Sketched on the spot.
On October 25 General Liprandi attacked the English camp at Balaklava with 20,000 or 30,000 men. It is a day to be much remembered in British war annals with profound but melancholy pride, because of the blunder which cost the British Army the loss of two-thirds of its Light Cavalry. |Balaklava.| The action began by the capture by the Russians of four redoubts held by the Turks. Then took place a cavalry encounter which, though it has been eclipsed in memory by the subsequent exploit of the Light Brigade, was, in truth, not less splendid and far more fruitful. The Russian horse, numbering some 3,000 sabres advanced against the British Heavy Cavalry Brigade under General Scarlett. |Cavalry Charges by the Heavy and Light Brigades.| Immensely outnumbered as they were, and hampered by tent ropes and enclosed ground, the Scots Greys and Enniskillens charged them impetuously. For a minute or two it seemed as if these fine regiments must be swallowed up in the dense columns of the enemy, but the Royals and 4th Dragoon Guards moving up on the left, and the 5th Dragoon Guards on the right, charged the enemy on either flank, and forced them to give way and fly. The whole affair was over in less than five minutes.
Lord Raglan, who was anxiously waiting for infantry reinforcements, seeing the Russians preparing to move the guns from the captured redoubts, sent an order to Lord Lucan to prevent them doing so. “Try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns.” What guns? Captain Nolan, who carried the order, pointed to a battery of eight Russian guns at the end of the valley, supported by artillery on either flank. “There, my lord, is our enemy,” said he, “and there are our guns.” Lord Lucan hesitated at first, but the order seemed explicit, and he directed Lord Cardigan to form his Light Brigade into two lines. In the first line were four squadrons of the 13th Light Dragoons and 17th Lancers; in the second were four squadrons of the 4th Light Dragoons and 11th Hussars, with one squadron of the 8th Hussars as a kind of reserve. The command was given, and it was obeyed. Six hundred and seventy-three men rode down that valley of death straight for the guns, on a venture as hopeless and devoted as that of Sir Giles de Argentine at Bannockburn, and hardly less futile. Only one hundred and ninety-five returned.
Stanley Berkeley.] [By permission of the publishers, Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., of London and Manchester.
THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE AT BALAKLAVA.
On the following day the Russians made a sortie in force upon the English position at Inkermann, and although they were repulsed by Sir de Lacy Evans’s division, there can be no possible doubt that the Allied Forces at this period were in imminent peril of a terrible disaster. Five days before the cavalry action of Balaklava, Raglan had informed the War Office that his army was reduced to 16,000, and that he doubted if he could maintain it in the field during the winter, even if Sebastopol should be taken first. Week after week the condition of the troops was painted in gloomier colours by the war correspondents. |Breakdown of Transport and Commissariat.| The transport system had broken down; supplies of all sorts were running short; the hospital arrangements were miserably inadequate for the numerous wounded and the still more numerous sick. The Turkish troops—men of the same race who had fought so well under English officers at Silistria—proved useless—worse than useless, for they had to be fed—under their own pashas in the trenches before Sebastopol.
R. Caton Woodville.] [By permission of the Artist, and of Messrs. Graves, Pall Mall, Publishers of the Photogravure.
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE AT BALAKLAVA.