PELISSIER TO THE FRONT--DEATH OF LORD RAGLAN.
"The king is dead! Long live the king!"
Yes, the proud and ambitious Emperor Nicholas breathed his last on
the second of March 1855, and Alexander the Second reigned in his
stead. I do not mean to judge the dead emperor harshly, as many have
done. _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_ is an excellent motto; but,
independent of this, I cannot but believe that in endeavouring _vi et
armis_ to cut his way to the sunny Mediterranean, Nicholas was
following the traditional policy of his forbears, and that he
believed he was doing the best he could for his country.
The emperor probably died half heart-broken: the victories not only
of our troops and those of the French in the Crimea, but of the
Turks, who in February drove the Russians from the gates of
Eupatoria, had told upon his health; even the winter, with its
hardships, its diseases, its death, had not annihilated our armies,
and hope itself seemed to desert the heart of the great Czar.
Heigh-ho! death is no respecter of persons; but even in the last
moments of his life, Nicholas found strength to send a message to his
troops. He was passing away into life eternal, but even from on high
he would bend down to bless his warriors for their unequalled
constancy and valour!
If any one expected that the war would now cease, he was much
mistaken; for Alexander was as determined as his father had been.
But a few months more and summer would be in its prime and glory, the
roads would no longer be sealed against the influx of troops, and the
allied armies would be crushed out of existence and driven into the
sea by sheer force of numbers, Sebastopol relieved, and victory won.
Well, this would certainly have been for us a national disaster of
the gravest kind, and for the French also; but would it have put an
end to the war? Would we, because the Crimea was lost, have stood
quietly by and seen the northern Bear establish himself at
Constantinople, complacently licking his paws as he saw his ships of
war pass majestically to or from the Mediterranean? Undoubtedly not.
The relief of Sebastopol by the Russians, and our destruction on the
Upland, would have been but the commencement of a greater war that
might have raged for years, despite the fact that it would have
anastomosed with the terrible rebellion in India.
Gortschakoff was now general over the Russian army in the Crimea
instead of Menschikoff. That was the second change.
Many changes were taking place at home that affected the carrying on
of the war considerably--splits in the cabinet, the resignation of a
cabinet, councils of war, and indignation meetings.
New men came to the front in the French army, and new theories were
advanced.
The Emperor of the French himself, who probably had a hankering after
military glory, had a theory. Everybody had a theory; though, as
Jack told his friend Dr. Reikie, speaking perhaps from his early
experience in Malony's shop, theory never bent a red-hot horse-shoe.
There is no good standing and looking at it till it begins to get
cold; the plan is to go at it hammer and tongs.
General Neil was, against Canrobert's wishes, appointed engineer
_vice_ General Bizot, killed in the cannonade.
Canrobert, indeed, was far from very resolute, and therefore might do
more harm than good. Good he might have done had he taken the bull
by the horns, and resolved on a grand assault after the terrible
bombardment. This assault was to have taken place on the 28th of
April; but on the 25th, orders had been given to the French admiral
to get ready all his ships at once to embark the army of reserves at
Constantinople. So this news determined Canrobert not to make the
attack. He thought it safer and wiser to wait for these
reinforcements, and Lord Raglan had to give an unwilling assent.
An expedition had been despatched to attack Kertch, for through this
place the Russians were receiving all their supplies. It had sailed
on May 3; but Canrobert recalled the French portion of it by a fast
steamer, on receiving a telegram from the Emperor of the French to
the effect that an expedition must be made at once against the
Russian army. In the middle of May, the emperor's plans in detail
were laid before Canrobert by an officer direct from France. He,
Canrobert, was to command the field army, General Pelissier to take
sole charge of the siege-works with a force of Turks and French, and
the British to take to the field.
To this plan there were insuperable objections, though it might have
looked very pretty on paper to the eyes of the French emperor, who,
by the way, was never a Buonaparte.
So it fell through. Canrobert resigned, and General Pelissier was
made commander-in-chief of the French army.
* * * * *
Pelissier was a bold and a daring man, and a most persistent. He had
his own ideas about carrying on war, and didn't care even for
offending his emperor. I suppose he thought that after all there was
nothing so successful as success.
Pelissier determined to do two things--to capture an important new
outwork of Todleben's, and to send an expedition to Kertch to crush
the Russians there, and stop Gortschakoff's supplies. He was
successful in both.
The Kertch expedition was a very pretty little affair.
Jack Mackenzie and Dr. Reikie, whose services for the time being
could be spared from the trenches, both found themselves once more on
board the _Gurnet_.
On the map you will notice the position of Kertch on the straits of
that name. These straits, you will note, are narrow, and connect the
Black Sea with the Sea of Azof. Into this latter the Don pours its
floods, and bears on its bosom the products of immense villages if
not towns that line its banks. The largest town is Taganrog, near
the entrance of the Don to this inland ocean.
The Straits of Kertch were well lined with batteries, and General
Wrangel, who commanded them, had it in his power to make a splendid
demonstration against our forces. But if he was Wrangel by name, he
certainly was not wrangle by nature; and so he not only cut and run,
but destroyed his batteries and burned his ships of war.
If there was a disappointed man on board the saucy _Gurnet_, it was
Jack Mackenzie. He had looked forward to seeing and participating in
a real sea-fight of the good old-fashioned sort.
Small though the _Gurnet_ was, it could have run alongside a Russian
man-o'-war and boarded; then, once on deck, the tulzie would have
been terrible. It could only have ended, Jack believed, in our
killing or wounding about half the defending crew, and chasing the
others below. He even fancied himself hauling down the enemy's flag,
and hoisting in its place the brave old Union Jack, while cheers of
victory rang from stem to stern.
But, alas! there was to be no such thing. It was not to be in this
way that Jack should win honour and glory and those epaulettes--or
the halo.
No doubt Sturdy was disappointed also. However, the whole business
was a walk-over. A very sad one, however, for the Russ. For the
whole of the stores intended for Gortschakoff, as well as the vessels
supplying them, were captured and destroyed. It was only the smaller
vessels that could get through the straits, but they did execution
enough. Even at Taganrog they destroyed the stores and depots on the
beach, and they also bombarded and took the fortress of Arabat.
The larger ships outside the straits made for the coast of Circassia,
and without a struggle destroyed the fortified places at Anapa and
Soujouk-kale.
By the end of June all the work was done: the chief support of the
Russian army was cut, and thus Sebastopol was invested more easily
and with far less loss of life than could have been done by any
amount of trenching.
* * * * *
The stage was now being rapidly cleared for the last and final act in
this drama of war. Already Canrobert had driven the enemy from
Tchorgoum, and utterly demolished their camp.
It is somewhat galling to learn from Todleben that the Flagstaff
Bastion and other works in front of the town had several times been
so reduced by our fire that had they been assaulted our success or
that of the French would have been certain, and that Sebastopol must
then have fallen.
Pelissier, and with him Raglan, persisted in his one and main object,
and that was the capture of the Mamelon, the White Works, and the
Quarries, and these fortifications must be carried by storm. The
emperor himself stormed in another fashion. He stormed by telegraph.
Pelissier tore the telegrams up and let them blow, while he coolly
acted according to his own judgment and that of Lord Raglan.
On the sixth of June a cannonade of tremendous proportions was turned
upon the Russian works, and carried on till darkness, doing terrible
damage. It was resumed on the 7th. About six the same evening the
French and Turks carried the Mamelon by storm; and after desperate
fighting, which lasted, on and off, throughout the night, the British
Light Division and Second Division captured and held the Quarries.
The enemy was thus once more driven back to the rear of his former
lines.
How fierce the fighting had been may be judged from the fact that the
French had lost 5,440 men, the British 693, and the Russians over
5,000.
* * * * *
On the 18th, Pelissier and our own forces made a terrible assault
upon the Malakoff and Redan. It is not, dear reader, because we were
defeated in this attempt (which, had not the French general been so
headstrong, would never have been undertaken) that I do not here give
any detailed account of the fighting and the slaughter--for one
should never be ashamed to own one's faults and defeats--but because
the facts are all too well known to the veriest school-boy.
I may add, however, that after these failures I should not have cared
to stand in Pelissier's shoes, seeing that he was acting entirely
contrary to his emperor's plans.
But Pelissier persisted--he could not very well withdraw now--and so
the siege went on, but more methodically and prudently.
Pelissier was a kind-hearted man in the main, as well as a resolute,
daring, and determined. The soft or gentle side of his character is
well seen at the death-bed of poor Lord Raglan. The general's health
had no doubt been weakened by chagrin and grief at the reverses he
had met with. In such a condition as this one is more apt to fall a
victim to disease, and Raglan was attacked by cholera, and quietly
passed away on the twenty-eighth of June. And Pelissier, we are
told, stood by the bedside for upwards of an hour crying like a child.