The British Expedition to the Crimea

by Sir William Howard Russell

The French outpost beyond the bridge consisted of a company of the 2nd regiment of Zouaves. The other avant postes, to the right of the Zouaves up to the Sardinian outposts, were furnished by the 20th léger and the 22nd of the line. The réveillée had not yet gone in camp, when the sentinels were alarmed by hearing the tramp of men, whose forms were yet invisible in the darkness. The posts had not time to stand to their arms ere they were driven across the river; but the desultory firing had given timely warning to the main guards and to the camps, and the men turned out just as a storm of round shot began to rush over the ground.

The Russian columns, protected by the fire of their artillery, moved in excellent order down to the river side, notwithstanding the heavy fire of artillery which greeted them in front from the French, and in flank from the Sardinians. At the river the first column detached itself from the rest, and dividing into two parts crossed the river, which is easily fordable in summer.

Before the troops were properly under arms the Russians were at the bridge and at the foot of the hillock. The 20th léger and the 2nd battalion of Zouaves had to stand the first shock, and they certainly stood it gallantly. The Russians, without losing time in firing, advanced with an élan scarcely ever seen in Russian troops. They were new troops, belonging, according to the prisoners and wounded, to the 5th division of the 2nd corps d'armée, lately arrived from Poland.

The aqueduct which ran close to the foot of the hillock, formed the chief defence of the French. About nine or ten feet wide and several feet deep, it skirts the steep hills so close, that it is nearly in all places supported by a high embankment, offering considerable difficulties for an advancing force, and exposing them as soon as they reach the top of the embankment, to commanding musketry fire. Notwithstanding this, the Russians crossed it on the right, and were beginning to scale the heights, when, taken in flank by the Sardinian batteries, which fired with admirable precision, they were swept down wholesale and rolled into the aqueduct.

ORDINARY SIGNAL OF RUSSIAN RETREAT.

This first rush did not last ten minutes. The Russians fell back. Scarcely had they gone a few hundred yards when they were met by a second column, which was advancing at the pas de charge, and both united and again rushed forward. This second attempt was more successful than the first. They forded the river on the right and left, at the bridge, and forced its defenders to fall back. The moment the bridge was free two guns of the 5th Light Brigade of Artillery crossed it and took position between two of the hillocks on the road which leads to the plain of Balaklava. A third gun crossed the river by a ford, and all three began to sweep the road and the heights. The infantry, without waiting for the portable bridges, the greater part of which had been thrown away during the advance, rushed breast-deep into the water, climbed up the embankment, and began to scale the heights. They succeeded in getting up more than one-half of the ascent, where the dead and wounded afterwards showed clearly the mark they reached; but by this time the French met them in the most gallant style. The Russians were by degrees forced back, and driven across the bridge, carrying away their guns.

While this conflict took place on the bridge, the other column attacked the French right in such a swarm that they could neither be kept back by the aqueduct, nor cowed by the Sardinian guns, which were ploughing long lanes through their ranks. On they came, as it seemed, irresistible, and rushed up the steep hill with such fury that the Zouaves, who lined the sides of it, were obliged to fall back. The officers might be seen leading the way and animating their soldiers. This furious rush brought the advancing column to the crest of the hillock, where it stopped to form. But the French had not been idle. Scarcely did the column of the enemy show its head, ere the guns opened upon it with grape, and a murderous fire was poured in by the French infantry. The column began to waver; but the impetus from those behind was so powerful that the head was pushed forward a few yards more, when the French, giving one mighty cheer, rushed upon the enemy, who, shaken already, immediately turned round and ran. But the mass was so great that all the hurry could not save them, and more than 200 prisoners were taken, the banks of the aqueduct, the aqueduct itself, and the river side were covered and filled with the dead and the wounded. The Sardinian and French artillery poured a murderous cross-fire into the scattered remains of the column. It was a complete rout. The French drove them far across the plain. This defeat completely depressed them; nothing more was attempted against this side.

Not so on the bridge. Notwithstanding the heavy loss suffered in the second attack, the Russians collected the scattered remains of the column which had been routed on the right of the French, and brought up all their reserves. They crossed the river, and the aqueduct too, but the French were now thoroughly prepared, and the tenacity of the Russians only served to augment their losses. This last failure was decisive, and immediately the advance of the artillery—the usual Russian preparation for retreat—showed they were on the point of retiring. Three batteries, each of twelve guns, began to open fire, while the remains of the infantry rallied behind a rising ground leading up towards the plateau of Ayker, or Mackenzie's Height.

The Sardinians, who, with the exception of the little outpost fight on the opposite side of the Tchernaya, had only supported the French by their artillery, began to move across the aqueduct. The Russian riflemen, after the last defeat on the right, had retired behind the banks of the Tchernaya. A battalion of Piedmontese, preceded by a company of bersaglieri, advanced in beautiful order as if on parade, and soon drove these riflemen from their position. It even advanced some way, but it was not intended to force the heights. The French brought up a new division (Dulac's). The English and French cavalry were in readiness on the ground of the Light Cavalry charge, to receive the enemy if they should debouch on the plain. But General Morris would not risk the cavalry on the plain, intersected as it was by the branches of the river, and defended, as it was still, by the Russian guns on the height; so only two squadrons of Chasseurs d'Afrique followed the retreating enemy.

The guns which the Russians had brought up to cover their retreat suffered so much by the fire, which from our side was increased by Captain Mowbray's battery from the open ground between the Sardinian and the French positions, that they made off. As the guns retired, a brilliant line of cavalry appeared from behind the rising ground. I could distinguish five regiments—three in line and two other regiments in second line. They advanced at a gallop, and wheeling round, allowed twelve guns to pass, which again opened fire, but at half-past nine or ten o'clock black lines moving off, through clouds of the dust on the Mackenzie Road, were the only traces which remained of the so long threatened attack of the Russians.