AFTER THE BATTLE.
The Battle of the Alma was won! Three short hours had sufficed to
finish it, and by four o'clock the enemy was in full retreat. It was a
flight rather than a retreat--a headlong, ignominious stampede, in
which the fugitives cast aside their arms, accoutrements, knapsacks,
everything that could hinder them as they ran. Pursuit, if promptly
and vigorously carried out, would assuredly have cost them dear. But
the allies were short of cavalry; the British, greatly weakened by
their losses in this hard-fought field, could spare no fresh troops to
follow; the French, although they had scarcely suffered, and had a
large force available, would do nothing more; St. Arnaud declared
pursuit impossible, and this, the first fatal error in the campaign,
allowed the beaten general to draw off his shattered battalions.
But, if the allied leaders rejected the more abiding and substantial
fruits of victory, they did not disdain the intoxicating but empty
glories of an ovation from their troops. The generals were everywhere
received with loud acclaims.
Deafening cheers greeted Lord Raglan as he rode slowly down the line.
The cry was taken up by battalion after battalion, and went echoing
along--the splendid, hearty applause of men who were glorifying their
own achievements as well.
There was joy on the face of every man who had come out of the fight
unscathed--the keen satisfaction of success, gloriously but hardly
earned. Warm greetings were interchanged by all who met and talked
together. Thus Lord Raglan and Sir Colin Campbell, both Peninsular
veterans, shook hands in memory of comradeship on earlier fields. Few
indeed had thus fought together before; but none were less cordial in
their expressions of thankfulness and cordial good-will. They told
each other of their adventures in the day--its episodes, perils,
narrow, hair-breadth escapes! they inquired eagerly for friends; and
then, as they learnt gradually the whole terrible truth, the awful
price at which victory had been secured, moments that had been radiant
grew overcast, and short-lived gladness fled.
"Next to a battle lost, nothing is so dreadful as a battle won," said
Wellington, at the end, too, of his most triumphant day. The
slaughter is a sad set-off against the glory; groans of anguish are
the converse of exulting cheers. The field of conquest was stained
with the life's blood of thousands. The dead lay all around; some on
their backs, calmly sleeping as though death had inflicted no pangs;
the bodies of others were writhed and twisted with the excruciating
agony of their last hour. The wounded in every stage of suffering
strewed the ground, mutilated by round shot and shell, shattered by
grape, cut and slashed and stabbed by bayonet and sword.
Their cries, the loud shriek of acute pain, the long-drawn moan of
the dying, the piercing appeal of those conscious, but unable to move,
filled every echo, and one of the first and most pressing duties for
all who could be spared was to afford help and succour.
Now the incompleteness of the subsidiary services of the English army
became more strikingly apparent. It possessed no carefully organised,
well-appointed ambulance trains, no minutely perfect field-hospitals,
easily set up and ready to work at a moment's notice; medicines were
wanting; there was little or no chloroform; the only surgical
instruments were those the surgeons carried, while these indispensable
assistants were by no means too numerous, and already worked off their
legs.
Parties were organised by every regiment, with stretchers and
water-bottles, to go over the field, to carry back the wounded to the
coast, and afford what help they could. The Royal Picts, like the
rest, hasten to send assistance to their stricken comrades. The
bandsmen, who had taken no part in the action, were detailed for the
duty, and the sergeant-major, at his own earnest request, was put in
charge.
As they were on the point of marching off, General Wilders rode up. He
had been separated, it will be remembered, from part of his brigade,
and had still but a vague idea of how it had fared in the fight.
"I saw nothing of you, colonel, during the action. Worse luck I went
with the wrong lot, on the right of the village."
"It is well some of the regiment escaped what we went through," said
Colonel Blythe, sadly. "My left wing was nearly cut to pieces. I was
never under such a fire."
"How many have you lost, do you suppose?"
"We are now mustering the regiment: a sorrowful business enough. Seven
officers are missing."
"What are their names?"
"Popham, Smart, Drybergh, Arrowsmith--"
"Anastasius--my young cousin--is he safe?" hastily interrupted the
general.
Colonel Blythe shook his head.
"I missed him half way up the hill; he was carrying the regimental colour,
but when we got into the battery it was in the sergeant-major's hands. I
wish to bring his--the sergeant-major's--conduct especially before your
notice, general."
"The sergeant-major's? Very good. But if he took the colour he must
know what happened to Anastasius. Call him, will you?"
Sergeant-major McKay came up and saluted.
"Mr. Wilders, sir," he told the general, "was wounded as we were
breasting the slope."
"You saw him go down? Where was he hit?"
"I hadn't time to wait, sir."
"I should think not," interrupted Colonel Blythe; "but for him,
general, we should never have carried the battery. I was dismounted,
the men were checked, and just at the right moment the sergeant-major
led them on."
"Bravely done, my lad! You shall hear of this again; I will make a
special report to the commander of the forces. But there, that will
keep. We must see after this poor boy."
"I was just sending off a party for the purpose," said the colonel.
"That's right. You have some idea, I suppose"--this was to McKay--"of
the place where Mr. Wilders fell?"
"Certainly, sir. I think I can easily find it."
"Very well; show us the way. And you, Powys"--this was to the
aide-de-camp--"ride over to the Royal Lancers and tell Hugo Wilders
what has happened."
Then the little band of Good Samaritans set out upon its painful
mission. The autumn evening was already closing in; the night air blew
chill across the desolate plain; already numbers of men were busy
amongst the wounded, assuaging their thirst from water-bottles,
covering the prostrate forms with blankets, and lending the surgeons a
helping hand.
Half an hour brought the searchers of the Royal Picts to where young
Anastasius Wilders lay. McKay was the first to find him, and he raised
a shout of recognition as he ran forward to the wounded officer.
Unslinging his water-bottle, he put it to his cousin's lips; but young
Wilders waved the precious liquid aside, saying, although in a feeble
voice--
"Thank you; but I can wait. Give it to that poor chap over there; he
is far worse hit than I am."
It was a private of the regiment, whose breast a bullet had pierced,
and whose tortures seemed terrible.
But now the rest of the party came up. General Wilders dismounted,
flask in hand, and the wounded lad was rewarded for his self-denial.
A surgeon, too, had arrived, and he was anxiously questioned as to the
nature of young Wilders's wound.
The right leg had been shattered below the knee by a round shot; the
wound had bled profusely, but the poor lad managed to stanch it with
his shirt.
"Can you save it?" whispered the general.
"Impossible!" replied the surgeon, in the same tone.
"We must amputate above the knee at once," and he turned up his
sleeves and gave instructions to an assistant to get ready the
instruments.
The operation, performed without chloroform, and borne with heroic
fortitude, was over when Hugo Wilders rode up to the spot. Anastasius
recognised his brother, and answered his anxious, sorrowful greeting
with a faint smile.
"What is to be done with him now?" asked the general.
"We must get him on board ship--to-night, if possible; but how?"
"We will carry him every inch of the way," said one of the bandsmen of
the Royal Picts. Young Wilders was idolised by the men.
"It is three miles to the sea-shore: a long journey."
"They can march in two reliefs, four carrying, four resting," said
McKay.
"You must be very careful," said the surgeon.
"Never fear! We will carry him as easy as a baby in its cot," replied
one of the soldiers.
"Yes, yes! you can trust us," added McKay.
"Are you going with them?" asked the general.
"I should like to do so, sir."
"And of course I shall go too," added Captain Wilders; and the
procession, thus formed, wended its way to the shore.
It was midnight before McKay and the stretcher-party were relieved of
their precious charge, and when they had seen the wounded officer
embarked in one of the ship's boats, accompanied by his brother, they
laid down where they were to rest and await the daylight.
Soon after dawn they were again on the move making once more for the
heights above the river, where they had left their regiment. Once
more, too, they traversed the battle-field, with its ghastly sights
and distressing sounds. It was still covered with the bodies of the
dead and dying, their numbers greatly increased, for many of the
wounded had succumbed to the tortures of the night. The figures of
ministering comrades still moved to and fro, and men of all ranks were
busily engaged in the good work.
There were others whose action was more open to
question--camp-followers and sutlers, dropped from no one knew where,
who lurked in secret hiding-places, and issued forth, when the coast
seemed clear, to follow their loathsome trade of robbing the dead.
McKay's little party, as they trudged along, suddenly put up one of
these evil birds of prey almost at their feet. The man rose and ran
for his life, pursued by the maledictions of the Royal Picts.
"Stop him! Stop him!" they cried, and the fugitive was met and turned
at every point. But he doubled like a hare, and had nearly made his
escape when he fell almost into the arms of Sergeant Hyde.
"Stick to him!" cried McKay. "We will hand him over to the
provost-marshal, who will give him a short shrift."
A fierce struggle ensued between the fugitive and his captor, the
result of which seemed uncertain; but the former suddenly broke loose,
and again took to his heels. He made towards the French lines, and
disappeared amongst the clefts of the steep rocks.
When McKay joined Hyde, he said to him, rather angrily--
"Why did you let the fellow go?"
"I did my best, but he was like an eel. I had far rather have kept
him. I have wanted the scoundrel these dozen years."
"You know him, then?"
"Yes," replied Hyde, sternly. "I know him well, but I thought that he
was dead. It is better so; we have a long account to settle, and the
day of reckoning will certainly come."
Thus ended the first collision between the opposing armies: the first
great conflict between European troops since Waterloo. The credit
gained by the victors, whose prowess echoed through the civilised
world, was greater, perhaps, than the results achieved. The Alma, as
we shall see, might have paved the way, under more skilful leadership,
to a prompt and glorious termination of the war. But, if it exercised
no sufficient influence upon the larger interests of the campaign, the
battle greatly affected the prospects of the principal character in
this story.
Sergeant-major McKay was presently informed that, in recognition of
the signal bravery he had displayed at the storming of the Causeway
battery, his name had been submitted to the Queen for an ensign's
commission in the Royal Picts.