The Allies resolved to land on the western shore of the bay and on the northern shore of the island on the 8th of August. Day breaks early in those high latitudes, and at two o'clock some French and British ships opened fire on the woods to cover the landing, while others attacked the battery and shelled Fort Tzee to occupy their attention. In a short time the battery was abandoned, and the Allies were in possession of it. All this time the troops had been pouring ashore, and by eight o'clock 10,000 men were marching through the woods, turning the enemy's works. They encamped about two miles from Fort Tzee, on the north of a glen affording plenty of water, while the fir groves furnished wood. The French battery opened fire on Fort Tzee on the 13th; and while the shot from the heavy guns and the shells from the mortars tore down the walls, the riflemen lying among the rocks threw into the embrasures a fire so searching, that the enemy's gunners found it difficult to load their pieces. In the afternoon the Russians hung out a white flag. It is said they asked an hour to bury their dead, and that the boon being granted, they used the time to replenish their store of ammunition. The fire was renewed, and later another flag of truce was displayed. This time General Baraguay d'Hilliers refused to parley, because of the abuse of the previous suspension of the cannonade. The next morning, the guns of the fort being silent, the French riflemen dashed in and captured the work with fifty prisoners. The British battery had been constructed under a heavy fire. It was finished on the 14th, but not being wanted, its guns were turned upon Fort Nottich on the 15th; and at six in the evening, one side of the tower being demolished, the garrison surrendered. On the morning of the 16th the main fort and the Presto tower alone held out. They had been under the fire of the ships for some days, and now the great fort was entirely commanded from the rear by the shore batteries. General Bodisco, having no hope of succour, was without warrant for a bloody defence. So at noon he hung out a white flag and surrendered. It was resolved to blow up all the works—a resolution carried out very completely by the beginning of September.
With this exploit the showy work of the naval campaign in the Baltic ended. The blockade was maintained until the ice interposed an utterly impassable barrier; Sweaborg was reconnoitred, and very antagonistic schemes were propounded for its capture; some misunderstandings arose between Admiral Napier and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir James Graham; but in the end the ice and the fierce tempests came, and arrested the cruising of ships, although they could not stop the squabbling of men. The British fleet was the first to enter and the last to leave the Baltic, and the frigates did not reach home until November.
We have already stated that after the battle of Inkermann the British general found himself compelled, with diminished forces, to maintain a purely defensive attitude in the face of a weakened, but still numerous and vigilant enemy. The character of the expedition had wholly changed. It was intended to be a temporary operation, swift and complete. It became a permanent invasion. Not only the enemy, but the winter had to be fronted. The Czar counted on his generals, January and February, as well as on Todleben and Gortschakoff. He trusted to rain, mud, and snow to weaken the forces, and wear out the hardihood of the British, and exhaust the spirit of the French. Like many others he cradled himself in delusions. For, whatever may have been the effect of suspense on the French soldier, the French Emperor could not afford to fail; and it so happened that the British nation, with astonishing unanimity, had set its heart on the destruction of Sebastopol; and rarely in history can you find an instance of failure to accomplish a settled purpose really formed by the British nation. In this present case they were severely tried; but, though they were truculent, and angry, and irrational because Sebastopol had not been taken in October; though they turned furiously upon the Government at home and the general in the Crimea; yet not for one moment did they relent or shrink from their fixed resolve; rather did they insist, with a vehemence without parallel, on the full achievement of the main object, until the phrase—"vigorous prosecution of the war," heard on every lip, became a tedious but still vital commonplace.
The general and the troops who were working out their resolve in the Crimea were tried more severely than they. With November had come, not only a bloody battle, but a painful change in the climate. The soft, calm, sunny days of October faded away. The Black Sea began to show the appropriateness of the name it bore. Thick mists covered the surface of its dark grey waters; heavy clouds overspread the clear blue sky. Rain fell, sometimes in drenching showers, sometimes in thick, small drops; and the earth absorbing the moisture, began to change into mud. Then, with a fierceness gathered from a triumphant rush over the whole breadth of the Black Sea, there came swooping upon the southern shores of the Crimea a tempest memorable for its potency and destructiveness—the famous storm of the 14th of November.
The wind came from the south. First came heavy squalls and pelting rain; then the wind became more continuous and stronger, and the rain thicker, beating on the earth with a hoarse sound, and forcing its way through the canvas of the tents. It was early morning, and weary sleepers were awakened by the uproar. In a few minutes nearly every tent on the plateau was down. No fires could be lighted, no food cooked. All around was one common desolation; for the hospital tents had shared the fate of the others, and the sick lay exposed to all the violence of the tempest. The wooden structures erected by the French for their sick went down before the gale, and only a few planks remained. Generals, officers, soldiers, sick and wounded, hale and well, were in a like predicament. And when the wind fell a little—that is, became a little less violent—the air became colder, and the rain became sleet and snow, men and horses perished from exposure.
But the horrors of that day were most horrible off Balaclava. There hundreds of lives were lost in a few hours. Outside the port, at anchor in deep water, were twenty-two ships. Among them were the four war-steamers Retribution, Niger, Vulcan, and Vesuvius; four fine steam transports, including the Prince, whose hold was filled with warm clothing for the troops; ten sailing transports, and four freight ships. Caught by the full violence of the storm, some were washed ashore, others, including the Prince, went down.
This terrible tempest was the climax of our misfortunes. The battle of Inkermann had proved that the army must winter on those desolate hills; the effects of the storm made it manifest that the troops would have to face the winter without adequate supplies. No fewer than 2,500 watch coats, 16,000 blankets, 3,700 rugs, 53,000 woollen frocks, 19,000 lamb's-wool drawers, 35,700 socks, 12,880 pairs of boots, 1,800 pairs of shoes, and stores of drugs and other necessaries were lost in the Prince. Fourteen of the wrecked transports were laden with forage and provisions—namely, 359,714 pounds of biscuit, 74,880 pounds of salt meat, 157 head of cattle, 645 sheep, 8,000 gallons of rum, 73,986 pounds of rice, 11,200 pounds of green coffee, 1,116,172 pounds of forage corn, and 800,000 pounds of pressed hay. With the Resolute were engulfed several million rounds of ball cartridge, and the reserve ammunition for the artillery. Even these losses do not measure the extent of the calamity, for many ships were injured so much that the army was for a long time deficient in sea transport, and consequently in the means of repairing the ravages inflicted by the storm on stores of all kinds. Although the harbour of Balaclava was, after the 25th of October, in danger of being seized by the enemy, there seems to have been no good reason why that risk should not have been incurred, and the Prince and the Resolute allowed to anchor inside. Lord Raglan, immediately after the battle of Inkermann, had taken steps to obtain clothing and shelter, and ample supplies of food. But in the interval the troops suffered greatly. For the remainder of November it rained almost without cessation, and the plains became one vast quagmire. So the road to the camps became a track of liquid mud; the valley of Balaclava desolated and melancholy; the town as muddy as the plains, and the tideless harbour a common sewer. For several weeks the men were without proper clothing, fuel, or food, and the result was an outbreak of cholera. In the camp hospitals men lay down to die upon the bare ground; in the hospitals at Scutari, ignorance, dirt, and confusion prevailed, besides a want of ambulance to carry the invalid soldier from camp to port, and of accommodation on board ship.
When the people heard of the sufferings of their soldiers in the Crimea and at Scutari they became indignant and unreasonable: they ascribed the failure of the expedition and the distresses of the troops to the wrong causes, and they demanded the recall of the general and the dismissal of the Government. To understand how this came about, we must consider how the Government conducted the war, and the means at hand wherewith to conduct it.
For nearly forty years the British nation had not taken any part in a war in Europe. The vast expense of the war against the first Napoleon, the suffering it caused, the habits of despotic government which it induced, the obstinate resistance of a great party to needful reforms, had all served to inspire a dread of a standing army. The consequences were most serious. The nation was in danger of having no army at all. At no period subsequently to 1815 was Britain in a condition to go to war. The pith of the army, the infantry, consisted of a number of very fine regiments, kept down at the lowest numerical condition. The cavalry regiments were good, but in numbers they were each barely equal to two good squadrons. There were in England but a very few guns in fighting order. There was a weak commissariat; there was no land transport corps or military train. Such a thing as a camp of exercise was unknown until 1853. There were no opportunities for handling large masses of all arms. The militia even was suffered to fall into abeyance for many years. There were men in England fully alive to the consequences of this neglect of the military machine; but their voices were not heeded until the revolutions of 1848 and the success of Louis Napoleon in 1851 roused the whole nation from its apathy. An improved tone in public feeling, a better estimate of the real value of a good army, and a real dread of danger from without, led to some improvements. The militia force was revived. Lord Hardinge had the courage to insist on the adoption of the Minié rifle, and Mr. Sidney Herbert prevailed on his colleagues to establish a camp. The artillery was placed in a state of great efficiency. But that man would, in 1852-3, have been regarded as mad who proposed a military train, an ambulance corps, and an effective military staff. These necessary parts of an army were not in existence.
The army in 1853 consisted of little more than 102,000 men for the service of the British Empire, exclusive of India. In 1854 Ministers proposed and carried, in February, an augmentation of 10,000, bringing up the total to 112,000. These men they had to obtain by enlistment, for the militia then was young, and little more than a paper force. It was not embodied, nor had the Government power to embody a single regiment; for the militia had been raised to resist invasion only, so jealous were the Commons; and Ministers, before they could call out a man, except for the annual training, were obliged to obtain an Act of Parliament. Moreover, just on the threshold of war, so rotten was the system of promotion and retirement, that they were compelled to appoint a Royal Commission to report on the best mode of enabling the Queen to avail herself of the services of officers in the full vigour of life. Thus Europe was astonished at the spectacle of a great Power remodelling its military system, enlarging it, and strengthening it, on the brink of a conflict with the vast and well-appointed armies of Russia. For it was soon found that the Ministry of War must be separated from that of the Colonies; and when this was done, no minute defining the powers and functions of the new department was framed; so that the Duke of Newcastle, who left the Colonies for the new War department, had to grope his way towards the vital work he had undertaken to do. The duke was a man of some hardihood, and great energy and industry; but he was new to the business, he had not sufficient weight in the Cabinet; one at least of his colleagues envied him the place he filled; and it may be surmised that with all his good intentions, Lord Aberdeen's innate repugnance to war exercised, unconsciously, a paralysing influence over the whole Cabinet. A more vigorous and decided mind at the head of the executive would have begun in 1853 to make those preparations which, made then, would have prevented so much suffering in the winter of 1854. A man of greater weight at the War Office would, even in 1854, have been able to impress his colleagues with a sense of the magnitude of the impending conflict, and have obtained their assent to the most vigorous exertions, made with a distinct perception of all that was required to enable Britain to carry on her share of the war in a manner consistent with the wishes of the people and her character as a great Power.