A day came when the Malakoff only replied with one shot to three that
were fired from the batteries of the Allies, and the Second Bastion
answered not at all. Between the yellow, smoke-wreathed hills and the
glittering blue, wind-swept bay the fortress-citadel lay dying--she who
had for so long owed life to the invigorating genius of Todleben....
Presently along her whole line of bastions no living creature moved.
Ruin, Destruction, and Death, held sole possession. Amidst the red
glare of conflagration--the shock of repeated explosions--the clouds
of pale dust, and sooty smoke shot with ruddy flames that veiled the
face of day--the clashing of bayonets and the roll of iron wheels--the
garrison and the population streamed over the swaying bridge of
boats that led to the northern shore; and when night came, and earth
and sea and sky were wrapped in fire, it is on record that but
three representatives of the invading Army of England witnessed the
destruction of Sevastopol from the summit of Cathcart’s Hill.
“Oh, hang the place! Let it burn!” said the others. “We’re going to
have a night in bed!”
And they had it. There were banquets subsequently, expeditions to the
evacuated citadel, meetings and fusions of friends who had been foes;
regimental balls and bonfires; Royal and Imperial congratulations.
And then the camps of Balaklava and Kamiesch were deserted; and, to
the strains of _Partant Pour La Syrie_ and “Cheer, Boys, Cheer!”
the diminished Army of Sire my Friend, and the crippled remnant of
England’s Eastern Expedition, were recalled from the Crimea.
My Aunt Julietta will never forget that day, when the shabby,
battered-looking transport steamed in slowly to the Dockyard quayside,
and the bugle blew, and the gangways opened, and the ragged, hairy
men--not a vestige of uniform remaining on the backs of nineteen
out of twenty of them--began to march, or limp, or halt, or hobble
ashore by companies, as the band that had come to meet them struck
up “Home, Sweet Home.” And Captain Goliath McCreedy was not seen
amongst them--and in her bitter distress and disappointment my Aunt
ran up crying to a thin, ragged maypole of an officer with a long red
beard--he would have called it a “bird”--reaching down to his middle.
She meant to ask him where her husband was?--but her sobs prevented
the words from coming. And the lean, red-haired giant shouted, “Juley!
don’t ye know me?” and caught her in a huge embrace....
* * * * *
There was a Triumph in Paris and there were rejoicings in London,
including a Service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul’s. All the Bigwigs and
Nobs attended in state, and Cowell, Powell, Dowell, Bowell, Crowell,
Towell, Rowell, and the rest of the fraternity, were present; and gave
thanks behind their shining hats with ostentatious devoutness. It would
have been a peculiarly appropriate season for a National Fast, and a
Litany, with special clauses having reference to Cabbaging, but nobody
seems to have thought of that.
Though that lamentable public spirit of distrust of the Army
Contractor--instilled into the national bosom by the malignant demon
Tussell, was never to be exorcised--has not been laid unto this
hour.... And a day was to dawn when the crowned Imperial charlatan
who had made France his mistress and his slave, was to see Great
Britain--awake at last, if only in part, to the truth that she herself
had been his dupe and victim--stand by with white arms folded over
those old ineffaceable bosom-scars of 1854-56; while he whom she had
befriended, believed in, championed--for whom her sons had been offered
up in hecatombs of slaughter, wallowed in the dust, a fallen Power.
Not a single taunt, O my England! not the shadow of a smile of
contemptuous pity; only the stern silence, the grave, immovable regard,
and the arms folded over the bosom marred by those old, old cruel scars
of THE CRIMEA. But, if his hidden hate of her long years
before had amounted to obsession, judge to what a pitch of secret
frenzy it was wrought when she afforded him, an exile, refuge from the
well-earned vengeance of those whom he had ruled and ruined--a roof to
shelter his disgraced and humbled head.