The British Expedition to the Crimea

by Sir William Howard Russell

"In these operations the loss to the enemy during four days has amounted to four war steamers, 246 merchant vessels, and corn and magazines to the amount of £150,000. Upwards of 100 guns have been taken. It is estimated that four months' rations for 100,000 men of the Russian army have been destroyed.

"On the Circassian coast the enemy evacuated Soudjak Kaleh on the 28th of May, after destroying all the principal buildings and sixty guns and six mortars.

"The fort on the road between Soudjak Kaleh and Anapa is also evacuated."

THE FIRST "MONITOR."

Subsequently an attack was made on Taganrog, but the depth of water off the port did not permit the larger vessels to approach near enough to cover the landing of armed parties, to destroy the immense stores of corn effectually; nevertheless a good deal of harm was done to the Russians, and public and private property largely injured. It was on the occasion of the demonstration against this important town, apparently, that the germ of the great idea of the Monitor, which has revolutionized the navies of the world, was developed by Lt. Cowper Coles, R.N. He mounted a gun on a raft and defended it with gabions, and he was enabled to bring this floating battery, which he called the Lady Nancy, into action with great effect against Taganrog. In the development of that idea called the Captain he lost his life in 1870. These operations along the coasts of the Sea of Azoff certainly caused losses to the enemy, and may have done something to create temporary inconvenience; they were effected in a legitimate if rather barbarous exercise of the rights of war, but when a few months subsequently the British Army before Sebastopol was in such need of corn that contractors were sent out to buy it in the United States, it must have occurred to the authorities that they had countenanced senseless waste, and authorized wanton destruction, to their great eventual detriment. As the naval forces were obliged to retire after each bombardment, and the landing of armed parties was only temporary, the enemy generally claimed the credit of having repulsed them, and Russia was inundated with accounts of the disasters caused by the bravery of priests and peasants, and divine interposition, to the audacious invaders who had ventured to pollute her holy soil. Cheap prints of the defence of Taganrog, &c., were published and sold by the thousand, and the people were excited by accounts of the death of innocent people, of the sacking of undefended cities, and of arson and pillage and wreck. Kertch and Yenikale were placed in a state of defence and garrisoned, and eventually the Turkish Contingent was stationed on the coast and in the town, and a small force of infantry and cavalry was detached from the British to aid them. The Contingent, composed of Turks under British officers, became a highly disciplined body, fit for any duty, but its value and conduct were not exhibited in the field, and it was employed as a corps of defence and observation on the Bay of Kertch till the war was over, when it and the other corps raised abroad under British officers, such as the Swiss Legion, the German Legion, &c., were disbanded. The Russians soon sent a corps to observe the movements of the force stationed at Kertch and Yenikale, and hemmed them in with Cossacks, and some slight affairs of outposts and reconnoitring parties occurred during the autumn and winter, in one of which a party of the 10th Hussars had difficulty in extricating itself, and suffered some loss from a larger body of the enemy. The work of the expedition to Kertch having been accomplished by the occupation of the town and straits, and by obtaining complete command of the entrance of the Sea of Azoff, the Allied fleets returned to Kamiesh and to the anchorage off Sebastopol, to participate as far as they could in the task of the siege.

BOOK VI.

COMBINED ATTACKS ON THE ENEMY'S COUNTER APPROACHES—CAPTURE OF THE QUARRIES AND MAMELON—THE ASSAULT OF THE 18TH OF JUNE—LORD RAGLAN'S DEATH.

CHAPTER I.

Preparations for the Attack—Important News—The Assault—The Quarries and the Mamelon—A Desperate Attempt—Plan of another Attack—Assault of the Malakoff and the Great Redan—Failure—Naval Brigade—An Armistice—Inside the Mamelon—Sad Scenes.

WHILST I was away with the Kertch expedition, the siege was pressed on by the French with great vigour, and our army was actively employed in preparing for the bombardment which was to precede the fall of the place, as all fondly hoped and believed. There were intervals in the day when you might suppose that "villanous saltpetre" had no more to do with a modern siege than an ancient one, and that all this demonstration of a state of conflict was merely an amicable suit upon an extensive scale. There were times at night when angry and sudden explosions sprang up as if by some unaccountable impulse or conjuration, and continued with an impetuosity which seemed as if it intended to finish the whole business in a moment. There were times when the red fusees turned and tumbled in the air like hot coals belched out of a volcano, and danced successive hornpipes upon nothing; then the clatter of small arms broke upon the ear in distant imitation of the heavy artillery, like a little dog yelping in gratuitous rivalry of a big one. The fighting was done by jerks and starts, and the combatants, like Homer's heroes, stood at ease the best part of the time, and took it coolly, meaning deadly mischief all the while. The sharpest onset was generally on the side of our allies, about the Flagstaff or the Quarantine Battery, where they were sedulously advancing their endless mileage of trench and parallel, and promising themselves a result before long.