposed to the heavy flanking fire by which this work is protected.

It was arranged between Sir W. Codrington and Lieutenant-General Markham that the assaulting column of 1,000 men should be formed by equal numbers of these two divisions, the column of the light division to lead, that of the 2nd to follow. They left the trenches at the preconcerted signal, and moved across the ground preceded by a covering party of 200 men, and a ladder party of 320. On arriving at the crest of the ditch, and the ladders placed, the men immediately stormed the parapet of the Redan, and penetrated into the salient angle. A most determined and bloody contest was here maintained for nearly an hour, and although supported to the utmost, and the greatest bravery displayed, it was found impossible to maintain the position.

Your Lordship will perceive, by the long and sad list of casualties, with{531} what gallantry and self-devotion the officers so nobly placed themselves at the head of their men during this sanguinary conflict.

I feel myself unable to express in adequate terms the sense I entertain of the conduct and gallantry exhibited by the troops, though their devotion was not rewarded by the success which they so well merited; but to no one are my thanks more justly due than to Colonel Windham, who gallantly headed his column of attack, and was fortunate in entering, and remaining with the troops, during the contest.

The trenches were, subsequently to this attack, so crowded with troops that I was unable to organize a second assault, which I intended to make with the Highlanders under Lieutenant-General Sir Colin Campbell, who had hitherto formed the reserve, to be supported by the third division under Major-General Sir William Eyre. I, therefore, sent for these officers, and arranged with them to renew the attack the following morning.

The Highland Brigade occupied the advanced trenches during the night. About eleven o'clock the enemy commenced exploding their magazines, and Sir Colin Campbell having ordered a small party to advance cautiously to examine the Redan, found the work abandoned; he did not, however, deem it necessary to occupy it until daylight.

The evacuation of the town by the enemy was made manifest during the night. Great tires appeared in every part, accompanied by large explosions, under the cover of which the enemy succeeded in withdrawing their troops to the north side by means of the raft-bridge recently constructed, and which they afterwards disconnected and conveyed to the other side.

Their men-of-war were all sunk during the night.

The boisterous weather rendered it altogether impossible for the Admirals to fulfil their intention of bringing the broadsides of the Allied Fleets to bear upon the Quarantine Batteries; but an excellent effect was produced by the animated and well-directed fire of their mortar vessels, those of Her Majesty being under the direction of Captain Wilcox, of the Odin, and Captain Digby, of the Royal Marine Artillery.

It now becomes my pleasing duty, my Lord, to place on record the high sense I entertain of the conduct of this Army since I have had the honour to command it. The hardships and privations endured by many of the regiments during a long winter campaign are too well known for me to comment upon. They were borne both by officers and men with a patience and unmurmuring endurance worthy of the highest praise, and which gained them the deserved applause and sympathy of their country.

The Naval Brigade, under the command of Captain the Honourable Henry Keppel, aided by Captain Moorsom, and many gallant officers and seamen who have served the guns from the commencement of the siege, merit my warmest thanks.

The prompt, hearty, and efficacious co-operation of Her Majesty's Navy, commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, and ably seconded by Sir Houston Stewart, has contributed most materially to the success of our undertaking; and here, perhaps, I may be permitted to say that, if it had pleased God that the successful result of this memorable siege should have been reported by my ever to be lamented predecessor in this command, I am sure that it would have been one of his most pleasing duties to express the deep sense which I know he entertained of the invaluable assistance and counsel he received on all occasions from Sir Edmund Lyons. When at times affairs looked gloomy and success doubtful, he was at hand to cheer and encourage; and every assistance that could tend to advance the operations was given with the hearty goodwill which characterizes the British sailor.{532}

Nothing has contributed more to the present undertaking than the cordial co-operation which has so happily existed from the first between the two services.

I cannot sufficiently express my approbation of the conduct of the Royal Engineers under Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Jones, who has conducted the siege operations from the beginning of this year. For some time past he has been suffering on a bed of sickness, but the eventful hour of the assault would not permit him to remain absent; he was conveyed on a litter into the trenches to witness the completion of his arduous undertakings.

My warmest thanks are due to the officers and soldiers of the Royal Artillery under the command of Major-General Sir R. Dacres, who, during the arduous operations of this protracted siege, have so mainly contributed to its ultimate success.

I must beg further to record my thanks for the cordial co-operation and assistance I have received in carrying out the details of the service from the Chief of the Staff, the Adjutant and Quartermaster-Generals, and General Staff, as well as Generals commanding Divisions and Brigades of this Army.

I must reserve to myself, for the subject of a future despatch, bringing before your Lordship the particular mention of officers of the various branches of this Army, whom I shall beg to recommend to your favourable notice.

I entrust this despatch to the care of Brevet-Major the Honourable Leicester Curzon, who has been Assistant Military Secretary to my noble predecessor and myself since the commencement of this war, and who will be able to give your Lordship more minute details than the limits of a despatch will allow.

I have, &c.,

James Simpson,

General Commanding.

FINAL ASSAULT ON SEBASTOPOL.

Marshal Pelissier's Report.

Head-quarters, Sebastopol, September 11, 1855.

Monsieur le Maréchal,—I shall have the honour to send you by next courier a detailed report of the attack which has rendered us masters of Sebastopol. I can only give you to-day a rapid sketch of the principal features of this great military achievement.

Since the 16th of August, the day of the Battle of the Tchernaya, and despite the repeated notifications of a new and more formidable attack of the enemy on the positions which we occupy on that river, every preparation was being made for a decisive assault upon Sebastopol itself. The artillery of the Right Attack opened already on the 17th of August a{533} better sustained fire against the Malakhoff and against the Redan and Careening Bay, the neighbouring defences, and the roadstead, so as to allow the engineers to establish lodgments near the place, where the troops could throw themselves promptly on the enceinte. The engineers, moreover, prepared their scaling ladders, and all our batteries of the left opened a very violent fire against the town on the 5th of September. On their side the English kept up a heavy and incessant fire at the Great Redan and its redoubts, which they had to attack.

Everything being ready, I resolved, in concert with General Simpson, to give the assault on the 8th of September, at noon.

M'Mahon's division was to storm the Malakhoff works; Dulac's division the Redan of Careening Bay; and in the centre the division of La Motterouge was to march against the Curtain which unites those two extreme points. In addition to these troops I have given General Bosquet General Mellinet's division of the Garde to support those three first divisions. So much for the right.

In the centre the English were to attack the Great Redan by scaling it at its salient.

On the left the first corps, to which General della Marmora added a Sardinian Brigade, having at its head Levaillant's division, was to penetrate by the Central Bastion into the interior of the town, and then turn the Flagstaff Bastion, to make a lodgment there. General de Salles' instructions were only to follow up his attack if circumstances allowed him.

Moreover, the fleets of Admiral Lyons and Bruat were to make a powerful diversion by attacking the Quarantine, the roadstead, and sea fronts of the fortress. But the state of the sea, owing to a strong wind from the N.E., was such that neither the line-of-battle ships nor frigates could leave their anchorage. The English and French mortar-boats were, however, enabled to open fire. They fired in a remarkable manner, and did us good service.

Precisely at noon M'Mahon, La Motterouge's, and Dulac's divisions, electrified by their leaders, threw themselves against the Malakhoff, the Curtain, and the Little Redan of Careening Bay. After surmounting unheard-of obstacles, and after a terrible hand-to-hand struggle, M'Mahon's division succeeded in making good a footing in the front part of the Malakhoff. The enemy kept up a hail of projectiles of every description upon our brave troops. The Redan of Careening Bay, exposed to a cross fire and to the fire of the steamers, was obliged to be evacuated after having been occupied; but La Motterouge's division held its ground on a portion of the Curtain, and M'Mahon's division gained ground in the Malakhoff, where General Bosquet poured in reserves, which I hastened up.

The other attacks were subordinate to that of the Malakhoff, the key of the defences of the whole place.

From the Brancion Redoubt, where I had placed myself, I saw that the Malakhoff was in our hands, and I gave the signal agreed upon with General Simpson.

The English at once advanced bravely against the salient of the Great Redan; they succeeded in lodging themselves there, and struggled for a long time to keep it; but, overwhelmed by the Russian reserves, which never ceased advancing, and by a violent fire of artillery, they were forced to fall back into their parallels.

At the same signal General de Salles attacked the Central Bastion. Levaillant's division had commenced establishing itself there, as also on the right lunette, when, after a sweeping fire of grape, such strong Russian reinforcements came up, that our troops, decimated by the fire, and their{534} officers hors de combat, were compelled to return to the places d'armes they had started from.

Convinced that the capture of the Malakhoff must decide the success, I prevented a renewal of the other attacks, which, by occupying the enemy on all the points of his vast enceinte, had already fulfilled their chief object, and I concentrated all my attention on the possession of the Malakhoff, now completely in the power of General M'Mahon. A critical moment was, however, at hand.

General Bosquet had just been struck by a large fragment of a shell, and I was obliged to give his command to General Dulac. A powder magazine in the Curtain near the Malakhoff blew up, and made me fear the most serious consequences.

The Russians, hoping to profit by this accident, advanced in dense masses, and in three columns attacked the centre, left, and right of the Malakhoff. But arrangements had already been made within the work. General M'Mahon had daring troops, who feared nothing, to oppose them, and after some desperate attempts the Russians were compelled to beat a retreat. From that moment they relinquished any offensive attack. The Malakhoff was ours, and could not be taken from us. It was half-past four. Measures were immediately taken to put us in a condition to repulse the enemy, should he attempt to attack us in the night. But our uncertainty was soon put an end to. At nightfall flames burst out on all sides, mines exploded, powder magazines blew up. The spectacle of Sebastopol in flames, witnessed by the whole army, was one of the most imposing and terrible sights ever presented in the history of wars. The enemy was evacuating the place. The retreat was effected during the night by means of the bridge established between the two sides of the roadstead, and under cover of the successive explosions, which prevented me from approaching to harass it. On the morning of the 9th the whole south side of the town was abandoned and in our hands.

I need not point out to your Excellency the importance of such a success; nor need I speak of that brave army whose warlike virtues and devotion are so well appreciated by our Emperor, and I shall have, though the number is great, to point out to you those who distinguished themselves among so many valorous soldiers. I cannot do so yet, but I shall fulfil that duty in an early despatch.

Accept, M. le Maréchal, the expression of my respectful devotion.

Pelissier,

Commander-in-Chief.

On the 9th of September, when it became known that the city was abandoned, the following order was issued:—

"General After-Order.

"Head-quarters, September 9.

"The Commander of the Forces congratulates the army on the result of the attack of yesterday.{535}

"The brilliant assault and occupation of the Malakoff by our gallant Allies obliged the enemy to abandon the works they have so long held with such bravery and determination.

"The Commander of the Forces returns his thanks to the general officers and officers and men of the Second and Light Divisions, who advanced and attacked with such gallantry the works of the Redan. He regrets, from the formidable nature of the flanking defences, that their devotion did not meet with that immediate success which it so well merited.

"He condoles and deeply sympathizes with the many brave officers, non-commissioned officers, and men who are now suffering from the wounds they received in the course of their noble exertions of yesterday.

"He deeply deplores the death of the many gallant officers and men who have fallen in the final struggle of this long and memorable siege.

"Their loss will be severely felt, and their names long remembered in this army and by the British nation.

"General Simpson avails himself of this opportunity to congratulate and convey his warmest thanks to the general officers, officers and soldiers of the several divisions, to the Royal Engineers and Artillery, for their cheerful endurance of almost unparalleled hardships and sufferings, and for the unflinching courage and determination which on so many trying occasions they have evinced.

"It is with equal satisfaction that the Commander of the Forces thanks the officers and men of the Naval Brigade for the long and uniform course of valuable service rendered by them from the commencement of the siege.

"By order,

H. W. Barnard, Chief of the Staff."

{536}

STATE OF ARMY, MARCH, 1855.

{537}

THE TREATY OF PARIS.

Art. VII. Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, His Majesty the Emperor of Austria, His Majesty the Emperor of the French, His Majesty the King of Prussia, His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, and His Majesty the King of Sardinia, declare the Sublime Porte admitted to participate in the advantages of the public law and system (concert) of Europe. Their Majesties engage, each on his part, to respect the independence and the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire; guarantee in common the strict observance of that engagement, and will, in consequence, consider any act tending to its violation as a question of general interest.

Art. VIII. If there should arise between the Sublime Porte and one or more of the other signing Powers any misunderstanding which might endanger the maintenance of their relations, the Sublime Porte, and each of such Powers, before having recourse to the use of force, shall afford the other Contracting Parties the opportunity of preventing such an extremity by means of their mediation.

Art. IX. His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, having, in his constant solicitude for the welfare of his subjects, issued a firman which, while ameliorating their condition without distinction of religion or of race, records his generous intentions towards the Christian population of his empire, and wishing to give a further proof of his sentiments in that respect, has resolved to communicate to the Contracting Parties the said firman, emanating spontaneously from his sovereign will.

The Contracting Powers recognize the high value of this communication. It is clearly understood that it cannot, in any case, give to the said Powers the right to interfere, either collectively or separately, in the relations of His Majesty the Sultan with his subjects, nor in the internal administration of his empire.

Art. XI. The Black Sea is neutralized: its waters and its ports, thrown open to the mercantile marine of every nation, are formally and in perpetuity interdicted to the flag of war, either of the Powers possessing its coasts, or of any other Power, with the exceptions mentioned in Articles XIV. and XIX. of the present Treaty.

Art. XIII. The Black Sea being neutralized according to the terms of Article XI, the maintenance or establishment upon its coast of military-maritime arsenals becomes alike unnecessary and purposeless; in consequence, His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias and His Imperial Majesty the Sultan engage not to establish or to maintain upon that coast any military-maritime arsenal.

Art. XXII. The Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia shall continue to enjoy, under the suzerainty of the Porte, and under the guarantee{538} of the Contracting Powers, the privileges and immunities of which they are in possession. No exclusive protection shall be exercised over them by any of the guaranteeing Powers. There shall be no separate right of interference in their internal affairs.

Art. XXVIII. The Principality of Servia shall continue to hold of the Sublime Porte, in conformity with the Imperial Hats which fix and determine its rights and immunities, placed henceforward under the collective guarantee of the Contracting Powers.

In consequence, the said Principality shall preserve its independent and national administration, as well as full liberty of worship, of legislation, of commerce, and of navigation.

Art. XXIX. The right of garrison of the Sublime Porte, as stipulated by anterior regulations, is maintained. No armed intervention can take place in Servia without previous agreement between the High Contracting Powers.

Treaty between Her Majesty, the Emperor of Austria, and the
Emperor of the French, guaranteeing the Independence and
Integrity of the Ottoman Empire.

Signed at Paris, April 15, 1856.

Ratifications exchanged at Paris, April 29, 1856.

Art. I. The High Contracting Parties guarantee, jointly and severally, the independence and the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, recorded in the Treaty concluded at Paris on the thirtieth of March, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six.

Art. II. Any infraction of the stipulations of the said Treaty will be considered by the Powers signing the present Treaty as casus belli. They will come to an understanding with the Sublime Porte as to the measures which have become necessary, and will without delay determine among themselves as to the employment of their military and naval forces.

THE DENUNCIATION OF THE TREATY OF PARIS.

Earl Granville to Sir A. Buchanan.

FOREIGN OFFICE, Nov. 10, 1870.

Sir,—Baron Brunnow made to me yesterday the communication respecting the Convention between the Emperor of Russia and the Sultan, limiting their naval forces in the Black Sea, signed at Paris on the 30th of March, 1856, to which you allude in your telegram of yesterday afternoon.

In my despatch of yesterday I gave you an account of what passed between us, and I now propose to observe upon Prince Gortschakoff's{539} despatches of the 19th and 20th ult., communicated to me by the Russian Ambassador on that occasion.

Prince Gortschakoff declares, on the part of His Imperial Majesty, that the Treaty of 1856 has been infringed in various respects to the prejudice of Russia, and more especially in the case of the Principalities, against the explicit protest of his representative, and that, in consequence of these infractions, Russia is entitled to renounce those stipulations of the Treaty which directly touch her interests.

It is then announced that she will no longer be bound by the Treaties which restrict her rights of sovereignty in the Black Sea.

We have here an allegation that certain facts have occurred which, in the judgment of Russia, are at variance with certain stipulations of the Treaty, and the assumption is made that Russia, upon the strength of her own judgment as to the character of those facts, is entitled to release herself from certain other stipulations of that instrument.

This assumption is limited in its practical application to some of the provisions of the Treaty, but the assumption of a right to renounce any one of its terms involves the assumption of a right to renounce the whole.

This statement is wholly independent of the reasonableness or unreasonableness, on its own merits, of the desire of Russia to be released from the observation of the stipulations of the Treaty of 1856 respecting the Black Sea.

For the question is, in whose hand lies the power of releasing one or more of the parties from all or any of these stipulations?

It has always been held that that right belongs only to the Governments who have been parties to the original instrument.

The despatches of Prince Gortschakoff appear to assume that any one of the Powers who have signed the engagement may allege that occurrences have taken place which in its opinion are at variance with the provisions of the Treaty; and, although this view is not shared nor admitted by the co-signatory Powers, may found upon that allegation, not a request to those Governments for the consideration of the case, but an announcement to them that it has emancipated itself, or holds itself emancipated, from any stipulations of the Treaty which it thinks fit to disprove. Yet it is quite evident that the effect of such doctrine, and of any proceeding which, with or without avowal, is founded upon it, is to bring the entire authority and efficacy of Treaties under the discretionary control of each one of the Powers who may have signed them; the result of which would be the entire destruction of Treaties in their essence. For whereas their whole object is to bind Powers to one another, and for this purpose each one of the parties surrenders a portion of its free agency, by the doctrine and proceeding now in question one of the parties, in its separate and individual capacity, may bring back the entire subject into its own control, and remains bound only to itself.

Accordingly, Prince Gortschakoff has announced in these despatches the intention of Russia to continue to observe certain of the provisions of the Treaty. However satisfactory this might be in itself, it is obviously an expression of the free will of that Power, which it might at any time alter or withdraw; and in this it is thus open to the same objections as the other portions of the communications, because it implies the right of Russia to annul the Treaty on the ground of allegations of which she constitutes herself the only judge.

The question therefore arises, not whether any desire expressed by Russia ought to be carefully examined in a friendly spirit by the co-signatory Powers, but whether they are to accept from her the announcement that, by her own act, without any consent from them, she has released herself from a solemn covenant.{540}

I need scarcely say that Her Majesty's Government have received this communication with deep regret, because it opens a discussion which might unsettle the cordial understanding it has been their earnest endeavour to maintain with the Russian Empire; and for the above-mentioned reasons it is impossible for Her Majesty's Government to give any sanction, on their part, to the course announced by Prince Gortschakoff.

If, instead of such a declaration, the Russian Government had addressed Her Majesty's Government and the other Powers who are parties to the Treaty of 1856, and had proposed for consideration with them, whether anything has occurred which could be held to amount to an infraction of the Treaty, or whether there is anything in the terms which, from altered circumstances, presses with undue severity upon Russia, or which, in the course of events, had become unnecessary for the due protection of Turkey, Her Majesty's Government would not have refused to examine the question in concert with the co-signatories to the Treaty. Whatever might have been the result of such communications, a risk of future complications and a very dangerous precedent as to the validity of international obligations would have been avoided.

I am, &c.,
(Signed) Granville.

P.S.—You will read and give a copy of this despatch to Prince Gortschakoff.

Prince Gortschakoff to Baron Brunnow.

Czarskoe Selo, 8 (20) November, 1870.

M. le Baron,—The English Ambassador has read to and given me a copy of a despatch of Lord Granville relating to our communications of the 19th (31) of October.

I have hastened to place it before His Majesty the Emperor. It has pleased our August Master to notice, first, the earnest desire of the Cabinet of London to maintain a cordial understanding between England and Russia, and secondly, the assurance that it would not refuse to examine the modifications which circumstances have caused in the results of the Treaty of 1856. As regards the view of strict right laid down by Lord Granville we do not wish to enter into any discussion, recall any precedent, or cite any example, because such a debate would not conduce to the understanding that we desire.

Our August Master has had an imperative duty to fulfil towards his country, without wishing to wound or threaten any of the Governments who signed the Treaty of 1856. On the contrary, His Imperial Majesty appeals to their sentiments of justice, and to the consciousness of their own dignity.

We regret to see that Lord Granville dwells chiefly on the form of our communications. It was not done by our choice. Assuredly, we should have desired nothing better than to arrive at the result in harmony with the Powers who signed the Treaty of 1856. But Her Britannic Majesty's principal Secretary of State well knows that all the efforts repeatedly made to unite the Powers in a common deliberation, in order to do away with{541} the causes of complication which trouble the general peace, have constantly failed. The prolongation of the actual crisis, and the absence of a regular Power in France, remove still further the possibility of such an union. Meanwhile, the position of Russia by this Treaty has become more and more intolerable. Lord Granville will allow that the Europe of to-day is very different from that which signed the Act of 1856. It was impossible that Russia should consent to remain indefinitely bound by a transaction which, already onerous when concluded, lost its guarantees from day to day.

Our August Master knows his duty towards his country too well to impose on it any longer an obligation against which the national feeling protests.

We cannot admit that the abrogation of a theoretical principle without immediate application, which only restores to Russia a right of which no other nation would be deprived, can be considered as a menace to peace, or that the annulment of one point in the Treaty implies the annulment of the whole.

Such has never been the intention of the Imperial Cabinet. On the contrary, our communications of the 19th (31st) of October declare in the most explicit manner that His Majesty the Emperor adheres entirely to the general principles of the Treaty of 1856, and that he is ready to come to an understanding with the Powers who signed that transaction, either by confirming the general stipulations, or by renewing them, or by substituting for them any other equitable arrangement which will be considered fitting to ensure tranquillity in the East, and the equilibrium of Europe. There seems to be no reason why the Cabinet of London, if agreeable to it, should not enter into explanations with those who signed the Treaty of 1856.

On our part, we are ready to join in any deliberation having for its object the general guarantees for consolidating the peace of the East.

We are sure that this peace would receive additional security if a permanent cause of irritation now existing between the two Powers most directly interested in it was removed and their mutual relations were resettled on a good and solid understanding.

You are requested, M. le Baron, to read and give a copy of this despatch to Lord Granville.

The principal Secretary of State of Her Britannic Majesty has expressed to you the regret he would experience if this discussion would alter the good understanding which the Government of Her Majesty the Queen has striven to maintain between the two countries. Will you inform his Excellency how much the Imperial Cabinet would share in this regret.

We think the good understanding of the two Governments essentially useful to the two countries, as well as to the peace of the world. It is with a lively satisfaction that we have seen it become during the last few years more and more intimate and cordial.

The parity of the circumstances in which we are placed seem of a kind to render this more desirable than ever.

Receive, &c.,

Gortschakoff.

{542}

Earl Granville to Sir A. Buchanan.

Foreign Office, Nov. 28.

Sir,—The Russian Ambassador has read and given to me a copy of a despatch of Prince Gortschakoff of the date of 8th (20th) November.

It is not necessary for Her Majesty's Government to recur to the important questions of international law raised by the circular of Prince Gortschakoff, as they have nothing to add to the declaration on the subject which they have already made.

His Excellency has been good enough to appeal to my knowledge of facts which His Excellency states prevented that consultation and agreement with other parties to this Treaty which Russia would have preferred.

I am aware that suggestions for Congresses to settle other European questions have been made and not adopted.

It has been also stated to me that intimations have been given to some of my predecessors, that in the case of certain contingencies, which however have never occurred, such as the possession of the Principalities by Austria, Russia would feel bound to call into question some of the provisions of the Treaty of 1856. But I am ignorant of any occasion on which Russia, the party most interested, has proposed in any way to this country that a relaxation of the Treaty should be taken into consideration.

I cannot therefore admit that the Imperial Government can justify this proceeding by the failure of efforts which have never been made.

The courteous language in which Prince Gortschakoff's despatch is written, his assurance of the manner in which he would have preferred to open this question, and his declaration of the strong desire for a confirmation of good relations between the two nations, particularly important at this time, encourage Her Majesty's Government in the belief that the obstacle to such relations will be removed.

They observe that His Excellency describes the declaration which has been made by Russia as an abrogation of a theoretical principle without immediate application. If these words are to be construed into an announcement that Russia has formed and stated her own opinion of her rights, but has no intention of acting in conformity with it without due concert with the other Powers, they go far to close the controversy in which the two Governments have been engaged.

Her Majesty's Government have no objection to accept the invitation which has been made by Prussia to a Conference, upon the understanding that it is assembled without any foregone conclusions as to its results. In such case Her Majesty's Government will be glad to consider with perfect fairness, and the respect due to a great and friendly Power, any proposals which Russia may have to make.

You will read and give a copy of this despatch to Prince Gortschakoff.

I am, &c.,
(Signed) Granville.

{543}

THE CONFERENCE OF 1871.

THE RESULT OF THE DENUNCIATION OF THE TREATY OF PARIS BY
RUSSIA WAS THAT A CONFERENCE, SUGGESTED BY PRINCE BISMARCK,
WAS ARRANGED TO MEET AT LONDON.

Protocol No. 1.

At the Sitting of January 17.

Earl Granville expressed himself as follows:—

Earl Granville—

"The Conference has been accepted by all the co-signatory Powers of the Treaty of 1856, for the purpose of examining, without any foregone conclusion, and of discussing with perfect freedom, the proposals which Russia desires to make to us with regard to the revision which she asks of the stipulations of the said Treaty relative to the neutralization of the Black Sea.

"This unanimity furnishes a striking proof that the Powers recognize that it is an essential principle of the law of nations that none of them can liberate itself from the engagements of a treaty, nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent of the contracting parties by means of an amicable understanding."

Annex.

The Plenipotentiaries of North Germany, of Austria-Hungary, of Great Britain, of Italy, of Russia, and of Turkey, assembled to-day in Conference, recognize that it is an essential principle of the law of nations that no Power can liberate itself from the engagements of a treaty, nor{544} modify the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent Powers by means of an amicable arrangement.

In faith of which the said Plenipotentiaries have signed the present Protocol.

Done at London, the 17th January, 1871.

(Signed) Bernstorff.
Apponyi.
Granville.
Cadorna.
Brunnow.
Musurus.
Broglie.

March 13, 1871.{545}

INDEX.

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y, Z

Adams, Brigadier-General, at Inkerman, 169
Adelaide, the, her arrival in Balaklava, 201
Agamemnon, the, her orders for sailing, 81;
enters Balaklava, and attacks the fort, 137
Airey, General Sir R., his encampment, 42;
superseded, 423
Aladyn, encampment at, 42, 46
Alexander, Colonel, 128
Alexander, Dr., 8
Allied armies, assembled at Varna, 50;
military review of the, 51;
their great losses in killed and wounded, 341;
their preparation for winter quarters, 379;
error of their campaign, 494, 495.
See French, and Soldiers
Alma, the river, halt of the Allied forces at, and preparations for the battle of, 98;
account of the battle, 102 et seq.;
position of the Russians on, 106;
the Allies victorious, 120;
retreat of the Russians from, ib.;
military conduct of the battle of, 121;
state of the battle-field, 483;
telegraph at, 486;
position and attack at, 486, 487;
bitter reflections on the battle, ib.;
graves at, 489;
frightful losses at, 490;
its entrenchments, ib.;
monument at, 491
Aloupka, visit to, 482;
the Colonel of, ib.;
dinner at, ib.
Aloushta, 476;
visits to, 479
Ambalaki, capture of, 268
Ambulance corps, wretchedness of the, 199;
disbanded, 378
Ambulances, their great utility, 363;
superiority of the English ones, 439
Anderson, Captain, 42, 87
Araba drivers, their disappearance from Roumelia and Bulgaria, 201
Arabas, arrival of, with provisions, 97
Arabat, Spit of, 277, 496;
unsuccessful attack on the fortress of, ib.
Armies of the Russians and the Allies, condition of the, 303;
their respective positions before Sebastopol, 305;
general state of the, 469
Armistice, for the burial of the dead, and interchange of civilities during the, 228, 246, 267;
sad scenes during the, 295;
news of, from the respective governments, 457;
mutual visits after the, 458 et seq.;
agreed to, 462;
followed by peace, 467
Arms, a gallant feat of, 258, 259
Army, British, its distressed position at Varna, 62;
its different divisions, and General Commander, 87;
its improved condition, 238;
its concentrated attack on Sebastopol, 351 et seq.;
its amount of armament in the bombardment of Sebastopol, 336 et seq.;
jealousies in the, 385, 386;
preparations for its winter encampment, 420.
See Crimea, and Soldiers
Artillery, duel of, 249;
its powerful effects, 463
Athens, Gulf of, 12
Athos, Mount, 12
Autemarre, General d', the French Commander in the Sea of Azoff, 265.
Azoff, expedition to the Sea of, 265;
capture of Yenikale, 268;
operations in the, 270 et seq.;
destruction of the Russian shipping, &c., 280;
complete success of the expedition, 281;
purity of its water, 496

Baidar, miserable state of, 475
Bakschiserai, retreat of the Russians to, 131;
visit to, 472;
miserable state of, 474
Balaklava, march of the expedition to, 137;
a poor village, ib.;
surrender of the town, ib.;
cholera at, 138;
intended attack of the Russians on, 156;
fortified earthworks thrown around, 166;
hurricane at, 180 et seq.;
miserable condition of, 191, 192;
dreadful scenes among the Turks in, 192;
false alarm at, 193;
improvements in, 235;
general state of, 250;
movements in front of, 325;
its singular aspect, 375;
discipline in the harbour of, 450;
improvements in, ib.
Baltschik, rendezvous of the expedition in, 70, 71
Barnard, General, appointed chief of the staff, 305;
his meeting with the Russians, 458
Bashi-Bazouks, their military characteristics, 51;
their encampment, 52;
disbanded, 57
Batteries before Sebastopol, 214, 215;
relative position and strength of the, 336 et seq.
Bayonet, sanguinary charge with the, at Inkerman, 169, 170;
contests with the, 255, 259;{546}
reluctance to charge with the, 347
Bazancourt's strictures on the Allied forces, 97-100
Beatty, the engineer, his death, 250
Belbek, the river, 132;
scenery of the, ib.;
barrier of the, 133;
arrival of the Allied troops at, ib.;
false alarm at, 135;
deliberations at, 136;
march from the, ib.;
heights of the, 484;
cantonments on the, ib.
Bell, Captain, his gallantry at Alma, 114
Bentinck, Major-General Sir H., lands at Eupatoria, 86;
his orders relative to the services of the fourth division, 392
Berdiansk, attack on, 270
Birds, crowds of, on board ship, 9, 10;
Crimean varieties, 233
Bizot, General, killed, 252
Black River, the, 133;
gorge of the, 166
Black Sea, entrance of the expedition into the, 39
Blane, Major, 183
Bombardment of Sebastopol, 250 et seq.;
terrible effects of the, 335, 338 et seq.
See Sebastopol
Bomb-shells of the Russians, 248, 343
Bonaparte, Emperor, his intended visit to the Crimea, 260
Bono Johnnies, 53, 54, 175
Bosphorus, arrival of the British troops in the, 23;
scenery of the, 37, 38
Bosquet, General, commander of the second division of the French, 56;
his command at the Alma, 98;
his bravery, 102, 103;
at the Tchernaya, 155;
at Inkerman, 172
Bouljanæk, affair at, 94 et seq.
Bouet Willaumez, the French Admiral, 487
Boussiniere, his bravery at Alma, 103
Boxer, Admiral, commander of Balaklava, 210;
his improvements at Balaklava, 239
British soldiers, their devoted heroism, 2, 3
British troops, their disembarkation at Eupatoria, 84.
See Soldiers
Brown, General Sir G., 8;
visits Rustum Pasha, 15;
his quarters, 16;
cordiality of the French towards, 16;
a strict disciplinarian, 23;
proceeds to Varna, 36;
his landing at Eupatoria, 85;
his danger, ib.;
commands the light division, 87;
his gallantry at the Alma, 113, 114;
at Inkerman, 169;
his operations, 242;
commander of the expedition to the Sea of Azoff, 265
Bruat, Admiral, 27;
death of, 447;
high mass celebrated for the soul of, ib.
Bucharest, captured by Omar Pasha, 55
Bug, river, expedition up the, 413;
scenery on the banks of the, ib.;
conflict with the Russians, 414;
its confluence with the Dnieper, 415;
operations in the, 416, 417;
raising of the blockade, 419;
difficulties of ascending it, ib., note
Bulair, town of, 16, 21;
military works at, 23;
fortifications at, 27
Bulgaria, peasantry of, 43, 44;
immense forces assembled in, 48, 49;
the natives forsake their homes, 46
Buller, Brigadier-General, 42
Burgoyne, Sir John, proposes the flank march, 132, 134;
his departure for England, 243
Burliouk, ruins of, 489, 491
Burrell, Dr., 8

Cafés at Gallipoli, 17, 18
Calvert, Mr., the consul at Gallipoli, 15;
his active efforts, ib.
Cambridge, Duke of, his arrival at Gallipoli, 30;
dines with the Sultan, 33;
lands at Eupatoria, 86;
commands the first division, 87;
his gallantry at Alma, 114;
at Inkerman, 169
Camel, anecdote of one at Sebastopol, 439
Cameron, General, of the Highland division, 324
Camp-followers in the Crimea, 449, 450
Camp life, 48
Campbell, General Sir Colin, 25;
his military experience, 114
Campbell, General Sir J., of the fourth division, 242;
his military operations, ib.;
death of, 292
"Canards," hatching of, 215
Canrobert, General, 6;
at Gallipoli, 15;
arrives at Varna, 41;
his bravery at Alma, 102;
assumes the command of the French troops, 139;
at Inkerman, 172;
his order of the day after the battle of Inkerman, 190;
his address to the troops, 260
Canteen-keepers, their rapacity, 445
Carbuccia, General, death of, 56
Cardigan, Lord, his difficult reconnaissance, 54;
his early operations, 94;
at the Tchernaya, 155;
his desperate cavalry charge at Balaklava, 159
Careening Bay, Sebastopol, 143
Casualties, number of, 324, 432
Cathcart, Sir G., commands the fourth division, 87;
at Balaklava, 139;{547}
slain at Inkerman, 170;
his advice while living disregarded, 436
Cathcart's Hill, its position, 248, 249, 252;
view of Sebastopol from, 334;
present state of, 375
Cavalry brigade, British, criticisms on the, 152;
its charge on the Russians, 157;
relics of the, 257
Cemetery, struggle for the, 292;
its capture, 294
"Chambers of horrors," 367
Chapman, Captain, at Sebastopol, 151
Charges at night, difficulties of describing, 261
Chasseurs, at Inkerman, 171;
review of the, 261
Cherson, Cape, lighthouse of, 138
Cherson Bay, cruise up the, 413
Chersonese, Cape, 76;
memorials of the brave at the, 494
Cholera, its violence in Bulgaria, 56;
at Varna, 57, 58;
horrors attending it, 58, 61, 62;
its ravages at Balaklava, &c., 138, 139, 447
Christian subjects of Turkey, their right to protection, 2
Christmas of 1854, its dreariness in the Crimea, 196;
of 1855, 447
Church, desolated interior of a, 257
Civilians, their criticisms on military matters, 447
Classical fictions, 10
Clifford, Hon. Mr., 115
Climate of the Dardanelles and surrounding country, 25, 26
Clothing, terrible deficiency of, 196, 197;
supplied by the Times' commissioner, 196;
general supplies of, 202, 441
Codrington, General Sir W., his gallantry at Alma, 111, 112;
at Inkerman, 169;
his justification, 353;
appointed commander-in-chief, 423;
his various promotions, 424, 425;
his career, 425;
his general orders, 425;
his grand review of the British troops, 454-456;
his general orders respecting the departure of the Sardinians, 492
Coffee, wretched supply of, 204
Colborne, Major, 31
Cold, destructive effects of the, 205, 206;
paralyzing effects of, 221
Colville, Captain, his bravery at Alma, 111
Comet, appearances of the, 9
Commissariat department, 8;
its difficulties at Gallipoli, 20, 21;
its pressure of business, 59;
its supplies, 179;
its deficiencies, 191;
improvement in the supplies, 238;
favourable changes in the, 437
Commission, mixed, at Sebastopol, for distributing the prize captures, 381-385
Cooking, want of apparatus for, 478
Cooking rations, receipts for, 219
Corn, destruction of, in the Sea of Azoff, 270;
quantity of, issued to the English army, 375;
great waste of, 444
Cossacks, appearance of the, 80, 84;
first encounter with the, 94, 95;
their indefatigability, 202;
their cunning, 212;
a brush with the, 258;
their sly manœuvres at Kinburn, 420;
their appearance and habiliments, 459, 473, 480;
their horses, 480, 481
Councils, divided, evils of the, 426
Crimea, causes of the expedition to the, 1;
preparations for the campaign, 2 et seq.;
influence of the press on the, 2, 3;
early difficulties, and imperfect arrangements for the war, 15, 17;
orders for attacking the, 56;
preparations for invading the, ib.;
Russian forces at the, ib.;
departure of the expedition, 70;
its shores and anchorage, 73 et seq.;
landing at Eupatoria, 84-86;
first encounters with the Russians, 89, 94, 95;
amount of the invading force, 87;
Tartar race of the, 88;
march of the Allied army, 83 et seq.;
battle of the Alma, 97 et seq.;
advance from the Alma, 129;
movements of the Russians, 133;
advance on Belbek, 134;
capture of Balaklava, 137;
arrival at Sebastopol, 138;
and its investment, 141 (see Sebastopol);
battle of Inkerman, 169;
hardships of the campaign, 179;
attack on Eupatoria, 190;
attack of the French on Sebastopol, and the progress of the siege, 200;
great hardships, 203;
climate, ib.;
the Times' fund sent to the, 196;
commencement of active operations in the spring, 231;
railway in the, 232;
birds and flowers in the, 233;
sports of the camp, 234;
march of improvement in, 235;
severe fighting before Sebastopol, 244 et seq.;
Kertch expeditions, 263, 265;
expedition to the Sea of Azoff, 265;
severe fighting before Sebastopol, 284 et seq.;
death of Lord Raglan, 299;
General Simpson appointed Commander-in-Chief, 301;
battles of the Tchernaya, 155, 315;
the Sardinian contingent, 310;
capture of the Malakoff, 343;
retreat of the Russians, 361;
capture of Sebastopol, 362;{548}
review of the great struggle, 370 et seq.;
state of the two armies, 387;
ruins of Sebastopol, 387-389;
General Simpson's despatch respecting operations in, 390;
mildness of the weather in November, 1855, 427, 429;
disadvantageous position of the Allies in the, 427;
winter of 1855, 440;
mud of the, 444;
Russian forces in the, 446;
a second Christmas in the, 447;
winter in the, ib.;
storm in the, 448;
camp followers in the, 449;
destruction of the Sebastopol docks, 451-453;
the British forces in the, 454-456;
armistice takes place, 462;
peace proclaimed, 467;
preparations for evacuation, 468;
review of the great struggle, 468-471;
excursion into the interior, 472;
tour through the, and general aspect of the country, 473;
departure of the Sardinian staff from, 492;
memorials of the brave, 494;
tour in the north of the, ib.;
its outlets, and the difficulties these presented to the Russians, ib.;
wells of the, ib.;
salt waters of the, 495;
German villages of the, 496;
reflections on the campaign, ib.
Crimean Flora, 477
Croat labourers, their physical strength and endurance, 232
"Crow's Nest," battery so called, 338
Cuddy, Lieut.-Colonel, his bravery and ill-treatment, 466;
his death, ib.

Dardanelles, arrival of the British troops at the, 12;
coasts of the, ib.;
climate and scenery of the, 25, 26
Dead, armistice for the burial of the, 228, 246, 287, 295
Death, the valley of, 64, 67
Demur Kapu, 476
Desaint, Colonel, 56
Deserters from the Allied forces, 204;
from the Russians, 204, 234;
their accounts from Sebastopol, 204;
stories of the, 387;
their miserable plight, ib.
Devno, march to, 50; the Valley of Death, 64, 67
Diarrhœa among the troops at Varna, 46
Dickson, Colonel, 24;
at Balaklava, 139;
at Sebastopol, 146;
at Inkerman, 170
Dinner, a Crimean one, 219
Discipline, relaxation of, 427
Divisions of the British forces, and their commanders, 87;
their landing at Eupatoria, 85, 86;
their order of march, 93
Djemel Pasha, commander of the Dardanelles, 19;
his learning and intelligence, 19, 20
Dnieper, entry of the united squadron into the, 415;
its blockade raised, 419;
difficulties of ascending the, 419, note
Dobrudscha, campaign in the, and losses experienced thereby, 56
Docks, of Sebastopol, destroyed, 451-453
Dog-hunting in the Crimea, 235
Dogs and cats from Sebastopol, 439
Doyne, Mr., the head engineer, his vigorous labours at Sebastopol, 388, 421, 441
Dragoon Guards, their charge on the Russians, 157
Drainage, operations of, 442
Dress of the British soldiers, 18
Drummers of the Crimea, 450
Drunkenness, punishment of, 445
Dundas, Admiral, 41;
his orders, 76

Egerton, Colonel, his bravery at the Alma, 116
Egyptian troops at Varna, 49
Elchingen, Duc d', death of, 56
Electric telegraph laid down, 236;
its tendency to mischievous consequences, 443
Electricity, agencies of, 278
Eman, Colonel, killed, 353
Emperor, the guiding star of the fleet, 82
Engineering works, scarcity of men for, 243, 244
England, her commercial interests as regards Turkey, 1
England, Sir Richard, arrives at the Dardanelles, 25;
commands the third division, 87
English. See Soldiers, and Army
Enniskilleners, their charge on the Russians, 157
Enos, town of, 15
Entrenchments, advance of the, 308
Espinasse, General, 56
Estcourt, General, 129; death of, 299
Etesian wind, 11
Etonnoirs of the French, 255, 494
Eubœa, 12
Eupatoria, survey of the coast of, 59;
coast of, 75, 76;
town of, 80;
selected for the landing-place, ib.;
inhabitants of, 82;
landing of the French at, 82, 83;
resolution to garrison it, 91;
Russian attack on, 190
Evans, General Sir de Lacy, arrives at the Dardanelles, 25;
commands the second division, 87;
lands at Eupatoria, 86;
his bravery at the Alma, 107, 115;{549}
his report of military operations at the Alma, 116;
his despatch from the heights of the Tchernaya, 161-163;
his illness, 165, 175
Expedition, Crimean, its departure, 70;
its extent, 71;
vastness of the armada conveying it, 73;
its voyage from Varna to the Crimea, 73-75;
its uncertainties, 75, 76;
account of its disembarkation, 84-88;
military force of the, 87;
marches into the interior, ib.;
its order of march, 93;
its halt at the Alma, 96;
at the Katcha, 132;
accession of forces at the, ib.;
makes a détour round the Belbek, 132 et seq.;
its march from the Belbek to Balaklava, 136, 137.
See Crimea, and Sebastopol
Explosions, disastrous ones, 328, 361, 380, 429-433;
causes, 433
Eyre, Brigadier, 25;
appointed to the command of the third division, 311;
his excursion in the interior of the Crimea, 479

Fatigue parties, severe duties of the, 197
Fatima Hanoum, the Kurdish chieftainess, 54
Ferguson, General, 7
Fidonisi, French rendezvous of, 71
Fighting, love of, an anecdote, 434
Filder, Commissary-General, 40;
his office in Varna, 59;
his instructions, 67
Fire, a disastrous one, 380
Flagstaff Battery, contentions for the, 191
Flank march of the Allies, 134
Fleet of the Russians, its submergement, 472, 473
Flowers of the Crimea, 233
Food, prices of, at Varna, 41
Forey, General, his bravery at the Alma, 103
Fort Constantine, in Sebastopol, 138
Forts of the north side of Sebastopol, 472
Fourth division, General Bentinck's testimony to their services, 392
France, her political interests as regards Turkey, 1
French camp, sickness in the, 218;
their superiority in cooking, ib.
French fleet, conveying the expedition, 73, 74
French Spahis effect a landing at Eupatoria, 83
French forces, their arrival at Malta, 6;
their superior arrangements, 15, 16, 21, 47;
their accommodations at Gallipoli, 17, 18;
their police regulations, 18;
their mode of making purchases, 17;
number of, at Gallipoli, 16, 21;
their cordiality to the English, 18, 48;
their uniforms, ib.;
their methods of dealing with the Turks, 17;
review of, at Gallipoli, 28;
staff of the, 29;
first land on the Crimea, 82, 83;
their successful bravery at the Alma, 102;
their landing at Kamiesch, 138;
their siege and bombardment of Sebastopol, 140 et seq.;
their order of battle at Inkerman, 174, 175;
road made by the, 198;
important reinforcements received, 205;
their sufferings, 209;
their conflicts with the Russians, 239;
their contests for the rifle-pits, 253-255;
their gallantry, 259;
their capture of the Mamelon, 284, 285;
their unsuccessful attack on the Malakoff, 290, 291;
great losses sustained thereby, 292-294;
their second attack, and capture of the Malakoff, 343;
engaged at the battle of the Tchernaya, 316, 319;
amount of their ordnance on their last bombardment of Sebastopol, 336;
their works for storming the Malakoff, 364;
their operations after the fall of Sebastopol, 375 et seq.;
review of the, 422;
their system of mines, 493
Frost-bites in the Crimea, 202, 205, 221
Fury, the, her reconnaissance of Sebastopol, 59
Fusileer Guards, their arrival at Malta, 5;
their severe losses, 357

Gallipoli, departure of the English and French troops for, 8, 9;
arrival at, 13;
description of, 13, 14;
wretchedness of, 14;
population of, ib.;
its bad quarters, 15-17;
difficulties of the commissariat at, 17, 21;
high price of provisions, 22;
police regulations at, 18;
alarming fire at, 24;
confusion arising therefrom, 24, 25;
climate and scenery of, 25, 26;
arrival of generals at 27, 30
Gambier, Lieut. Colonel, commander of the siege train at Sebastopol, 146;
at Inkerman, 170
Generals of the army, deficiency of, 190
German colonists of the Crimea, 496
Genitchi, attack on, 270
Gibb, Captain, 9
Golden Fleece, the, 8, 9, 10, 12;
her arrival at Gallipoli, 13
Golden Horn, the, 37
Goldie, Brigadier-General, at Inkerman, 169;
slain, 170{550}
Goodram, Samuel, blown up, 434;
anecdotes of, ib.
Gordon, Captain, 42;
at Sebastopol, 142
Gortschakoff, Prince, 101;
his operations, 437;
his intended plan of operations, 441
Grant, Captain, of the ambulance corps, 199
Greece, localities of, 10, 11
Greek and Latin Churches, their quarrels in Turkey, 1
Greek hermit, 11
Greeks, their religion, 16;
their apathy, 29
Greys, their charge on the Russians, 157
Guards, their departure from London, 3;
their arrival at Malta, 4, 5;
their difficulty of obtaining provisions, 6;
their arrival at Varna, 47;
leave Varna for the Crimea, 67;
their gallantry at the Alma, 110, 114, 120;
their heroism and severe losses at Inkerman, 171, 175;
Queen Victoria's presents to the, 212;
their magnificent appearance in line, 115, 116

Hall, Dr., his letter to Dr. Smith, 385
Hallewell, Captain, 15, 31
Hamelin, Admiral, 41
Hammersley, Major, his tour in the north of the Crimea, 494
Handcock, Colonel, killed, 346
Harbour discipline at Balaklava, 450
Highland Brigade, their condition, 64;
leave Varna for the Crimea, 67;
their gallantry at the Alma, 110, 120;
steadiness of their movements in action, 115;
their bravery at the Tchernaya, 156;
their kilt, 202
Hill, Captain, shot, 247
Himalaya, the, her arrival at Malta, 5;
at the Bosphorus, 23;
her enormous cargo of horses and men, 90
Hoey, Colonel, his bravery at the Alma, 118
Horses, difficulty of getting them on shore, 90;
great havoc among, 206
Hospital quarters at Gallipoli, 17
Hurricane at Balaklava, 180;
its violence, 181-186;
distress caused thereby, 184, 185;
miserable state of Balaklava after the, 187
Hussars, arrival of the, 255
Hut of the author, 440;
its situation, 441
Huts, decorations of the, 439, 448;
robberies of the, 439;
complaints against the, 448

Ida, Mount, 12
Inkerman, the British force taken by surprise at, 168;
sanguinary battle of, 169-172;
a series of sanguinary hand-to-hand fights, 170;
review of the dreadful battle-field, 173;
the frightful slaughter at, 174-176;
ghastly relics of the battle, 257
Isarkaia, ruined chateau of, 478

Jack Tar at his tricks, 238;
his playbill, 329
John Bull at a nonplus, 326-328
Jones, General Sir H., replaces Sir J. Burgoyne, 243, 305

Kadikoi, encampment at, 144;
road made from, 198;
its administrative government, 445
Kamara, village of, 166
Kamiesch, landing of the French at, 138;
amusements at, 440
Kara-Bournou, destruction of the magazines, at, 267
Karaguel, town of, 67
Kariakoff, the Russian commander, 101
Kars, fall of, 447
Katcha, mouth of the, 59;
valley of the, 129-132;
river of the, 130;
Russian vessels sunk in the harbour of the, 132;
march from, 134
Keppel, Captain, commander of the naval brigade, 302
Kertch, expedition to, 263;
return of the expedition, 264;
second expedition, 265;
town of, 268, 269;
capture of, 268;
plunder of, 269, 270, 279;
its inhabitants, 272, 273;
hospital at, 274;
dreadful ravages in, 275, 276;
peninsula of, 419, note
Kinburn, expedition to, 406;
description of, ib.;
plan of the attack on, 407-409;
bombarded by the Allied fleet, 410;
surrender of, 411;
fort described, 412;
refortified by the Allies, 419;
Cossacks in the neighbourhood of, ib.
Koran, not adapted to the civil law of Turkey, 20
Kostendji, village of, laid waste, 57
Kurds, chieftainess of the, 54

Lancaster gun, destroyed by a shot, 252
Laspi, the French doctor, plundered by the Turks, 313
Lawrence, Colonel, 9, 111, 112
Leblanc, Mr., accidentally shot, 241
Leander, frigate, 12
Leslie, Lieutenant, wounded, 119
Letters from head-quarters, 31
Levinge, Major, death of, 60
Levinge, Captain, 42
Liège muskets, used by the Russians, 178
Light Cavalry Brigade, its desperate charge at Balaklava, 159;
ordered to embark for Eupatoria, 393{551}
Light division, its heroic gallantry, 109, 111, 112;
its severe losses, 357;
its casualties, 432;
its attack at the Alma, 491
Lights, short supplies of, 440
"Looting" at Kertch, 272
Lucan, Lord, commander of the cavalry division, 33, 87;
at the Tchernaya, 154;
his desperate cavalry attack, 159;
his recall, 220
Lüders, General, 457
Luggage of the English and French armies, 30
Lyons, Admiral, his opinions on the flank march of the expedition, 134;
commands the expedition to the Sea of Azoff, 266;
his operations in Cherson Bay, 413 et seq.

Machines, for exploding, 278
Mackenzie's Farm, 133
Macnish, Lieutenant W. L., drowned, 34
Malakoff Tower, 207;
French preparations for attacking, 215;
unsuccessful attack on the, 290, 291;
great losses sustained, 292-294;
a second attack on the, left to the French, 303;
the French advances towards, 308;
assaulted and captured by the French, 343;
contest in the rear of the, 350, 351;
its capture causes the loss of Sebastopol, 365;
strength of its works, ib.;
terrible scenes of the, ib.;
number of guns captured in the, 383
Malea, Cape, 10, 11
Malta, arrival of the Guards at, 4;
busy scenes in, 5;
cordial reception of the British troops at, 5, 6;
arrival of the French troops at, 6, 8
Mamelon, attack on the, 243;
contest for the, 244;
firing from the, 249;
capture of the, 284;
continued struggles for the, 285;
interior of the, 297
Manilla, her arrival at Malta, 5
Mansell, Captain, 24, 54
Markham, General, assumes the command of the second division, 305
Marmora, Sea of, 14, 16, 25, 37
Marmora, General della, the Sardinian commander, 264;
his departure from the Crimea, 492;
honours paid to, ib.
Martimprey, General, 6
Matapan, Cape, 10
Maule, Colonel, death of, 60
May-day, in the Crimea, 262
Medals, distribution of, at Sebastopol, 372
Medicines, utter want of, in the Crimea, 208
Mediterranean, storm in the, 9
Mehemet Kiprisli Pasha, 34
Memorials of the brave in the Crimea, 494
Menschikoff, Prince, the Russian commander, at the battle of the Alma, 101;
his military force, 123;
his military genius, 436;
satirical songs on, 470
Michael, Grand Duke, at the battle of Inkerman, 168;
his reconnaissance of the Allied armies, 191
Middle Packet Ravine, 246, 296
Military spectacle, a grand one, 260
Military matters, criticisms of civilians on, 447
Mines, explosion of, 255;
of the French and Russians, 493
Minié rifle, its destructive effects, 171, 172
Miskomia, valleys of, 448, 475
Mitylene, 12
Mixed commission for dividing the spoils of Sebastopol, 381-385
Monastir, town of, 64, 67
Monetary arrangements, intricacy of, 22
Money, waste of, 326
Money-changers, Jew and Armenian, 32
Montezuma, her arrival at Malta, 6
Monument at the Alma, 491
Morea, coast of the, 10;
arrival of the troops at, 12
Mortar-battery, contest for the, 245
Mounted staff corps, disbanded, 378
Mud, of the Crimea, 444;
of Balaklava, 445
Mule-litters of the French, 199
Muscovite character, type of the, 490
Muscovite infantry, a bad lot of, at Kinburn, 412
Music, military, influence of, 141
Musketry, affair of, between the Russians and the French, 210

Napoleon, Emperor, his Christmas presents to the Crimean army, 198
Napoleon, Prince, arrives at the Dardanelles, 27;
reviews the troops, ib.;
his arrival in Bulgaria, 48
Naval brigade, their attack on the Redan, 291;
their severe losses, 294;
their admirable practice, 336
"Navvies," their rapid progress, 214;
their industry, 232
Newbury, Mr., death of, 60
Newspaper correspondence in the Crimea, 188;
its difficulties, 189
Newspapers, effect of their statements, 209, 210
Nicholaieff, its situation in the bay, 404;
dockyards of, 418;
its ship-building and arsenal, ib.{552}
Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, his menacing pretensions, 1;
his ideas respecting the campaign, 65, 66;
death of, 236
Nicholas, Grand Duke, at the battle of Inkerman, 168
Niel, General, the French engineer, 214
Night attacks, difficulty of describing, 261
Nightingale, Miss Florence, her devoted labours at Scutari, 24
Nixon, Lieutenant, his bravery at the Alma, 111
Nolan, Captain, killed at Balaklava, 160
Norcott, Colonel, 105;
his bravery at the Alma, 109, 111, 114
November, anniversary of the month, 429;
favourable change of circumstances in the, ib.;
its seasonable mildness, ib.

Oczakoff, fort of, destroyed, 412
Odessa, threatened by the Allied fleets, 398;
the alarm of the inhabitants, 399;
reasons for not attacking, 401, 403;
description of, 398, 402
Old Fort, selected for the landing-place for the expedition, 81
Omar Pasha, his military appearance, 50;
his review of the troops, 51;
at Varna, 33;
his conference with Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud, 34;
his proposed plans, ib.;
his arrival at Sebastopol, 197;
his visit to the Crimea, 217;
undertakes to send 20,000 Turks to Sebastopol, 239;
is tired of his inactive position in the Crimea, 306;
his expedition in Asia Minor, 447
Order of Merit, suggestion respecting, 296, 451
Osmanli, their military courage, 49;
their want of discipline, ib.;
their military appearance, ib.;
their temperance and spare diet, 145;
their kindness to the sick, 165
Out-posts, good-fellowship of the, 211
Ovens, combat for the, 191

Paget, Lord G., ordered to Eupatoria, 393
Pashas of Turkey, their adherence to ancient usages, 20
Paskiewitch, General, his bombardment of Silistria, 34
Patton, Captain, death of, 139
Paulet, Lord, W., his promotion, 420
Pavlovskaia, fort of, 268;
occupation of, 277
Peace, rumours of, 325;
proclamation of, 467
Pelissier, Marshal, succeeds General Canrobert, 264;
created a marshal, 372;
his review of the British troops, 454-456
Pennefather, Brigadier-General, 25, 169
Pera, district of, 38
Perekop, its defences, 495
Peroffsky, mined chateau of, 475
Phoros, visit to, 475;
obstacles at, 476, 477
Pickets, affair of, 187
Piedmont, political situation of, 310;
character of her army, 311
Pluton, the, 8
Polish deserters, 191, 234, 387
Post-house, imperial, in Sebastopol, 130
Potteries district, 252
Powell, Captain, 55, 166
Press, its faithfulness and ability, and its support of the ministry, 2, 3
Promotions of officers, 420
Provisions, prices of, at Gallipoli, 24;
general depôt for, 201;
dearness of, at Balaklava, 213;
want of apparatus for cooking, 478
Purchase system, evils of the, 465-467

Quarantine battery, contentions for the, 191
Quarries, capture of the, 284;
continued contests for the, 285;
batteries of the, 338

Races in the Crimea, 234, 265
Rafts, Russian, capture of, 517
Raglan, Lord, the British Commander-in-Chief, his arrival at Gallipoli, 27;
his conference with Omar Pasha at Varna, 34;
visits the Turkish encampment, ib.;
his head-quarters at Scutari, 32;
his review of the troops, 94;
his want of communication with General Evans, 98;
his strong political feelings and aristocratic prejudices, 104;
an accomplished gentleman, but no general, 105;
his operations against Sebastopol, 140 et seq.;
his orders at Balaklava, 158, 159, 161;
his despatch after the battle of the Tchernaya, 163;
his death, 299;
his qualities, 300;
succeeded by General Simpson, 301
Railway road, its formation in the Crimea, 213, note, 214;
brought into use, 232
Railway train, accident with the, 249
Railway works, 441
Ranken, Major, death of, 458
Rations, ill supply of, 17;
scarce supply of, 440
Reade, Mr., death of, 139
Reconnaissance, preparations for, 220;
frustrated, 222
Red tape and routine business, 208, 212{553}
Redan, defences of the, 253;
unsuccessful attack on the, 291, 292;
great losses sustained, 292-294;
final attack on the, 346 et seq.;
plan of assault, 344, 345;
description of the interior, 349 et seq.;
failure of the English attack, 350;
detailed account of the conflict 351 et seq.;
causes of the repulse, 356;
tremendous losses sustained thereby, 354, 355, 357-359;
ruin and desolation of the, 367;
number of guns captured in the, 383;
melancholy accident in the, 433
Redschid Pasha, the Turkish commander in the Sea of Azoff, 265
Reid, Sir W., 7
Rifle-pits, position of the, 241;
attacks on, and severe contests for the, 242, 243, 244, 253-255, 259
Riza Pacha, 34
Road-making, 375, 421;
difficulties of, 388
Roads, 198;
round Sebastopol, 441;
one from Balaklava to Kadikoi, 442
Rocket practice, its effects, 258
Ros, Lord de, quartermaster-general, 27;
his interview with Omar Pasha, 33
Rose, Brig-Gen., commissioner for the British army, 88
Round Tower of Sebastopol, defences of the, 253;
desperate contests for the, 285
Russia, causes of the war with, 1;
her spirit of aggression, 1, 2;
her armies on the Danube, 33;
and their siege of Silistria, 48;
death of the Emperor of, 236
Russian forces in the Crimea, 60;
their encampment bombarded by the Allied fleet, 89;
first encounter with the, 94, 95;
their determined bravery at the battle of the Alma, 103, 107-109;
their position, 106, 123;
their defeat, 113, 114, 125;
their retreat towards Simpheropol, 120;
their numbers, 123;
their loss in the battle, 126;
their defences on the north of Sebastopol, 133;
their movements ib.;
their defence of Sebastopol, 149 et seq.;
their manœuvring, 155, 159, 193;
their attack from the Tchernaya, 151, 193;
their cavalry defeated, 155;
their retreat from Balaklava, 160;
their fortified position, 166;
surprise the British at Inkerman, 168;
their desperate attack, 171;
defeated, 172;
formation of the army, 177;
their uniform and weapons, 177, 178;
their general appearance, 177, 178;
their devotion to their officers, ib.;
their barbarity to our men, ib.;
their furious conflicts, 214, 216, 227, 239, 242 et seq.;
receive reinforcements from Sebastopol, 243;
their great losses, 246;
their contests for the rifle-pits, 253, 254;
their movements towards the Tchernaya, 263;
their furious attack, and defeat, 263-265;
destruction of their ports, corn, and shipping, in the Sea of Azoff, 270;
continue to receive supplies of men and food, 306;
defeated at the battle of Tchernaya, 318;
the divisions engaged in the battle at Tchernaya, ib.;
concentration of the, 330;
their distressed condition, 339;
lose the Malakoff, and retreat to the north side of Sebastopol, 343;
their retreat after the capture of the Malakoff, 360, 361;
ability of their engineers, 362;
their operations after the fall of Sebastopol, 372, 373;
their defences and activity on the north side of Sebastopol, 376;
their firing, 380;
their miserable state after the capture of Sebastopol, 387;
their continued firing, 388;
capture of their immense rafts in the Dnieper, 417;
apprehensions of their renewed attacks, 435;
their threatening movements, 443, 446;
their attempt to surprise, 446;
their continued firing, 451;
their military music, 471;
their fleet submerged, 472, 473;
their mutual intercourse with the Allies, 465;
their mines, 493;
their immense losses in the Crimea, 496, 497
Russian New Year, opening of the, 200
Russian officer discovered at Eupatoria, 84
Russian song on the war, 470
Rustum, Pasha of Adrianople, 15

Sailor, his comparative comforts, 72
Sailors, British, their good-natured assistance to the troops, 86, 87
Sailors' batteries, their activity, 247, 249
Sailors' brigade, their severe losses, 253
St. Arnaud, Marshal, his arrival at Gallipoli, 30;
dines with the Sultan, 33;
his conference with Omar Pasha, at Varna, 34;
his vigour and coolness, 61;
his declaration to the army, on embarking for the Crimea, 66;
seized with illness, 74;
reviews the troops, 94;
explains his plan of battle, 97;
death, 139
St. Laurent, M., death of, 248
Salt lakes of the Crimea, 266, 495
Saltmarshe, Lieutenant, death of, 65
Sanatorium at Balaklava, 240{554}
Sappers and Miners at Varna, 43
Sardinians, their arrival at the Crimea, 264;
their soldierlike equipments, ib.;
their character as soldiers, 311, 492;
their skill and bravery at the battle of the Tchernaya, 316-318;
their departure from the Crimea, 492;
general orders respecting, ib.
Saros, Gulf of, 16
Scarlett, Brigadier-General, 52;
at Balaklava, 157
Schapan, on the coast of the Crimea, 79
Scutari, arrival of troops at, 23;
the Alied forces at, 31, 32;
departure from, 36
Sea, life at, 72
Sea-passage, the, 9 et seq.
Sebastopol, orders for besieging, 56;
report respecting, 59;
reconnoitring of, 76;
forces of, 89;
its northern defences, 133;
south of, occupied by the Allies, 138;
investment of, and commencement of the siege, 140;
operations against, 141;
first sortie, 143;
the line of operations, 143, 144;
difficulties of the ground, 146;
the Russian defence, ib.;
the first bombardment, ib.;
effects of the fire upon, 146, 147;
the Russian manœuvres, 151;
its continued defence, 186;
its great strength, 211;
the tales of the siege, 193 et seq.;
during the winter, 195 et seq.;
reconnaissance of, 206;
Russian defences of, 206, 207;
furious contests before, 214;
a good view of, 224;
its general appearance, 225;
cannonading of, 227;
ships sunk in the harbour of, 228;
active operations against, 229, 231;
Russian reinforcements, 243;
furious struggles for, 244;
a number of officers killed and wounded, 244, 245;
its general defences, 248, 249;
desultory contests, 249;
continued bombardment of, 250 et seq.;
the various batteries brought against, 252;
its ruinous condition, 253;
renewed operations against, 282;
preparations for the general attack, ib.;
capture of the Mamelon and Quarries, 284;
and further struggles, 285 et seq.;
positions of the contending parties, 303 et seq.;
principal events of the siege, 304-306;
the writer's opinions as to its capture, 308;
letter of a Russian lady respecting, 309;
ominous preparations for the final assault, 312, 313;
crisis of the siege, 330;
commencement of the sixth and last bombardment, 334;
aspect of the city from Cathcart's Hill, ib.;
tremendous bombardment of, 335, 339;
frightful state of the town, 339, 348;
in flames, 341;
the Russians retreat to the north side on the capture of the Malakoff, 343, 360, 361;
visit to the city after its capture, 362;
plunder taken from, 363;
hospital of, 364;
general review of the great struggle, 370;
the Russian defences on the north side of, 376;
the mixed commission appointed for adjudicating the spoils of, 381-385;
materials and build of the forts of, 388;
ruins of, 387-389;
Russian account of its capture, 389;
state of affairs in, 420;
want of proper system and organization, 421;
proceedings of the mixed commission on the division of the spoils, 381-385;
how the city might have been taken, 436;
spoils of, contribute to the comfort of the army, 438;
sales of the different articles, ib.;
destruction of the docks, 451-453;
the city a mass of ruins, 454;
reflections on the siege, 468 et seq.;
northern forts of, 472
Seymour, Lieut.-Colonel, slain, 170
Shipping of the Russians, sunk in the harbour of Sebastopol, 228;
on fire, 340;
sunk and destroyed, 341
Ships of war engaged in the Crimean expedition, 67
Shumla, Turkish forces at, 34
Sick, comforts for the, 378
Sickness of the British troops, 196, 209, 217;
in the French camp, 198, 209, 218
Siege works, formidable progress of the, 236, 308, 322
Sievernaya, the, 133, 309;
defence of the, 133
Silistria, bombardment by the Russians, 34;
siege of, raised, 48
Simeis, Tartar village of, 481
Simoom, her arrival at Malta, 5
Simpheropol, typhus-haunted streets of, 473
Simpson, General, succeeds Lord Raglan as Commander-in-Chief, 300;
not suited for the position of Commander-in-Chief, ib.;
his order of the day announcing his appointment to the command, 301;
his personal staff, ib.;
receives the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, 372;
his despatch respecting the operations on the 8th of September, 390;
his failure as a commander, 424;
suspended, ib.;
his farewell address, ib.{555}
Sinope, slaughter of, avenged, 370
Sivash, waters of the, 495
Snow-storm, effects of one, 221-223
Social vultures, 445
Soldier, his hardships, 72
Soldiers, British, their devoted heroism, 2;
their departure for Gallipoli, 9;
their voyage, 9 et seq.;
their arrival at the Dardanelles, 12;
quartered at Gallipoli, 15;
deficiency of accommodation for the, 16;
their difficulties at Gallipoli, 17;
their arrival in the Bosphorus, 23;
their uniforms, 18;
their complaints 46;
their disposition, 33;
their games and amusements, 35;
their sufferings at Varna, 62;
their landing at Eupatoria, 84;
want of accommodation for, 89;
sickness among, 91;
their operations and bravery at the battle of the Alma, 107 et seq.;
enter Balaklava, 137;
their siege and bombardment of Sebastopol, 140 et seq.;
surprised at Inkerman, 168;
their want of clothing, 179;
their distressing position, 180 et seq.;
their heroism, 199;
continual drain of, 209, 210;
effect of the author's statements, ib.;
their armament, 305;
their severe losses, 354, 355, 357-359;
not equal to the French as labourers, 389;
their increased comforts, 437, 441;
grand review of the, 454;
their splendid appearance, 455, 456
Soyer, M., at the Crimea, 328;
his system of cookery, ib.
Spahis, their capture of cattle, 91, 92
Spencer, Hon. General A., commander of the expedition to Eupatoria, 394
Spirit vendors, their abominable articles, 445;
expelled the Crimea, ib.
Sports of the camp, 234
Spring, sports of the, 234;
its genial influence, 239
Spy, Russian, in the trenches, 210;
his information trustworthy, 216
Squadrons, English and French, their formidable array before Odessa, 399, 400;
their plan of operations in the expedition to the Bay of Cherson, 406-409;
their attack on Kinburn, 407 et seq.;
compel its surrender, 411;
their departure from the Bay of Cherson, 417, 419
Strangways, General Fox, slain at Inkerman, 171
Staff of General Simpson, 301
Stanislaff, threatened attack on, 417
Star fort, in Sebastopol, 138, 309
Steamers, Russian, sunk at Sebastopol, 370
Stewart, Admiral Houston, 7;
his operations in Cherson Bay, 413, 414
Storms, in the Mediterranean, 9;
in the Dardanelles, 26;
their fatal effects, 33, 34, 180-186;
in the Crimea, 449
Sullivan, Colonel, 15
Supplies received by the Russians, 306
Surgeons of the Crimean army, official neglect of, 385
Suttlers, their rapacity, 445
Surgery of the English, its skill, 439

Taganrog, attack on, 270
Taioutine regiment, 133
Takli Bournou, Cape of, 266
Taman, coast of, 266
Tarkan Cape, promontory of, 73, 77
Tartar race of the Crimea, 88, 475;
their friendliness, 92;
their ruined villages, 478, 479
Tartars of Kertch, 272
Tchernaya, the river, 133;
occupied by the Russian infantry, 152;
the adjoining country, 153;
the Russians advance from the, 154, 155;
despatch of General Evans after the battle, 161-163;
attack on the, 315;
position of the, ib.;
battle of the, 316 et seq.;
the Russians defeated at, 318;
a review of the battle-field, struggle between the French and the Russians, 319;
fire of the English battery, 320;
last effort of the Russians, ib.;
their retreat, ib.;
memorials of the fight, 322;
excursion to the, after the armistice, 483
Tchongar, its defences, 495
Telegraph, information by, 421;
at Alma, 486
Tenedos, Mount, 12
Thaw, effects of a, 199, 200
Theatre, play-bill of the, 329;
acting in the, 329, 330
Therapia, number of wounded officers at, 311
Thomas, General, at the Alma, 102
Thompson, Dr., 129;
death of, 139
Tice, Dr., 42
Times, commissioner, various articles sent by the, 196;
his valuable supplies to the troops, ib.
Timoyoieff, General, his negotiations respecting the armistice, 459;
characteristics of, 461
Tornado, its violence, 368
Torrens, Brig.-General, at Inkerman, 169
Traktir, hamlet of, 137
Traktir bridge, novel scene at the, 458 et seq.;
armistice signed at the, 462{556}
Transport, want of, at Varna, 46
Transports to the Crimea, 70
Trenches, terrible state of the, 197;
conversations in the, 261;
service in the, 331
Troad, the, 12
Trochu, Colonel, 56
Truce, flags of, 389;
See Armistice
Tryon, Lieut., death of, 190
Turco-Egyptian troops at Varna, 49
Turkey, her independence menaced, 1;
protection of her Christian subjects, 2;
her need of reform, 20
Turkish commission, its difficulties, 19
Turkish forces, strength of the, 34
Turks, their opinion of the English and the French, 18;
their apathy, 29, 35;
at Sebastopol, 145;
their redoubts, 153;
their flight from the Russian attack, 154;
employed in the trenches, 165;
their inefficiency, 165, 166;
their dreadful state in Balaklava, 192;
their removal from Balaklava, 235;
15,000 infantry join the besiegers before Sebastopol, 254;
their dress and appearance, ib.;
reconnaissance by the, 256;
their position in Asia Minor, 306;
their plundering disposition, 313, 314
Turner, Commissary-General, 15
Tylden, Brigadier-General, of the Engineers, death of, 128

Unett, Colonel, killed, 346
Uniforms of the French and English, 18
Upton, Mr., capture of, 138

Valetta, arrival of the British troops at, 5;
of the French troops, 6, 8
Valetta, the transport, 8
Varna, conferences at, between Omar Pasha and the Allied generals, 34;
departure of the troops at, 36;
arrival at, ib.;
town of, described, 40, 41;
march from, 41;
improvements at, 43;
surrounding country of, ib.;
animals of, ib.;
natives of, ib.;
inconveniences at, 45;
further arrival of troops at, 48, 49;
council of war at, 55;
cholera at, 57;
great fire at, 61;
council of war at, 63;
determine on invading the Crimea, ib.;
the army embarks from, 70
Varnutka, valley of, 475
Vatika Bay, landing at, 11
Vegetables and fruits, mismanagement in their supply, 217
Veliki, Lake of, 495
Vicars, Captain, killed, 245
Victor, Colonel, 9
Victoria, Queen, celebration of her birthday in Turkey, 35
Vivandière, the, 21

Wallachia occupied by Omar Pasha, 54
Walpole, Mr., leader of the Indian Osmanli, 55
Walsham, Lieutenant, 119
War, its false economy, 36, 45;
dreadful picture of the horrors of, 97 et seq.;
havoc of, 360 et seq.
Warren, Colonel, his bravery at the Alma, 118
Weare, Captain, 119
Weather, improvements in the, 214;
state of the, 217;
returning mildness of the, 235;
effects of the, 251
Wellington, Duke of, his circular to commanding officers in 1812, 390-392
Wells of the Crimea, 484, 494
Welsh Fusileers, monument to their officers slain at the Alma, 491
Wetherall, Colonel, 185
"Whistling Dick," 165
White buildings of Sebastopol, destruction of the, 457
Whitmore, Captain, 15
Wild-fowl shooting in the Crimea, 203, 234
Wild-fowl of the Crimea, 233
Windham, Colonel, bravery of, 346, 349, 350;
goes for assistance, 349;
his promotion, 420
Winter of 1855, four months of, 440;
its severity, 445
Winter encampments round Sebastopol, 193 et seq.;
requisitions, &c., evil system of, 194, 208
Winter quarters, preparations for, 166, 438
Wolff, Admiral, 270
Woronzoff, Colonel, palace of, 483
Woronzoff Road, 144, 310, 340, 342, 343
Wrangel, General Von, his hospitality, 495

Yalta, visit to, 476
Yea, Colonel, 118
Yellon, Deputy-Assistant-Commissary, killed, 432
Yenikale, capture of, 267;
town of, 270;
destruction and plunder at, 267-269
Yursakova, town of, 67
Yusuf, General, 51, 57

Zouaves, their dress and appearance, 22;
their martial bearing and equipments, 27, 28;
their pillaging propensities, 91, 195, 223;
their bravery at the Alma, 102;
at the Tchernaya, 155;
at Inkerman, 171;
our gay and gallant friends, 195;
their activity and bravery, 242;
review of the, 260;
their capture of the Mamelon, 284