The British Expedition to the Crimea

by Sir William Howard Russell

Immense quantities of caviare, of dried sturgeon, and of a coarse-scaled fish like a bream, were found in every village, and were relished by our soldiers, but they had very imperfect means of gratifying the thirst which followed, and the stores of country wine (some of it excellent, in spite of the adulteration of essence of roses) were nearly all drank up. The water of the straits was brackish, and our horses, as well as the native cattle, drank it readily, but its taste was very mawkish and disagreeable.

As there was nothing doing at Yenikale, I took an opportunity of paying Kertch a visit. It is only a run of some three or four miles by sea, but the channel is very difficult. As we approached the town, long columns of gray smoke were visible rising from the corn stores, and working parties could be made out on the shore engaged in removing various articles which could be turned to the account of the allies.

Sir George Brown took up his quarters in Yenikale. But the town was set on fire in two places, and it required all the exertions of the authorities to prevent the flames spreading and devastating the whole place. The houses were smashed open, the furniture broken to pieces, and "looting" and plundering were the order or the disorder of the day. Two of the 42nd Highlanders, who were in a crowd assembled round a house, were shot in a very extraordinary manner. A French soldier struck at the closed door with the butt of his musket. The concussion discharged the piece, and the ball killed one of the men on the spot, and wounded the other severely.

The Austrian flag floated before one house, probably that of the Imperial Consul; but the more significant standards of France and England were waving at either end of the quay, and fluttered from numerous boats glancing over the water. The quays were guarded by a few sailors with drawn cutlasses stationed here and there, and with difficulty holding their own against refractory merchantmen. In every direction, wherever the eye turned, up or down the streets, men could be seen hurrying away with bundles under their arms, with furniture on their backs, or staggering under the influence of drink and bedding down to the line of boats which were lying at the sea-wall, laden to the thwarts with plunder. This kind of work is called by sailors "looting," from our Indian reminiscences. The fate of nearly every house of good condition was soon apparent. The windows were broken, the doors smashed open, and men went in and out like bees in a hive. All the smaller and more valuable articles had been removed, either by the Turks or by the Tartars, but big arm-chairs, pictures of the saints with metallic glories round their heads, large feather-beds, card-tables, and books in unknown tongues and type, seemed to possess a strange infatuation for Jack, and to move him as irresistibly as horseflesh.

TARTAR AND RUSSIAN BEAUTIES.

There were plenty of Tartars in the streets, dressed in black sheepskin cap, or white turban, with handsome jackets and wide breeches of dark silk or fine stuff, and gaudy sashes round their waists. These fellows were of the true Calmuck type—with bullet head, forehead villanously low, dark, piggish, roguish, twinkling eyes, obtuse, obstinate noses, straight lips, and globular chin. Unlike most people, they improve in looks as they grow old, for their beards, which only attain amplitude in age, then give a grisly dignity and patriarchal air to their faces. Groups of men in long lank frock-coats, long waistcoats, trousers tucked into their boots or falling down over slipshod feet, sat on the door-steps, in aspect and attire the very image of a congregation of seedy Puseyites, if such a thing could be imagined. Most of these men wore caps instead of hats, their clothing was of sober snuffy hues, to match their faces, which were sombre and dirty and sallow. Their looks were dejected and miserable, and as an Englishman or a Frenchman came near, they made haste to rise and to salute his mightiness with uncovered head and obsequious noddings and gesticulations. These were the remnants of the Russian population, but there were among them Jews, who might have stepped on any stage amid rounds of applause, in garb and face and aspect so truly Shylock-like were they, cringing, wily, and spiteful, as though they had just been kicked across the Rialto; and there was also a sprinkling of Armenians and Greeks; they were all lean and unhappy alike, and very sorry specimens of Muscovite bourgeoisie.

Tartar women, scantily covered, were washing clothes in the sea, like tamed Hecates—withered, angular, squalid, and ugly in face and form. The Russian fair, not much more tastily clad, might be seen flitting about with an air of awkward coquetry, mingled with apprehension and dislike of the intruders, their heads covered with shawls, and their bodies with bright Manchester patterns. The boys, like boys all over the world, were merry and mischievous. They hung out of the riggings of the vessels near, pelted the street dogs, "chivied" the cats and pigeons, and rioted in the gutted houses and amid the open storehouses in the highest possible spirits, or fed ravenously on dried fish and "goodies" of various kinds, which they picked up in old drawers and boxes in the houses torn open by the "looters." The houses were well supplied with poultry, nor were pigs, rabbits, cats, dogs, and other domestic animals deficient. Each mansion was complete in itself; they were like those in the older streets of Boulogne, and the interiors were furnished somewhat in the same fashion—plenty of mirrors, and hard, inflexible, highly varnished, unsubstantial furniture, no carpets, lots of windows (doubled, by-the-by, to keep out the cold) and doors, and long corridors; the windows and doors were, however, handsomely mounted with brass work, and locks, bolts, and hinges, of great solidity, of the same metal, were exclusively used in the better rooms. The Russian stove, as a matter of course, was found in each apartment. Spacious vaults underneath the houses were often used as storehouses for corn, and the piles of empty and broken bottles marked the locality of the wine-cellar. Icehouses were attached to many residences, and their contents were very welcome to the ships.

The market-place is a large piece of ground of an oval shaper surrounded by a piazza and shops and magazines of an inferior class. Most of them were shut, and fastened up, but butchers displayed some good English-looking beef, and the sounds of English revelry were very distinct from the interior of a wine-shop at the end of an arcade, where some sailors were drinking Russian champagne at 3s. a bottle, and smoking cheap and nasty cigars of native manufacture. Amid the distracting alphabetical mysteries of Cyrillus, which were stuck up on most of these doors, where all one's knowledge of other languages led him hopelessly astray, and where P was R, and H was N, there was sometimes an intelligible announcement that Mdlle. So-and-so was a modiste from Paris, or that M. Brugger was a bootmaker "of the first force" from Vienna. The greater number of the houses in the streets were entered through a large courtyard, surrounded by the offices and out-buildings, to which admission was gained by a porte-cochère. There were baths, libraries, schools, literary associations, and academies in Kertch of pretensions beyond its size.

All the military and civil archives of Kertch since 1824 were discovered in a boat towed by the steamer which the Snake had chased, huddled up with the valuables of the Governor of Kertch. In general our army found but little plunder—they had been reined tightly in; while the French and the merchant sailors had the benefit of the pillage; but the 79th Regiment were a little fortunate in finding at the advanced post to which they were sent, near the Quarantine station, a considerable amount of plate in one of the houses.

The hospital was a large, well-built, clean, and excellently ventilated building. It was situated at the outskirts of the town, and was surrounded by iron railings, inside which there was a plantation, which furnished a pleasant shade from the noontide sun to the convalescents. As we entered, some women, who were standing at the gate, retreated, and an old man, with a good clear eye, and an honest soldierly air, came forward to meet us with the word "Hospital," which he had learned as a kind of safeguard and protection against intrusion. He led the way into a dark corridor on the ground floor, on the walls of which the regulations of the establishment (in Russian) were suspended. The wards opened on each side of this corridor. The old man invited us to enter the first: it was spacious and airy, but the hospital smell of wounded men was there. Five wounded Russians and one drunken Englishman were the occupants of the chamber. Two of the Russians had been blown up when the magazines exploded. Their hands and heads were covered with linen bandages, through which holes were cut for the eyes and mouth. What could be seen of these poor wretches gave a horrible impression of their injuries and of the pain which they were enduring, but they gave no outward indication of their sufferings. Their scorched eyes rolled heavily upon the visitors with a kind of listless curiosity. The other men had been shot in various parts of the body, and had probably been sent there from Sebastopol: in one or two I recognized the old Inkerman type of face and expression. The bed and bedclothes were clean and good, and at the head of each bed black tablets of wood were fixed to receive the record of the patient's name, his disease, &c.