The British Expedition to the Crimea

by Sir William Howard Russell

SUSPICIONS OF PORK IN DISGUISE.

On five of these tumular ridges overlooking the road to Balaklava, a party of 2000 Turks were busily engaged casting up earthworks for redoubts, under the direction of Captain Wagman, a Prussian engineer officer, who was under the orders of Sir John Burgoyne. In each of these forts were placed two heavy guns and 250 Turks. These poor fellows worked most willingly and indefatigably, though they had been exposed to the greatest privations. For some mysterious reason or other the Turkish government sent instead of the veterans who fought under Omar Pasha, a body of soldiers of only two years' service, the latest levies of the Porte, many belonging to the non-belligerent class of barbers, tailors, and small shopkeepers. Still they were patient, hardy, and strong—how patient I am ashamed to say. I was told, on the best authority, that these men were landed without the smallest care for their sustenance, except that some Marseilles biscuits were sent on shore for their use. These were soon exhausted—the men had nothing else. From the Alma up to the 10th of October, the whole force had only two biscuits each! The rest of their food they had to get by the roadside as best they might, and in an inhospitable and desolated country they could not get their only solace, tobacco; still they marched and worked day after day, picking up their subsistence by the way as best they might, and these proud Osmanli were actually seen walking about our camps, looking for fragments of rejected biscuit. But their sorrows were turned to joy, for the British people fed them, and such diet they never had before since Mahomet enrolled his first army of the faithful. They delighted in their coffee, sugar, rice, and biscuits, but many of the True Believers were much perturbed in spirit by the aspect of our salt beef, which they believed might be pork in disguise, and they subjected it to strange tests ere it was incorporated with Ottoman flesh and blood.

Eighteen days had elapsed since our army, by a brilliant and daring forced march on Balaklava, obtained its magnificent position on the heights which envelope Sebastopol on the south side from the sea to the Tchernaya; the delay was probably unavoidable. Any officer who has been present at great operations of this nature will understand what it is for an army to land in narrow and widely separated creeks all its munitions of war—its shells, its cannon-shot, its heavy guns, mortars, its powder, its gun-carriages, its platforms, its fascines, gabions, sandbags, its trenching tools, and all the various matériel requisite for the siege of extensive and formidable lines of fortifications and batteries. But few ships could come in at a time to Balaklava or Kamiesch; in the former there was only one small ordnance wharf, and yet it was there that every British cannon had to be landed. The nature of our descent on the Crimea rendered it quite impossible for us to carry our siege train along with us, as is the wont of armies invading a neighbouring country only separated from their own by some imaginary line. We had to send all our matériel round by sea, and then land it as best we could. But when once it was landed the difficulties of getting it up to places where it was required seemed really to commence. All these enormous masses of metal had to be dragged by men, aided by such inadequate horse-power as was at our disposal, over a steep and hilly country, on wretched broken roads, to a distance of eight miles, and one must have witnessed the toil and labour of hauling up a Lancaster or ten-inch gun under such circumstances to form a notion of the length of time requisite to bring it to its station. It will, however, serve to give some idea of the severity of this work to state one fact—that on the 10th no less than thirty-three ammunition horses were found dead, or in such a condition as to render it necessary to kill them, after the duty of the day before. It follows from all these considerations that a great siege operation cannot be commenced in a few days when an army is compelled to bring up its guns.

Again, the nature of the ground around Sebastopol offered great impediments to the performance of the necessary work of trenching, throwing up parapets, and forming earthworks. The surface of the soil was stony and hard, and after it had been removed the labourer came to strata of rock and petrous masses of volcanic formation, which defied the best tools to make any impression on them, and our tools were far from being the best. The result was that the earth for gabions and for sand-bags had to be carried from a distance in baskets, and in some instances enough of it could not be scraped together for the most trifling parapets. This impediment was experienced to a greater extent by the British than by the French. The latter had better ground to work upon, and they found fine beds of clay beneath the first coating of stones and earth, which were of essential service to them in forming their works.

The officers commanding the batteries on the right attack were Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson, Captain D'Aguilar, and Captain Strange. The officers commanding the batteries of the left attack were Major Young, Major Freese, and Major Irving. The whole of the siege-train was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Gambier.

Our left attack consisted of four batteries and 36 guns; our right attack of 20 guns in battery. There were also two Lancaster batteries and a four-gun battery of 68-pounders on our right. The French had 46 guns. In all 117 guns to 130 guns of the Russians. The night was one of great anxiety, and early in the morning we all turned out to see the firing. On 17th October the bombardment began. It commenced by signal at 6.30 A.M.; for thirty minutes previous the Russians fired furiously on all the batteries. The cannonade on both sides was most violent for nearly two hours.

At eight o'clock it was apparent that the French batteries in their extreme right attack, overpowered by the fire and enfiladed by the guns of the Russians, were very much weakened; their fire slackened minute after minute.

At 8.30 the fire slackened on both sides for a few minutes; but recommenced with immense energy, the whole town and the line of works being enveloped in smoke.

TERRIFIC CANNONADES.

At 8.40 the French magazine in the extreme right battery of twelve guns blew up with a tremendous explosion, killing and wounding 100 men. The Russians cheered, fired with renewed vigour, and crushed the French fire completely, so that they were not able to fire more than a gun at intervals, and at ten o'clock they were nearly silenced on that side.