Chapter VII (1)

1854-1856.

THE WAR IN THE CRIMEA.

When the Royal Irish reached England in June, 1854, after a six months’ voyage from Calcutta, they were greeted by the news that for the first time since Waterloo Britain had become embroiled in a European war, and in alliance with France had sent troops to protect Turkey against the Russians, who had invaded the part of the Sultan’s dominions then known as the Danubian principalities. The Czar had long cast covetous eyes on Turkey, whose European provinces on the Ægean and the Sea of Marmora prevented the expansion of Russia towards the Mediterranean, and thus limited her seaboard to the Baltic and the Black Sea. In the middle of the nineteenth century Turkey appeared to be so decadent a country that its ruler was commonly described as “the sick man”; the Czar actually threw out suggestions to England that she should divide with him “the sick man’s heritage,” and on her indignant refusal he determined to bide his time and pick a quarrel with the Sultan on the first opportunity. A pretext soon presented itself in a dispute between the Greek and Latin branches of the Christian faith concerning their respective rights in the Holy Places of Jerusalem: the Czar hotly espoused the cause of the Greek Church, while the Emperor Napoleon III., reviving the historic claim of France to represent the Latin Church in Palestine, vigorously supported the views of the Roman Catholics. The Sultan, profoundly indifferent to the rivalries of those whom his religion taught him to regard as infidel dogs, attempted to propitiate both sides, but with such conspicuous ill-success that the Czar declared war against him in October, 1853, and invaded the Turkish provinces on the Danube. To defend Turkey against this wanton and unprovoked attack, England and France in the spring of 1854 landed a considerable number of troops at Varna, a Bulgarian port on the Black Sea. It was from no love of the Turks that England thus plunged into war with Russia: she took up arms in pursuance of the foreign policy which for centuries she has followed on the Continent, and sided with the weaker state--not on altruistic grounds but solely to preserve the balance of power in Europe, and to prevent the Czar from possessing himself of Constantinople, and thus obtaining direct access to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Anglo-French troops were still at Varna when, in the interests of peace, Austria brought such pressure upon the Czar that he recalled his armies from Turkish soil. But though the immediate danger to Constantinople was averted by this intervention, the governments of England and France agreed that there would be no safety for Turkey, and therefore no tranquillity in European politics, until the Russian fleet in the Black Sea had been captured or destroyed, and its base at Sebastopol levelled to the ground. When the demolition of this great naval station was thus determined on, the allies knew little of Sebastopol,[159] except that it was a fortress in the south of the Crimea, a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea from the mainland of Russia: and no soldier in western Europe had any conception of the difficulties awaiting the Anglo-French Expedition when it put to sea from Varna on September 7, 1854. Exclusive of the crews of the great fleet of warships by which the transports were escorted, the fighting men numbered about 63,000, of whom 28,000 were French, 7000 Turks, and 28,000 British. The French were under Marshal St Arnaud; Lord Raglan, who had served on Wellington’s staff in the Peninsular war, commanded the British troops. Neither of these officers lived to see the end of the campaign: St Arnaud died in September, 1854, and was succeeded by General Canrobert who, after a few months, resigned his post to General Pélissier: Lord Raglan fell a victim to cholera at the end of June, 1855, and was replaced by General Simpson. The Turks were commanded by Omar Pasha.

The effort to collect and equip for war the comparatively small body of men forming the British quota of the combined forces had greatly taxed the military resources of England. After the fall of the great Napoleon had restored peace to Europe, enormous reductions had been made in our military expenditure;[160] not only was the _personnel_ of the army cut down, but the _matériel_ was allowed to fall into decay. For more than thirty years every arm and every department of the service was systematically starved, with results well summed up by Lord Palmerston, who in 1846 bluntly informed his colleagues in the Cabinet that our military weakness was such that England existed “only by sufferance and by the forbearance of other Powers.” This opinion was endorsed by the highest authority in the British army, for Wellington himself acknowledged that our supply of guns, arms, ammunition, and all kinds of stores was inadequate. Nor were these grievous shortcomings atoned for by any high standard of efficiency amongst the troops, for though the drill and discipline of the army were alike excellent, neither the soldiers nor the departments vital to their existence in the field were trained in the slightest degree for active service; indeed, until 1853, when a few thousand men spent some weeks under canvas, no camp of exercise had been formed in England since the end of the Great War with France. Marksmanship was almost a lost art; and although the deadly volleys of the British infantry in the Peninsula had won for our troops the reputation of the best shots in Europe, musketry was so entirely neglected during the dead period after Waterloo, that the injunction “Fire low, and hit ’em in the legs, boys,” was the only instruction given to recruits. Even in the Foot Guards the men were considered to be masters of their weapon if, once in every three years, they fired thirty rounds of ball cartridge. The military education of the officers was no better than that of the rank and file; there was no attempt to teach them anything beyond barrack-square drill; the vast majority grew up ignorant of every detail of their profession, and as the Staff College at Camberley was not then in existence, the officers selected for employment on the staff proved in the majority of cases to be blind leaders of the blind. The few veterans of the Peninsula who were still to be found among the Generals had seen war on a grand scale; the officers who had served in eastern and colonial campaigns had acquired much useful knowledge in these distant operations, but with these exceptions the Staff and regimental officers were as untrained in the practice, as they were unversed in the theory of war.

When the Royal Irish reached England they were quartered at Chatham and Canterbury. At first there seemed no likelihood of their being actively employed, for when the regiment had left India many men had volunteered into other corps, and the climate of Burma had told so heavily on those who still remained with the Colours that a large number of them were unfit for active service. Fortune, however, befriended the XVIIIth; in October the flank companies under Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel Edwards were ordered to Windsor, to strengthen the militia battalion which had replaced the regiment of Foot Guards at the Royal Castle. Her Majesty, Queen Victoria was much impressed by the bronzed and soldierly appearance of the detachment, and learning from Colonel Edwards that the regiment was most anxious to serve in the war, she was pleased to direct that the XVIIIth should proceed forthwith to the Crimea, where reinforcements were urgently required. As the result of the medical examination proved that less than four hundred men were fit for the campaign, volunteers were invited from other regiments: four hundred joined from the 94th, a hundred and fifty from the 51st, and smaller contingents from other corps. On December 8, 1854, the regiment, eight hundred and forty-eight strong,[161] embarked at Portsmouth in the s.s. _Magdalene_, and reached the Crimea at the end of the year, about three months and a half after the Allies had made good their footing on Russian soil.

To enable the reader to understand the condition of the British Expeditionary Force when the _Magdalene_ steamed into the harbour of Balaclava, it is necessary to give a very short account of the main events of the war up to the end of 1854. Between the 14th and 18th of September the Allies[162] were engaged in landing at Kalamita Bay, about thirty miles north of Sebastopol; two days after their disembarkation was completed they forced the passage of the river Alma, defeating the Russians so completely that they were allowed to march southward without molestation, and to form bases on the coast within a few miles of Sebastopol, the British establishing themselves at Balaclava, a little port eight miles to the south, the French at Kamiesch Bay, six miles to the south-west of the fortress. The Russian stronghold lies on the shores of a harbour, in shape not unlike a T: the top of the letter is represented by an arm of the sea running eastward from the Euxine for about four miles, and varying in width from a thousand to twelve hundred yards, while the leg is formed by a narrow creek which from the south runs into the main inlet, about two miles from the entrance to the open sea. On these deep and sheltered waters the whole of the Russian fleet could ride in safety, protected by a ring of forts from attack by land or sea, and the labours of successive generations of engineers had converted the western shore of the creek, or inner harbour, into a vast arsenal and dockyard, round which a thriving and populous city had sprung up. The Generals of the Anglo-French forces soon ascertained by reconnaissance that they had not nearly men enough to invest the whole perimeter of the fortress, and at the same time to repel the attacks to be expected from the enemy’s field troops. All they could hope to accomplish was to pour upon one portion of the defences a fire so heavy as to become insupportable; and as the real power of the defence was obviously concentrated in the arsenals, stores, and barracks round the inner harbour, the Allies selected the southern works, those protecting the heart of the fortress, as the object of their first attack, and took up positions on the plateau between Balaclava and Sebastopol. Bounded on the north by the harbour, on the west and south by the sea, and on the east by the valley of the Tchernaya, the surface of this plateau, or “Upland” as the British termed it, was seamed by ravines which, beginning as mere depressions in the ground, grew deeper as they approached the fortress, finally becoming precipitous gorges, difficult for troops to cross. Close to the harbour the ground between these gorges rose into gentle elevations, crowned by works which, as soon as the Russians realised that the southern side of the fortress was threatened, were heavily armed and greatly strengthened. The largest of these ravines, dividing the plain from south to north, descended to the head of the inner harbour, and served as the boundary between the British on the right, and the French on the left of the besiegers’ line.

Owing to the inability of the Allies to invest the fortress completely, communication continued uninterrupted between the northern part of Sebastopol and the interior of the Crimea; early in October the civilian population quitted the town, and thus relieved the troops of the burden of feeding thousands of useless non-combatants. The forethought of the Russians had collected in the magazines of Sebastopol enormous supplies of guns, ammunition, and warlike stores; the commissariat was well provided; the garrison consisted of 38,000 men--soldiers, military workmen already partially trained to arms, and sailors from the men-of-war which, at the approach of the Allies, had been sunk to block the mouth of the outer harbour. Among the regular troops was an officer in himself worth an army--Todleben, an engineer who had already made his mark in the fighting on the Danube. When it became known that the Allies were sailing for the Crimea he was sent to Sebastopol, where he became the mainspring of the defence. His courage and genius, his versatility and resource, his boundless energy, his power of inspiring enthusiasm and devotion among his men won for him the deepest respect of his enemies, and the fervent admiration of his fellow countrymen, who with good reason claim for him a high place among great military engineers. He soon had an opportunity of displaying his talents. In the middle of October the Allies opened fire upon the fortress, and at the close of the bombardment had reason to be satisfied with the result, for the works were reduced to shapeless heaps, the batteries ruined, the guns disabled. But next morning the assailants discovered that in Todleben they had to meet a master-mind: during the night he had rebuilt the parapets, repaired the batteries, and replaced the damaged guns from the almost boundless supply of cannon at his command. On the 25th, the Russian Field army, which after its defeat at the Alma had retired into the interior of the Crimea to await reinforcements, made an unsuccessful attempt to break the line of communication between the British camps on the Upland and Balaclava. A few days later the Allies determined to assault the fortress, but their project was discovered by the enemy. At dawn on the 4th of November, the garrison and the field army together attacked the British right; and though after a desperate battle, to which the name of Inkerman has been given, the victory remained to the Allies, it was dearly bought: the British casualties were 597 killed and 1760 wounded, while those of the French were 143 killed and 786 wounded. The Russians on their side lost more than 12,000 men, of whom a very large proportion were left dead upon the field.

So far our army had not fared badly in the campaign: the hardships had not been greater than were to be expected on active service, and reinforcements had filled the gaps caused by casualties and disease. Cholera, indeed, hung about the camp, and the men were undoubtedly overworked, for when the Anglo-French generals drew up their plans for the siege, the share in the operations which Lord Raglan undertook was greater than his troops could accomplish without undue fatigue. But despite sickness and overstrain the health of the army was fairly good, and when, a few days after Inkerman, it was officially announced that the Allies would spend the winter in the Crimea, men looked forward to the prospect without great apprehension, for the weather was fine, and the Indian summer, bright, mild, and dry, gave no hint of the rigours of the coming winter. Suddenly a terrific storm of rain and wind burst upon the Crimea, levelled whole camps and blew the tents, and all that the tents contained, far and wide over the Upland; the supplies of food and forage at the front were destroyed, and communication with Balaclava was temporarily cut off by the force of the hurricane. Had the fleet of store-ships then at anchor at Balaclava, or lying off the port, escaped destruction, the damage, in great measure at least, could have been repaired; but twenty-one vessels were dashed to pieces, and eight more disabled. The ships that went to the bottom contained forage, ammunition, war-like stores of every kind, drugs and surgical appliances, warm flannel shirts and drawers, woollen stockings, boots and watch-coats--everything that the army most urgently required. When fresh supplies arrived at Balaclava from England the means of conveying them to the Upland was utterly inadequate, for we had landed without a transport corps, depending for land carriage on such horses and vehicles as could be seized in the Crimea. The animals thus obtained died fast from want of forage, and in January, 1855, the Commissariat department could only muster 333 horses and mules and 12 camels, while the divisional transport consisted of a few ponies, dying from starvation and overwork. Though horses in plenty were to be bought in the countries near the Crimea, and many transports were available to bring them to Balaclava, it was useless to import animals until forage arrived to feed them, and forage unhappily was an article of which the Treasury had neglected to make an adequate provision. Consequently upon the troops fell the whole labour of carrying on their shoulders from the port to the camps everything that was required, not only for their own support, but for the conduct of the siege. As was to be expected, the men broke down terribly fast; in November there were nearly 17,000 on the sick list; in December there were more than 19,000 ineffectives, and in January, 1855, no less than 23,076 men filled the hospitals. The horrors of this period of the war are well described by Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, who served on shore as a midshipman in one of the Naval brigades.

“In the early part of the winter the battalions at the front
were generally on duty two nights out of three, and later,
every alternate night. The life of the rank and file was thus
spent:--The men were mustered carrying great-coat and blanket,
just before dusk, and marched through a sea of mud into the
trenches. These were cut up by deep holes from which boulders and
stones had been taken, and into these holes on dark nights, the
men often fell. When the soldier reached his position, he had to
sit with his back to the parapet, and his feet drawn up close
under his body to allow others to pass along the four-feet-wide
trench. If he was not detailed for a working party, nor for
piquet in the trenches or in advance of them, he might lie down,
resting as best he could, in a wet ditch. Assuming that the
soldier was not on piquet, and that there was no alarm--and these
were of frequent occurrence--he could, after the working parties
and their reliefs had ceased to move about the trenches, repose
till daylight, when he marched back to camp, and after a few
hours’ rest had to carry a load of some kind.

“The comparative repose enjoyed by those men who were required
only as a guard, or reserve in the trenches, was very different
to the condition of those who were employed from 200 to 300 yards
in advance of our works, often within conversational distance of
the opposing sentries. The reliefs for the sentries could snatch
a dog’s sleep for four hours out of six, hoping their comrades
would by remaining on the alert give them time to jump up ere
the enemy was on them; but for the two hours that each man was
out near the enemy, the strain on the nervous system would have
been great even to a robust, well-fed man. These sentries had
necessarily to stand absolutely still, silent and watchful, and
as the severity of the weather became more and more marked,
numbers of men whose frames were weakened by want of adequate
nutritious food, were found in the morning frost-bitten and
unable to move. One battalion which landed nearly 900 strong
early in November, was actually in the trenches six nights out of
seven, and then became so reduced, not only in numbers,[163] but
also in the men’s bodily strength, that it was unable for some
time to go there again.

“When the soldier got back to camp, he used to lie, often in
a puddle, which chilled his bones, under a worn-out tent,
through which the rain beat. The less robust would fall asleep,
completely worn out, to awake shivering, and in many cases to be
carried to a hospital tent scarcely more comfortable than the
tent which they had left, and thence to a grave in two or three
days. Those who were stronger, went out to collect roots of
brushwood, or of vines, and roasted the green coffee ration in
the lid of the canteen, afterwards pounding it in a fragment of
shell with a stone, ere they boiled it for use. Others, unequal
to this laborious process, would drink their rum, and eating a
piece of biscuit, lie down again in the great-coat and blanket
which they had brought, often wet through from the trenches.

“In the afternoon the soldier was sent on ‘fatigue’ duty from
five to seven miles, according to the position of his camp,
usually to Balaclava, to bring up rations. On his return he had
again to gather fuel in order to boil the salt beef or salt pork
in his mess tin, which did not hold water enough to abstract the
salt. A portion of the meat therefore only was consumed, and
it was necessary from time to time to tell off men to bury the
quantities thrown away. Salt pork which was issued two days out
of seven, was frequently eaten by the men in its raw state, from
the difficulties of finding fuel to cook it.

“Shortly before dusk the soldier either marched back to the
trenches, or lay down to sleep if he was not on piquet in front
of the camp. Many men disliking to report themselves sick, were
carried back from the trenches in the morning, and died a few
hours afterwards. Those who were reported sick were taken to
hospital, in many cases merely a bell tent; here the men lay,
often in mud on the ground, and in many instances their diet was
only salt meat and biscuit.[164] They were moreover so crowded
together that the doctors could scarcely pass between the
patients.

“The Regimental Medical officers unable to provide comforts,
medicine or proper housing, were eager to send down their
patients, even in storm and rain, to Balaclava, as the best
chance of saving their lives. As we had no ambulances, and the
French could not always lend us mule litter-transport, many were
necessarily carried on cavalry horses, which slipping upon the
hill outside Balaclava, often caused further injury or the death
of the patient.

* * * * *

“The small schoolhouse at Balaclava, which we used as a hospital,
held only between 300-400 men, thus the great majority of the
sick and wounded were necessarily laid on the beach, exposed to
all weathers, while awaiting their turn for embarcation in the
transports. On the steamer running between Balaclava and the
Bosphorus--a voyage of 36 to 48 hours--the soldier seldom got
anything but tea and biscuit, sometimes only water. During this
short but terribly trying passage, from 8 to 9% succumbed and
were thrown overboard. Once on shore there was often a further
painful wait on the beach before they were carried up to the
hospital.

* * * * *

“We who saw the ‘old soldier’ die without a murmur may well be
excused dilating on his virtues, when we endeavour to describe
what he suffered for our country, the ministry of which, having
given him a task far beyond his strength, failed to supply
him with clothes and food. It is impossible to overpraise the
disciplined silence of men under privations, which in a few weeks
reduced one battalion from nearly 1000 effectives to a strength
of 30 rank and file.”[165]

This misery was at its height when the Royal Irish disembarked at Balaclava on December 30, 1854; casualties, hardships, and disease had so thinned the British ranks that in January, 1855, to meet all requirements of the siege Lord Raglan had only 11,000 men at duty on the Upland, many of whom were only fit to be in hospital: one day, indeed, after providing fatigues to bring up the necessaries of life from Balaclava, he could only turn out two hundred and ninety officers and men to guard his trenches--about one-twentieth part of the garrisons of the forts opposite his works, against which at any moment the Russians might have directed a sortie. The regiments upon which the war had told most heavily had almost ceased to exist: one battalion paraded for duty with a few officers, a sergeant, and seven rank and file. With his army in such a condition, it was impossible for Lord Raglan to continue responsible for the whole of the ground allotted to him at the beginning of the siege, and the French, who had been very largely reinforced, and whose sufferings, though great, were in comparison with ours but insignificant, relieved him on the extreme right of his line. The material result of this necessary but deplorable admission of weakness was to “sandwich” the British between two wings of the French army, while morally it reduced us to the position of a mere contingent in the forces of Napoleon III. By England’s persistent neglect of all things military she had sown the storm, and her unhappy soldiers in the Crimea reaped the whirlwind; and it was not for many months, after thousands of lives had been wasted[166] and money spent like water, that her army was once more able to take its proper place in the forces of the alliance against Russia.

The Royal Irish were not at once sent up to the front, but for nearly a fortnight were employed on fatigues about the port. Thanks to this delay they were able to see their baggage and camp equipage safe on shore, and thus, when ordered to the Upland, they began the campaign well prepared to face the hardships that awaited them. In this respect they were far better off than the regiments which first landed in the Crimea. The original expedition had disembarked with hardly any vehicles; the men were so much enfeebled by the climate of Varna that they could not bear the weight of their knapsacks, which with the rest of the baggage were left on board the transports; and when these vessels ultimately reached Balaclava, knapsacks, stores, and regimental property of every kind were lost in the confusion which for many months reigned supreme at our base of operations. The miseries undergone by the troops who landed at the beginning of the war have already been described; and the ragged, jaded starvelings who dragged themselves from the camps on the Upland to the port of Balaclava on the daily quest for food were in pitiable contrast to the well-fed, well-clothed, well-shod men of the XVIIIth. These material advantages doubtless contributed largely towards the comparative immunity from sickness enjoyed by the regiment during the siege, but an even more important factor in its well-being was the presence in its ranks of a large number of soldiers who had been on active service, and of many officers who had learned in two long wars not only to take care of themselves, but also of the men under their command.

On January 12, 1855, the Royal Irish received orders to join Major-General Sir William Eyre’s brigade, then composed of the 4th, 38th, and 50th regiments, which formed part of the third division under Lieutenant-General Sir Richard England; and leaving a guard over such of their property as they could not carry with them, they started for the Upland. Their introduction to campaigning in the Crimea was a rude one; a blizzard raged as they floundered through deep snow along a track, marked by the bodies of transport animals killed by starvation and overwork; and when late in the afternoon they reached Eyre’s camp, they were told off by companies to find shelter in the lines of other corps, for their own tents had been left standing at Balaclava from want of transport to move them. When the Royal Irish succeeded in bringing up their tents from Balaclava, they settled down in camp with the handiness of seasoned troops. Most of the officers dug out the earth inside their tents to a depth of eighteen inches, piling the soil on the curtains to keep out the wind. There was no means of draining the inside of these habitations, “holes in the ground, roofed over with canvas,” as they were well described, but as the camp of the third division was pitched on dry and porous ground the XVIIIth were not troubled with water inside their tents, nor outside had they the miseries of mud and standing pools which made the camps on low ground so wretched. As for “warming the tents,” continues Captain Kemp’s[167] statement,

“in mine we improvised a stove out of an old square biscuit-tin;
we let part of it into the earthen wall of the dug-out tent, and
made a chimney-pipe out of round meat tins, slipped one inside
the other. This chimney passing through the soil, came out clear
of the canvas and was then turned upwards for a couple of feet.
It answered well, though we were at times half smothered with the
smoke. Wood for fuel was very scarce. A small quantity was served
out for the soldiers’ cooking places, but the men had to carry
it into camp on their shoulders for a distance of two miles or
more. Their cooking was done in the usual trench in the open, but
in very severe weather--rain, wind or snow--it was impossible to
keep the fires going: this was one of the great hardships of the
campaign. The cooking for the officers was done close to their
tents, in holes or trenches dug by the servants, who used to
throw the earth round the kitchen, and cover it with any bits of
canvas they could find. Our servants had to forage for firewood,
and generally brought back nothing but the wet roots of vines
which they had grubbed up.”

Each officer took out with him to the war a canteen containing cooking utensils, plates, dishes, and cups, but the wear and tear of camp life soon made havoc of this kit. At a farewell dinner given in March by the XVIIIth to Colonel Reignolds when, completely broken down by hardships, he made over the regiment to Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel Edwards and went home invalided, each of the officers had to cook some part of the feast in his own kitchen, and brought the remnants of his plates, knives and forks, and the articles of food he had provided to the dinner, where empty jam pots took the place of soup plates and champagne glasses.

As soon as the Royal Irish joined Eyre’s brigade they began to do duty in the trenches, where parties were sent for twelve hours at a time to guard the works, make good with sand-bags the damage done to the parapets by the enemy’s projectiles, and improve the drainage. In March, when the weather began to moderate, the tour of duty was increased to twenty-four hours, much to the men’s satisfaction, as those who were not wanted by day for guards or working parties snatched some hours’ sleep in the dry caves of the great ravine which, as has already been mentioned, marked the left of the British front. The duty, heavy for all, was particularly hard on the officers, who were often in the trenches for seventy-two hours in the week. By day they had to direct the men at their labours, by night to be prepared to meet an attack from the fortress. Thanks to their incessant care in seeing that the men were always ready for any emergency, and to half-hourly visits to the sentries, the officers of the XVIIIth were never surprised, and whenever the regiment was in the trenches the Russians received so unfriendly a welcome that they never attempted to push home, though on several occasions they crossed bayonets with the outlying sentries. These local attacks were not the only dangers of night work during the siege. If the wind served, and the Russians heard a party at work, they threw fireballs, which on striking the ground burst into a great flare; then, guided by the light, they poured grape upon the labourers, who used to throw themselves for shelter behind the parapet of the trench until the cannonade ceased. Things began to brighten on the Upland in March: a great burst of indignation at home against the archaic methods by which the army was administered had roused the officials of the War Office and the Treasury to a tardy sense of their shortcomings: a gang of navvies from England had almost finished a railway from Balaclava to the camps; a transport corps had been organised and was doing good service,[168] and the troops, once more properly clothed, discarded the weird garments with which they had covered their nakedness during the winter months, and began to resume the bearing of British soldiers. So marked was the improvement in the appearance of the men that some martinets considered that only one thing was required to bring the army up to its old level--the resumption of the stock, which by general consent had been discarded at the beginning of the war: but this relic of barbarism was not taken into use for many months, and then only on the ceremonial parades at the end of the war. In justice to the XVIIIth it should be said that throughout the siege all ranks managed to turn out respectably attired. The officers wore their red shell-jackets or blue frocks under the regimental great-coat; and they were also provided with a non-regulation garment, much like the “coat-warm-British” of the present day, made of serge, lined with rabbit-skin, and reaching almost to the knee. The great-coats of the men looked decent, and concealed the blankets below them, converted into loosely fitting under-coats by the simple expedient of cutting holes in them for the men’s arms to come through. All ranks had fur caps, the envy of the whole army. About this time the Minié rifles, with which the army were then supposed to be armed, were issued to the Royal Irish, who had been hurried off to the war equipped with Brown-Bess percussion muskets, the same weapons that they had used in Burma.

Even in the worst part of the winter the Allies never wholly discontinued their siege operations, and as the weather became less severe their parallels were pushed forward steadily towards Sebastopol. The Russians on their side had not been idle: large reinforcements from the field army so abundantly made good the losses of the garrison that Todleben could command the services of 6000, and even on occasions of 10,000 men in carrying out his improvements of the defences. He seized and fortified fresh ground overlooking some of the works of the Allies, and devised a successful method of harassing the men on duty in the trenches. Under cover of darkness he dug numbers of shallow rifle-pits within musketry range of our lines, posting in each a marksman whose duty it was to shoot at every living target he could see. These pits were gradually connected by continuous trenches, and became a source of much annoyance to the Anglo-French troops, who found them difficult to deal with: to turn the sharpshooters out with the bayonet was costly, while to shell so small a mark as they presented was very difficult, and therefore little sandbag forts were run up at intervals on the parapets of the trenches, manned by soldiers detailed to keep down the skirmishers’ fire. In spite, however, of Todleben’s efforts the Allies succeeded in arming their batteries with an imposing number of heavy guns, and early in April finished their preparations for a vigorous bombardment, the prelude (as it was universally believed) to the storming of Sebastopol. The French could bring to bear 378 pieces of ordnance; the British had only 123 guns and mortars available, but as for the most part they were much more powerful than those of the French, the difference in weight of metal was not great. The cannonade began on the 9th of April, and raged for ten days and nights, for though the guns did not fire after the sun was down, the mortars continued to play upon the fortress throughout the night. Though mitigated by Todleben’s genius for rapid repairs, the effect of the bombardment was very great, and all ranks were awaiting orders for the attack when Canrobert, who on the death of St Arnaud had succeeded to the command of the French, decreed that the assault was to be postponed.[169] The fire of the guns was gradually allowed to die down: the digging parties resumed work upon the approaches: and the Russians were allowed to carry out the restoration of their works without interruption other than that of occasional shots from our batteries. This bombardment cost the enemy 6000 men: in the ranks of the Allies the casualties were far smaller, amounting among the French to 1585, among the British to 265 of all ranks.

Up to the middle of June the record of the XVIIIth is one of exceedingly hard work, unbroken by the excitement of any important engagement. The Royal Irish were employed in many different ways. They toiled along the track, first from Balaclava, and then from railhead to the camps on the Upland, laden, to use the soldiers’ expression, “like commissariat mules,” with stores; they were on fatigues of every kind, from digging parallels and throwing up batteries to making gabions and fascines; and they took their turn in the trenches, where, though they demanded and often obtained the dangerous privilege of guarding the approaches nearest to the enemy, their losses were small. Between the 6th of February, when their first casualty occurred, and the 17th of June, only six men were killed and thirty-six wounded. Of these injuries, however, many were of the gravest nature: on one occasion a shell from a Russian mortar burst among a detachment on its way to the trenches and struck down ten of the party. To save the lives of the wounded the surgeons had to perform amputations upon each of them, and seven men lost a leg apiece, two an arm each, while the least hurt escaped with the loss of a hand. This comparative immunity from casualties, however, was not to last, for the regiment was now to be called upon to undergo an ordeal nearly as severe as those in its campaigns under William III. and Marlborough. At the beginning of June the immediate object of the Allies was the capture of three outlying fortifications, outposts which covered the left of the line of Russian defences. The trenches of the French right attack were faced by the White Works and a hill called “the Mamelon,” the latter of which barred the way to the Malakoff redoubt, one of the keys of the main position; the British sap led to “the Quarries,” where a number of works covered the Redan, a fort as formidable and as important as the Malakoff itself. On the 6th of June another great bombardment began; five hundred and forty-four pieces of heavy ordnance hurled shot and shell into the Russian works, and though answered by almost an equal number inflicted great injury: many cannon were dismounted and earth-works ruined before darkness imposed silence upon our guns, though not upon our howitzers, which continued to fire throughout the night. Thanks to the boundless energy of Todleben and the dogged industry of his men, much of the damage was made good before dawn; the cannon were remounted and the parapets rebuilt; but early in the morning the English and French re-opened fire with such terrible effect that in two hours the _morale_ of the defenders was seriously affected. Then the infantry of the Allies was let loose, and after heavy fighting succeeded in taking the points assailed. In these achievements the XVIIIth had no part, as the third division was not employed in the capture of the Quarries.

As soon as these three outlying works had been taken, the Allies began to prepare for an attack on the Malakoff and the Redan, and on the 17th of June the batteries concentrated a furious fire on the Russian fortifications, with results so destructive to the enemy’s artillery that everything appeared to promise success for the assault on the morrow. Lord Raglan and Marshal Pélissier, who had recently been placed in command of the French army, had already agreed upon their plans; remembering how rapidly during the night of the 6th-7th of June the Russians had re-fitted their batteries, the Generals decided that the cannonade should be resumed at daylight for two hours, when it was calculated that the enemy’s guns would be silenced and the repairs of the night destroyed. The infantry was then to come into action, the French against the Malakoff, the British against the Redan. Barnard’s brigade of the third division was to support the storming columns, while on the extreme left Eyre, with the other brigade of the same division, was to threaten the fortifications on the Russian right of the Redan and in front of the Dockyard Creek, and to convert his demonstration into a serious attack if the assault on the Redan proved successful. Raglan’s preparations for the execution of his part of this scheme were completed, when suddenly, late on the night of the 17th, Pélissier informed the British Commander-in-Chief that he had resolved to dispense with the preliminary bombardment, and to storm the Malakoff at daybreak. Against his own judgment, and in an evil hour for the Allied armies, Raglan consented to this all-important change of plan; the infantry attacks on the Malakoff and the Redan were delivered without adequate artillery preparation; Todleben, who had done wonders during the night, was ready at every point, and the combined assault was beaten back with heavy loss. The only troops on whom Fortune smiled this day were those of Eyre’s brigade, who fought magnificently, and worthily sustained the honour of the British army. The brigade was at this time composed of the 9th, XVIIIth, 28th, 38th, and 44th regiments, but so heavily had the campaign told upon them that, when in the small hours of the 18th of June Eyre mustered these five battalions, there were but two thousand men in their depleted ranks. Covered by an advance-guard of a hundred and fifty sharpshooters--volunteers from each company in his command--the General left his camp while it was still black night, and marched down the great ravine towards the Dockyard Creek. At daybreak, just as the troops detailed for the assault on the Redan were swarming out of the trenches in which they had been assembled, Eyre’s advance-guard reached a cemetery, surprised the occupants of the rifle pits by which it was defended, and captured it without much trouble. This cemetery marked one flank of the enemy’s line, the other rested on a mamelon;[170] and to quote the words of Eyre’s report, the intervening ground “was intersected, and the road barricaded with stone walls, which our men were obliged to pull down under fire before they could advance. In rear of this position, towards the fortress, the enemy occupied several houses, there were bodies of the enemy seen in rear, but in what strength I could not say. This position, under cover of the walls of the fortress, was strong.” Well might General Eyre describe the position as “strong.” The suburb, of which these houses formed part, consisted of villas standing in gardens, planted with peach-trees in full blossom, and surrounded with low stone walls, thickly overgrown with vines. From several points it was commanded by the Russian artillery; to our “half-left” was the Garden Wall battery; in front rose the Creek battery, built at the head of the inner harbour of Sebastopol; on our right was the Barrack battery, and hidden behind the Redan were field-guns, which after the assault on that work had failed turned their fire upon Eyre’s regiments.

Before describing the doings of the XVIIIth in detail it will be well to give a short account of the work done by the brigade as a whole. Such an account is to be found in the letter to ‘The Times’[171] by Sir William Russell, the celebrated war correspondent, who, writing only two days after the battle, seems to have obtained his facts from the reports supplied to Eyre by the officers commanding his units. As Russell’s letter is in substantial agreement with Eyre’s report to his divisional general, its evidence appears valuable. After mentioning that the advance-guard occupied the cemetery with small loss, he says--

“the moment the enemy retreated, their batteries opened a heavy
fire on the place from the left of the Redan and from the Barrack
battery. Four companies of the XVIIIth at once rushed on out of
the cemetery towards the town, and actually succeeded in getting
possession of the suburb. Captain Hayman was gallantly leading on
his company when he was shot through the knee. Captain Esmonde
followed, and the men, once established, prepared to defend the
houses they occupied.[172] As they drove the Russians out, they
were pelted with large stones by the latter on their way up to
the battery, which quite overhangs the suburb. The Russians could
not depress their guns sufficiently to fire down on our men, but
they directed a severe flanking fire on them from an angle of the
Redan works. There was nothing for it but to keep up a vigorous
fire from the houses, and to delude the enemy into the belief
that the occupiers were more numerous than they were. Meanwhile
the Russians did their best to blow down the houses with shot
and shell, and fired grape incessantly, but the soldiers kept
close, though they lost men occasionally, and they were most
materially aided by the fire of the regiments in the cemetery
behind them, which was directed at the Russian embrasures; so
that the enemy could not get out to fire on the troops below. The
9th regiment succeeded in effecting a lodgment in the houses in
two or three different places, and held their position as well as
the XVIIIth.... While these portions of the 9th and XVIIIth, and
parties of the 44th and 28th were in the houses, the detachments
of the same regiments and of the 38th kept up a hot fire from the
cemetery on the Russians in the battery and on the sharpshooters,
all the time being exposed to a tremendous shower of bullets,
grape, round-shot, shell. The loss of the brigade under such
circumstances, could not but be extremely severe. One part of
it, separated from the other, was exposed to a destructive fire
in houses, the upper portion of which crumbled into pieces or
fell in under fire, and it was only by keeping in the lower
storey, which was vaulted and well built, that they were enabled
to hold their own. The other parts of it, far advanced from our
batteries, were almost unprotected, and were under a constant
mitraille and bombardment from guns which our batteries had
failed to touch.”

Though the repulse of the main British column left Eyre in a situation of hourly increasing peril, he resolutely continued to hold the points which the dash and bravery of his troops had gained. At first he hoped that the Redan might yet be stormed, when his brigade would be ready to follow up the victory; and when it became clear that the attack was not to be renewed he declined to fall back, until an authority higher than his own had decided how much of the ground that his brigade had won was to be retained. Though Eyre was wounded comparatively early in the day, it was not until late in the afternoon that, after giving orders for the gradual withdrawal of the troops from the houses nearest to the enemy, he made over his command to the next senior officer and quitted the battlefield. The process of withdrawal took several hours, and it was not until 9 P.M. that the Royal Irish, the last regiment of the brigade to retire, began its march back to the camp of the third division.

How the XVIIIth fared must now be told, as far as possible, in the words of the officers who had the honour to be present. Late on the 17th, the rumour had run through the lines of the Royal Irish that the town was to be assaulted next day. The men were wild with joy at the prospect of taking part in the attack, and talked and sang in their tents so incessantly that the officers could get no rest during the few hours allowed the regiment for sleep. At 1 A.M. on the 18th of June, a date ever memorable in the annals of the regiment, six hundred and sixty-nine officers and men paraded in front of the camp of the 9th regiment, where the brigade was formed, the XVIIIth in front, the 44th, 38th, 28th, and 9th regiments following in the order named. On the march down the great ravine occurred an interesting instance of the rigidity of the drill which, in the middle of the nineteenth century, fettered the movements of the British army. It has been mentioned that every infantry regiment then had two flank companies of picked men: those of the right, or grenadier company, were chosen for height and strength; those of the left, or Light company, were selected for activity and intelligence. On the parade ground the rule was that all battalion movements should be made from the right, and consequently that in column the grenadier company should always lead. Colonel Edwards had learned in the school of the Chinese and Burmese wars that all drill is but the means to one end, the successful attack on an enemy; and thinking that on this occasion the quick-moving “Light Bobs” were the men first to be employed, marched off “left in front.” This daring innovation did not long pass unnoticed, and almost within sight of the enemy he was ordered to halt, and countermarch his regiment in order to bring the grenadier company to the head of the column. In 1855, the countermarch was an evolution slow and ponderous in broad daylight, and doubly difficult of execution in semi-darkness, at a time when the pulses of all ranks were throbbing with the excitement of a night march and an impending battle. After the manœuvre was carried out, the brigade once more advanced, forming into a mass of close columns whenever the ground permitted. Though it was now almost day the Russians had not yet detected the presence of Eyre’s troops, and the General took an opportunity of addressing the Royal Irish, telling them he knew they would prove themselves good soldiers and “this day do something that will ring in every cabin in Ireland.” Then he added, “Now, men, above all things you must be quiet or you’ll get peppered!” In answer to this very reasonable appeal a shout arose from the ranks, “All right, your Honour, we’ll get in. Three cheers for the General!” Before the officers could stop them the men had given three lusty cheers. Eyre remonstrated, but the Royal Irish were far too eager for the fray to be sensible, and in response to his reiterated entreaties for silence they burst out into stentorian cheering, this time for Old Ireland. “Let them go in and attack,” cried the General in despair; “they will only draw fire upon us!”

From a letter written by Colonel Edwards two days after the battle, it appears that while the advance-guard was driving the Russians from the cemetery at the point of the bayonet, the XVIIIth

“halted in the open ready for action. Just here the first
round-shot danced among us, and as the advance party had
extended and were under such cover as they could find, we met
the intruder. That peculiar thud (once heard, never forgotten)
denoted that the round-shot had told, two men being killed. But
we were compelled to wait a little longer, and then the Grenadier
company moved off in skirmishing order, soon followed by Nos. 1
and 2 companies. These three companies occupied the ruined houses
on the Woronzoff road.”

As the grenadiers, led by Captain Armstrong, were pressing forward they found their way obstructed by one of the stone walls mentioned in General Eyre’s report. Two subalterns raced for the wall, and leapt it at the same moment: Lieutenant Taylor landed safely on the other side, but Lieutenant Meurant was shot dead as he rose at the jump. Soon afterwards the remainder of the regiment in column of sections was moved forward in support, along a lane leading towards the suburb from the great ravine, the rocky cliffs of which gave the XVIIIth some cover from cannon shot. The Russian riflemen, however, speedily found the range, “and the men,” says Colonel Edwards,

“commenced to fall fast. The General had given me orders to stand
there, but the casualties were then so great that I put the men
behind the houses and walls, which saved them much. I did not see
the General again; he was wounded across the head.