Stirring Incidents in the Life of a British Soldier: An Autobiography

by active 1835-1883 Thomas Faughnan

While our souls we trust to heaven,

Then for Britain and our Queen, boys, hurra! hurra! hurra!

Then, for Britain and our Queen, boys, hurra!

Thos. Faughnan.

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

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

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

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

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

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