Part 7 (2/2)
”Steady, lads, steady,” shouted the officers, and as regularly as if on field-day, the English troops advanced. The Rifles, under Major Northcote, were ahead, and, das.h.i.+ng through the vineyards under a rain of fire, crossed the river, scaled the bank, and pushed forward to the top of the next slope. It was on the plateau beyond that the Russian main body were posted, and for a time the Rifles had hard work to maintain themselves. In the meantime, the Light Division were advancing in open order, sometimes lying down, sometimes advancing, until they gained the vineyards. Here the regular order which they had so far maintained was lost, as the ground was broken up by hedges, stone walls, vines and trees. The 19th, 7th, 23d and 33d were then led, at a run, right to the river by General Codrington, their course being marked by killed and wounded, and crossing they sheltered themselves under the high bank. Such was the state of confusion in which they arrived there that a momentary pause was necessary to enable the men of the various regiments to gather together, and the enemy, taking advantage of this, brought down three battalions of infantry, who advanced close to the bank, and, as the four regiments dashed up it, met them with a tremendous fire. As hotly it was answered, and the Russians retired while their batteries again opened fire.
There was but little order in the British ranks as they struggled forward up the hill. Even under this tremendous fire the men paused to pick grapes, and all the exertions of their officers could not maintain the regular line of advance. From a rising ground a Russian regiment kept up a destructive fire upon them, and the guns in the batteries on their flank fired incessantly. The slaughter was tremendous, but the regiments held on their way unflinchingly. In a few minutes the 7th had lost a third of their men, and half the 23d were down. Not less was the storm of fire around the 33d. Confused, bewildered and stunned by the dreadful din, Harry Archer struggled on with his company. His voice was hoa.r.s.e with shouting, though he himself could scarce hear the words he uttered. His lips were parched with excitement and the acrid smell of gunpowder. Man after man had fallen beside him, but he was yet untouched. There was no thought of fear or danger now. His whole soul seemed absorbed in the one thought of getting into the battery. Small as were the numbers who still struggled on, their determined advance began to disquiet the Russians.
For the first time a doubt as to victory entered their minds. When the day began they felt a.s.sured of it. Their generals had told them that they would annihilate their foes, their priests had blessed them, and a.s.sured them of the protection and succor of the saints. But the British were still coming on, and would not be denied. The infantry behind the battery began to retire. The artillery, left unprotected, limbered up in haste, and although three times as numerous as the men of the Light Division, the Russians, still firing heavily, retired up the hill, while, with a shout of triumph the broken groups of the 23d, the 19th, and 33d burst into the battery, capturing a gun which the Russians had been unable to withdraw.
CHAPTER VII.
BEFORE SEBASTOPOL
Not long were the Light Division to enjoy the position they had won.
Breathless, exhausted, bleeding, they were but a handful; and the Russians, looking down upon them and seeing that they were unsupported, again advanced in heavy ma.s.ses, and the Light Division fell back.
Had their division had the whole of their strength they might have been enabled to hold the position they had won. But just as they crossed the river, there was an unfounded alarm of a cavalry attack on the flank, and the 77th and 88th were halted to repel this, and took no share in the advance by the rest of the division.
As the shattered regiments fell back before the Russians in a state of disorder, they saw advancing up the slope behind them the brigade of Guards in as regular order as if on parade. For a moment the splendid formation was broken as the disordered troops came down upon them. But opening their files they allowed the Light Division to pa.s.s through them, and then closing up again moved forward in splendid order, the Highland Brigade keeping pace with them on their left, while the regiments of the Light Division reformed in their rear and followed after.
Steadily, under a storm of fire, the Guards advanced. Grape, canister, round shot, sh.e.l.l, and shot, swept through them but they kept forward till nigh crossing bayonets with the Russian infantry.
At this moment, however, two British guns mounted on a knoll opened upon the Russians, the victorious French threatened their flank, the Russian gunners limbered up and retired, and their infantry suddenly fell back.
On the right of the Light Division, General Sir De Lacy Evans had also been fighting sternly. The second division had advanced side by side with that of Prince Napoleon. The resistance which he encountered was obstinate, but more skilled in actual warfare than his brother generals, he covered his advance with the fire of eighteen guns, and so bore forward, suffering far less than the division on his left. He had, however, very heavy fighting before he gained the river. The village had been set on fire by the Russians, and the smoke and flames greatly incommoded the men as they fought their way through it. The 95th, however, dashed across the bridge under a storm of missiles, while the 55th and 30th waded through the river, and step by step won their way up the hill. Then the firing ceased, and the battle of Alma was won.
The force under the Russians consisted of some 37,000 men, of whom 3500 were cavalry. They had eighty guns, besides two light batteries of horse artillery. Inferior in number as they were, the discrepancy was more than outbalanced by the advantage of position, and had the troops on both sides been of equally good material, the honor of the day should have rested with the defenders.
The British loss consisted of 26 officers killed and 73 wounded, 327 men killed and 1557 wounded. The French had only 3 officers killed and 54 wounded, 253 men killed and 1033 wounded. The Turks were not engaged. The Russians lost 45 officers killed and 101 wounded, 1762 men killed and 2720 wounded. The Allied Army had 126 guns against 96 of the Russians; but the former, owing to the nature of the ground, played but a small part in the fight.
The whole of the loss fell upon a comparatively small number of the English regiments, and as the French had 9000 men in reserve who had not fired a shot, there was no season why the greater portion of the army, with all the cavalry, should not at once have followed on the track of the beaten Russians. Had they done so, the war in the Crimea would have been over in three days. That time, however, elapsed before a move was made. The reason a.s.signed was the necessity of caring for the wounded and burying the dead. But this might have been committed to the hands of sailors and marines, of whom 5000 might have been landed at night; in which case the whole Allied Army could have marched at day break.
It was a sad sight when the four regiments of the Light Division mustered after their work was done. Hitherto in the confusion and fierce excitement of the fight, men marked not who stood and who fell.
But now as the diminished regiments paraded, mere skeletons of the fine corps which had marched gayly from their camping-ground of the night before, the terrible extent of their losses was manifest. Tears rolled down the cheeks of strong men who had never flinched in the storm of fire, as they saw how many of their comrades were absent, and the glory of the victory was dimmed indeed by the sorrow for the dead.
”I wanted to see a battle,” Harry Archer said to Captain Lancaster, who, like him, had gone through the fight without a scratch, ”but this is more than I bargained for. To think of half one's friends and comrades gone, and all in about two hours' fighting. It has been a deadly affair, indeed.”
”Yes, as far as we are concerned, Archer. But not for the whole army.
I heard Doctor Alexander say just now that the casualties were about 1500, and that out of 27,000 men is a mere nothing to the proportion in many battles. The French have, I hear, lost rather less.”
”I thought in a battle,” Harry said, ”one would see something of the general affair, but I certainly did not. In fact, from the time when we dashed up the river bank till the capture of the battery, I saw nothing. I knew there were some of our men by the side of me, and that we were all pus.h.i.+ng forward, but beyond that I knew absolutely nothing. It was something like going through a tremendous thunder shower with one's head down, only a thousand times more so.”
After parade the men scattered in groups; some went down to the river to fill their canteens, others strolled through the vineyards picking grapes, and in spite of the fact that in many places the dead lay thickly together, a careless laugh was sometimes heard. The regiments which had not been engaged were at work bringing in the wounded, and Doctor Alexander and his a.s.sistants were busy at the ghastly task of amputating limbs and extracting b.a.l.l.s.
The next day a few officers from the fleet came up; among these was Hawtry, who was charged with a special mission from Jack, who could not again ask for leave, to inquire after his brother. The wounded were sent down in arabas and litters to the s.h.i.+ps, a painful journey of three miles. The French wounded fared better, as they had well-appointed hospital vans. Seven hundred and fifty Russian wounded were collected and laid together, and were given in charge of the inhabitants of a Tartar village near; Dr. Thomson, of the 44th Regiment with a servant volunteering to remain in charge of them, with the certain risk of capture when the Russian troops returned after our departure.
On the morning of the 23d the army started, continuing its march along the road to Sebastopol, the way being marked not only by debris thrown away by the retreating Russians, but by the cottages and pretty villas having been sacked by the Cossacks as they retired.
The troops halted for the night at Katcha, where the French were reinforced by 8000 men who were landed from transports just arrived, and the English by the Scots Greys and the 57th. As it was found that the enemy had batteries along the northwest of the harbor of Sebastopol which would cause delay and trouble to invest, while the army engaged in the operation would have to draw all its provisions and stores from the harbor at the mouth of the Katcha River, it was determined to march round Sebastopol, and to invest it on the southern side, where the Russians, not expecting it, would have made but slight preparations for a resistance.
Towards the sea-face, Sebastopol was of immense strength, mounting seventeen guns at the Telegraph Battery, 104 at Fort Constantine, eighty at Fort Saint Michael, forty at battery No. 4, and some fifty others in smaller batteries. All these were on the north side of the harbor. On the southern side were the Quarantine Fort with fifty-one guns, Fort Alexander with sixty-four, the a.r.s.enal Battery with fifty, Fort Saint Nicholas with 192, and Fort Paul with eighty. In addition to these tremendous defences, booms had been fixed across the mouth of the harbor, and a three-decker, three two-deckers, and two frigates sunk in a line, forming a formidable barrier against the entry of hostile s.h.i.+ps. Besides all this, the whole of the Russian Black Sea fleet were in harbor, and prepared to take part in the defence against an attack by sea. Upon the other hand, Sebastopol was naturally weak on the land side. It lay in a hollow, and guns from the upper ground could everywhere search it.
At the time when the Allied Armies arrived before it the only defences were an old loop-holed wall, a battery of fourteen guns and six mortars, and one or two batteries which were as yet scarcely commenced.
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