The battle of the Little Inkerman was soon followed by that called, par excellence, the battle of Inkerman. The morning of the 5th of November dawned mistily and dimly over the plateau before Sebastopol, and along the dark course of the Tchernaya. The Russians ascended stealthily against the flank of the British. A terrible battle ensued. The English, surprised, fought in their great-coats; although otherwise imperfectly dressed, and some without shoes or shakos. Evans, who would have been at the head of his second division, was ill on board ship at Balaklava, and his place was nobly filled by General Pennefather. At the sound of the cannon booming heavily over the plateau of Balaklava, Evans rose from his sick bed and hurried to the front of battle, where he remained during the terrible morning of conflict which opened that eventful day. The English were all but overpowered, although they fought as Englishmen—as probably no men ever before fought—with a tenacious obstinacy that yielded to no force, with a chivalrous dash and daring which contemned all odds. The Duke of Cambridge, probably, escaped greater danger than any British officer on the field. For a time he rode along the line encouraging his men, the fire of the advancing columns of the Russians directed upon him; nearly all around him were killed or wounded. It was a critical and awful moment: the Russians were gaining the summit of the ascent; they would there have had room to deploy, and the British would have been in danger of being driven from their intrenchments, and the allied armies of being forced back upon the sea. Fortunately the French, who were engaged in watching the manoeuvres of Liprandi in the valley beneath, at last came to the assistance of their allies, and fell upon the Russian flanks. The British at the same moment received supplies of ammunition, of which they had been in need through the wretched management of everything that depended upon head-quarters; their ranks rallied and poured deadly volleys of Minié bullets upon the masses of the enemy struggling with the French. The slopes of the plateau were strewn with dead, and slippery with gore; the Russians, foiled everywhere, retreated. The French, fresh for pursuit, would not pursue unless the weary guardsmen led the van. Canrobert, the successor of Arnaud in command of the French army, complimented the British, but did not act heartily with them. The services of Sir Richard England at Inkerman have been generally overlooked by British writers. England was not favourable to the agents of the press, and he showed this feeling in a manner which offended that class. This was unwise, both for himself, his division, and the service. Were it not for that circumstance, the valuable services of that general would have become better known to the public. When the battle of Inkerman began, England occupied a position to the left of the English lines, near to a ravine which separated them from those occupied by the French. Leaving a portion of his troops under the command of one of his brigadiers, he dispatched the rest under Brigadier Campbell to the right, and himself followed. His opportune arrival supported the divisions exposed to attack; and as their several detachments moved to the more immediate theatre of conflict, England’s troops occupied the ground from which they had been removed, and which would have been exposed to the enemy. It is remarkable that the plan of the Russian generals was to make the principal attack upon the extreme left of the British, so as to separate the English left from the French right. The officer in charge of the attacking column missed his way, delay was thus caused as well as the plan of assault totally deranged; possibly, to these circumstances may be attributed the failure of the Russian attack of the 5th of November.
After this battle, Sir De Lacy Evans strongly recommended Lord Raglan to change his position. He was influenced in offering this advice by the total inadequacy of the English army, numerically, to occupy such extended lines, and by the suffering of the army from ill health, climate, and deficient supplies, personal and military. This letter of the general has been much misrepresented in the London clubs, and among coteries unfriendly to the general’s liberal parliamentary policy. It was, however, the opinion of Sir De Lacy that, unless reinforcements arrived in numbers far superior to what was then probable, the British would be unable to hold their ground; and, notwithstanding the actual issue, such advice was sound, and based upon facts and probabilities.
After the battle of Inkerman, the condition of the British army became truly horrible, so that the closing winter months of 1854 were such as tried the fortitude of the British troops and their hardihood of endurance to the uttermost. It would be in vain to attempt to portray, upon these pages, sufferings which excited the wonder and sympathy of all nations, or to depict the patriotism and enduring devotion to duty by which such protracted miseries were sustained. Great numbers perished of cold, hunger, and sickness; and the cholera, which ravaged the encampments of Gallipoli and Varna, pursued the army to the trenches before Sebastopol. The Russians also suffered much, and bore it as good, hardy, and loyal soldiers; but they had the shelter, hospitals, and supplies of the city. The troops on the Tchernaya were relieved by the garrison of the city, and supplied from its almost exhaustless stores. The Russian armies had the whole power of the empire in their rear; but, notwithstanding the herculean efforts made by the czar to recruit and feed his armies, the drain of life was terrible, from causes similar to those by which the English were swept away in such numbers. The French army was far better organized and more honestly administered than the armies of England and Russia, and the loss of life during 1854, after the landing in the Crimea, was less than was experienced by the British or Russians. The cholera, however, took greater effect upon the Turks, French, and Muscovites, than upon the British. At Gallipoli and Varna this was strikingly exemplified. In the Dobrudscha, upon the Danube, the division of General Espineau was nearly destroyed by the pestilence.
During the whole period to which this relation of events refers, the allied fleets were masters of the Turkish waters, from the gates of the Dardanelles to the Sea of Azoff. When the fleets conveyed the armies to Old Fort and Eupatoria, they appeared before Sebastopol; and the Russians, fearing that the enterprise of the British might penetrate the harbour, sunk their fleet in two lines, so as to bar its entrance and prevent their capture. This bold measure did much to prolong the defence. It also mortified the allies, who were thus prevented from taking naval prizes, and from conquering the place, or very much promoting its conquest by naval artillery. The Russians reserved some of their most efficient vessels behind the range of sunken ships, and with those they commanded the flanks of the besiegers, causing much waste of life, and obstructing seriously the progress of the siege.
The naval force of the czar in the Black Sea was estimated very differently by various writers. A number of statements were put forth, all professing to be authentic. We select two, and our readers will be able to judge for themselves the probable statistics. Haxthausen represents the Black Sea fleet as consisting of three divisions, each of which comprised ordinarily 1 three-decker, 2 two-deckers (among the last two ships mounting each 84 guns), 6 frigates, 1 corvette, and 4 smaller vessels. Mr. Danby Seymour is more precise, and furnishes us with what purports to be a complete list of the Russian naval force in the Euxine in 1854, viz.:—20 ships of the line, 7 frigates, 5 corvettes, 12 brigs, 9 schooners, 7 cutters, 2 yachts, 1 bombard, 30 steamers, 28 gun-boats, and 30 transports.
The British fleet consisted of the Britannia, Trafalgar, Vengeance, Rodney, Betterophon, Queen, Lynx, Sphynx, Tribune, Sampson, Terrible, Furious, Retribution, Highflyer, Spiteful, Cyclops, Vesuvius, Albion, Arethusa, London, Sanspareil, Agamemnon, Firebrand, Triton, Niger, constituting a most powerful navy. At that juncture, so great were the maritime resources of England, that a naval authority thus reported concerning her resources:—“From our ships in reserve and building, we could form a naval force far surpassing that which any other nation in the world can boast of having afloat. We have in reserve, at the four ports of Portsmouth, Devonport, Chatham, and Sheerness, not less than 161 vessels of the ‘effective ships of the royal navy,’ and these estimated to carry not less than 6,807 guns. Besides these, too, we have a goodly number of paddle-wheels and other small craft. Though some of the vessels may not, without considerable repairs, be in a state to send to sea, yet most of them are excellent sea-going vessels—far superior, indeed, to anything Russian—and could be fitted out for service on very short notice. Then we have of vessels building—5 at Portsmouth, 7 at Devonport, 1 at Sheerness, 6 at Chatham, 11 at Pembroke, 4 at Deptford, 4 at Woolwich, and one at Mill wall.—Total 39.” The French naval force in the Black Sea, under the command of Vice-admiral Hamelin, was composed of the Friedland, Valmy, Ville de Paris, Henri IV., Bayard, Charlemagne, Lena, Lupiter, Marengo, Gomer, Descartes, Vauban, Mogador, Cacique, Magellan, Sanê, Caton, Sérieuse, Mercure, Olivière, Beaumanoir, Cerf, Prométhée, Salamandre, Héron, and Monette. The squadron of Viceadmiral Bruat, intended to act in the Black Sea, the Sea of Gallipoli, and in the Eastern Archipelago, comprised the following vessels:—Montebello, Napoléon, Suffren, Jean Bart, Ville de Marseille, Alger, Pomone, Caffarelli, Roland and Primauguet. Independently of these three squadrons, and all the frigates, or steam corvettes, which were assembled in the Mediterranean for the transport of the army of the East, were all the naval stations in the West Indies, the Pacific Ocean, the Indo-China seas, and in all quarters where the fishing interest existed.
The first bombardment of Sebastopol took place on the 17th of October, in which the fleet took an active part; but the combined efforts of the artillery, afloat and ashore, failed to subdue the gigantic works which had arisen for the defence.
The allied fleets rendered great services in protecting Eupatoria, which had been garrisoned mainly by Turkish troops, and which the Russians vigilantly watched and incessantly harassed.
Various bombardments and incessant watching occupied the fleets until, in the following year, the grand catastrophe occurred, and southern Sebastopol fell under what the Russian commander called “the fire infernal” of the allies.
On the 14th of November, a terrible storm smote the Black Sea and the Crimea. The tents of the camps were blown away, many ships were wrecked, and many lives were lost. The want of prevision, management, and organization, on the part of the chief authorities of the British, led to costly sacrifices of human life, matériel of war, and supplies.