The men taken in affairs of outposts by the Sardinians were in the same state, and it was evident that the Russians were rapidly declining in condition. They got 3lb. of bread or 1½lb. of biscuit a day, and a little barley, which they boiled into a kind of soup; this constituted their rations. They were kept alive by assurances that the Allies must soon go, and then they would have the spoils of the English camp, which was rich in everything but food. Most of these men were exceedingly tractable, and were excellent servants so long as they were not allowed rum. One of them, a Polish non-commissioned officer, was of great use, but he was seized with an unconquerable desire to join the Polish Legion at Varna, and got as far as Odessa, when he was recognized and shot as a deserter.
For some time the actual work of the army consisted in preparations for the winter on the plateau, dismantling the houses of the city for wood, and destroying the trenches for the sake of the gabions, which burned well and saved fuel. Sebastopol gradually came up piecemeal to the camp. Doors, windows, locks, hinges, fireplaces, stoves, pictures, chairs, tables, beams of wood, roofing, ceiling, flooring, sheet-lead, rolled copper, cut stone, crockery, and innumerable articles of every description, were brought up by carts, horses, ponies, and by men, every day in great quantities, and were found most useful in the construction and ornamentation of our huts. There were very few officers who had not got some trophies; arms of various descriptions, greatcoats, and helmets are the most common; but pictures of saints, often embellished by the finders with grotesque adornments of moustachios, short pipes, and eye-glasses, and portraits of the late Czar, which had not quite escaped the spirit of improvement manifested by our soldiery, were very common. Many articles of English workmanship abounded, and canary birds sang and flowers bloomed amid all the murky horrors of these blood-stained casements. All the shot and shell were collected, and the French gave their soldiers about 3½d. or 4d. for each 13-inch shell or large shot which they brought up to certain depôts indicated for the purpose.
The road made great progress. Upwards of 6,000 men were engaged upon it daily, and if Mr. Doyne could have procured more tools from the Quartermaster-General, the work would have gone on still faster; but he experienced considerable difficulty in getting the authorities to comply with his requisitions, although he handed over the matériel of the Corps to them when he arrived in the Crimea. Labour was ample, and was not denied; the tools were, however, worn out and worthless, and we were guilty of the very bad economy, in a country like the Crimea, where skilled labour cost so much, of repairing implements which had been damaged or used up, instead of issuing new ones. Many of these tools belonged to the Engineers' department, and were completely worked up by the Sappers and Miners during the siege. No, we were not perfect even yet. Though Sebastopol was ours, there were little blurs and blotches which might have been removed from our administrative escutcheon by very small labour. We borrowed flour from the French, and from the Sardinians, and, as we had been liberal lenders, they could not complain of our making small requisitions upon them now and then.
FLAGS OF TRUCE.
Although Forts Alexander and Nicholas were nearly intact, the Russians resolved not to spare them, and the effect of their practice upon them proved that the stone of which they were composed would not resist a lengthened and continuous fire at close quarters. When their shot hit the stones at the angle of the fort, they generally split and broke the outer masonry. The stones were of white freestone, cut in long parallelograms, and if a shot struck the middle of a block it generally split it right through, so that a few projectiles at any one point would speedily destroy all cohesion, and crumble the wall into a breach. Still, the forts were beautifully built, and were of very great strength, notwithstanding the inferior nature of the building material. They were all reared upon capacious vaults of solid masonry, and the casemates, curtains, and parapets were of prodigious thickness, and of very superior finish and workmanship. If a line-of-battle ship could have got alongside, she could soon have destroyed Fort Alexander, or any fort built of similar material. The enemy suspected that the French were making a battery behind Fort Alexander, and they shelled frequently in that direction; and, knowing the position of the mortar battery behind Fort Nicholas, they directed a pretty constant vertical fire on the guard behind that work.
A boat was sent round from Kamiesch to the harbour whenever a flag of truce appeared. Gortschakoff being pleased to consider that the south side of Sebastopol belonged to the Allies, suggested that it would save much time and inconvenience if a boat was kept in the Dockyard Harbour, near Fort Paul, so as to be ready to go out with or for communications in cases of armistice, several of which, relating to prisoners' property, exchange of letters, &c., had then recently taken place. The Russians always came across, in very well-appointed, handsome boats, manned with picked crews of well-dressed, clean-looking sailors, and the officers sent on the duty were generally very accomplished linguists and agreeable men. They were, however, very strict and very sharp in their practice as regards flags of truce, being extremely jealous of the smallest informality, and quick in firing the instant the flag of truce was hauled down. They insisted that the Malakoff had been taken by a surprise, and that all the garrison, except those who could get into the casemates, had gone off to enjoy their siesta when the French rushed in; but they admitted that the town was getting too hot to hold them, and that our fire was too heavy to be much longer withstood. Had they possessed mortars with which to reply to our vertical fire, they say they would have held out for another year at least, "but the army of defence, with a deep seaway in its rear, with one flank menaced by a fleet, and the other by the works at Inkerman, so that in reality its centre was only effective, could not strategically resist an army of attack which had such advantages of position." Our Siege-Train and Artillery and Naval Brigade, according to the Russians, took the town, as by their fire they made its defence impossible. During the last two bombardments from French and English, the garrison "lived in holes like rats," and the telling-off of reliefs and moving of reserves were always attended with danger and certain loss.
Was it old Turenne who said, "More battles were won by the spade than by the musket?" We won all ours by the bayonet and musket alone, and we certainly suffered great loss and were exposed to much disadvantage from not being able to approach within 200 yards of the Redan, whereas the French got up to the abattis of the Malakoff, and within 25 mètres of the parapet. Our gallant Allies could, indeed, spare more men to work, and could afford to lose more in the approaches, than we could. That their labours were not light, or their casualties trifling, we may infer from the fact that they lost not less than 64 officers of Engineers in the siege, of whom 30 were killed. As labourers, our soldiers are not equal to the French, and are far inferior to the Russians. Our Engineers complained that the only regiments that worked well were the Guards and some of the Rifle Brigade, and that the Irish and Scotch regiments did not know how to handle the tools used in military works. In fact, only those soldiers who were originally agricultural labourers, and were therefore used to the spade and pick, can get through the labours usually required for the construction of approaches or defences. Herdsmen, gillies, sworddancers, huntsmen, deer-stalkers, mowers, hodmen, mechanics, and town labourers, however strong, active, and willing, and wherever they come from, cannot use the implements which are put into their hands by Sappers and Miners, and it would be exceedingly desirable to teach men who may be employed in such works how to work and what to do with the tools.
General Simpson's despatch respecting the operations on the 8th of September gave considerable satisfaction. It afforded evidence that the Commander-in-Chief could rise above the very dead level of the uninteresting General Orders which will make the records of this army intolerable to the patience and not easy to the digestion of the most resolute and hardy antiquarian in times to come. Who will venture to publish our despatches? And yet we had notable penmen at head-quarters, who were at their vocation night and day, and who injured their tempers and manners by incessant scrivenery, the results of which were buried in the pigeon-holes of Whitehall, never to be seen even in the lively pages of a blue-book. The French authorities entered less into detail and exhibited less penmanship. If an Englishman presented himself at the French head-quarters, or made any application in writing for passes to the trenches, or such slight facilities, he was presented with them at once, in a manner which enhanced the value of the obligation. If he wrote to the Adjutant-General of the English army, the chances were that he would never receive any answer to his letter, although his request were of the smallest kind, unless indeed he happened to belong to the dii minores, or possessed such recommendations as had full consideration in the eyes of that dignitary of the army.
And even now it is not too late to reproduce a despatch of a very different character from those we read of in the London Gazette or in General Orders. It was, indeed, no less applicable to our army than it was when it was written, and the truths it contained were as patent and as pregnant with value and interest as they had been nearly half a century ago. The writer says,—
"I have no hesitation in attributing these evils—of irregularities, of bad cooking, and of want of discipline—to the habitual inattention of the officers of regiments to their duty, as prescribed by the standing regulations of the service and by the orders of this army.