According to what I heard from people, I was honoured by a good deal of abuse for telling the truth. I really would have put on my Claude Lorraine glass, if I could. I would have clothed skeletons with flesh, breathed life into the occupants of the charnel-house, subverted the succession of the seasons, and restored the legions which had been lost; but I could not tell lies to "make things pleasant." Any statements I had made I have chapter, and book, and verse, and witness for. Many, very many, that I did not make I could prove to be true with equal ease, and could make public, if the public interest required it. The only thing the partisans of misrule could allege was, that I did not "make things pleasant" to the authorities, and that, amid the filth and starvation, and deadly stagnation of the camp, I did not go about "babbling of green fields," of present abundance, and of prospects of victory.
Suppose we come to "facts." Do people at home know how many bayonets the British army could muster? Do they believe we had 25,000, after all our reinforcements? They might have been told—nay, it might have been proved to them by figures at home—that the British army consisted of 55,000 men. From the 1st of December, 1854, to the 20th of January, 1855, 8,000 sick and wounded were sent down from camp to Balaklava, and thence on shipboard! Shall I state how many returned?
Yet people at home told us it was "croaking" to state the facts, or even to allude to them! The man who could have sat calmly down and written home that our troops were healthy, that there was only an average mortality, that every one was confident of success, that our works were advancing, that we were nearer to the capture of Sebastopol than we were on the 17th of October, that transport was abundant, and the labours of our army light, might be an agreeable correspondent, but assuredly he would not have enabled the public to form a very accurate opinion on the real state of affairs in the camp before Sebastopol. The wretched boys sent out to us were not even fit for powder. They died ere a shot was fired against them. Sometimes a good draught was received; but they could not endure long vigil and exposure in the trenches.
And now for another "fact." The battle of Inkerman was fought on the 5th of November, as the world will remember for ever. About 40 per cent. of the Brigade of Guards were killed or wounded on that occasion. They received reinforcements, and the brigade which mustered about 2,500 men when it left England had received some 1,500 men in various draughts up to the end of the year. What was the strength in the last week of January of the Brigade of Household troops—of that magnificent band who crowned the struggle of the Alma with victory, and beat back the Russian hordes at Inkerman? I think they could have mustered, including servants, about 950 men in the whole brigade. Here is another fact. Since the same battle of Inkerman, at least 1,000 men of the brigade had been "expended," absorbed, used up, and were no more seen. The official returns will show how many of that thousand were killed or wounded by the enemy. Another fact. There were two regiments so shattered and disorganised—so completely destroyed, to tell the truth, that they had to be sent away to be "re-formed." Now, mark, one of these regiments was neither at the Alma nor at Inkerman—the other was engaged in the latter battle only, and did not lose many men.
January 28 was celebrated by an extremely heavy fire between the Russians and the French. The volleys were as heavy as those at the Alma or Inkerman, and from the numbers of Russian infantry thrown into the works, it was evident the enemy intended to dispute the small space of ground between the last French trench and the broken outworks of their late batteries with the greatest vigour. Possibly, indeed, orders had been received to resist any nearer approaches of the French, who had burrowed up, zigzagged, paralleled, and parapetted the country from the Quarantine Fort to the Flagstaff Fort.
It was not to be expected that such an affair could take place without considerable loss on both sides. After daybreak the fire recommenced with great fury, and about eight o'clock a regular battle was raging in the trenches between the French and Russians. There could not have been less than 3,000 men on each side firing as hard as they could, and the lines were marked by thick curling banks of smoke. The fire slackened about nine o'clock.
By general orders dated 29th of January, Lord Raglan communicated that the Russian commanders had entered into an agreement to cease firing whenever a white flag was hoisted to indicate that a burying-party was engaged in front of the batteries. Admiral Boxer arrived to assume the command of the harbour of Balaklava, and by incessant exertions succeeded in carrying out many improvements, and in introducing some order in that focus of feebleness, confusion, and mismanagement.
INTERCHANGE OF CIVILITIES.
On the 31st, a spy walked through some of our trenches. He was closely shaven, wore a blue frock-coat buttoned up to the chin, and stopped for some time to look at Mr. Murdoch "bouching" the guns. Some said he was a Frenchman, others that he "looked like a doctor." No one suspected he was a Russian till he bolted towards the Russian pickets, under a sharp fire of musketry, through which he had the good luck to pass unscathed.
Orders were issued, in consequence, to admit no one into the trenches or works without a written permission, and all persons found loitering about the camp were arrested and sent to divisional head-quarters for examination. The French were in the habit of sending out working parties towards the valley of Baidar, to cut wood for gabions and fuel. They frequently came across the Cossack pickets, and as it was our interest not to provoke hostilities, a kind of good-fellowship sprang up between our allies and the outposts. One day the French came upon three cavalry horses tied up to a tree, and the officer in command ordered them not to be touched. On the same day a Chasseur left his belt and accoutrements in a ruined Cossack picket-house, and gave up hope of recovering them, but on his next visit he found them on the wall untouched. To requite this act, a soldier who had taken a Cossack's lance and pistol, which he found against a tree, was ordered to return them. The next time the French went out, one of the men left a biscuit in a cleft stick, beckoning to the Cossack to come and eat it. The following day they found a loaf of excellent bread stuck on a stick in the same place, with a note in Russian to the effect that the Russians had plenty of biscuits, and that, although greatly obliged for that which had been left, they really did not want it; but if the French had bread to spare like the sample left in return, it would be acceptable. One day a Russian called out, as the French were retiring, "Nous nous reverrons, mes amis—Français, Anglais, Russes, nous sommes tous amis." The cannonade before Sebastopol, the echoes of which reached the remote glades distinctly, must have furnished a strange commentary on the assurance.