At last, in the month of June, came his first chance to do some real fighting. Every branch of the service was marshalled by the commanding general, Lord Raglan, for a massed attack. What happened can best be described in Gordon's own words:
"About three a. m. the French advanced on the Malakoff tower in three columns, and ten minutes after this our signal was given. The Russians then opened with a fire of grape that was terrific." And again: "They mowed down our men in dozens, and the trenches, being confined, were crowded with men who foolishly kept in them instead of rushing over the parapet, and, by coming forward in a mass, trusting to some of them at least being able to pass through untouched to the Redan, where, of course, once they arrived, the artillery could not reach them, and every yard nearer would have diminished the effect of the grape by giving it less space for spreading. We could thus have moved up the supports and carried the place. Unfortunately, however, our men dribbled out of the ends of the trenches ten and twenty at a time, and as soon as they appeared they were cleared away."
Thus ended the first engagement in which Gordon took part. The Allies suffered defeat, and Lord Raglan died a few days later of a broken heart. It was not an auspicious baptism of fire.
In August another assault was made, which also met defeat. Gordon ends his account with the remark: "We should have carried everything before us, if the men had only advanced."
Perchance one reason why the men failed to advance was that their morale had been lowered, by reason of the privations they had undergone. This was before the days of the Red Cross, the army canteen, or the Y. M. C. A. with its homely comfort. The men had had to shift for themselves. Nursing the sick and wounded was almost unknown, until the white-clad figure of Florence Nightingale showed the world its dereliction. Listen to what this devoted pioneer among nurses has to say:
"Fancy working five nights out of seven in the trenches. Fancy being thirty-six hours in them at a stretch, as they sometimes were, lying down, or half-lying down often forty-eight hours with no food but raw salt pork, sprinkled with sugar, rum, and biscuit; nothing hot, because the exhausted soldier could not collect his own fuel, as he was expected to do, to cook his own rations; and fancy through all this, the army preserving their courage and patience, as they have done, and being now eager (the old ones as well as the young ones) to be led into the trenches. There was something sublime in the spectacle."
Sublime? Granted. But no soldier fights well on an empty stomach.
Despite their hardships and reverses, however, the Allies were at last successful in the capture of Sebastopol. But it was a barren victory, as the Russians had set fire to the town and destroyed practically everything of value. The war soon afterwards ceased, and with it the first hard lesson in Charles Gordon's military training. He had entered it a somewhat careless youth. He came out of it a seasoned veteran.
That his government had learned to appreciate his services is shown by the fact that he was soon afterward placed on a joint commission of the English, French, Russians, and Austrians, to lay down a boundary line between Russia and her neighbors at the southwest. It was only one of many later attempts to define the Balkans.
"The newly-ceded territory is in great disorder," writes Gordon. "The inhabitants refuse to obey the Moldaves and own nobody's authority. This is caused, I suspect, by Russian intrigues."