The British Expedition to the Crimea

by Sir William Howard Russell

Meanwhile the fall of the Mamelon did not by any means bring the combat to an end on the side of our allies. The Zouaves, emboldened by their success, carried their prowess too far, and dreamt of getting into the Round Tower by a coup de main. A new crop of battle grew up over all the intervening hollow between it and the Mamelon, and the ripple of musket shots plashed and leaped over the broad hill-side. The combatants were not enough for victory there too, but they were enough for a sanguinary and prolonged contest, a contest to the eye far more violent than that which preceded it. The tower itself, or rather the inglorious stump of what was once the Round Tower, took and gave shot and shell and musketry with the most savage ardour and rapidity. The fire of its musketry was like one sheet of flame, rolling backwards and forwards with a dancing movement, and, dwarfed as it was by the distance, and seen by us in profile, could scarcely be compared to anything, small or large, except the notes of a piano flashed into fire throughout some rapid tune. Our gunners, observing the duration and aim of the skirmish, redoubled their exertions, and pitched their shells into the Round Tower with admirable precision, doing immense mischief to the defenders. It was dark, and every one of them came out against the heavens as it rose or swooped. From Gordon's Battery and the Second parallel they streamed and plunged one after another into the enceinte up to which the Zouaves had won their way unsupported, heralded every now and then by the prompt and decisive ring of a round shot. The Russian defence, rather than their defences, crumbled away before this tremendous fire, but, on the other hand, the attack not being fed, as it was not designed, began to languish, and died gradually away.

During the night repeated attacks, six in all, were made upon our men in the Quarries, who defended their new acquisition with the utmost courage and pertinacity, and at a great sacrifice of life, against superior numbers, continually replenished. The strength of the party told off for the attack was in all only 1,000, of whom 600 were in support. At the commencement 200 only went in, and another 200 followed. More than once there was a fierce hand-to-hand fight in the position itself, and our fellows had frequently to dash out in front and take their assailants in flank. The most murderous sortie of the enemy took place about three in the morning; then the whole ravine was lighted up with a blaze of fire, and a storm of shot was thrown in from the Strand Battery, and every other spot within range. With a larger body in reserve, it was not doubtful that our men could have been into the Redan. This was asserted freely both by officers and privates, and the latter expressed their opinion in no complimentary manner. They were near enough up to it to see that it was scarcely defended, and one officer lost his life almost within its limits. On our side 365 rank and file, and 35 officers, had been killed and wounded. Our loss in officers killed was great. The 88th were the severest sufferers, having three officers killed, one missing and conjectured to be killed, and four wounded—all indeed who were engaged. The four senior officers of the 62nd were put hors de combat. On the French side nearly double the number of officers, and a total of not less than 1,500 men, probably more. It was stated as high as 3,700. When morning dawned, with the wind blowing even stronger than the day before, the position held by both parties was one of expectation. The French were in great force within and on the outer slopes of the Mamelon, and also in possession of two out of the three offsets attached to the Mamelon on the Sapoune-hill. Their dead were seen lying mixed with Russians upon the broken ground outside the Malakoff Tower, and were being carried up to camp in no slack succession. In the rear of the Mamelon their efforts to intrench themselves were occasionally interrupted by shells from the ships in the harbour, and from a battery not previously known to exist further down the hill, while, on their left front, the Round Tower, showing still its formidable platforms of defence and its ragged embrasures above, fired upon their working parties, in the western face, and upon their reserves in the background.

The ammunition waggons, the ambulance carts, the French mules, with their panniers full freighted, thronged the ravine below our Light Division, which is the straight or rather the crooked road down to the attack on the right. Troops of wounded men came slowly up, some English, the greater portion French, begrimed with the soil of battle. On the left a party of Zouaves had stopped a while to rest their burden, it being the dead bodies of three of their officers. A little lower an English soldier was down on the grass exhausted and well nigh unconscious from some sudden seizure. A party of French were gathered round him, supporting him on the bank, and offering water from their canteens, which he wildly motioned aside. On the right, lining a deep bay in the gorge, was dotted over half a mile of ground a French reserve, with their muskets piled, attending the signal to move forward. They were partially within view of the Malakoff, and the round shot and shell came plumping down in the hollow, producing every minute or so little commotions of the sauve qui peut order, replaced the next moment by the accustomed nonchalance, and the crack of stale charges, fired off by way of precaution.

AN UNEXPECTED PETITION.

A lively and even pretty vivandière came striding up the ascent, without a symptom of acknowledgment to the racing masses of iron, and smiling as if the honour of her corps had been properly maintained. At ten o'clock the little incidents of the halting war perceptible through the telescope from the crown of the hill below the Picket-house were these:—At the head of the harbour the Russians were busily engaged burying their dead; outside the abattis of the Round Tower several corpses of Zouaves were to be distinguished; about the Mamelon the French troops were hard at work, some of them stripped for coolness to their drawers, and were seen creeping down the declivity on the side towards the Malakoff, and making themselves a deep shelter from its fire. Our people, meanwhile, on the right attack were calmly shelling the Malakoff in a cool matter-of-business sort of way, but the eternal gun on its right, which has been endowed with nine months of strange vitality, launched an indirect response into the Mamelon. From and after eleven o'clock the Russians, as usual, slackened fire, nor was there any duel of artillery on a great scale until after dark.

On the 9th a white flag from the Round Tower and another on the left announced that the Russians had a petition to make. It was a grave one to make in the middle of a fierce bombardment with events hanging in the balance, and success, perhaps, depending upon the passing moments; but made it was, and granted. From one o'clock until six in the evening no shot was fired on either side, while the dead bodies which strewed the hill between the Mamelon and the Round Tower, or remained in front of the Quarries, were removed from the field. Both of the French and of the Russians large numbers were scattered over the ground of the chief conflict; among the former a large proportion were swarthy indigenes of Arab blood, or, as they were popularly termed by the French soldiers, Turcos, and to their contingent of the killed some were added from the very inside of the Malakoff, showing how near the impromptu attack was delivering the place into our hands. Of the Russians there lay still upon the spot some 200, a sufficient testimony to the severity of their losses in the struggle. The third battery on the Sapoune-hill was abandoned the night before, and its guns either withdrawn or tumbled down the hill.

In the early part of the day there had been a popular impulse to believe that an end of the affair would be made at night by a combined assault upon the Malakoff and the Redan. That both were within scope of capture was considered in camp as proved to demonstration. But the news of the suspension of arms dissipated the hope, and when the divisions got their orders for the night, it was no longer thought that aggression was likely, though defence might be. The enemy, with their wonted perseverance, had been making very comfortable use of their time, and when the firing recommenced, which it did instantly on the flags being lowered, a few minutes before six o'clock, it was plain that the Malakoff and Redan had both received a reinforcement of guns. Six and eleven were the numbers of remounted bouches de feu—exactness in such a calculation was not easy, for the Russians were laboriously artful in disguising the strength of their artillery, and frequently by moving guns from one embrasure to another make a single one play dummy for two or three. From six until nine o'clock the duel continued without special incidents; then there came a sudden splash of musketry, which lasted some few minutes and died away as unexpectedly. Another trifling musketry diversion took place about three in the morning, to relieve the monotony of the great artillery, which kept up its savagery throughout the night—ten guns for one of the enemy's—but slacked a little towards morning. We had a great number of casualties during the night in our new position on the left, into which the Russians kept firing grape and canister from the batteries which protect the rear of the Redan. They also occupied the dismantled houses above the ravine, and leisurely took shot at our people from the windows. Not unnaturally, it was a subject of the bitterest anger and complaint among the soldiers that they had to stand still and be riddled, losing day by day a number which was swollen in a week to the dimensions of a battle-roll of killed and wounded.

Through the occupation and arming of the White Batteries, situated on the edge of the ridge of Mount Sapoune, the head of the harbour was more or less in our power. The Russians themselves seemed to acknowledge this by taking outside the boom the vessels which had before been lying in that direction, and would have been commanded from the works which the French were then constructing on the site of the White Batteries of the Russians. But this was not all. These new works were to act against the two Strand batteries which the Russians had behind the Mamelon, and which, not being much commanded by any of our works, could do a good deal of harm without being exposed to much danger. The construction of French works on the Mamelon brought us to about 500 yards from the Malakoff works; it gave us a footing on the plateau on which these works lie; it furnished us with the means of approaching the rear of them, and at the same time of operating successfully on the annoying batteries in the rear of the Mamelon, which, taken thus in a cross fire, could not long resist. The Quarry was scarcely more than 200 yards from the Redan. The battery which it contained worked successfully on the six-gun battery in the rear between the Redan and the Malakoff Tower works; and from the advanced posts our riflemen were able to prevent a good number of the guns in the Redan from working.

But, for all this, the keeping of the Quarry was, especially in the beginning, not at all an easy thing; not so much, perhaps, from the attempts of the Russians to retake a point of such vital importance to them, but rather on account of the fire to which it was exposed from other Russian batteries besides the Redan. The Garden Battery on our flank, the six-gun battery in the rear, and the Malakoff works could touch it on nearly all sides. Moreover, the work, when it was taken being directed against us, offered very little protection against the riflemen of the Redan, until its face could be converted.

CHANGE OF PLAN OF OPERATIONS.