As an instance of the spirit shown by the wounded who were left upon the field, this story is quoted from Russell’s account of the battle. During the armistice of the 19th for the collection of the wounded and the burial of the dead, Major-General Eyre came to the part of the cemetery where a sergeant of the Royal Irish lay, with both his legs broken by a round-shot. “General,” exclaimed the non-commissioned officer, “thank God, we did our work, anyway. Had I another pair of legs, the country and you would be welcome to them!”
The operations of the 17th and 18th cost the French 3500 men, the British 1500, the Russians 5400, and of the six generals and commanders, French and English, who led the attacks on the 18th, four were killed and one disabled. When Eyre’s casualty returns were made up, it was found that his brigade had lost 562 killed and wounded. To this total the Royal Irish contributed no less than 259, almost 39 per cent of the regiment as it went into action. Among the officers, Lieutenant J. W. Meurant was killed, and ten were wounded, several being dangerously or severely injured. They were—Major J. C. Kennedy; Captains J. Cormick, A. W. S. F. Armstong, M. Hayman, H. F. Stephenson, and J. G. Wilkinson; Lieutenants W. O’B. Taylor, W. Kemp, F. Fearnley, and C. Hotham. Of the other ranks 57 were killed or mortally wounded, 16 were dangerously and 87 severely wounded, and 88 more slightly injured.[175] The wounded were gradually carried back to the camp of the IIIrd brigade, which they soon filled to overflowing. To our modern ideas the preparations for their reception were singularly rough. “So many of us had been hit,” writes Captain Kemp, who himself had been struck by a bullet in the knee, “that the orderly room and mess huts and every other available place was appropriated for our use. At first my leg was doomed to come off, and I was laid on the amputation table for the purpose, but as I was too weak then it was left on till the morrow. Next day I was allowed to retain it by the decision of one of the staff surgeons, who said, most luckily for me, ‘Let us give the poor lad a chance,’ but I became very ill from fever and the intense heat of the tent,[176] and shortly afterwards was ordered home. I was moved to Balaclava in one of the ‘carrying chairs’ slung on the side of a mule, and fainted nearly all the way from sun and weakness.”
After their double repulse at the Malakoff and the Redan the Allies lost no time in resuming the ordinary operations of the siege: their approaches were steadily pushed forward, and their guns kept up a heavy fire upon the fortress. In July the average daily loss in Sebastopol was two hundred and fifty, while each day in August saw the strength of the garrison diminished by eight or nine hundred officers and men. The Russians, magnificently stubborn fighters as they were, began to realise that the place was becoming untenable. The parapets were crumbling under the projectiles of the Anglo-French artillery; many guns were disabled or worn out, and though there was still a large reserve of cannon in the arsenal, the fire of our mortars made it impossible to mount them on the shattered batteries. Round the disabled guns the dead lay in great heaps, while the wounded could not be moved till darkness brought some respite to the harassed garrison. Barracks, arsenals, and store-houses were all more or less in ruins; and the hospitals, overflowing into the streets and squares of the town, were rapidly emptied into a cemetery, grimly termed “the grave of the Hundred Thousand.” Towards the end of August the Russians determined to abandon Sebastopol; they began to build a bridge across the outer harbour, strong enough to carry guns and waggons upon its sixteen feet of roadway; threw up barricades across the streets of the town, and laid great mines under the forts and magazines. On the 5th of September, the Allies once more brought all their guns into action, and bombarded the fortress, almost without intermission, for three days and nights, and on the 8th, the French once more assaulted the Malakoff, and the British the Redan. As the third division was in the reserve and did not come into action, the XVIIIth regiment was not engaged, and therefore all that need be said about the result is that we failed to take the Redan, while the French carried the Malakoff, and succeeded in holding it against the strenuous efforts of the enemy to recapture it. These attacks were made by the Russian rear-guard to gain time for the retreat of the main body from the southern shores of the harbour, and were so far successful that when the French General heard that the head of the enemy’s column was marching over the bridge, he was still too uncertain of ultimate success to attempt any interference with the retirement. During the night the Russians successfully exploded many of their mines; destroyed their few remaining warships; set fire to the town in many places, and called in the troops from the forts; and by daybreak on the 9th the whole of the garrison, carrying with them most of the wounded, had crossed the bridge, broken it behind them, and found safety on the heights to the north of the harbour of Sebastopol. The losses on both sides in this, the last important episode in the Crimean War, were very heavy. Our defeat at the Redan cost us 2271 officers and men, among whom were three generals, wounded: the French casualties amounted to 7567 of all ranks, including five generals killed and four wounded: the Russians lost nine generals and 12,906 other officers and men.
With the fall of the fortress the war in the Crimea came virtually to an end. The Allies had accomplished their self-imposed task of destroying Sebastopol and the Black Sea fleet; there was no immediate object to be gained by a pitched battle with the Russian Field army; disagreements on questions of future policy caused a considerable amount of friction between the Ministers of Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon III., and fettered the movements of the Generals, who engaged in no further operations except two comparatively unimportant raids against the towns of Eupatoria and Kilburn, in neither of which the XVIIIth regiment took part. The French, indeed, were not anxious, if indeed they were able, to continue the war; but the English had atoned, though very tardily, for their previous neglect of their army, by preparing so energetically for another campaign, that in November there were in the Crimea 51,000 British troops, a contingent of 20,000 Turks, raised, trained, and officered by Englishmen, and a German legion of ten thousand men.[177] The good health of this large body of soldiery showed how excellent our system of administration had become at the seat of war; at home recruits were forthcoming in great numbers; the militia had relieved the troops in the United Kingdom and the Mediterranean of much garrison duty; Malta was full of trained soldiers, eager to be employed on active service; in short, the Army, purified by the ordeal it had passed through, had become once more a first-rate fighting machine. But the troops arriving after the fall of the fortress had no opportunity of distinguishing themselves, for though the enemy annoyed us by cannonading Sebastopol from the northern shore of the harbour, he made no offensive movement against the camps on the Upland. Thus the second winter in the Crimea was a time of comparative rest for the greater part of the army, though not for the regiments placed at the disposal of the Royal Engineers to complete the destruction of the forts, arsenals, and dockyards of the fortress. To the Royal Irish fell a very heavy task, the demolition of the docks in the inner harbour. As Colonel Edwards was senior to the engineer officer in charge of the work, the headquarters of the XVIIIth remained outside the town, and Major Call was placed in command of the working parties, which practically consisted of the whole of the Royal Irish. The labour of preparing the docks for destruction was very great, and the hardships of the men extreme: to quote the words of the general order of February 7, 1856, praising the zeal and perseverance of all ranks, and thanking Major Call, among other officers, for his valuable services, “the work was carried out in the depth of winter; the docks occasionally flooded, the shafts filled with water, the pumps choked with frost; but all ranks united to overcome difficulties, and the mass of ruins is a proof of the success attending the cheerful performance of a laborious duty.”
This official record is not the only testimony to the good behaviour of the Royal Irish while they worked like navvies in the docks. General C. G. Gordon, who as a young officer of Royal Engineers had served in the Crimea, replied to a request for information about the doings of the XVIIIth at the siege of Sebastopol in a characteristic letter:—
“Port Louis, 3/3/82.
“My dear Major Savile,—Thanks for your note received to-day. I am afraid I cannot write anything which would be of value about the 18th Royal Irish, as it is now 28 years ago or nearly so, since the Crimea. I know that they were a favourite regiment with the R.E. for work, both in the trenches and in the destruction of the docks, from the energy and pluck of the officers and men, and it was then that I formed my opinion of Irishmen being of a different nature than other Britishers inasmuch as they required a certain management and consideration, which, if given them, would enable you, so to speak, to hold their lives in your hand. The officers liked the men and the men liked the officers; they were a jovial lot altogether, but they would do anything if you spoke and treated them as if you liked them, which I certainly did. You know what great hardships they went through in the Docks in working at the shafts which, 30 feet deep, were often full of water, if left, unpumped out, for 12 hours. Poor devils! wet, draggled, in their low ammunition boots, I used to feel much for them, for the Generals used to be down on them because they were troublesome, which they were when people did not know how to manage them.
“Kindest regards to General Edwards, a fine, clever old officer who had all our respect.
“I am sorry I can write you no details.—Believe me, yours sincerely,
“C. G. Gordon.”