It is the morning of Saturday, the 8th September, 1855. For a year now
the allied forces have been before Sebastopol; but the flag of St.
Andrew is still flying in defiance upon its forts, and on this
memorable morning the columns of attack are forming for the great
assault. In the preceding June, amid the din of the ceaseless
cannonade, poor Lord Raglan had passed away to a quieter world; and
the picturesque Sardinians, with their green uniforms, billycock hats,
and Bersaglieri plumes--each private a species of _Fra Diavolo_--had
come to aid us in the reduction of this place, the Gibraltar of the
Euxine.
It was a cheerless morning. From the sea, a biting wind swept over the
land; clouds of white dust and dusky-brown smoke, that came from more
than one blazing street and burning ship--among the latter was a
two-decker, fired by the French rockets--rose high above the green
spires and batteries of Sebastopol, and overhung it like a sombre
pall, while shorn of its rays the sun resembled a huge red globe hung
in mid-air above us. Gradually it seemed to fade out altogether, and
then the whole sky became of a dull, leaden, and wintry gray. By this
time our epaulettes had entirely disappeared, and our uniforms were
hopeless rags; in some instances eked out by plain clothes, or
whatever one could pick up; and the government contractors had such
vague ideas of the dimensions of the human foot, that some of the
boots issued to the soldiers would not have fitted a child of ten
years old, and as they dared not throw away her Majesty's property,
many men went bare-footed, with their boots dangling from their
knapsack or waist-belt.
"In our present toggery we may meet the Russians," said Dyneley, our
adjutant; "but I should scarcely like to figure in them before the
girls at Winchester, in 'the Row,' or at the windows of 'the Rag.'"
In great masses, 30,000 Frenchmen were forming to assault the
Malakoff, with 5,000 Sardinians as supports.
A long line of cavalry--Hussars with their braided dolmans, Lancers
with their fluttering banneroles, Dragoons with glittering helmets,
and all with loaded carbine on thigh, had been, from an early hour,
thrown to the front, to form a cordon of sentinels, to prevent
straggling; while a similar line was formed in our rear to keep back
idlers from Balaclava; yet to obtain glimpses of the impending attack,
groups of red-fezzed Turks, of picturesque-looking Eupatorians, and
fur-capped Tartars, began to cluster on every green knoll at a safe
distance, where, in their excitement, they jabbered and gesticulated
in a manner most unusual for people so generally placid and stolid.
At half-past eleven A.M. the pipes of the Highland Brigade were
heard, as it marched in from Kamara, and got into position in reserve
of the right attack; and the fine appearance of the men of those
mountains--"the backbone of Britain," as Pope Sylvester called them of
old--elicited a hearty cheer from the Royal Welsh as they defiled
past, with all their black plumes and striped tartans waving in the
biting wind.
During all the preceding day, the batteries had thundered in salvoes
against Sebastopol; and hence vast gaps were now visible in the
streets and principal edifices, most of which were half hidden in
lurid sheets of fire; and by the bridge of boats that lay between the
north and south side, thousands of fugitives, laden with their goods
and household lares, their children, sick, and aged, had been seen to
pour so long as light remained.
Until the French began to move, the eyes of all in our division were
turned on our famous point of attack--the Redan; and I may inform the
non-military reader, that a _redan_ in field fortification means simply
an indented work with lines and faces; but this one resembled an
unfinished square, with two sides meeting at the salient angle in
front of our parallels, _i. e_., the trenches by which we had dug our
way under cover towards it.
With a strong reinforcement, Nicholaevitch Tolstoff, now, as before
stated, a general, had entered the Redan by its rear or open face; and
since his advent, it had been greatly strengthened. In the walls of
the parapet he had constructed little chambers roofed with sacks of
earth, and these secure places rendered the defenders quite safe from
falling shells. In the embrasures were excavations wherein the gunners
might repose close by their guns, but ever armed and accoutred; and by
a series of trenches it communicated with the great clumsy edifice
known as the Malakoff Tower.
By a road to the right, the Redan also communicated with the extensive
quadrangle of buildings forming the Russian barracks, one hundred
yards distant; and in its fear there lay the Artillery or Dockyard
Creek. The flat caps, and in other instances the round glazed helmets,
of the Russians and the points of their bayonets, bristling like a
hedge of steel, could be seen above the lines of its defence and at
the deeply-cut embrasures, where the black cannon of enormous calibre
peered grimly down upon us.
Our arrangements were very simple. At noon the French were to attack
the Malakoff; and as soon as they fell to work we were to assault the
Redan, and I had volunteered for the scaling-ladder party, which
consisted of 320 picked men of the Kentish Buffs and 97th or Ulster
Regiment.
In the trenches of our left attack could be seen the black bearskins
of our Brigade of Guards, and massed in dusky column on the hill
before their camp, their red now changed to a very neutral tint
indeed, were the slender battalions of the Third Division, motionless
and still, save when the wind rustled the tattered silk of the
colours, or the sword of an officer gleamed as he dressed the ranks. A
cross cannonade was maintained, as usual, between our batteries and
those of the enemy. The balls were skipping about in all directions,
and several "roving Englishmen," adventurous tourists, "own
correspondents," and unwary amateurs, who were there, had to scuttle
for their lives to some place of shelter.
As I joined the ladder party, I could not help thinking of many a past
episode in my life: of Estelle, who had been false; of Valerie, who
was lost to me; and of the suspicion that Winifred Lloyd loved me. Ere
another hour, I might be lying dead before the Redan, and there forget
them all! Our covering party consisted of 200 of the Buffs and Rifles
under Captain Lewes; but alas for the weakness of our force, as
compared with thousands of men to oppose. The strength of the Second
Division detailed against the Redan consisted only of 760 men of the
3rd, 41st, and 62nd regiments, with a working party of 100 from the
Royal Welsh. The rest of Colonel Windham's brigade was in reserve.
Brigadier Shirley, who was to command the whole, had been ill on
board-ship; but the moment the gallant fellow heard that an assault
was resolved on, he hastened to join us. Prior, however, to his
coming, Colonel Windham and Colonel Unett of the 29th were deciding
which of them should take precedence in leading the attack. They
coolly tossed up a shilling, and the latter won. Thus he had the
alternative of saying whether he would go first, or follow Windham;
but a glow spread over his face, and he exclaimed,
"I have made my choice, and I shall be the _first_ man inside the
Redan!"
However, it was doomed to be otherwise, as soon afterwards a ball from
the abattis severely wounded and disabled him. When we had seen that
our men had carefully loaded and capped and cast loose their
cartridges, all became very still, and there was certainly more of
thought than conversation among us. Many of the men in some regiments
were little better than raw recruits, and were scarcely masters of
their musketry drill. Disease in camp and death in action had fast
thinned our ranks of the carefully-trained and well-disciplined
soldiers who landed in Bulgaria; and when these--the pest and
bullet--failed, the treachery of contractors, and the general
mismanagement of the red-tapists, did the rest. Accustomed as we had
been to the daily incidents of this protracted siege, there was a
great hush over all our ranks; the hush of anticipation, and perhaps
of grave reflection, came to the lightest-hearted and most heedless
there.
"What is the signal for us to advance?" I inquired.
"Four rockets," replied Dyneley, our adjutant, who was on foot, with
his sword drawn, and a revolver in his belt.
"There go the French to attack the tower!" cried Gwynne; and then a
hum of admiration stole along our lines as we saw them, at precisely
five minutes to twelve o'clock, "like a swarm of bees," issue from
their trenches, the Linesmen in kepis and long blue coats, the Zouaves
in turbans and baggy red breeches, under a terrible shower of cannon
and musketry, fiery in their valour, quick, ardent, and eager! They
swept over the little space of open ground that lay between the head
of their sap, and, irresistible in their number, poured on a sea of
armed men, a living tide, a human surge, section after section, and
regiment after regiment, to the assault.
"O'er ditch and stream, o'er crest and wall,
They jump and swarm, they rise and fall;
With _vives_ and _cris_, with cheers and cries.
Like thunderings in autumnal skies;
Till every foot of ground is mud,
With tears and brains and bones and blood.
Yet, faith, it was a grim delight
To see the little devils fight!"
With wonderful speed and force, their thousands seemed to drift
through the gaping embrasures of the tower, which appeared to swallow
them up--all save the dead and dying, who covered the slope of the
glacis; and in _two_ minutes more the tricolor of France was waving on
the summit of the Korniloff bastion!
But the work of the brave French did not end there. From twelve till
seven at night, they had to meet and repulse innumerable attempts of
the Russians to regain what they had lost--the great tower, which was
really the key of the city; till, in weariness and despair, the latter
withdrew, leaving the slopes covered with corpses that could only be
reckoned by thousands. The moment the French standard fluttered out
above the blue smoke and grimy dust of the tower, a vibration seemed
to pass along all our ranks. Every face lit up; every eye kindled;
every man instinctively grasped more tightly the barrel of his musket,
or the blade of his sword, or set his cap more firmly on his head, for
the final rush.
"The tricolor is on the Malakoff! By heavens, the French are in!
hurrah!" cried several officers.
"Hurrah!" responded the stormers of the Light and Second Divisions.
"There go the rockets!" cried Phil Caradoc, pointing with his sword to
where the tiny jets of sparkles were seen to curve in the wind against
the dull leaden sky, their explosion unheard amid the roar of musketry
and of human voices in and beyond the Malakoff.
"Ladders, to the front! eight men per ladder!" said Welsford, of the
97th.
"It is our turn now, lads; forward, forward!" added some one
else--Raymond Mostyn, of the Rifles, I think.
"There is a five-pound note offered to the first man inside the
Redan!" exclaimed little Owen Tudor, a drummer of ours, as he slung
his drum and went scouring to the front: but a bullet killed the poor
boy instantly, and Welsford had his head literally blown off by a
cannon ball.
In their dark green uniforms, which were patched with many a rag, a
hundred men of the Rifle Brigade who carried the scaling ladders
preceded us; and the moment they and we began to issue, which we did
at a furious run, with bayonets fixed and rifles at the short trail,
from the head of the trenches, the cannon of the Redan opened a
withering fire upon us. The round shot tore up the earth beneath our
feet, or swept men away by entire sections, strewing limbs and other
fragments of humanity everywhere; the exploding shells also dealt
death and mutilation; the grape and cannister swept past in whistling
showers; and wicked little shrapnels were flying through the air like
black spots against the sky; while, with a hearty and genuine English
"hurrah!" that deepened into a species of fierce roar, we swept
towards the ditch which so few of us might live to recross.
Thick fall our dead on every hand, and the hoarse boom of the cannon
is sounding deep amid the roar of the concentrated musketry. Crawling
and limping back to the trenches for succour and shelter, the groaning
or shrieking wounded are already pouring in hundreds to the rear,
reeking with blood; and, within a minute, the whole slope of the Redan
is covered with our redcoats--the dead or the helpless--thick as the
leaves lie "when forests are rended!"