Chapter XXXVI: ‘the Soldiers’ Battle.’

The crashing volleys with which the picket Jack and Will had alarmed greeted the Russians were quickly echoed from right and left. The rattling of musketry was soon interrupted by the sharp, ringing report of field-guns, and along a great part of the British lines a heavy fire was opened.

The picket of the 41st were outnumbered a hundred to one; but they refused to give ground. For half-an-hour they maintained their position, and long before that time had elapsed both Jack and Will, possessing themselves of the rifles and cartridge-pouches of two men who had fallen, were bearing their part with their comrades of the line.

During the half-hour in which the picket stuck to their post, the Russians placed twenty-two heavy guns on the height known as Shell Hill, just in front of them. When these opened fire, and not till then, the gallant picket retired, not falling back, but moving away to their right.

A fierce struggle was then taking place between other Russian columns and a company of the 49th. Jack’s party joined these, and presently a British field-battery came groping its way through the mist in order to find a suitable place on which to unlimber and open fire. The ground was much encumbered with thick brushwood, and it was some time before they could unlimber. Even then they paused before opening fire, for the mist was so thick that they could not see whether Russians or English were before them.

Presently the 49th were assailed with so tremendous a fire that they fell back with loss, retiring to reform behind the guns. Before these latter could open fire, with yelps and shouts, dense masses of gray-coated, flat-capped Russians threw themselves upon the gunners, and a terrific hand-to-hand combat commenced. The men fired literally in each other’s faces; then muskets were clubbed, and a fierce mêlée ensued.

‘Fire a round of case,’ yelled the officer in command of the guns; but the enemy was in amongst the gunners.

A young lieutenant of artillery drew his sword, and crying to his men to do likewise and follow him, charged at the enemy. A shower of bullets greeted him and those who followed him, amongst whom were Jack and Will. Then the Russians, as though bewildered by the suddenness of this onslaught, halted, and in an instant men with swords, rammers, and sponge-staves were in amongst them, smiting them and hurling them back. One enormous gunner, having smashed a rammer on a particularly thick Russian skull, stood alone for some time, felling Russian after Russian with tremendous sledge-hammer blows of his fists. Then the Russians rallied, rolled on in irresistible numbers, drove back the defenders, and three of the guns were in the enemy’s hands.

The artillery lieutenant, borne back with the sullenly retreating infantry, loudly bewailed the loss of his beloved guns, and the men of the 41st and the 49th, reforming, poured such a galling fire upon the advancing Russians that they halted and wavered.

‘Men,’ cried the officer in command, ‘the enemy pauses; give them one more volley, then let them have the bayonet.’

The men answered with a wild cheer, and soon along the whole line a crashing volley rang out.

As was frequently the case during the day, the fog lifted for a few minutes and showed the little band of Englishmen that they were opposed to several whole battalions fully six thousand strong. They also saw that four slender companies of the 77th Regiment, barely two hundred and fifty strong, coming down the crest, had as it were come unexpectedly upon the huge horde of Russians. Not for one instant did they pause, however. They delivered a crashing volley; then, led by several mounted officers, with a soul-stirring cheer they charged with the bayonet. They dashed in amongst the dense masses of Russian infantry, literally rolling them up. The gray-coated battalions broke and wavered.

‘Now is our time, men,’ cried the officer in command of the mixed party with which were Jack and Will, and bringing their bayonets down to the charge they sprang forward to complete the work so gallantly begun by the 77th.

The Russians had faced half-about to meet the 77th, and Jack’s party took them in flank, bayoneting and driving them backward like sheep. The great battalions broke and fled for their lives, leaving hundreds of dead behind them. The captured guns, which had been left where they were, were retaken, and the artillerymen almost wept with joy to find their weapons had not been spiked.

The defeated battalions were pursued down to the very slopes of Shell Hill, and it was only when the Russian artillery posted on the crest began to hurl showers of shot and shell amongst the handful of British that the bugles sounded the rally, and the men retreated to the ground they had originally occupied. Then those two Russian battalions, the Catherinburg and Tomsk, retreated from the field and took no more part in that day’s fighting.

‘Cavalry work is brilliant,’ said Jack; ‘but after all it’s the infantry that do the real business. That charge was grand, Will.’

But the tremendous fire from the guns on Shell Hill was so rending and tearing them that this gallant band had to retire, and but few would have lived to tell the tale had it not been for the English artillery, which silenced some of the Russian guns.

The remainder of the 41st Regiment, under General Adams, advancing, Jack’s party formed in their rear and marched with them towards the spot known as the Fore Ridge, which was being assaulted by an overwhelming force of Russians. Marching along the ridge, the gallant seven hundred descended the slope, meeting on their way the pickets driven in from the front.

Then through the fog they saw looming enormous columns of Russians, thousands strong. The English fired a volley, and while they were reloading the Russian bugles began to sound and the men to face about and retreat.

The voice of the gallant Adams rang out, but only those near him could hear, ‘Another volley, lads; then charge!’

Those near him started; the others followed the example, and the line dashed downhill, crashing into the Russian column, which turned and fled. They were the Taroutine and Borodino regiments, the same that the British had taught such a terrible lesson to on the day of the Alma. Disheartened by their previous experience, their hearts failed them; leaving hundreds of dead and wounded behind them, they too fled, and were no more seen that day.

It was with difficulty that the pursuit by the victorious English could be stopped; but at last they were brought back and took up their position in what was known as the Sandbag Battery, which was simply a dismounted earthwork having a parapet about eight or nine feet high, but no _banquette_ on which the men defending it might stand to fire over the top. It had afforded a shelter from the wind to the pickets stationed there; but for defensive purposes it was useless. Yet it was for the possession of this useless work that the fiercest struggles of the day took place.

Hardly were the defeated battalions out of range than ten thousand fresh men, with ninety-seven more guns, came forward to the attack. So quickly did they appear through the fog, and so much were all the Russian soldiers alike, that the English thought it was the same force they had defeated returning to the attack.

These fresh troops, stern-looking, resolute men, came on with great determination, and soon a terrific combat began. The guns on the Home Ridge behind did good work by pouring in their fire on the Russians, the vivid, searing flashes showing up through the mist.

Often the opposing bodies met bayonet to bayonet; then the Russians would be hurled back and the English would coolly load and pour in a volley. Again the bayonet, a struggle, heaving first this way, then that; the repulse of the enemy, another volley, and another attack.

But the hundreds who were holding their ground against the thousands were feeling the stress. A seventh part of their number was down, and though they had done fourfold the damage they had suffered, yet as fast as they shot or bayoneted a foe, other two high-cheek-boned, pasty-faced soldiers seemed to take his place. Masses had also worked round on their right and left flanks and rear.

The position was desperate. All cohesion was lost; the men were acting together in tens and sixes, or even singly. Every man had set his teeth and determined to fall where he stood. The British had their backs to the wall; they knew that on them depended the fate of the army, of the whole expedition; defeat meant disaster, so they fought on till they died.

Jack and Will, with two privates and a sergeant, a man of great stature, fought in one group, and terrible were the combats they had.

Spite of all, the British had to give ground foot by foot; but they hung on with the bull-dog tenacity of their race. Twice they were driven from the Sandbag Battery, and twice did they retake it, only again to be driven out. Then four officers sprang forward, waving their swords.

‘Follow us, men!’ they cried.

They sprang in among the foe, and for a moment no one followed. Two were at once slain. Then Jack ran forward. ‘They will all be killed!’ he cried. ‘To the rescue!’

A rush followed, the Russians were driven back, the bayonets went to work till they dripped blood, and the battery was again in British hands, though at a terrible cost. But now the ammunition failed, and men cried out to General Adams to ask what they should do.

‘You have still your bayonets, boys,’ he replied; and with these they fought on. But numbers told; and, unsupported as they were, they had to fall back, carrying their wounded with them, for they had seen that day that the Russians brained or bayoneted every wounded man they saw.

While they were sullenly retreating, General Adams received a mortal wound, and a cry of sorrow went up from the men. Then suddenly, three field-guns behind them opened fire, and instantly the advance of the Russians was checked, the round-shot crashing through their ranks; but presently, being reinforced by yet another battalion, they again advanced, moving cautiously in skirmishing order through the brushwood. Then the guns opened with ‘case,’ and they retreated.

Soon, coming through the mist, tall black headdresses were seen, and a cheer went up from the sorely smitten 49th as they recognised the Guards. The Grenadiers were moving down grandly to the attack, and the remnants of the 49th and 41st, not waiting to replenish their ammunition, but depending alone upon their bayonets, formed up and advanced on the left of the Guards.

Upon coming up with the enemy, the Guards tried to open fire; but the chambers of their rifles were wet and the caps only snapped, failing to explode the cartridges.

Low, angry growls burst from the Guards till a cheery voice rang out, ‘Never mind, Grenadiers; the steel will do it.’

Then they brought their rifles down to the charge, and without any word of command dashed down upon the Russians, sweeping them from the battery and from the ground on its flanks. The Grenadiers used the few minutes’ respite they had won in drying their rifles by firing caps, and by then the Russians had returned to the attack.

The Guards soon found that the wall of the battery, having no _banquette_ on which the defenders might stand, though it might be a protection, yet hindered them from inflicting harm on the enemy, so they left it and engaged the Russians on the flank of it. Again and again did they charge the countless hordes, again and again did the Sandbag Battery change hands, till the slain around it lay in heaps. The Scots Fusiliers joined in the fight, and for two hours a struggle went on that is almost impossible to describe.

The English fought mostly in grim silence; but the Russians, roused to a wild, religious enthusiasm, and maddened by _vodka_, yelled and howled like demons.

At last the Russians brought up an overwhelming mass of artillery, which opened on the defenders and so played on the slopes behind them that it would have been impossible to bring up reinforcements, even were there any to bring; but all were engaged. Under cover of this fire, six thousand fresh troops were hurled against the remnants of the Guards, less than eight hundred strong at the beginning of the fight; and, the fog again lifting, the colonel of the Grenadiers saw the columns upon columns of flat-capped, white-faced soldiery, with their close-cropped bullet-heads, and their high cheek-bones, throwing up their right shoulders to outflank him. He knew the Sandbag Battery was useless to him, and he moved his men so as to form his line to meet the Russians.

Just then over the crest came a long line of bearskins. Jack saw them as quickly as any one.

‘Hallo, Will,’ he cried, ‘what troops are those?’

A sergeant of Grenadiers answered that question. ‘They’re the Coldstreams, sonny’ he said; ‘now we’ll show these long-gowned putty-faces’--alluding to the Russians’ greatcoats, which reached to their feet--‘what stuff the Guards are made of.’

The ‘long gowns,’ finding the Sandbag Battery deserted, had already rushed in with wild yells of delight. This sight made the Grenadiers chafe.

‘Boys,’ said the sergeant who had just spoken to Jack and Will, ‘are we going to let the Coldstreams get back the battery? Who’ll follow me? The Grenadiers have held it and they’ll keep it.’

With a wild cheer a hundred of them dashed down, bayoneting the Russians; and, before the Coldstreams came up, for the seventh time the Sandbag Battery was retaken. Neither Jack nor Will had followed the impetuous sergeant; but they took part in the forward movement which presently set the Okhotsk and Selinghinsk battalions reeling down the hill. And so the fight went on; but slowly the force of thousands against hundreds began to tell, and though every man in the British force was a hero, he could not maintain for ever a struggle against odds ten to one. Russians seemed to spring up on all sides; and, though the earth was cumbered with their dead and wounded, in countless hordes they still came on.

It presently became imperative that the Guards and the remnants of the 49th and 41st should receive reinforcements. The Duke of Cambridge himself had gone some time before to find men to come to the assistance of his beloved Guards; but not a man had arrived.

A desperate attack had just been beaten off, in which Will had received a blow on the head from the butt-end of a rifle which had laid him senseless for a few minutes.

Jack was kneeling beside his injured comrade when a mounted officer tapped his shoulder with his blood-stained sword.

‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘I’ve several times noticed you and your comrade to-day using a rifle and bayonet with the best of us, and you’ve done good service, though how on earth you got here I can’t tell.’

‘Accident brought us here, sir,’ replied Jack.

‘Well, it was a lucky chance, and you can render us further service if you will. You’re a cavalryman. Mount my horse, go back to the ridge, and find General Pennefather. Ask him to send us what men he can spare, we’re hard pushed.’

Jack looked at Will and then at the officer.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said the officer; ‘but you can get your comrade up before you on the mare. She’ll carry you both, and your chum will be better in the rear. I can’t go myself, because my place is here with my battalion. We shall have to fight for our very lives, and few if any of us will get out of this. When you find the General, impress upon him that we are almost out of cartridges.’

This amounted to an order, and so, reluctantly, Jack climbed into the saddle which the major vacated; and, two stalwart Guardsmen lifting up Will tenderly and seating him before Jack, he turned his horse’s head uphill. As he went along, bullets whizzed by his ears and several times round-shot ploughed up the ground round him; but he reached the crest, and having placed Will in safety, he had the good fortune to find General Pennefather and his staff. He delivered his message, and the genial Irishman, his face aglow with pleasure at the fight he was enabled to wage against tremendous odds, untrammelled by superiors, said, ‘And what the dickens are you doing here?’

Jack replied, and the General burst out laughing. ‘A lame excuse, youngster,’ he said; ‘but any excuse that takes a man into the fight will pass with me. Now we must see what men we can spare to help the Guards. Keep with me, Lancer, you may be useful, for many of my staff have been bowled over.’

Reinforcements in tens or twenties were found and formed up--men of the 20th, 21st, and 63rd Regiments who had wandered back for ammunition; men who had been in the fight and been driven back, losing their companies; men who were acting as camp-guard. These men, just driblets, fell in and marched to the assistance of those in the Sandbag Battery, who, from the occasional glimpses which could be caught of them, it was seen were waging a stubborn fight.

Then immense masses of the enemy emerging from the Quarry Ravine advanced against the right of the Home Ridge. Perceiving the movement, General Pennefather galloped off there, and Jack, still on the charger of the Guards’ officer, followed.

That part of the ridge was held by four hundred men only; but they were men of historic regiments, the 20th and the 57th. When the Russians came within striking distance the 20th delivered their fire; then, with the old Minden yell, a cry practised by that regiment alone, they swooped down on the Russians. The colonel of the 57th bade his men prepare.

‘A volley, then the bayonet,’ he said. ‘Remember Albuera, men, and die hard!’

That regiment, known since Albuera by the proud nickname of the ‘Die Hards,’ needed no second bidding. They sprang upon the flank of the Russians and rolled them up; but another battalion appearing, General Pennefather ordered both the 20th and the 57th to retire to the top of the ridge, where they lay down, and with concentrated fire held the enemy in check.

For three hours, then, the battle had waged, and everywhere, in spite of occasional advantages, the Russians had been defeated. A lull now ensued; the enemy were preparing for their great final effort.

The weather cleared a little, so that surrounding objects could be seen; and, riding behind heroic General Pennefather, Jack presently saw the Russians coming up the slope towards the Home Ridge in enormous columns. They covered the advance of their infantry with a raging artillery fire, and the ridge was swept from end to end.

Presently, just by Jack, the head of a Russian column gained the ridge. There were no English troops in sight; but a French regiment, the 7th of the line, was moving along the crest. It was smitten by the Russian artillery, it wavered and faltered. An English staff-officer rode up and harangued them in broken French. Jack, speaking the language fluently, also galloped up.

‘Comrades, brothers, stand firm!’ he cried; ‘prove that you are the sons of the heroes who under the great Napoleon conquered half Europe.’

The battalion advanced; but the Russians poured in a volley when they retreated down the hillside. The troops on the Home Ridge were in danger, the victorious Russians were advancing, when two hundred men of the 55th and 77th flew at the mass, charged it, tore through it from end to end; and the Russians, paralysed by the very audacity of the attack, retired down the hill. They were not defeated though; they rallied and returned to the attack.

The French 7th Regiment advanced; some English troops who had been driven back formed up beside them. The French deployed right in the face of the advancing Russians. They delivered a volley and were reloading when a panic seemed to seize them. They saw the Russians would be upon them before they had finished loading, and they had not that calm confidence in their prowess which enables the British to charge home with the bayonet. They began to fall back, when General Pennefather, in strong, vigorous language, bade them stand; many of his officers did likewise, and the English soldiers on their left shouted out encouragingly. The French soldiers listened; they took heart, but the Russians were then only a few paces from them.

Suddenly the enemy’s leading battalions halted, and began to gaze nervously over their shoulders. A tremendous tumult broke out behind them. They saw their supporting battalions reel and stagger, then weaken.

The English around their General, looking from the vantage of their seats on horseback, saw the gallant Daubeney with thirty men of the 55th dash at the flank of the whole Russian battalion, strike in, lose itself in the horde of Russians; then--by stabbing, kicking, punching, heaving--literally tear a way through from flank to flank, throwing them into fearful disorder. This disorder spread to the first battalion of Russians, who, thinking they were attacked by numbers, wavered.

General Pennefather gave a tremendous cheer, those with him took it up; the handful of English on the flank of the French sprang forward, and a fierce fight began. The French officers cried out, ‘Drummers to the front.’

In an instant they were beating a _pas de charge_; the French gave a cry, and with levelled bayonets dashed on the foe, who were driven down the hill with great slaughter.

The Russians this time, however, were in grave earnest. They rallied, and again attacked along the whole line with great vigour. But the British artillery had gained the ascendant, and was doing enormous damage with two eighteen-pounders which Lord Raglan had caused to be dragged up to the front.

The whole of the Russian battalions concentrated their fire on these guns; and although they struck down one-tenth of the men working them, so magnificently were they handled that they smashed up gun after gun of the Russians and effectually quieted their fire.

It was then that every available man was brought up to repel the final Russian attack. More French troops arrived, with them being a cavalry regiment, the 4th Chasseurs d’Afrique.

They passed close by Jack, and to his surprise he saw the remnants of the Light Brigade, the whole only two hundred strong, acting in support of the French cavalry.

Barrymore saw Jack, and immediately called him, and Jack took his place in the ranks. There was no time then for explanations, and he rode on with his regiment till they came under a tremendous artillery fire. A shell burst right in amongst them, and several men and horses fell.

‘Poor Harry Scarfe is down,’ cried Jack.

‘Ay,’ growled Barrymore, ‘and so is our cornet; that leaves us only two officers.’

Unfortunately both men were killed; and, several other casualties occurring, the cavalry was retired.

The French General decided to recall his troops, for they had all met with discomfiture. One regiment of Zouaves, however, remained, and with the remnant of our Guards they advanced towards the Sandbag Battery.

So fierce was the attack the thus allied brigade delivered that the Russians were hurled back against the wall. The only outlets were the two embrasures; and, encumbered by their long coats, the Russians tried in vain to force themselves through. They were caught in a trap and a terrible slaughter ensued, the pursuit following them right down to the Quarry Ravine.

Along the whole line the British were equally successful, the Russians were hurled back; and the eighteen-pounders continuing to do grand work, the Russian artillery fire was gradually overcome.

General Pennefather ordered a fresh advance of his handful of men, only a few hundreds being left of his three thousand six hundred of the morning.

‘Forward once more, boys,’ he said, ‘and we’ll lick ’em yet--lick ’em to the devil!’

Once more they advanced, once more crossed bayonets with the sulky foe, no longer yelling like demons, but now fighting with the stubbornness of despair. Gradually they drove them back, the Russians again giving vent to that wailing cry of despair that had been heard on the heights of the Alma.

About one o’clock a staff officer with Lord Raglan observed the Russians beginning to withdraw their artillery; then the news flew round that the enemy acknowledged his defeat, and at last the battle, the great ‘Soldiers’ Battle,’ was won.

A mass of two thousand men, all gathered closely together, formed to cover the retreat of the Russian artillery. The eighteen-pounders were turned upon them, and the balls tore through, carrying cruel destruction with them.

The moment had arrived for pursuit; but the fasting British were too exhausted to move, the French General refused to advance his troops unless the British supported him, and the Russians were allowed to fall sullenly back.

There was no semblance of riot or disorder. The defeated battalions, still in their thousands, retreated in good order.

By three o’clock Mount Inkermann was free of Russians, all but the ghastly thousands of dead and wounded.

The French artillery followed the foe and did them some damage; but the ships from the harbour opened on them, and they retreated.

Night settled down in mist and fog and gloom, hiding the horrors on those blood-stained slopes. By eight o’clock the last gun had passed back into the Russian lines of defence.

The great battle of Inkermann was lost--and won!