"HARD POUNDING."
Mr. Hobson, as he called himself, had been perfectly right when he
gleefully assured Mrs. Wilders that the Russians were gathering up
their strength for a supreme effort against the allies. Reinforcements
had been steadily pouring into the Crimea for weeks past--two of the
Czar's sons had arrived to stir up the enthusiasm of the soldiers.
Menschikoff, who still commanded, counted confidently upon inflicting
exemplary chastisement upon the invaders. He looked for nothing less,
according to an intercepted despatch, than the destruction or capture
of the whole allied army.
No doubt the enemy had now an overwhelming superiority in numbers. The
total land forces under Prince Menschikoff's command, including the
garrison of Sebastopol, were 120,000 strong. Those numbers included a
large body of cavalry and a formidable field artillery.
The entire allied army was barely half that strength. It was called
upon, moreover, to occupy an immense front--a front which extended
from the sea at Kamiesch to the Tchernaya, and from the Tchernaya, by
a long and circuitous route, back to the sea at Balaclava. This line,
offensive as regards the siege-works, but defensive along the unduly
extended and exposed right flank at Balaclava, was close on twenty
miles. The great length of front made severe demands upon the allied
troops; it could only be manned by dangerously splitting up their
whole strength into many weak units, none of which could be very
easily or rapidly reinforced by the rest.
Perhaps the weakest part of the whole line was the extreme right, held
at this moment by the British Second Division. Here, on an exposed and
vitally important flank, the whole available force was barely 3,000
men. For some time past it had been intended to fortify this flank by
field-works, armed with heavy artillery. But, although the necessity
for protecting it was thus admitted, the urgency was not exactly
understood, or at least was subordinated to other operations; as a
matter of fact, this flank was "in the air," to use a military phrase,
lying quite open and exposed, with only an insufficient, greatly
harassed garrison on the spot, and no supports or reserves near at
hand.
The utmost assistance on which this small body could count, as was
afterwards shown, under stress, too, of most imminent danger, was
14,000 men. Not that all these numbers were fully available at any one
time; they were constantly affected and diminished by casualties in
the height and heat of the action; so that never were there more than
13,000, French and English, actually engaged.
On the other hand, the Russian attacking force was 70,000 strong, and
they had with them 235 guns.
It was in truth another battle of giants, like Waterloo. "Hard
pounding," as the great duke said of that other fight; a fierce trial
of strength; a protracted, seemingly unequal, struggle between the
dead weight of the aggregate many and the individual prowess of the
undaunted, indomitable few.
The enemy's plan of action had been minutely and carefully prepared.
We know it now. He meant to use his whole strength along his entire
front--in part with feigned and deceiving demonstrations to "contain"
or hold inactive the troops that faced him, in part with determined
onslaught, delivered with countless thousands, in massive columns,
against the reputed weakest point of our line.
This plan Menschikoff hastened to put into execution. Time pressed:
the enemy had learnt through spies that an assault on Sebastopol was
close at hand. Besides, the Grand Dukes had arrived, and the troops,
worked up to the highest pitch of loyal fanatic fervour, were mad to
fight under the eyes of the sons of their father, the holy Czar.
Dawn broke late on that drear November morning: November the 5th--a
day destined to be ever memorable in the annals of British arms: a
dawn that was delayed and darkened by dense, driving mists, and
rain-clouds, black and lowering.
Nothing, however, had broken the repose of the British camp, or hinted
at the near approach of countless foes.
The night had been tranquil; the enemy quiet; only, in the valley
beneath our pickets on the Inkerman heights, some sentries had heard
the constant rumbling of wheels, but their officers to whom they
reported did not interpret the same aright, as the movement of
artillery.
An hour or more before daylight the church-bells of Sebastopol rang
out a joyous peal. Why not? It was the Sabbath morning. But these
chimes, alas! ushered in a Sunday of struggle and bloodshed, not of
peaceful devotion and prayer.
The outlying pickets had been relieved, and were marching campwards;
the Second Division had had its customary "daylight parade"; the men
had stood to their arms for half-an-hour, and, as nothing was
stirring, had been dismissed to their tents; the fatigue-parties had
been despatched for rations, water, fuel--in a word, the ordinary
daily duties of the camp had commenced, when the sharp rattle of
musketry rang out angrily, and well sustained in the direction of our
foremost picket on Shell Hill.
"That means mischief!" The speaker was General Codrington, who,
according to invariable rule, had ridden out before daylight to
reconnoitre and watch the enemy. "Halt the off-going pickets; we may
want all the men we can lay hands on."
Then this prompt and judicious commander proceeded to line the
Victoria ridge, which faced Mount Inkerman, with the troops he had
thus impounded, and galloped off to put the rest of his brigade under
arms.
The firing reached and roused another energetic general officer,
Pennefather, who now commanded the Second Division in place of De Lacy
Evans.
"Sound the assembly!" he cried. "Let the division stand to its arms.
Every man must turn out: every mother's son of them. We shall be
engaged hot and strong in less than half-an-hour."
As pugnacious as any terrier, Pennefather, with unerring instinct,
smelt the coming fight.
His division was quickly formed on what was afterwards called the
"Home Ridge," and which was its regular parade-ground. But the general
had no idea of awaiting attack in this position. It was his plan
rather to push forward and fight the enemy wherever he could be found.
With this idea he sent a portion of his strength down the slope to
"feed the pickets," as he himself called it, whilst another was
advanced to the right front under General Wilders, and with this body
went the Royal Picts. The Second Division benefited greatly by this
advance, for the Russians were now absolute masters of the crest of
the Inkerman hill, where they established their batteries, and poured
forth volley after volley, all of which passed harmlessly over the
heads of our men. Meanwhile the alarm spread. A continuous firing,
momentarily increasing in vigour, showed that this was no affair of
outposts, but the beginning of a great battle. The bulk of the allied
forces were under arms, and notice of the attack had been despatched
to Lord Raglan at the English headquarters.
In less than a quarter-of-an-hour, long before 7 a.m., Lord Raglan was
in his saddle, ready to ride wherever he might be required most.
But whither should he go? The battle, as it seemed, was waging all
around him, on every side of the allied position. A vigorous fire was
kept up from Sebastopol; down in the Tchernaya valley the army,
supposed to be still under Liprandi, but really commanded by
Gortschakoff, had advanced towards the Woronzoff road, and threatened
to repeat the tactics of Balaclava by attacking with still greater
force the right rear of our position; last of all, around Mount
Inkerman, the unceasing sound of musketry and big guns betrayed the
development of a serious attack.
Lord Raglan was not long in doubt. He knew the weakest point of the
British position, and rightly guessed that the enemy would know it
too.
"I shall go to Inkerman," he said. "That is their real point, I feel
sure. And we must have up all the reinforcements we can muster. You,
Burghersh, tell Sir George Cathcart to move up his division and
support Pennefather and Brown. You, Steele, beg General Bosquet to
lend me all the men he can spare."
Pennefather had his hands full by the time Lord Raglan arrived. With a
paltry 3,000 odd men he was confronting 25,000; but, happily, the
morning was so dark and the brushwood so thick that his men were
hardly conscious that they were thus outnumbered.
Not that they would have greatly cared; they were manifestly animated
with a dogged determination to deny the enemy every inch of the
ground, and with unflagging courage they disputed his advance,
although they were so few. Once more it was the "Thin Red Line"
against the heavy column: hundreds against thousands, a task which for
any other troops would have been both hopeless and absurd.
But Pennefather's people stoutly held their own. On his left front,
one wing of the 49th Regiment routed a whole Russian column, and drove
it back at the point of the bayonet down the hill; to give way in
turn, but not till it was threatened by 9,000 men. Next, four
companies of the Connaught Rangers stoutly engaged twenty times their
number, and only yielded after a stubborn fight. General Buller came
up next, with a wing of the 77th, which was faced by a solid mass five
times as strong.
"There are the Russians," cried Egerton, who commanded the 77th. "What
shall we do, general?"
"Charge them!" was Buller's prompt reply.
The next instant the slender line, with a joyous hurrah, was engulfed
in a giant column. The effect was instantaneous. The Russian column
reeled before the fiery charge, wavered, then broke and fled.
More to the right, Mauleverer prolonged the line with the 30th, and
gave so good an account of the Russians in his front that they, too,
fell back in disorder; and Bellairs, with a party of the 49th, was
equally triumphant.
Beyond these forces, General Wilders, with whom young McKay now rode
as extra aide, led a fraction of his brigade, including the Royal
Picts, against the Sandbag Battery, a point deemed important because
it commanded the extreme right of the position.
On the far sides of the slopes, beyond the battery were 4,000 Russian
troops, and the mere sight of Wilders with his deployed line sufficed
to shake the steadiness of the foe. The Russian bugles sounded a
retreat, the leading companies faced about, and, communicating the
panic to those behind the hill, the whole mass gave way and ran down
the slope, followed by a destructive fire from the British line.
Thus ended the first phase of this unequal contest. Pennefather had
triumphed to an extent of which neither he nor his heroes were fully
aware. Barely 1,200 men had routed 15,000! The few had achieved a
decisive victory over the many.
But the struggle had only just begun. Many more and still severer
trials awaited our starving, weary, sorely-beset soldiers that day.
The enemy had numberless fresh and still untried troops at hand.
Column after column had been moving steadily forward, some from the
town, some from the eastern side of the Tchernaya, and already the
Russian generals were in a position to renew the fight. A new
onslaught was now organised, to be made by 19,000 men under cover of
ninety guns.
So far in those early days of the battle the brunt of it had fallen
upon the Second Division, supported by a portion of the Light. Stout
old General Pennefather had had the supreme control throughout.
"I will not interfere with you," Lord Raglan said, as, standing by his
staff, he watched the progress of the fight from the ridge. "You know
your ground, as you have occupied it so long with your camp. I'm sure
I can trust you."
"Thank you, my lord. I'll do my best, never fear," replied
Pennefather.
"Their artillery fire is very troublesome, and must be over-mastered.
If I could only get up some of the siege-train guns to help you. Let
some one go back to the artillery park, and tell them I want a couple
of eighteen pounders."
An aide-de-camp at once galloped off with the order, but two or three
eventful hours elapsed before these guns were brought to bear upon the
action.
Pennefather's men, although for the moment triumphant, had their hands
full. They showed an undaunted front or "knotted line" of
fighting-men: the remnants of the pickets, fragments, and
odds-and-ends of many regiments, mixed up and intermingled, still in
contact with the enemy, and so far still without supports.
Officers came back rather despondingly to ask for help.
"I cannot send you a single man," was the firm reply to one applicant.
"You must stand your ground somehow."
"We should be all right, sir, but the men have run out of ammunition."
"It's no use. I can't give you a round. What does it matter? Don't
make difficulties. Stick to your bayonets. And remember you've got to
hold on where you are, or we shall be driven into the sea."
The want of cartridges was what the troops felt most direly. They
growled savagely and grumbled at the mismanagement that kept back
these indispensable supplies.
Only here and there the energetic action of a few shrewd officers did
something to mend the mischief.
Thus the Royal Picts benefited by the astute promptitude of
long-headed Sergeant Hyde. He was acting as quartermaster, and as such
had been left behind in camp, although sorely against his will, when
the rest of the regiment went out to fight. But he had heard the long,
well-sustained roll of musketry-fire, and it satisfied one not new to
war that a very close contest had begun.
"They'll soon fire away their cartridges at this rate," he said to
himself. "If I could only get the ammunition-reserves up to them! I'll
do it." And on his own responsibility he laid hands on all the beasts
in camp: spare chargers, officers' ponies, and other animals, and
quickly loaded them with the cartridge-boxes. Then, leading the
cavalcade, he hurried to the front, asking as he went for the Royal
Picts.
He found his regiment in the Sandbag Battery, and they received him,
so soon as his errand was known, with a wild cheer.
"Excellently done!" cried Colonel Blythe. "You have a good head on
your shoulders, Hyde: ammunition was the one thing we needed."
"Yes," shouted a brawny soldier, "we were just killed for want of
cartridges."
"And want of food," grumbled another; "sorra bite nor sup since
yesterday."
"Sergeant darling," said a third, "won't you sound the
breakfast-bugle? Fighting on an empty stomach is but a poor pastime."
Thus, in the interval between two combats, but always under a galling
and destructive fire, they joked and bandied words with a freedom that
discipline would not have tolerated at any other time.
"I think, colonel, I could bring up the rations: biscuits and cold
pork, anyhow," suggested Hyde.
"And the grog-tub: don't forget that, sergeant" cried a fresh voice.
"By all means, Hyde, get us what you can," replied Blythe; "the men
are all fasting, and some sort of a meal would be very good for them,
only you must keep a sharp look-out for us. We may not be still here
when you return."
This Sandbag Battery, which for the moment the Royal Picts still held,
was the object of ceaseless contention that day. Although at best but
an empty prize, useful to neither side, because its parapet was too
high to be fired over, the battery was lost and won, captured and
recaptured, constantly during the battle.
Even now the Russians, regaining heart, had made it the first aim of
their fresh attack.
General Dannenberg, who was now in chief command, had a twofold
object: he was resolved to press the centre of the English position
and at the same time vigorously attack the right, throwing all his
weight first upon the Sandbag Battery.
The small force under General Wilders, which included the Royal Picts,
soon began to feel the stress of this renewed onslaught.
"They are coming on again and in great numbers, sir," said McKay to
his general.
"I see, and menacing both our flanks. We shall be surrounded and
swallowed up if we don't take care."
"Some support ought to be near by this time, sir," replied McKay.
"Ride back, and see. I don't want to be outflanked."
McKay retired and presently came upon two battalions of Guards,
Grenadiers and Fusiliers, advancing under the command of the Duke of
Cambridge.
"General Wilders, sir, is very hard pressed in the Sandbag Battery,"
said McKay, briefly.
"I'll march at once to his aid," replied the duke, promptly.
"Sir George Cathcart and part of the Fourth Division are coming up,
and not far off," added one of the staff; "we won't wait for any one.
Ride on ahead, sir,"--this was to McKay,--"and let your general know
he is about to be supported by her Majesty's Guards."