With some difficulty, an expeditionary force of 28,000 men was collected and sent to the East; they landed at Varna, on the Black Sea, and joined a French army of about the same strength. But it was found that they were not needed on the Danube. The Turks had already thrust the Russians out of Bulgaria, and the Czar's forces were in retreat towards the Pruth. It thus became necessary to settle on some plan of offensive operations against Russia, which the English and French governments had not hitherto contemplated. Russia is only open to attack from the water on two points, the Baltic and the Black Sea, and the allies were almost committed to making their main attack on the latter field, as they had already sent their armies in that direction. It was resolved, therefore, to despatch a powerful fleet to the Baltic to threaten St. Petersburg, but to confine serious operations to the Black Sea. There the easiest point of attack was the great naval fortress of Sebastopol, in the Crimea, the stronghold and arsenal of the Russian fleet. Its destruction would inflict a great blow on the Czar, and its capture seemed easy owing to its remoteness from the centres of Russian strength.
Accordingly the allied armies, somewhat more than 50,000 strong, sailed from Varna on September 7, 1854, and landed on the western shore of the Crimea, thirty miles north of Sebastopol, a few days later. The expedition was very late in starting; it should have sailed in July, and would then have found the Russians unprepared. As it was, Prince Mentchikoff, now commanding in the Crimea, had got wind of the intention of the allies, and hastily taken measures to strengthen his position.
Battle of the Alma.
Advancing very slowly towards Sebastopol, the English and French armies found Mentchikoff with 40,000 men drawn up behind the river Alma, in a lofty position strengthened with entrenchments. The allied generals won the battle that ensued, but their victory was not the reward of their own good generalship. Raglan and the French general St. Arnaud did not get on well together, and the latter showed from the first a tendency to throw the heavier work of the campaign on the English. Half of the French army executed a long flank march by the sea-shore, and never fired a shot in the action. The remaining half allowed themselves to be checked for some time by the Russian left wing, a force of very inferior strength. Meanwhile the English advanced against the hostile centre and right; their front line outran its supports, crossed the river with a rush, and captured the chief redoubt on the opposite bank. But, assailed by the main body of the enemy, it was compelled to fall back, and the heights had to be stormed for a second time by the belated English reserves, which came up at last and swept all before them. Thus the fight was won, without any co-operation from the two commanders-in-chief: for St. Arnaud was too ill to follow the fortunes of the day; while Lord Raglan had blindly ridden forward, lost touch with his men, and blundered by mistake into the rear of the Russian position, where he might easily have been taken prisoner (September 20, 1854).
As the French, who had done hardly any fighting, refused to pursue, while the English were worn out, the Russian army got away without being completely destroyed, though the deadly musketry of the English infantry had fearfully thinned its ranks. The allies followed at a very slow pace; if they had hurried on they might have captured Sebastopol at once. But St. Arnaud was dying, and Lord Raglan could not goad the French into action. Even when they approached the fortress, an extraordinary caution and lack of enterprise was displayed. Mentchikoff had retired into the interior with his army, and left the town to an improvised garrison of sailors and militia, so that it could probably have been stormed offhand.
SEBASTOPOL.
1854.