The battles of the world

by J. Douglas Borthwick

CRACOW.—It was taken by Charles XII, in 1702. Taken and retaken several times by the Russians, and Kosciusko expelled the Russians, March 24th, 1794, but it surrendered to the Prussians the same year. Occupied by 10,000 Russians, September, 1831; seized by Austria, and incorporated into that empire, November 16th, 1846.

CRESSY.—Fought between the English and French, August 26th, 1346. In the month of July in the year 1346, King Edward, at the head of an army of 30,000 men, landed at La Hogue, in Normandy. He was accompanied by his son, the Prince of Wales, though only fifteen years of age, and by his principal nobility. Having taken several towns, he moved along the left bank of the Seine, which river he wished to cross, in order to join an army of Flemings in Picardy. But he found the bridges all broken, and King Philip, at the head of a numerous army, followed his motions on the opposite bank of the river. At length Edward contrived to repair one of the broken bridges, and to pass over unknown to Philip; and he then marched rapidly till he reached the river Somme; but he there again found all the bridges secured, and learned that Philip was at Amiens with 100,000 men. Being informed that there was a ford near the town of Abbeville, which might be passed when the tide was low, Edward set out for it at midnight; but when the English reached it, the waters were not sufficiently low; and while they were waiting, a large body of French cavalry came down to oppose their passage. The English horsemen, however, gallantly plunged into the stream, drove off the enemy, and gained the opposite bank. The whole army was over when King Philip arrived, and the rising of the tide obliged him to go round by the bridge of Abbeville.

Though the French army was nearly four times as numerous as his own, King Edward resolved to give it battle. He drew up his troops in three divisions on an eminence behind the village of Creci or Cressy. The prince of Wales, aided by the Earls of Oxford and Warwick, led the first, the King himself commanded the last. At dawn (the day was the 26th of August), Edward having heard mass and received the sacrament, rode along the lines, cheering his men, and at ten o’clock they sat down and took their breakfast in their ranks. The French, meantime, advanced from Abbeville in confusion and disorder. A storm of thunder and rain came on and lasted through a great part of the day; but at five o’clock in the afternoon, the sky becoming clear, Philip ordered a body of Génoese cross-bowmen, in his service, to begin the battle. The Génoese gave a shout, and discharged their bolts; the English archers, who were posted in front, showered in return their arrows of a yard in length; and the Génoese, unable to re-charge their ponderous crossbows, fell into disorder. The count of Alençon then charged the first division of the English with a numerous body of cavalry. The second line advanced to its aid, and a knight was sent off to King Edward, who was viewing the battle from the top of a windmill, to pray him to send more help. “Is my son slain or wounded?” said the King. “No, sire.” “Then,” replied he, “tell Warwick, he shall have no aid. Let the boy win his spurs.” When this message was brought to the English, it redoubled their courage; and the French were at length totally routed, with immense loss. “Fair son,” cried Edward to the Prince, as he clasped him to his bosom after the battle, “Fair son, continue your career. You have acted nobly, and shown yourself worthy of me and the crown.”

The person of the highest rank who fell in this great battle was John, king of Bohemia. This prince, who was blind from age, ordered four of his knights to lead him into the thick of the battle. They interlaced his and their own bridles, and rushed forward, and all were slain. The crest of the King of Bohemia, three ostrich feathers, and his motto, Ich dien, i.e. I serve, were adopted by the Prince of Wales, and still are those of the heir-apparent of the crown of England.

CRIMEA, LANDING IN THE.—Crimean War.—The following graphic description is from Emerson’s Sebastopol:—“At length the great fleet, nearly 400 vessels in all, on the 7th of September, 1854, a memorable day thenceforth, set sail for its destination. What that destination was none knew. Orders were issued to rendezvous off the Isle of Serpents, near the Sulina mouth of the Danube. The scene, when the immense flotilla was fairly under weigh, was of the most exciting and animating character. Every ship bore on its side the number of the regiment and nature of troops it conveyed, and carried a distinguishing flag. As night closed in, lanterns signalling the division to which it belonged were displayed, and an illumination, such as the waters of the Euxine never reflected, was witnessed by the sharers in the daring adventure. No incident of these modern practical times, perhaps, has partaken so largely of the character of romance as the departure of this renowned expedition. The great armada, which taxed the energies of the most powerful maritime nation of the sixteenth century, was a puny flotilla compared to the one we are now writing of. The largest vessel of that celebrated fleet was a cockleshell to many of our noble steamers, detached from their customary vocation of carrying on the commercial intercourse of nations, and devoted to the service of war. Resources of science, unknown before the present generation, and adapted by skill to our naval requirements, were there in abundance, rendering a single steamer more than a match for a dozen vessels of an earlier age, and almost independent of the adverse winds and strong currents which had dispersed many a gallant fleet and defeated many a deep-laid scheme of conquest. Iron, naturally one of the densest of bodies, became, in the hands of the scientific shipwright, buoyant as cork; and vessels, each large enough to carry a regiment of cavalry besides its proper crew, and to which a Spanish brig-of-war of the days of Philip might have served for a jolly-boat, breasted the broad waves of the Euxine, freighted with as brave and chivalrous warriors as menaced Troy, or did battle with the infidel possessors of Jerusalem.

Brave and chivalrous indeed, for they sailed they knew not whither, to encounter an unknown enemy. It might be that they were to force a landing at once under the very guns of Sebastopol, and by sheer audacity achieve the capture of the renowned fortress. It might be that, debarking at a distance from that spot, they would be exposed to toilsome marches, in an enemy’s country, harassed by clouds of Cossacks, and opposed by great armies, in strong positions, infinitely outnumbering their own force, when even continuous victory would necessarily be almost entire annihilation. But, like the errant-knights of old, they anticipated no difficulties, and bore a stout heart for any fate. English and French, officer and man, seemed to have but one desire, that of meeting all foes at all hazards, and winning gallantly or dying gloriously.

The general instructions furnished to Marshal St. Arnaud (who, by reason of the French army being so numerically superior to the English, and his military rank as marshal being higher than that of Lord Raglan, assumed the rank of generalissimo of the expedition), and which were understood to have been drawn up by the Emperor Louis Napoleon himself, though leaving to the discretion of the Generals the point of debarkation on the shores of the Crimea, yet strongly recommended—so strongly, in fact, as almost to amount to a command—the choice of Kaffa as the most convenient spot. It was, we cannot help believing, exceedingly fortunate that the allied Generals resolved upon examining for themselves the locality, and ultimately rejected the plans of the Emperor. Kaffa, it is true, affords the largest bay and the most secure anchorage in the Crimea, and, had they been the only requisites, there could have been little doubt that the imperial scheme would have been adopted. But the fleet was only valuable in the expedition as an auxiliary to the army—as a basis of operations, a depôt of stores, a means of conveying reinforcements, an assistant in the actual bombardment, or a medium of retreat in event of a disaster. For all practical purposes Sebastopol was the Crimea; and Sebastopol is on the western coast, while Kaffa is on the eastern, at least 100 miles distant. Had the object been to provide for the security and comfort of the fleet, it might as well have been in snug quarters at Spithead or Cherbourg, as at Kaffa, and there it would have been about as useful. The plan of Napoleon was to seize the town of Kaffa, thence to march across the peninsula, taking possession of Karu-Bazar, Simferopol, and Baktchi-Serai, thus advancing to Sebastopol, and securing the harbour of Balaklava, as a naval basis near the scene of intended operations. But the Emperor, by some strange oversight, seems to have forgotten his own previous caution not to separate from the fleets, when he sketched out the march of an army, only 50,000 strong, encumbered with necessary ammunition and baggage, along a road forty miles from the sea in some parts, through a mountainous district, in an enemy’s country, for a 100 miles, exposed to continued encounters with immense armies, and necessitated to seize and retain possession of, at least, three large towns, strongly garrisoned. It is true, a force stationed at Kaffa might intercept reinforcements arriving from Asia, or along the narrow strip of land bridging the Putrid Sea; but what was to hinder the arrival of the legions which should be poured into the Crimea, through Perekop, the most direct and available route from the very heart of the military strength of Russia, on the first intelligence of the invasion? Supposing, too, that a sufficient force to hold Kaffa had been left in occupation there (and if it had not been, what would have prevented the arrival of troops from Asia and the north, which would have followed the invaders, and enclosed them between two fires?)—that the three great towns had been captured and consequently garrisoned—or where the utility of taking them?—deduct the necessary casualties of the march, and the inevitable results of the unavoidable battles, even supposing them to have been victories, and how many men could possibly have arrived before Sebastopol out of 50,000? The expedition to the Crimea at all was romantic, and is said to have been strongly opposed by some of our most able Generals; but this contemplated march through a mountainous region, interposing innumerable obstacles to transit, in the face of a powerful enemy, far from assistance, cut off from supplies of food or ammunition, with three fortified towns to capture, at least several pitched battles to fight, and, as a finish to the prospect, the most strongly fortified town in the world to reduce, was the very absurdity of Quixoteism.

Fortunately, we say, the generals were wiser than their teacher. When the ships collected at their appointed rendezvous, orders were received to proceed to a spot about forty miles west of Cape Tarkan, in the north of the Crimea; then, embarking in the Caradoc, a small English steamer, Marshal St. Arnaud and Lord Raglan, accompanied by their seconds in command, Generals Canrobert and Brown, and Sir Edmund Lyons, proceeded to survey the coast and select the spot most favourable to their purpose. They skirted the western shore, ran close into Eupatoria, examined the coast thence to Sebastopol (where a few weeks previous, General Canrobert and Sir George Brown had closely scanned the fortifications on a flying visit, penetrating, under cover of night even into the harbour, and not retiring until the grey light of morning had revealed to them a considerable amount of information), passing almost within range of the guns, and coasting round to the little harbour of Balaklava; which having scrutinized, they returned in safety to the fleets. Had any of the large Russian steamers crossed the path of the little Caradoc, and attacked it, a very different fate might have awaited the Allies from that which they anticipated. But the Russian Admirals little dreamed of the prize they might have secured, and our modern Agamemnons were borne back unscathed from their perilous cruise.

On the morning of Monday, the 11th of September, the chiefs returned from their trip and rejoined the fleet; and the anxious expectation as to the point of debarkation, which had agitated the minds of all on board, during the two days’ tedious riding at anchor, was in some degree alleviated by the order to make sail, and rendezvous thirty miles west of Sebastopol. Even then, uncertainty seemed to cloud the counsels of the Commanders. The fleet was dispersed, the heavy sailing vessels having failed to keep in company with their more alert fellows of the steam fleet. At length, the English and French fleets, in one compact flotilla, approached the shore, and the town of Eupatoria, and the hills of the south-east, were presented to the eager gaze of the soldiers. A small steamer was despatched to summon the town to surrender at discretion, and a refusal being received, a small body of English and French marines was landed, their appearance soon stifling any qualms of conscience the local authorities might have felt at yielding up their trust to the enemy. The fleet then shaping a course in a south-easterly direction, the plans of the allied Generals became apparent. About eight miles from Eupatoria the ships cast anchor at a mile from the shore, in the Bay of Kalamita, near a place known as Old Fort. A narrow strip of level land was the spot selected for debarkation, and the enemy exhibited no signs of opposition, or even preparation. It had been not unnaturally anticipated that a formidable resistance would have been made to the expected landing of the Allies, which could only then have been accomplished with much loss. On the contrary, the only signs of Russian life apparent, was the presence of a mounted Russian officer, who, attended by three or four Cossacks, securely stationed on a neighbouring eminence, was calmly sketching the scene.