In their dark green uniforms, which were patched with many a rag, a hundred men of the Rifle Brigade who carried the scaling ladders preceded us; and the moment they and we began to issue, which we did at a furious run, with bayonets fixed and rifles at the short trail, from the head of the trenches, the cannon of the Redan opened a withering fire upon us. The round shot tore up the earth beneath our feet, or swept men away by entire sections, strewing limbs and other fragments of humanity everywhere; the exploding shells also dealt death and mutilation; the grape and cannister swept past in whistling showers; and wicked little shrapnels were flying through the air like black spots against the sky; while, with a hearty and genuine English "hurrah!" that deepened into a species of fierce roar, we swept towards the ditch which so few of us might live to recross.
Thick fall our dead on every hand, and the hoarse boom of the cannon is sounding deep amid the roar of the concentrated musketry. Crawling and limping back to the trenches for succour and shelter, the groaning or shrieking wounded are already pouring in hundreds to the rear, reeking with blood; and, within a minute, the whole slope of the Redan is covered with our redcoats--the dead or the helpless--thick as the leaves lie "when forests are rended!"
[CHAPTER LV.--INSIDE THE REDAN.]
One enormous cannon-shot that struck the earth and stones threw up a cloud of dust which totally blinded the brave brigadier who led us; he was thus compelled to grope his way to the rear, while his place was taken by Lieutenant-colonel W. H. Bunbury of ours--a tried soldier, who had served in the Kohat-Pass expedition five years before this, and been Napier's aide-de-camp during the wars of India. The Honourable Colonel Handcock, who led three hundred men of the 97th and of the Perthshire Volunteers, fell mortally by a ball in the head. Colonel Lysons of ours (who served in the Canadian affair of St. Denis), though wounded in the thigh and unable to stand, remained on the ground, and with brandished sword cheered on the stormers.
The actual portion of the latter followed those who bore the scaling ladders, twenty of which were apportioned to the Buffs; and no time was to be lost now, as the Russians from the Malakoff, inflamed by blood, defeat, and fury, were rushing down in hordes to aid in the defence of the Redan. In crossing the open ground between our trenches and the point of attack, some of the ladders were lost or left behind, in consequence of their bearers being shot down; yet we reached the edge of the ditch and planted several without much difficulty, till the Russians, after flocking to the traverses which enfiladed them, opened a murderous fusillade upon those who were crossing or getting into the embrasures, when we planted them on the other side; and then so many officers and men perished, that Windham and three of the former were the only leaders of parties who got in untouched.
The scene in the ditch, where the dead and the dying, the bleeding, the panting, and exhausted lay over each other three or four deep, was beyond description; and at a place called the Picket House was one solitary English lady, watching this terrible assault, breathless and pale, putting up prayers with her white lips; and her emotions at such a time may be imagined when I mention that she was the wife of an officer engaged in the assault, Colonel H----, whose body was soon after borne past her on a stretcher.
When my ladder was planted firmly, I went up with the stormers, men of all regiments mixed pell-mell, Buffs and Royal Welsh, 90th and 97th. A gun, depressed and loaded with grape, belched a volume of flame and iron past me as I sprang, sword in hand, into the embrasure, firing my revolver almost at random; and the stormers, their faces flushed with ardour and fierce excitement, cheering, stabbing with the bayonet, smashing with the butt-end, or firing wildly, swarmed in at every aperture, and bore the Russians back; but I, being suddenly wedged among a number of killed and wounded men, between the cannon and the side of the embrasure could neither advance nor retire, till dragged out by the strong hand of poor Charley Gwynne, who fell a minute after, shot dead; and for some seconds, while in that most exposed and terrible position, I saw a dreadful scene of slaughter before me; for there were dense gray masses of the Russian infantry, their usually stolid visages inflamed by hate, ferocity, by fiery vodka, and religious rancour, the front ranks kneeling as if to receive cavalry, and all the rear ranks, which were three or four deep, firing over each other's heads, exactly as we are told the Scottish brigades of the "Lion of the North" did at Leipzig, to the annihilation of those of Count Tilly.
We were fairly IN this terrible Redan; but the weakness of our force was soon painfully apparent, and in short, when the enemy made a united rush at us, they drove us all into an angle of the work, and ultimately over the parapet to the outer slope, where men of the Light and Second Divisions were packed in a dense mass and firing into it, which they continued to do even till their ammunition became expended, when fresh supplies from the pouches of those in rear were handed to those in front. An hour and a half of this disastrous strife elapsed, "the Russians having cleared the Redan," to quote the trite description of Russell, "but not yet being in possession of its parapets, when they made a second charge with bayonets under a heavy fire of musketry, and throwing great quantities of large stones, grape and small round shot, drove those in front back upon the men in rear, who were thrown into the ditch. The gabions in the parapet now gave way, and rolled down with those who were upon them; and the men in rear, thinking all was lost, retired into the fifth parallel."
Many men were buried alive in the ditch by the falling earth; Dora's admirer, poor little Torn Clavell of the 19th, among others, perished thus horribly. Just as we reached our shelter, there to breathe, re-form, and await supports, I saw poor Phil Caradoc reel wildly and fall, somewhat in a heap, at the foot of the gabions. In a moment I was by his side. His sword-arm had been upraised as he was endeavouring to rally the men, and a ball had passed--as it eventually proved--through his lungs; though a surgeon, who was seated close by with all his apparatus and instruments, assured him that it was not so.
"I know better--something tells me that it is all over with me--and that I am bleeding internally," said he, with difficulty. "Hardinge, old fellow--lift me up--gently, so--so--thank you."