Throughout the next day there was a brisk cannonade kept up on both sides, each intent on preventing the other from occupying in force the contested ground. At night the combat was renewed. General Couston, with four battalions, reinforced General Brunet's position, in order to defend it against any attack, and to complete the works of approach begun on that side. General Duval, with six battalions, issuing from the French trenches and assailing the Russian left, drove out the enemy's troops posted there, and held the ground in front, while the working parties, in the midst of a heavy fire from the main batteries of Sebastopol, rapidly transformed the Russian trench into a parallel of attack, giving ample shelter to the besiegers. Thus, in two nights, the French won this important ground, and connecting all their works together, showed a united front, and left but a comparatively narrow space, formed by the ravine across which they could not work their way, between them and the town. This line on the ridge a little east of the Cemetery was the limit of their regular approaches in that quarter.
Another result of the change of commanders was the occupation of the line of the Tchernaya by a combined force of French, Sardinians, and Turks. This was effected on the 25th. General Canrobert led his own division and that of General Brunet across the valley, and took post on the Fedoukine heights. General la Marmora and his Sardinians took up a position on the Hasfort Hill, above Tchorgoun. Sir Colin Campbell moved the Marines out of their lines near the sea to the ridge looking down on Kamara on one side, and the Baidar valley on the other. Omar Pasha, with 16,000 Turks, occupied the whole line of low hills on which stood the redoubts on October 25th. The whole force was about 43,000 strong. There were but few Russian troops on the river, and these gave way and retired up the opposite hills as soon as they felt the advance guard of the Allies. Thus the line of the Allies now extended from the sea on the right, through Kamara and Tchorgoun to the Fedoukine heights, just out of range of the Russian batteries, east of the Inkermann ruins. There were many who thought this a beginning of operations in the field. They were doomed to be disappointed. The Allies had now very large forces in the Crimea, but while Lord Raglan could not assent to the Emperor's plan of a regular campaign, the Emperor could not concur in Lord Raglan's suggestions; and thus, as a compromise, the Allies continued the siege, and undertook no other operation except one which we are now about to narrate—the naval and military expedition to the inhospitable and foggy regions of Kertch and the Sea of Azoff.
The Russian forces in the Crimea were dependent chiefly for their supplies upon the mainland itself, for the Crimea is a peninsula, projecting from the steppes of Southern Russia, and joined on to it only by the narrow neck of land at Perekop. The road through Perekop was the chief line of communication, leading as it did to Nicolaieff and Odessa. But there were other roads by which the enemy received supplies. At the eastern part of the Crimea was a small peninsula, called the Peninsula of Kertch, from the town of that name. In order to deprive the enemy of at least one road, and to ruin all his depôts within reach, and deprive him of the waterway over the Sea of Azoff to Yenikale and Arabat, and force him upon a more circuitous route, it was determined to seize Kertch, push through the Strait into the Sea of Azoff, and destroy the ships on its waters and the magazines in its ports. In order to accomplish this, it was deemed expedient that a military force should occupy the towns of Kertch and Yenikale, which are within the Strait, and thus, by taking the land defences in reverse, open a road into the Sea of Azoff for the light steamers. The Strait is narrow, especially where the waters of the Sea of Azoff pour into it. In 1854 the Russians had sunk many ships in the channel below Kertch, but in the winter, the waters of the Sea of Azoff, fed by the swollen streams of Southern Russia, rushing through the confined space in full volume, and at the rate of between three and four miles an hour, swept away the wreck; so that what was not possible in 1854 became possible in 1855.
What the Allies required was to get command of the Strait; and to put all resistance out of the question, it was determined, on the very day after General Pélissier assumed command, that the force sent should be overwhelming. Sir George Brown was again to take command of the expedition. The French supplied 6,800 men, including fifty Chasseurs d'Afrique and three batteries, under D'Autemarre; the Turks furnished 5,000 men and one battery; and the British 3,800 men, namely—the 42nd, 71st, 79th, and 93rd Highlanders, a battalion of Marines, fifty men of the 8th Hussars, and a battery. The force thus amounted to 15,600 men and thirty guns. The naval force consisted of twenty-four French ships, including three sail of the line, under Admiral Bruat; and thirty-four British vessels, including six sail of the line, under Admiral Lyons. The gunboats and light steamers were organised into a flying squadron, consisting of fourteen British and five French steamers, the whole under Captain Lyons, son of the admiral, and, like his sire, a bold and resourceful sailor.
Starting from Kamiesch and Balaclava on the 22nd, though obstructed by a dense fog, the ships were, on the morning of the 25th, off Cape Takli, the south foreland of the Strait; and soon after daylight the ships having troops on board rounded the cape and running as near the shore as the water would allow, proceeded to disembark the men. No enemy appeared, and the troops speedily got ashore; the French taking the right, and the British the left or exposed flank, while the Turks were held in reserve. But the enemy, though not in sight, was audible enough on land; for the troops had no sooner stepped ashore than the air was rent with the noise of repeated explosions, and tall pillars of white smoke rose up on the right of the allied forces. All along the coast, from Fort Paul towards Yenikale, the Russians were blowing up their magazines. On the sea a British gunboat, followed by another, was seen chasing the Russian ships and engaging the batteries, not yet abandoned, on both sides of the Strait. At the same time other vessels came up and silenced the battery on the spit opposite Yenikale; and the Russians, feeling resistance to be hopeless, blew up one magazine after another on both sides of the Strait; so that by the morning of the 25th there was not a gun or a man to resist the Allies. General Wrangel, who, with 6,000 men, had charge of the peninsula, retired to Argin, midway between Kertch and Kaffa, and in no way molested his opponents.
VOLUNTEERS OF THE FLYING SQUADRON FIRING THE SHIPPING AT TAGANROG. (See p. [102].)
Therefore, on the 25th, the steamers of light draught went up to Yenikale; and the troops, quitting their bivouacs, set out to march on the same place. They proceeded in three columns, the French on the right next the sea, the British on the left, covering their flank, and the Turks in the rear. When they came to Kertch, the whole broke into one column and filed through the town, and by mid-day the troops reached Yenikale. The fleet had come up, and the generals and admirals held a consultation in the afternoon. The sailors having buoyed the channel into the Sea of Azoff, Captain Lyons led his flying squadron at once into those waters. Already, in two days, the Allies had captured upwards of a hundred heavy guns, many new; had destroyed immense stores of corn and flour; had seized a mass of naval stores, and had forced the enemy to burn or wreck thirty or forty ships. By day clouds of smoke rose upward on all sides, and at night the sky was lurid with flames. The strength of the Allies, and the swiftness with which it was applied, soon completed the work and dismayed the enemy. It is with pain that we record the shameful fact that the allied soldiers and sailors disgraced themselves by plundering the houses and public buildings of Kertch and Yenikale. The predatory instincts of our troops were repressed severely, but Sir George Brown had no real control over our allies, and the French generals and Turkish pashas did nothing to restrain their men. The plunder of Kertch and Yenikale is a blot upon this brilliant expedition.
The flying squadron under Captain Lyons really deserved its name. Speed was essential to success, for delay would have given the mass of shipping employed in feeding the Russian army time to run up the Don, or enter the Strait of Genitchi and push into the Putrid Sea. Captain Lyons was as swift as a spirit of fire. It was his business to destroy every sail afloat, to visit and burn all the public magazines of the Russian Government within the reach of his guns and boats, and to bombard every fortified place on the shore. He fulfilled his task. Within four-and-twenty hours he was off Berdiansk, the best port in the sea. Here he landed his small-arm men, and burnt stores worth £50,000, and many merchant ships. Then detaching ships to watch Genitchi and the mouth of the Don, he steamed with the rest of the squadron to Arabat. Here the Russians had a fort, mounting thirty guns, and Lyons and the French shelled the place and blew up the magazine. In three days he had destroyed a hundred transports laden with provisions for the enemy. Without delay he made for Genitchi. Lyons bombarded the place in order to cover the passage of his boats through the Strait into the Putrid Sea. The boats' crews worked through, fired the shipping and corn depôts, and returned; but the wind shifting, it became necessary to go in again and complete the work. This was done by three volunteers: Lieutenant Buckley, Lieutenant Burgoyne, and Mr. John Roberts. These men had the hardihood to land alone, and, in the face of the Cossacks, performed the duty they undertook; and then the boats, under a fire of field-pieces, set fire to the shipping which had escaped before. At the end of the 29th of May the squadron had destroyed, in the Sea of Azoff, four war steamers, 246 merchant ships, and corn and flour worth £150,000. On the 2nd of June the indefatigable Lyons was off Taganrog. The governor would not accept terms of surrender, which would have saved private property; and under cover of the gunboats, in the face of 3,000 troops, Lieutenant Buckley and a band of volunteers landed repeatedly and performed the desperate service of firing the stores and Government buildings. Marioupol shared the fate of Taganrog. Thus Captain Lyons made a tour of the Sea of Azoff. Not one place escaped him or his able lieutenants, Sherard Osborn, Cowper Coles, Horton, Hewett, M'Killop, and his French coadjutors. The Russians lost not only the command of this sea, but masses of corn, forage, fish, and marine stores, and ships which it is impossible to estimate. Hewett and Lambert effectually destroyed all the means of connecting the spit of Arabat with the Crimea; and, after Captain Lyons had left, to meet an untimely death before Sebastopol, Sherard Osborn kept the sea, and left the enemy not a moment's rest. But ere this the French and British troops, leaving the Turks to hold a fortified camp at Yenikale, had returned to the camp at Sebastopol.
The losses inflicted by the flying squadron were not the only losses sustained by the enemy. When he quitted Kertch on the 24th of May, he destroyed himself 4,166,000 pounds of corn, and 508,000 pounds of flour; and it was estimated that this, with the quantity destroyed in the Sea of Azoff, would have furnished four months' rations for 100,000 men. The amount of supplies drawn from Kertch is shown by the fact that just before the Allies landed, the Russians had been sending off daily convoys of 1,500 waggons, each containing half a ton weight of grain or flour. Besides this, the fortress of Anapa, on the appearance of an allied fleet, was blown up by the garrison, and 245 guns rendered useless thereby. The garrison retired across the Kuban River, abandoning the last post held by them in that part of Circassia. Thus the expedition to Kertch and the Sea of Azoff surpassed in its effects the most sanguine expectations of its designers, and struck a severe blow at the vitals of the Russian army.