Sixty Years a Queen Part 17

With pardonable emulation historians of both nations have claimed the chief glory of the day for their own people, nor does it profit now to weigh out the laurels to each with scrupulous precision. The brunt of the fighting no doubt fell to the English share; that was their good luck in what Mr. McCarthy has termed a "heroic scramble"; theirs too was the heaviest loss. One thing is certain that the day was won by the Allies, not by the skill of their generals, but by the valour and endurance of the troops, and that the two qualities which ensured success were those which chiefly distinguished the two nations respectively--the resolute steadiness and courage of the one, and the brilliant dash and fury of the other.

[Sidenote: A Fruitless Victory.]

The Battle of Alma was won, but the fruits of victory--where were they?

The English had lost 2,000 men in two hours' fighting, including twenty-six officers killed; the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers having suffered worst, with eight officers killed and five wounded and nearly 200 casualties in their ranks. The French returned their loss at 1,200. What was to be set to the credit of the account? Menschikoff was in full retreat with his army in great confusion, which required only the pressure of pursuit to convert into a hopeless rout. Raglan, the pupil of the Great Duke, surely had learned a sounder lesson than to allow the enemy time to reorganise his disordered divisions. Raglan, of course, was for pursuit, but Saint-Arnaud, physically and mentally shattered, objected for the reason that he was weak in cavalry; the English commander hesitated, perhaps on good grounds, to proceed alone, and the opportunity was lost.

The news of victory caused a great revulsion of feeling in England.

People had become impatient during the summer months of inaction at Varna, and disheartened by the failure of Sir Charles Napier to carry all before him in the Baltic. Bomarsund, it is true, had been taken, but Cronstadt and Sweaborg had proved impregnable. Complaints were general about the want of vigour displayed in carrying on the war, and dissatisfaction not only prevailed among the uninformed public, but even found expression from the lips of Cabinet Ministers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Chevalier L. W. Desanges._} {_In the Victoria Cross Gallery, Crystal Palace._

COL. LLOYD LINDSAY, OF THE SCOTS FUSILIER GUARDS

(now Lord Wantage, K.C.B.), seized the colours and rallied his men when thrown into disorder in the Battle of the Alma. For this act, and for gallantry at Inkermann, he was awarded the Victoria Cross.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Elliott & Fry._

MR. (NOW SIR) WM. H. RUSSELL, LL. D.

The first of War Correspondents. Born in 1821; joined the staff of the _Times_ in 1843, and has represented that paper in all the considerable wars which have occurred since.]

[Sidenote: War Correspondents.]

A novel feature in the Expedition to the Black Sea was the presence with the army of war correspondents, representing the leading daily papers.

This was a symptom of that growth of journalistic enterprise which was to receive such notable impetus in the following year by the abolition of the newspaper stamp duty. The name of Mr. W. H. Russell, representing the _Times_, will be long remembered as that of the pioneer in this new and exciting form of literature. The vivid descriptions sent home of the splendid conduct of British troops in the field, and the excellent relations established between them and their ancient foes the French, were eagerly perused in England, and sent up the enthusiasm to fever heat.

But if the war letters in the newspapers were of good service in allaying public impatience by reporting valorous exploits and heroic endurance, they tended to intensify the anxiety when the campaign became prolonged towards winter, without any decisive result. It had been expected that Sebastopol would be carried by a _coup-de-main_; so it might have been, perhaps, had the victory of Alma been followed up, even on the day after the action. But the views of Marechal Saint-Arnaud prevailed again; the project of a.s.saulting Sebastopol on the north side was abandoned; and the Allies undertook the terribly hazardous, though, as it happened, successful flank march upon Balaklava, which, with its convenient harbour, was selected as the English base and depot, while the French chose Kamiesch Bay.

The Battle of Alma took place on September 20; on the 23rd General Todleben, commanding the defences of Sebastopol, sunk seven war vessels at the mouth of the harbour. The Allied Fleet, from which this operation was plainly visible, were thus effectually shut out; the golden opportunity of the speedy capture of the city by a combined land and sea attack had gone by. Such an attack was made on October 17, but the fleet could only play at long bowls, and the French batteries were silenced in a few hours. The first attempt ended in failure. There was nothing for it but a prolonged siege, and the Allied Land Forces were insufficient to invest the town effectively. Moreover they were threatened by a Russian army outside, constantly reinforced by fresh troops from the interior. The besiegers themselves had to stand on the defensive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _W. Simpson, R.I._} {_From Colnaghi's "Authentic Series."_

IN THE BATTERIES BEFORE SEBASTOPOL.

Sketched on the spot.]

[Sidenote: Balaklava.]

[Sidenote: Cavalry Charges by the Heavy and Light Brigades.]

On October 25 General Liprandi attacked the English camp at Balaklava with 20,000 or 30,000 men. It is a day to be much remembered in British war annals with profound but melancholy pride, because of the blunder which cost the British Army the loss of two-thirds of its Light Cavalry.

The action began by the capture by the Russians of four redoubts held by the Turks. Then took place a cavalry encounter which, though it has been eclipsed in memory by the subsequent exploit of the Light Brigade, was, in truth, not less splendid and far more fruitful. The Russian horse, numbering some 3,000 sabres advanced against the British Heavy Cavalry Brigade under General Scarlett. Immensely outnumbered as they were, and hampered by tent ropes and enclosed ground, the Scots Greys and Enniskillens charged them impetuously. For a minute or two it seemed as if these fine regiments must be swallowed up in the dense columns of the enemy, but the Royals and 4th Dragoon Guards moving up on the left, and the 5th Dragoon Guards on the right, charged the enemy on either flank, and forced them to give way and fly. The whole affair was over in less than five minutes.

Lord Raglan, who was anxiously waiting for infantry reinforcements, seeing the Russians preparing to move the guns from the captured redoubts, sent an order to Lord Lucan to prevent them doing so. "Try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns." What guns? Captain Nolan, who carried the order, pointed to a battery of eight Russian guns at the end of the valley, supported by artillery on either flank. "There, my lord, is our enemy," said he, "and there are our guns." Lord Lucan hesitated at first, but the order seemed explicit, and he directed Lord Cardigan to form his Light Brigade into two lines. In the first line were four squadrons of the 13th Light Dragoons and 17th Lancers; in the second were four squadrons of the 4th Light Dragoons and 11th Hussars, with one squadron of the 8th Hussars as a kind of reserve. The command was given, and it was obeyed. Six hundred and seventy-three men rode down that valley of death straight for the guns, on a venture as hopeless and devoted as that of Sir Giles de Argentine at Bannockburn, and hardly less futile. Only one hundred and ninety-five returned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Stanley Berkeley._} {_By permission of the publishers, Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., of London and Manchester._

THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE AT BALAKLAVA.]

[Sidenote: Breakdown of Transport and Commissariat.]

On the following day the Russians made a sortie in force upon the English position at Inkermann, and although they were repulsed by Sir de Lacy Evans's division, there can be no possible doubt that the Allied Forces at this period were in imminent peril of a terrible disaster.

Five days before the cavalry action of Balaklava, Raglan had informed the War Office that his army was reduced to 16,000, and that he doubted if he could maintain it in the field during the winter, even if Sebastopol should be taken first. Week after week the condition of the troops was painted in gloomier colours by the war correspondents. The transport system had broken down; supplies of all sorts were running short; the hospital arrangements were miserably inadequate for the numerous wounded and the still more numerous sick. The Turkish troops--men of the same race who had fought so well under English officers at Silistria--proved useless--worse than useless, for they had to be fed--under their own pashas in the trenches before Sebastopol.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _R. Caton Woodville._} {_By permission of the Artist, and of Messrs. Graves, Pall Mall, Publishers of the Photogravure._

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE AT BALAKLAVA.]

The French Emperor took alarm. Hitherto nearly all the fighting had fallen to the share of the British, and England had very few troops ready to send as reinforcements. Louis Napoleon proposed to send 20,000 French troops if England would supply the necessary transports. This was undertaken at once; huts, warm clothing, blankets, tinned meat, and other stores were sent out in ample quant.i.ties, but very few of the cargoes reached their destination. Winter had burst upon the Black Sea with almost unexampled fury; the transports and cargo s.h.i.+ps were scattered. Two French men-of-war and twenty-four British transports went to the bottom in the hurricane; the elements seemed to combine with man's mismanagement for the annihilation of the Allied Forces. What our soldiers had to bear, half clothed, half starved, in those bitter trenches, may be read in Kinglake's narrative.

[Sidenote: Battle of Inkermann.]

While the authorities at home were straining every nerve to send succour to the fast-dwindling army in the field, news came to England of another great battle, far more sanguinary than any previous encounter, in which once more the brunt had fallen on the British. The Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael, with the whole forces in Sebastopol, reinforced by large bodies of troops newly arrived from the Danubian provinces, in all not less than 50,000 men, had attacked the right of the English lines early in the dark morning of November 5. The fighting continued till late in the afternoon, the French being engaged also; but General Canrobert (who had succeeded to the command vacated by the death of Saint-Arnaud), in his telegram to the Emperor, chivalrously attributed the victory to "the remarkable solidity with which the English army maintained the battle, supported by a portion of General Bosquet's division." The English loss in the Battle of Inkermann amounted to 2,573 killed and wounded, of which 145 were officers, including four generals; the French lost 1,800, while the Russian casualties were made out in their official returns at 11,959 killed, wounded, and prisoners.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Chevalier L. W. Desanges._} {_In the Victoria Cross Gallery, Crystal Palace._

THE BATTLE OF INKERMANN.]

[Sidenote: Florence Nightingale.]

The Allies paid a heavy price for this victory, but the carnage was not in vain. The power of Russia was crippled for a moment, and time was given for the succour which busy hands and brains were preparing in London and Paris. The most heartrending spectacle of all was the state of the hospitals at Scutari. No sooner did a description of them reach London than a fund was opened to supply their wants. More than 25,000 was collected, and English women organised themselves as nurses, and placed themselves under the direction of Miss Florence Nightingale. No commander so puissant--no statesman so powerful--that his name shall out-last that of this devoted Englishwoman, whose services, in spite of the usual routine official objections, were accepted by Mr. Sidney Herbert, the Secretary at War.[F] Miss Nightingale arrived at Scutari, with thirty-seven nurses, on the morning of the Battle of Inkermann, and so clearly did this devoted band prove their usefulness, that Miss Stanley, the Dean of Westminster's sister, followed not long after with forty additional a.s.sistants. To Florence Nightingale is due the glory of having initiated a movement which has extended far beyond the limits of the Crimean Campaign. No army now moves on active service without its train of skilled nurses, and the Geneva Convention has been the direct result of this first mission of mercy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _W. Simpson, R.I._} {_From Colnaghi's "Authentic Series."_

MISS FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE IN ONE OF THE WARDS OF THE HOSPITAL AT SCUTARI.

From Sketches made on the spot.]

[Sidenote: Fall of the Coalition Cabinet.]

It would be no pleasant task to retrace at length the sorrowful story of the siege. British army organisation had broken down hopelessly, and people in England were maddened by the descriptions in the Press, perhaps in some instances exaggerated, how their brothers and sons were dying in the trenches, not by steel and sh.e.l.l, but from the starvation, disease, exposure, vermin, to which the culpable incapacity of British officials, as it was believed, had exposed them. It was the system, rather than its agents, which was to blame; but shoulders had to be found to bear the blame, and Parliament took the only means in its power, by pa.s.sing a vote of censure on Ministers, who were defeated on a motion by Mr. Roebuck by the crus.h.i.+ng majority of 157. The Coalition Government had collapsed.

[Sidenote: Victory of the Turks at Eupatoria.]

After an ineffective attempt by Lord Derby to form a Cabinet, Lord Palmerston--the only possible man in the existing state of public opinion--became Prime Minister. Things had begun already to go better with the Allies before Sebastopol. Omar Pasha, with his despised Turks, defeated an army of 40,000 Russians under General Liprandi at Eupatoria on February 18, being supported by an effective fire from the Allied Fleet.

The news reached Czar Nicholas on March 1; he was suffering at the time from the effects of influenza, but his health was not the subject of any alarm to his Court. Nevertheless he died on March 2; peace negotiations were immediately opened at Vienna, and the new Czar consented to send a representative to the Conference "in a sincere spirit of concord."

Great Britain was represented by Lord John Russell and France by M.

Drouyn de Lhuys, but the proceedings were rendered abortive by the refusal of Russia to consent to the neutralisation of the Black Sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Chevalier L. W. Desanges._} {_In the Victoria Cross Gallery, Crystal Palace._

LIEUT.-COLONEL SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, BART., V.C.

At the Battle of Inkermann, ammunition failing, both British and Russians hurled stones at each other. In the midst of the melee, Lieut.-Colonel Russell, of the Grenadier Guards, led a party into the midst of the enemy, and dislodged them from the Sand-bag Battery. He was nearly bayonetted; his life was saved by a private in the Grenadiers named Palmer.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Sir F. Grant, P.R.A._} {_By permission of Messrs Graves._