The British Expedition to the Crimea

by Sir William Howard Russell

Strange Inaction—What might have been done—The North Side—Its Fortifications—Sick Officers—French Reconnaissances towards Aitodor—An Ambuscade—The Mounted Staff Corps and the Ambulance Corps disbanded—Comforts for the Sick—Previous Mistakes—Disbandment of the Naval Brigade—Its Services—Rumours of Active Service—Road-making—The Russians Renew the Fire—A Serious Accident—The Sailors' Experiment—An Explosion.

THE contrast between the actual proceedings of the Allied armies and the fevered dreams in which the public at home, as represented by the press, soon after the capture of the south side, indulged, was as striking as it was painful. The Russians, so far from flying in discomfort over boundless wastes, calmly strengthened their position on the north side. The face of the country bristled with their cannon and their batteries. Day and night the roar of their guns sounded through our camp, and occasionally equalled the noise of the old cannonades, which we hoped had died into silence for ever. There was no sign of any intention on their part to abandon a position on which they had lavished so much care and labour. They retired from the south side when it became untenable; it had been shaken to pieces by a bombardment which it was impracticable for us to renew. In their new position, they had placed between themselves and us a deep arm of the sea, a river, and the sides of a plateau as steep as a wall. We permitted them to get off at their leisure, and looked on, much as we might have gazed on the mimic representation of such a scene at Astley's, while the Russian battalions filed over the narrow bridge, emerging in unbroken order out of that frightful sea of raging fire and smoke, which was tossed up into billows of flame by the frequent explosion of great fortresses and magazines.

THE ARMY HUTTED.

With the aid of a few men the army would have been ready to take the field and to carry provisions and ammunition for our available strength of bayonets detached on a short expedition. As to the French, they had certified their mobility by the rapid demonstration of four divisions on Baidar. Then, why did not the English move? Orders and counter-orders were sent day after day—requisitions on Captain This to know how many mules he had to carry ball cartridge, orders to Captain That to turn out his battery for the purpose of taking the field at daybreak next morning; counter-orders in the evening recountered and retracted at night, till it was hard to say what was to be done; and if the men who gave the commands were in half as confused a state of mind as those who received them, they were indeed in a pitiable plight. Cato with his Plato could not have been at all puzzled like unto them. It was quite evident that the expectations of the people at home were not gratified to the full extent, that we were not in undisputed possession of maritime Sebastopol, that the Russians were not utterly defeated, and that the campaign would have to be renewed the following year by doing what might have been done immediately after the fall of the place.

Large parties of our men went down every day to Sebastopol, and returned with timber, doors, window-frames, joists, slabs of marble and stonework, grates, glass, locks, iron, Stourbridge firebricks, of which a large quantity was found, and various other articles of common use in camp, and the huts which arose on every side were models of ingenuity in the adaptation of Russian property to British and French uses. However, the vast majority of the soldiers were under canvas, and were then likely to be so for a couple of months longer. The trenches—those monuments of patient suffering, of endurance, of courage—were fast disappearing. The guns were withdrawn. The gabions were going fast, for the men received permission to use them for fuel. It was melancholy, amid all these sounds of rejoicing and victory, to think that an army had been all but lost and swallowed up in these narrow dykes, and that it was "done by mistake." The firing into the town was occasionally very heavy, and was returned with spirit by the French mortars, and by a few guns in position.

The number of sick officers anxious to return home was not on the decrease. Many of those whose names appeared in general orders were, however, sufferers in the attack of the 8th of September. The proportion of men invalided on account of ill-health was about equal to the number of officers. Poor fellows! they, however, had no "private urgent affairs" to attend to, and that was the cause assigned for many "leaves of absence." It is curious and interesting to observe how rank and social position carry with them special cares of business and the labour of affairs from which the lowlier classes are exempted. Thus, the officers of the Guards seemed to be harassed to death by "urgent private affairs," which could no how be settled anywhere but in England, and which required their presence in that land of business from October till just the week after Christmas before there was the smallest chance of their satisfactory adjustment. How the gallant fellows could have managed to stay in the army and attend to their regimental duties with such delicate negotiations to conduct, such stupendous arithmetical investigations to make, such a coil of accounts to examine, such interviews to go through, such a constant pressure of affairs to sustain, is inconceivable! Sometimes no less than three of them succumbed on the same day, and appeared in orders as victims to these cruel urgencies. There were some people in camp who maintained that the killing of grouse, partridges, pheasants, and salmon, is a necessary condition of existence, and that when these were combined with the pleasures of society, with a light course of opera, and the claims of the family, they constituted an urgent private affair quite strong enough to draw any man from the Crimea. No one blamed these officers for feeling so strongly that they were citizens. We should all have liked to get home if it had been consistent with our duty, but some of our officers think they have nothing to do when once the fighting is over. After a time, our Allies began to feel their way towards the enemy's position on our rear and on the right.

The position of the armies, with the exception of the movement of the troops towards Baidar, remained unchanged in its larger features. Pelissier seemed inclined to rest upon his bâton for the time. His gaze was fixed, no doubt, upon the Mackenzie plateau, but his courage failed him; nor did he care to repeat his little proverb, which was in his mouth when slaughter and bloodshed were spoken of in his presence in reference to our grand assaults—"On ne peut pas faire des omelettes sans casser des œufs." The Marshal gave up the manufacture of omelettes: he had plenty of eggs if he had liked to break them.

PREPARATIONS FOR STAGNATION.

After the siege was over, the Mounted Staff Corps and the Ambulance Corps ceased to exist, and the Duke of Newcastle left the camp on a cruise to the coast of Circassia. Of course the Duke of Newcastle's presence had no more to do with the fate of these bodies than it had with the conduct and events of the war, but it was odd enough that the two, which were most lauded at the time of their creation, and at whose birth his Grace presided with parental solicitude, should have come to an end, within the space of a few months, under his very eyes. The service of the ambulance was performed by soldiers detached from the army for that purpose, and officers of the line were employed in command of them at a time when they could be very ill spared from their regiments. Charges of harshness were made by those sent in their charge to Scutari, &c., against some of the old ambulance men; they at all events served as a foil to the allegations that the men were as comfortable as they could be made on all occasions. The stream set the other way, and the authorities vied with one another in providing every accommodation, and even luxury, for the sick and wounded soldier. Dr. Hall at various periods received requisitions for such articles as "Rose water!" "Eau de Cologne!" "Champagne!" Different times these from what the army had the year before, when Sir George Brown, like some great bull of Basan, went bellowing over the camps of the affrighted Light Division, seeking for "medical comforts," that he might devour them in his wrath, and goring and butting Dr. Alexander and Dr. Tice because they would not reduce their store of medicines to that blessed old Peninsular allowance of which Sir George had only the dim recollections of a subaltern, although, with many strange oaths and ancient instances, he affirmed them to be the perfection of pharmaceutical wisdom. Perhaps the public, "the confounded public," as they were sometimes called by certain people, agreed with me in thinking that things might have been, mended when they learned that just two hours before the attack on the Redan the surgeon in the Quarries was "run out" of lint, plaster, and bandages, and could get no one to go up to his principal medical officer for them for a long time, although a great action with the enemy was then just impending, and the Quarries were the very place where a large number of casualties must have been expected. This statement I had on the word of a general officer, to whom the surgeon applied for assistance. Again, some regiments did not take down more litters than on ordinary occasions. This practice, however, would be approved by those who maintain, with considerable strength of argumentation, that no wounded officers or men should be taken off the field at all while an action was going on, inasmuch as every wounded man taken to the rear carries off six or eight combatants, who retire on the pretence of carrying or attending on him, thus affording opportunities for skulking and sneaking away to a few cowardly men who set a bad example to others.

The army was amused by rumours of active service, while in camp there were signs of hybernation. The work of the army was actually that of preparation, not for motion, but for stagnation. The men were engaged on great roads from the ports to the front, which will be permanent marks of the occupation of this portion of the Crimea by the Allied armies for centuries; in fact, with so much labour at their disposal, our authorities were determined, if possible, to atone for the apathy of the autumn before. The roads which we made were almost beyond the requirements of an army of temporary occupation. They were broad and well paved—in some places they had been tunnelled through the rock, which here and there could only be removed by heavy blasting charges. The railway assumed an appearance of great activity. Beside it wound the Central Road, and from the new central depôt, removed from the Col de Balaklava to an open space in the rear of the Second Division, and between the Guards' Brigade and the Fourth Division, there were divisional roads, which communicated with the divisional depôts. All these preparations were made to enable the army to exist comfortably in its winter cantonments, to bring up huts, food, clothing, and fuel, and to remove guns, mortars, &c., from the front. For these peaceful labours we were blessed by the most lovely weather. The days were warm, and the air was charmingly fresh and pure. The autumnal or second summer of the Crimea shone upon us with all the delightful influences of repose. The earth teemed again with herbs and flowers of autumn. Numerous bulbous plants sprung up over the steppes, among which the Colchicum Autumnale held a prominent place, and the hill-sides rung with the frequent volleys directed upon innumerable quail, against which our army waged fierce battle.