At Stamboul, I met Fred Wingfield, who was bound to Balaclava, as assistant under the unfortunate Mr. Commissary-General Filder, and had to congratulate myself upon my good fortune. We steamed together over the inhospitable Euxine, which showed me the reason for its sombre name.
The waters are in parts abnormally sweet, and they appear veiled in a dark vapour. Utterly unknown the blues, amethyst and turquoise, of that sea of beauty, the Mediterranean; the same is the case with the smaller Palus Meotis—Azoff. After the normal three days we sighted the Tauric Chersonese, the land of the Cimmerians and Scythians, the colony of the Greek, the conquest of Janghiz and the Khans of Turkey, and finally annexed by Russia after the wars, in which Charles XII. had taught the Slav to fight. We then made Balaclava (Balik-liwa, "Fish town"), with its dwarf fjord, dug out of dove-coloured limestones, and forming a little port stuffed to repletion with every manner of craft.
But it had greatly improved since October 17, 1854, when we first occupied it and formally opened the absurdly so-called siege, in which we were as often the besieged as the besiegers. Under a prodigiously fierce-looking provost-marshal, whose every look meant "cat," some cleanliness and discipline had been introduced amongst the suttlers and scoundrels who populated the townlet. Store-ships no longer crept in, reported cargoes which were worth their weight of gold to miserables, living
"On coffee raw and potted cat,"
and crept out again without breaking bulk. A decent road had been run through Kadikeui (Kazi's village) to camp and to the front, and men no longer sank ankle-deep in dust, or calf-deep in mud. In tact, England was, in the parlance of the "ring," getting her second wind, and was settling down to her work!
The unfortunate Lord Raglan, with his courage antique, his old-fashioned excess of courtesy, and his nervous dread of prejudicing the entente cordiale (!) between England and France, had lately died. He was in one point exactly the man not wanted. At his age and with one arm and many infirmities, he could not come up to the idea of Sir Charles Napier's model officer under the same circumstances, "eternally on horseback, with a sword in his hand, eating, sleeping, and drinking in the saddle."
But with more energy and fitness for command he might have deputed others to take his place. A good ordinary man, placed by the folly of his aristocratic friends in extraordinary circumstances, he was fated, temporarily, to ruin the prestige of England. He began by allowing himself to be ignobly tricked by that shallow intriguer, Maréchal de Saint Arnaud (alias Leroy). At Alma he was persuaded to take the worst and the most perilous position; his delicacy in not disturbing the last hours of his fellow Commander-in-Chief prevented his capturing the northern forts of Sebastopol, which Todleben openly declared were to be stormed by a coup de main; and allowed Louis Napoleon, in the Moniteur, to blame England only for the lâches of the French, after the "last of European battles fought on the old lines," etc. At Inkermann, where the Guards defended themselves, like prehistoric men, with stones, Lord Raglan allowed his whole army to be surprised by the Russians, and to be saved by General Bosquet, with a host of Zouaves, Chasseurs, and Algerian rifles. No wonder that a Russian general declared, "The French saved the English at Inkermann as the Prussians did at Waterloo, and all Europe believed that France would conquer both Russia and England, the first by arms and the second by contrast." The "thin red line" of Balaclava allowed some national chauvinism, but that was all to be said in its favour, except that the gallantry of the men was to be equalled only by the incompetency of their Chiefs.
I passed a week with Wingfield and other friends, in and about Balaclava, in frequent visits to the front and camp. A favourite excursion from the latter was to the Monastery of St. George, classic ground where Iphigenia was saved from sacrifice. There was a noble view from this place, a foreground of goodly garden, a deep ravine clad with glorious trees, a system of cliffs and needles studding a sandy beach, and a lovely stretch of sparkling sea. No wonder that it had been chosen by a hermit, whose little hut of unhewn blocks lay hard by; he was a man upwards of sixty apparently, unknown to any one, and was fed by the black-robed monks. At Kadikeui also I made the acquaintance of good Mrs. Seacole, Jamaican by origin, who did so much for the comfort of invalids, and whom we afterwards met with lively pleasure at Panámá.
The British cavalry officers in the Crimea were still violently excited by reports that Lord Cardigan was about returning to command; and I heard more than one say, "We will not serve under him." And after a long experience of different opinions on the spot, I came to the following conclusion:—The unhappy charge of the "Six Hundred" was directly caused by my old friend, Captain Nolan of the 15th Hussars. An admirable officer and swordsman, bred in the gallant Austrian Cavalry of that day, he held, and advocated through life, the theory that mounted troops were an overmatch for infantry, and wanted only good leading to break squares and so forth. He was burning also to see the Lights outrival the Heavies, who, under General Scarlett, had charged down upon Russians said to be four times their number. Lord Lucan received an order to take a Russian 12-gun battery on the Causeway Heights, from General Liprandi, and he sent a verbal message by Nolan (General Airey's aide-de-camp) to his brother-in-law, Lord Cardigan, there being bad blood between the two.