Cassell's History of England, Vol. 6 (of 8) / From the Death of Sir Robert Peel to the Illness of the Prince of Wales

by Anonymous

The Russians fell back as fast as they could. Part of their infantry and artillery took the road to Sebastopol; the remainder crossed the Tchernaya bridge. Lord Raglan, it is said, was anxious that the enemy should be pursued as soon as the artillery left Shell Hill. He had not a man to spare for this purpose himself, for our troops were worn out with their tough, enduring struggle, and all the more so as officers and men alike had gone into action fasting. But General Canrobert had Monet's brigade of Prince Napoleon's division, which had been sent up from the Siege Corps, and kept up to this time in reserve. Not a man had seen or felt the enemy. But Canrobert hesitated to use them. He is said to have asked that the Guards should go with them, if they went, for his troops had great confidence in "les Black Caps." But to this Lord Raglan, of course, could not consent, for the Guards were a mere handful. At length Canrobert agreed to push forward two battalions of Zouaves and a battery of 12-pounders, and these, with the two Commanders-in-chief, ascended the heights abandoned by the Russians, and arrived in time to see that the enemy had escaped beyond range. The guns opened fire and did some mischief to the stragglers; but the main force had made good its retreat. The Russian Grand Dukes and Prince Menschikoff had the mortification to witness the ruin of those splendid dreams in which they had indulged with such confidence when their great army moved out at dawn. The battle of Inkermann won for Lord Raglan the bâton of a British Field Marshal, which he deserved for his valour, though hardly for his strategy. The losses of the Allies were very great. The British lost 2,816 men of all ranks. Of these three generals and 43 officers were killed, and six generals and 100 officers were wounded; 586 men were killed, and 2,078 were wounded. The French lost 1,800 men killed and wounded at Inkermann and in front of their trenches. Their exact loss at Inkermann is not stated, but is roughly put at 900 men. Among the wounded was Canrobert. The Russian loss was some 12,000. Prince Menschikoff was slightly hurt. The field of battle presented a more than usually horrible spectacle, for the dead and wounded lay within a space about a mile and a half long and half a mile deep, while about the Sandbag Battery the corpses were piled in heaps.

No one alive on that bloody field, except Lord Raglan, had ever seen so sad a spectacle. The Duke of Cambridge was so deeply affected by the loss of the Guards alone that he fell sick, and shortly afterwards went home. Sir De Lacy Evans, ill though he was, had come up from Balaclava in time to see the crisis and the close of the fight; and he is said to have taken the gloomiest views of the prospects of the Allies, and even to have advised the abandonment of the whole enterprise. And, indeed, the Allies were in a dreadful plight. They had won a victory, but at a cost which forbade all further progress with the siege for some time.

But now we must quit the Black Sea and its shores for a space, and narrate the proceedings of the fleet in the Baltic; and then proceed to blend together the winter incidents in the Crimea and the astonishing proceedings of the British Parliament and the British people.

The British nation is naturally and justly proud of its navy; but, considering that they are a maritime people, they are—or were in 1854—singularly ignorant of the true functions of a fleet. When Queen Victoria led the squadron under Sir Charles Napier out of Spithead, on the 11th of March, the popular impression was that the admiral, with eight screw line-of-battle ships, four screw frigates, and three paddle-wheel steamers, would be able, not only to keep the Russian fleet in harbour, but demolish Cronstadt and Sweaborg, and this impression Ministers and admiral did their best to strengthen by vainglorious speeches at a public banquet.

The real fact is, that the Government prescribed to themselves very limited and reasonable but highly useful objects. The Russian fleet in the Gulf of Finland consisted of no less than twenty-seven sail of the line, seventeen lesser men-of-war, frigates, and corvettes, and an unknown number of gunboats—perhaps one hundred and fifty. These ships and boats were well manned, and mounted upwards of 3,000 guns; but their situation was peculiar. They were all in the Gulf of Finland, except a few gunboats; and the Gulf of Finland was frozen. Supposing they could get out of the Gulf of Finland, they would have been able to cruise in the Baltic, menace both Copenhagen and Stockholm (if that were deemed expedient policy), and send their lighter ships, and some of the heavier, through the Great Belt or the Sound into the North Sea, to prey on the commerce of the Allies. It was therefore of the last importance that this Russian fleet should be prevented from leaving the Gulf of Finland. That was the primary object of the occupation of the Baltic to be effected by Sir Charles Napier. If he did this, and could do no more, much would be done.

It would be tedious and profitless to follow the British men-of-war in their wanderings to and fro in these northern seas. As the Russians would not come out and fight, all that could be done, even after the French arrived, was to maintain a blockade of the ports, and inflict such damage on the coasts of the enemy as the means at the disposal of the admirals would permit. Before the French arrived Admiral Plumridge had reconnoitred the Åland Islands, and had swept the Finnish coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, taking within a month forty-six merchant ships, and destroying immense quantities of pitch and tar and naval stores. He had visited the important ports, and, by the aid of his boats, had done this damage between Abo and Brahestad. The stores destroyed were public property, for private property he respected.

In the meantime Sir Charles Napier went up the Gulf of Finland to look at Sweaborg. On the 13th of June Admiral Parseval-Deschenes joined him at Bomarsund, bringing twenty-eight ships, of which six were sailing line-of-battle ships and only one a screw line-of-battle ship. The allied fleet, exclusive of the ships doing duty as blockaders, now amounted to forty-seven sail. The Russian fleet lay in two divisions, one at Cronstadt, the other at Sweaborg; and although Sir Charles gave them plenty of opportunities, neither of them would come out and fight him together or singly. As there was so great a clamour in England for an attack upon the fortresses, it is supposed that the Russians hoped the admirals would attack one or the other, so that while they were suffering from the fire of the forts, the Russian fleets might sail out, fall upon and destroy them. The two admirals, however, were not to be so caught. They went together, in the middle of June, to reconnoitre Cronstadt, and, as was anticipated, found it out of their reach. The water was so shallow and so commanded by forts that a direct attack would have been a criminal folly, while the enemy had blocked up with sunken obstructions the passage on the northern side by which, it was just possible, the lighter ships might have got into the rear of the place. The fact is, that without gunboats and light ships, and, above all, without an army, neither Cronstadt nor Sweaborg could be attacked with success.

THE HOSPITAL AND CEMETERY AT SCUTARI, WITH CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE DISTANCE.

But there was one place within their power. At the southern end of the Gulf of Bothnia, over against Stockholm, and within a few miles of the Swedish coast, lie the Åland Islands. On one of these islands, the Czar, at great cost, had built the fortress of Bomarsund. It was to Stockholm what Sebastopol was to Constantinople—a "standing menace." Built on an island, it lay within reach of the Allies, and they resolved to capture and destroy it. But this could not be done without troops. So the French Government agreed to supply 10,000 men; and they were embarked at Boulogne in British ships, and commanded by General Baraguay d'Hilliers. The plan of the Allies was to land the troops, and, taking the outworks, breach the main fort from the rear. This was practicable, with the force in hand, because our ships commanded the sea and no army could march to succour the place.