Chapter VIII

Departure of General della Marmora and the Sardinian Staff--General
After Order--Inspection of the Siege-Works, offensive and
defensive--Memorials to the Dead--Major Hammersley's
Tour--Information obtained--What might have been effected by an
Advance after the 8th of September--Aspect of the Country.

The departure of General della Marmora and the Sardinian Staff, which occurred on Monday, 19th May, was the signal for strong demonstrations of the regard and esteem in which they were held by our army. The ships in harbour hoisted the Sardinian flag, the _Leander_ manned yards, and the General set his foot on the deck of the vessel which was to bear him home amid enthusiastic cheers. The good feeling which existed between the Sardinians and the allies was never marred for one moment by untoward jealousies or rivalry; more especially were they ever on terms of friendship with the English, although their knowledge of French gave them greater facilities for communicating with our allies. The position at Fedukhine brought them into constant contact with French and Highland Brigades, and they left behind many kindly remembrances. In all my rambles I rarely, if ever, saw a drunken Sardinian; their behaviour in camp, in the canteens, at Kadikoi, and on the roads was exemplary.

The English Commander-in-Chief issued the following General After-Order:--

"HEAD-QUARTERS, SEBASTOPOL, _May 17th, 1856_.

"No. 1. The greater part of the Sardinian army has quitted the
Crimea, and General della Marmora himself will soon embark.

"A guard of honour, with artillery, will be held in readiness for
the departure of the Sardinian Commander-in-Chief.

"The Commander of the Forces trusts that General della Marmora will
himself receive, and convey to those whom he has commanded in the
Crimea, the good wishes of the English army for their future
prosperity.

[Sidenote: THE EVACUATION.]

"With steadiness, with discipline, with resource, the Sardinian
army has long maintained and efficiently guarded the advanced
position entrusted to it; and it bore its honourable share with the
troops of France in the battle of the Tchernaya.

"In our intercourse there has neither been difficulty nor
difference, and this good feeling between all the armies of the
Alliance has had a very important influence in determining the
peace of Europe.

"By order. C. A. WINDHAM, Chief of the Staff."

As we were about to part, our anxiety to learn more of our late foes increased. The Russians surveyed our camps, we visited their hospitals, studied their commissariat, inquired into their military system, and inspected their positions; our engineers minutely examined the works of our allies, with which they were necessarily but slightly acquainted during the progress of the attack.

The approaches to the place afforded no opportunity to our English engineers of developing the use of mines. We were never sufficiently near to the Redan, and our works were not assailable by the same agency for the same reason. The French system of mines in front of the Bastion du Mât presented a most astonishing display of labour and skill. To the Russians, however, belonged the credit of performing the most extensive operations. The enemy's mines consisted of two series of galleries and magazines, the first being twenty-seven feet below the surface, the second being forty feet below the first. The workmen were supplied with air by means of force-pumps. In one magazine at the end of one of the galleries there was found 8,500 lbs. of powder, all tamped in and ready for firing by electric wires. This magazine would have formed an _étonnoir_ far in the rear of the French advance; and the explosion was intended to destroy not only the French parallels, but the works of the Bastion du Mât itself, so as to prevent the French turning the guns. The destruction of the docks was effected by a smaller quantity of gunpowder. The Russians intended to fire some of these mines in case of an assault on the Bastion being repulsed under circumstances which gave them a chance of occupying the enemy's advanced saps; others would only have been fired in case of a retreat from the city, in order to destroy as many of the enemy as possible and to check pursuit. There were two or three mines inside the Redan, and there were some extensive galleries and mines in front of the Malakoff, but it was at the Bastion du Mât, or Flagstaff Battery, that the French and Russians put forth their strength in mine and countermine. The galleries were pushed for fifty yards oftentimes through the solid rock. These labours were of the most stupendous character, and must have proved very exhausting to the garrison. Many of the shafts sprang out of the counterscarp, there were numerous chambers cut into the ditch of the bastion, which were used as bombproofs. It was also discovered that the Russians had cut a subterranean gallery from inside the parapet, under the ditch, to an advanced work which they used as a _place d'armes_ in making sorties, and the French, who had been puzzled to understand how the men used to collect in this work without being seen, now perceived the _modus operandi_.

The effect produced by the French mines could only be conceived by those who looked down the yawning craters of the _étonnoirs_, the wild chaos of rocks cast up all around by the explosion, as though Titans and Gods had met there in deadly combat. Some of these gulfs resembled the pits of volcanoes.

The British army, relieved from the pressure of military duties, and warned of their approaching departure, laboured, regiment by regiment, for many long weeks, to erect memorials to the comrades whose remains would be left behind. The works of this nature, which the hasty embarkation did not permit the army to complete, were undertaken by the few skilled soldier-labourers belonging to us. The Chersonese from Balaklava to the verge of the roadstead of Sebastopol was covered with isolated graves, with large burial-grounds, and detached cemeteries. Ravine and plain--hill and hollow--the roadside and secluded valley--for miles around, from the sea to the Tchernaya, presented those stark-white stones, singly or in groups, stuck upright in the arid soil, or just peering over the rank vegetation which sprang beneath.[36]

The French formed one large cemetery. The Sardinians erected a pedestal and obelisk of stone on the heights of Balaklava, close to their hospital, to the memory of General della Marmora and of their departed comrades; we erected similar monuments on the heights of Inkerman and on the plain of Balaklava to commemorate the 5th of November and the 25th of October.

A tour made by Major Hammersley, Captain Brooke, and Mr. St. Clair in the north of the Crimea demonstrated the enormous difficulties experienced by the Russians in maintaining their position. It satisfied every one, that if the Allies had advanced after the 8th of September, and followed the enemy, the Russian army of the South must have surrendered, and Cherson, Berislaff, Nicholaieff, and Odessa would have been seriously menaced. All the north side, its guns, its garrison, all the _matériel_, all the provisions and magazines of Bakshiserai and Simpheropol, must have fallen into our hands, and about 60,000 or 70,000 men. "But why so?" some one will ask. "Could they not have got away?" Most certainly not. There are but two outlets from the Crimea; the first is by the isthmus at Perekop, the second is by the bridge over the Putrid Sea at Tchongar. The approaches to these outlets lie over waterless, foodless plateaux, broken up by deep salt lakes. The wells, which yield a scanty supply of disagreeable water, are profound pits, of which the shallowest is 100 feet, and many are as deep as 150 to 250 feet. They are scattered over the country very sparsely, and they contain but little water. Under such circumstances, the Russians were obliged to send in their reinforcements by driblets, to carry water whenever they wanted to push on a single regiment. It would have been impossible for them to have marched a body of 5,000 or 6,000 men by either of those routes in dry weather. Imagine how helpless would have been the position of an army of 70,000 or 80,000 men of all arms, hemmed in by this salt prairie, and by the waters of the Sivash, under a burning sun, and pressed by a victorious enemy. They could not have marched, nor, if they had once got away, could we have pursued; but no General in his senses would have risked the entire destruction of his army by retreating under circumstances like those from the south of the Crimea; and the Russians confessed their position was hopeless had they been attacked and beaten at any point along the line.

[Sidenote: DEFENCES OF PEREKOP.]

When our travellers arrived at Perekop, they observed that the defences consisted of redoubts directed against an advance from Russia Proper, and not from the south of the Crimea; they made a similar discovery at Tchongar, where the _tête-de-pont_ was strongly fortified towards the north, and was open towards the south. These works were mostly thrown up at the time of the Kinburn expedition, which the Russians very naturally believed to be the precursor of an immediate operation against the Crimea, to which they looked with very great apprehension.

General Von Wrangel received them with much hospitality and kindness at Perekop. The old Tartar citadel and the remains of a wall and parapet were visible; but the defences of the place were very weak; water was very scarce, and very bad; but the climate is healthy, except when the wind blows across the Sivash. No less than 25,000 men died of sickness at and near Perekop. There were large hospitals and ambulances, but they were far too small for the demands upon them, and many convoys had to be sent on to Cherson, Berislaff and Nicholaieff. At Tchongar the tourists were refused permission to pass the bridge, and that refusal was confirmed by the General commanding at Genitchi, to whom they applied to rescind the decision of his subordinate. They examined the bridge, however, and found it was well and substantially built of wood. The waters of the Sivash are as clear as crystal, and are so intensely bitter that no fish frequent them except small flounders. The bottom consists of a stratum of fine shells, of two or three inches in thickness, just sufficient to bear a man treading lightly upon it, but if one presses with all his weight this crust breaks, and up rushes black mud and stinking gas, probably sulphuretted hydrogen.

The banks are high and steep, and all the way from Genitchi to the bridge of Tchongar, in the centre of the stream, there is a channel, about nine feet deep. This sea presents the curious phenomenon of a steady current running from Genitchi west to Perekop, where there is no outlet whatever, so that there must be an under current out again, or, as the natives believe, a prodigious evaporation on the shoals at the extremity of the sea. The salt lakes are very conspicuous features in the desolate scenery of Northern Crimea. They are surrounded by very high precipitous banks; and the waters seem black from their great depth. One of these, Lake Veliki, is connected with Perekop by the line of redoubts, seven in number, recently constructed. Wherever these abound, fresh water is rare, and the wells are deep. Each village has about two wells, and the supply is so small that it would take a day at any one station to water a regiment of cavalry. In the south there is abundance of fresh water, of blooming valleys, of fruit, corn, vines, and forest trees; but for the cultivation and growth of these Russia is mainly indebted to the industrious German colonists. Kronthal, Neusatz, Friedenthal, Rosenthal, Zurichthal, Heilbronn, and other villages founded by these industrious people, are patterns of neatness and frugal comfort. Most of the emigrants came from Wurtemburg, and they spoke fondly of "fatherland." The Russians gave them small ground for complaint. They are exempt from all military service for 100 years, and their only tribute to the State is a capitation-tax of twenty silver roubles, which they are in general well able to pay. Another interesting point visited was the Fortress of Arabat, which was bombarded for several hours by the Allied squadron. The fact is, however, that not only was little or no harm done to the fortress, but that the Russians claim it as a victory, and have promoted the officer who commanded for "beating off the Allied fleet." Such will always be the result of an attack by sea on any land-defences so long as the enemy retain one gun to fire when the attack has ceased.

The Spit of Arabat was very little used at any time, and a curious instance of the ignorance of chart-makers was discovered on referring to the sites of wells marked on the maps. There were no wells, for the simple reason that they were not required. The water of the Sea of Azoff close to the Spit is quite fresh, and can be drunk with safety by man or beast.

Vast as the population of Russia is in the aggregate, the extent of her territory is such that, in the state of her internal communication, it was difficult for her to concentrate troops, notwithstanding the conscription and compulsory levies. Towards the end of the war, Sebastopol swallowed up her armies by whole divisions, a battalion a day was engulfed in the yawning craters of our shells. The march of a regiment through a country such as has been described was as fatal as a battle, and it was customary to estimate the reduction in strength caused by moving from Odessa to Sebastopol at 35 per cent. During the worst days of its trials the Russian army in the Crimea lost 500 men a day! This did not include casualties caused in the siege. The attention of their medical men was directed to the enormous losses of their army, and to its extreme unhealthiness in campaigns; and a Board, consisting of a few of their most eminent men, made minute inquiries into the medical administration of the Allied armies. They were greatly impressed with what they saw at Balaklava, and one of them exclaimed, "We heard you were prepared for a three years' war; we find you are ready for twenty."

[Sidenote: THE EVACUATION.]

The uttermost efforts were made by the Allies to remove the stores and _matériel_ accumulated on the plateau, and to embark the troops for their different destinations, but so vast was the mass of warlike necessaries, and so large the force congregated in the Crimea, that it was not till July they had so far succeeded as to be able to name a day for the formal cession of the last position held by them on Russian soil. On the 12th of July the 50th Regiment furnished a rear-guard which was posted outside Balaklava to await the Russian officer who was to take over charge of the town. He came across the plain with 50 Cossacks, and the two parties saluted and then returned to the town, where the Russians posted their sentries, and the English troops embarked on board H.M.S. _Algiers_. The General in command of the British forces, Sir W. Codrington, and his staff left the Crimea at the same time.

During the expedition the English lost--killed in action and died of wounds, 3,500; died of cholera, 4,244; of other diseases nearly 16,000;--total (including 270 officers), 24,000; 2,873 officers and men were disabled. The French loss was estimated at 63,500 men, killed in action or died in camps. The loss of the Russians was estimated as high as 500,000. The war added to the National Debt £41,041,000.

FINIS.

CATHCART'S HILL

(1856.)

In times to come this Cathcart's Hill will be a chosen terminus of Saxon pilgrimage. Whether the traveller beholds from its humble parapet the fair aspect of the Imperial city, guarded by threefold mightier batteries than before, or sits upon the Cemetery wall to gaze upon the ruins of Sebastopol, he must, if he has any British blood in his veins, regard with emotion that little spot which encloses all that was mortal of some of the noblest soldiers that ever sprang from our warrior race. He will see the site of those tedious trenches where the strong man waxed weak day after day, and the sanguine became hopeless, and where the British soldier fought through a terrible winter with privation, cold, frost, snow, and rain, more terrible and deadly than the fire of the enemy. With the Redan, the Malakoff, the Quarries, the Mamelon, Gordon's Attack, Chapman's Attack, under his eyes, he will revive with the aspect of the places where they stood the memories of this great struggle, and in his mind the incidents of its history will be renewed.

[Sidenote: CATHCART'S HILL.]

The Cemetery is a parallelogram of about forty yards long by thirty broad, formed by the base of a ruined wall, which might in former days have marked the lines of a Tartar fort, or have been the first Russian redoubt to watch over the infancy of Sebastopol. Although many a humble tumulus indicated to the eye of affection the place where some beloved comrade rests till the last _reveillée_, the care and love of friends had left memorials in solid stone of most of those whose remains were buried in this spot. The first grave towards the front and west of the Cemetery consisted of a simple mound of earth. I know not whose remains lie below. The second was marked by a simple slab, with the following inscription:--"Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant H. Tryon, Rifle Brigade, killed in action on the 20th of November, 1854." He was a thorough soldier, brave, cool, and resolute, and in the terrible crisis of Inkerman he used a rifle with more deadly certainty and success than any of his men. In the struggle for the "Ovens" on the 20th of November, in which a small body of the Rifle Brigade dislodged a force of the enemy much greater than their own, he displayed such gallantry that General Canrobert paid him the rare honour of a special mention in the next "General Order of the Day" for the French army. Next to his reposed the remains of a lamented officer. The stone recorded his name, "Sacred to the memory of Brigadier-General Thomas Leigh Goldie, commanding the first Brigade of the 4th Division of the British army, Lieutenant-Colonel of the 57th Regiment, who fell at Inkerman, November 5, 1854." No. 4 was a rude cross of stone, without mark or name. The fifth grave was distinguished by a stone cross at the feet, and at the head was a slab with an ornamental top, beneath which was written, "Sacred to the memory of Brigadier-General Fox Strangways, killed in action November 5, 1854." A few lines in Russian asked the Christian forbearance of our enemies upon our departure for the bones of one whom they would have admired and loved had they known him. No. 6 was conspicuous by a large tombstone, with an ornamental cross at the top, and some simple efforts at the chisel at the sides and base. Come and read! "Here lieth the mortal remains of Captain Edward Stanley, 57th Regiment, killed at the battle of Inkerman, November 5, 1854, to whose memory this stone is erected by the men of his company--'Cast down but not destroyed,' 2 Corinthians, iv. 9." Who will not look with respect on the tombs of these poor soldiers, and who does not feel envy for the lot of men so honoured? There were fourteen other graves in the same row, of which only one could be identified.

Sir George Cathcart's resting-place was marked by a very fine monument, for which his widow expressed her thanks to those who raised it to the memory of their beloved commander. There was an inscription upon it commemorating the General's services, and the fact that he served with the Russian armies in one of their most memorable campaigns--the date of his untimely and glorious death, and an inscription in the Russian language stating who and what he was who reposed beneath. In the second row to the east there were two graves, without any inscription on the stones; the third was marked by a very handsome circular pillar of hewn stone, surmounted by a cross, and placed upon two horizontal slabs. On the pillar below the cross in front was this inscription: "To Lieutenant-Colonel C. F. Seymour, Scots Fusileer Guards, killed in action, November 5, 1854." Beneath these words were a cross sculptured in the stone, and the letters "I.H.S.;" and a Russian inscription on the back, requesting that the tomb might be saved from desecration. At the foot of the tomb there was an elaborately carved stone lozenge surmounting a slab, and on the lozenge was engraved the crest of the deceased, with some heraldic bird springing from the base of a coronet, with the legend "Foy pour devoir, C.F.S. Æt. 36." How many an absent friend would have mourned around this tomb! Close at hand was a handsome monument to Sir John Campbell, than whom no soldier was ever more regretted or more beloved by those serving under him; and not far apart in another row was a magnificent sarcophagus in black Devonshire marble, to the memory of Sir R. Newman, of the Grenadier Guards, who also fell at Inkerman. With all these memorials of death behind us, the front wall at Cathcart's Hill was ever a favourite spot for gossips and spectators, and sayers of jokes, and _raconteurs_ of _bons mots_ or such _jeux d'esprit_ as find favour in military circles.