Battles of English History

The plateau surrounding Sebastopol is seamed with deep ravines running more or less northwards down to the sea, some of them three or four miles in length. By these ravines the various portions of the besieging lines were separated from each other, more completely in proportion as the works were brought nearer to the city. Thus some little time must elapse before any one portion could be largely reinforced. The Russians hoped, by bringing a very strong force to bear upon the English troops occupying the bit of the plateau between the last of these ravines and the valley of the Tchernaya, to overwhelm them before they could be adequately supported, and so establish themselves on the plateau. If they could do this, the allies must fight a general action with their backs to the sea, that is to say with the certainty of destruction if they were defeated. From this necessity the allies were saved by the obstinate valour of the English infantry, who fought in what is known as the battle of Inkerman.87

At the beginning of November Prince Menschikoff had at his disposal more than 100,000 men, exceeding the forces of the allies in the proportion of at least three to two. He thus had good reason for hoping to turn the tables on his enemies; and had his combinations been made with more skill, he might well have succeeded. His plan was that nearly 20,000 infantry with a quantity of artillery should issue from Sebastopol and assail Mount Inkerman, in conjunction with a somewhat smaller force from outside, which should cross the Tchernaya by the great bridge at its entrance into the harbour. At the same time the remainder of the field army under Gortschakoff was to demonstrate from the Tchernaya valley against the whole east side of the allied position; and the ample garrison of Sebastopol was to be in readiness to assault the siege works if they were denuded of troops. He forgot that every movement of Gortschakoff down in the valley could be fully seen from the plateau, and that therefore demonstrations were futile. A real attack in all quarters at once might, with his very superior numbers, have been made without risk: but he was not the man to depart from conventional methods. Similarly in planning the actual attack, he was swayed by the conventional, and usually sound, objection to sending troops into action divided by an obstacle which prevents all communication. Mount Inkerman was obviously to be assailed by ascending both from the Tchernaya on the east and from the great ravine on the west, known as the Careenage ravine. The forces detailed for this purpose would have amply sufficed to attack simultaneously the tongue of land west of the Careenage ravine also: but the Russian general was afraid to divide his troops by this very steep ravine, forgetting that Sebastopol with its large garrison lay behind, and committed the far worse error of crowding all his men into the one attack, where there was not room for half of them.

The tongue of land known as Mount Inkerman is by no means level. The English second division was camped just behind a ridge crossing it from east to west, which formed the position for the English artillery during the action. In front of this little ridge the ground sinks, ascending again to a hillock, known as Shell hill, three-quarters of a mile off, which was the Russian artillery position. Between them the tongue of land is narrowed considerably by a ravine on the east side, the incline of which is gentle enough to allow of the road from Sebastopol descending it to the Tchernaya. This road ascends to Mount Inkerman from the Careenage ravine, which may for practical purposes be deemed to terminate there, about three-quarters of a mile behind the camp of the second division. About this point was the camp of the guards' brigade: opposite it, on the other side of the Careenage ravine was the camp of the light division. Other English troops were from two to three miles off: and the nearest portion of Bosquet's French corps, which was now charged with the duty of guarding the east face of the plateau against possible attack from the Tchernaya, was scarcely nearer. Thus the first stress of the battle fell on the second division, about 3000 strong, commanded at the moment by General Pennefather, during the absence through illness of Sir De Lacy Evans.

Before dawn on November 5, General Soimonoff, issuing from Sebastopol, led 19,000 infantry and 38 guns up on to the northern end of Mount Inkerman, and there formed in order of battle. His heavier guns were posted on Shell hill, with two lines of infantry, about 10,000 in all, in front for attack, and the remainder in reserve behind Shell hill. As the maximum width of the tongue of land does not exceed 1400 yards, it may be imagined that the infantry were in very dense formation, a fact which partly accounts for the enormous losses which they sustained in the course of the battle. About seven o'clock the Russians advanced, their guns opening fire over the heads of the infantry: Pennefather very wisely pushed his men forwards into the hollow to support his pickets, occupying the crest in front of his camp with artillery. The English infantry, formed as usual in a thin line, and with the advantage of superior weapons, drove back time after time their far more numerous assailants. Most part of the light division were naturally required to occupy their own tongue of land, but General Buller with two regiments from it was the first to reinforce Pennefather. One of these regiments rendered the important service of routing a separate Russian column which was coming up to the head of the Careenage ravine, and threatening to take the second division in rear. Gradually other English troops arrived on the scene, but the conflict long remained very unequal in point of numbers. The day was not clear, though dense fog clung only to the bottoms: hence the Russians, unable to see how little there was behind the thin red lines which met them so firmly, imagined that they were encountering masses at least equal to their own. The inequalities of the ground rendered it practically impossible to retain regular formation, and this told against the Russians, both as being much more crowded together, and also as lacking the power of independent action which the habit of fighting in line gives. It was reported at the time that the troops in Sebastopol had been prepared for battle not only by appeals to their religious enthusiasm, but also by copious rations of vodki, or, as the current jest ran, were under the influence of stimulants both spiritual and spirituous. If there was any truth in this, it would help to account for the comparative ease with which the first Russian attacks were routed: when the troops of General Pauloff, brought across the Tchernaya and up the eastern slopes, came into action, the fighting was much more obstinate.

As the English grew stronger on the field, General Cathcart with the fourth division made a needless attempt to push forward along the slope overhanging the Tchernaya, in which he was killed, and his men suffered heavily. From the nature of the case, there was nothing to be done except to hold the ground, and let the Russians exhaust themselves, as they gradually did. During the latter part of the battle French troops came up. General Bosquet had naturally been distracted between his primary duty of watching the Russians below him in the Tchernaya valley, and the duty of reinforcing his allies. Soon after the action began he sent a couple of regiments towards Mount Inkerman, but an English general, totally misinformed as to the strength of the Russian attack, stopped them as not being needed. Later Bosquet learned the true state of the case, and also saw that the movements in the Tchernaya valley meant nothing, and he therefore despatched heavy and welcome reinforcements to Mount Inkerman, the foremost of which took an important share in the fighting. It is obvious that if the large Russian force available for the purpose had attacked Bosquet in earnest, he could not have spared a man to support the English, who would have been very hardly pressed. When the Russians finally abandoned the action despairing of success, though they had lost fully 12,000 men, they had still 9000 in reserve, besides their broken front lines, while the English had on the field less than 5000 unwounded men. But for the relief given by the French, who had been fighting beside them for the last hour or two, and had borne the weight of the action to an extent represented by a loss on their part of 900 men, the English would manifestly have been fewer still. They had lost over 2300 men, or about a third of those actually engaged; they were in no position to turn the tables on their opponents, even if prudence had not dictated, as the French undoubtedly thought, the choice so difficult in battle of leaving well alone.

Inkerman was not unappropriately christened "the soldiers' battle." Under the conditions of weather no general could have efficiently directed any elaborate scheme, and fortunately none was needed. The shape of the ground and the relative numbers would have compelled resort to the simple tactics which in fact were adopted, even if the air had been perfectly clear. They were in accordance with the habitual practice of the British soldier to form line, and in that formation sustain the attack of columns, and drive them back in rout when their front has been crushed by the wider fire of the line. Thus regimental officers without superior command, even the men uncommanded when their officers were struck down, were ready to sustain the fight in the best way. "No other European troops," says Sir Edward Hamley, "would at that time have formed in a front of such extent without very substantial forces behind them." With an enormous weight of artillery against them until near the close of the action, with odds of infantry against them which began at three to one, and which must have been heavier still for a while when General Pauloff came on the field, they held their ground with an audacious obstinacy which it would be difficult to parallel in European warfare.

The victory of Inkerman marked a decisive point in the campaign. Foiled in this carefully prepared enterprise, the Russians henceforth made no attempt to challenge battle in the open field. They limited themselves to withstanding as far as possible the advance of the siege operations, which were carried on under considerable difficulties, arising both from the nature of the ground and from the skill displayed by Todleben in making the utmost use of every opportunity. The approach of winter was however destined to enforce, not a cessation of hostilities, but the prosecution of them in a slow and uneventful fashion. Reinforcements could no longer reach the Crimea, except at a cost prohibitory even to the vast resources in men of the Russian empire. And though the allies, having their communications by sea, were not liable to the same exhaustion, yet a disaster befel them soon after Inkerman which reduced them for the time practically to the defensive. On November 14 a furious storm burst on the allied camps, followed by much rain and snow. The tents were blown down, and the whole country converted into a wilderness of mud. At the same time many vessels laden with stores were wrecked. For many weeks after this disaster, the sufferings of the English army were intense. The fundamental cause was want of forage: without it the horses died, and supplies could only be conveyed from Balaclava to the camp by the soldiers, already as hard worked in the trenches as they could bear. Food was never actually wanting, but hardly any fuel was to be procured; the soldiers were never dry, and often ate their food raw. Naturally under such conditions they sickened and died in thousands. The French, having shorter distance between their harbour and camp, and a tolerable transport service already organised, in which the English were deficient, and having also a smaller part of the siege works to maintain, suffered materially less. Things improved slowly, but the siege was protracted indefinitely; in fact it became a contest of endurance between the rival powers, in which the command of the sea ensured ultimate victory to the allies.

Early in the new year the French, whose army had now been largely reinforced, took in hand an additional portion of the siege works, thus making for the first time a fairly equal partition of labour with the English.88 Instead however of taking over the left portion of the English works, which adjoined his own, the French general preferred to undertake the new operations which had long been intended against the east face of the city. Here however the ever active Todleben seized and fortified, just in the nick of time, a knoll some way in advance of the Malakoff redoubt, the main defence of this side of Sebastopol. This new fortification, known as the Mamelon, was so situated as to prevent the English trenches at the south corner of the city being pushed forwards. Consequently the main work of the siege concentrated itself on the new French attack.

Political reasons operated to cause delay, which may be fairly said to be one of the results of divided control. The death of the Czar Nicholas made no difference, for his successor could not but continue the defence. But the opinion of Napoleon III., that the capture of Sebastopol was only feasible if it was completely invested, which meant the detaching of a force to cope with the Russian field army, was persistently pressed. The English government, like the generals on the spot, thought differently; but the emperor must be held responsible for at least part of the waste of time. Conflicts, equivalent in the losses sustained to many pitched battles, occurred again and again. A bombardment of ten days in April, which would have been followed by an assault if the whole siege had been directed by a single enterprising general, cost the Russians over 6000 men. The artillery employed on both sides far exceeded, both in number of guns and in weight of metal, anything that had ever before been seen in a siege. The material progress during forty years of peace was visible in many ways. Steamers brought the contents of the English and French arsenals: the English made a railway from Balaclava up to the camps: a telegraph cable put the Crimea into communication with the western countries, which greatly accelerated the supply of whatever was wanted, though it enabled Napoleon III. to worry the army incessantly with his military ideas. Marshal Pelissier, however, who took Canrobert's place in the spring, was equal to his position, and in concert with Lord Raglan carried on the siege upon the principles already determined. On June 7, after another terrific bombardment, the French stormed the Mamelon, though not without a serious struggle. On the 18th another attack was made which ended in failure. The day had been chosen in the hope that a victory won by English and French in common might supersede the bitterness of Waterloo: but whatever chance of success existed beforehand was wasted by Pelissier's suddenly determining to assault without waiting for a preliminary cannonade. The result was that the French were repulsed from the Malakoff with heavy loss, the English from the Redan, the chief Russian work at the south-eastern corner of the city, with at least equal loss relatively to the numbers engaged, the only success being the capture of a small work in front of the English left.

In spite of this failure, in spite of the death of Lord Raglan which occurred a few days later, the siege went steadily on. The resources of Russia were gradually becoming exhausted. Returns compiled about the date of the Czar's death gave the total cost of the war to Russia at 240,000 men: since that date more than 80,000 had fallen in the Crimea. An ill-conceived attempt to raise the siege by attacking the eastern side of the allies' position from the Tchernaya valley failed disastrously in August. Prince Gortschakoff, now commanding in the Crimea, felt that the end was approaching, and took measures to prepare for the evacuation of Sebastopol, but changed his mind and awaited the final assault. On September 8 the end came: the French trenches had now been brought quite close up to the Malakoff tower, and Pelissier, carefully noting the exact point and moment at which an assault could best be delivered, stormed the great work. A simultaneous attack by the English on the Redan was a necessary part of the plan: the soil in front being solid rock, the assailants had to advance for some distance over open ground, and suffered badly. The capture of the Malakoff was however decisive. During the following night the Russians abandoned Sebastopol, or rather its ruins: for they completed, in blowing up their magazines and forts, the destruction wrought by the bombardments. The siege of Sebastopol takes rank in history not as the most momentous – in that respect it falls far below the Athenian siege of Syracuse – or the most protracted, but as that in which the greatest resources were employed on both sides. Success fell, as might be expected, to the side which represented the greatest advance in material civilisation.

The war nominally lasted for several months longer: the allied armies occupied the Sebastopol peninsula during the winter, and small operations were directed against other points of Russian territory. Substantially however the fall of Sebastopol was decisive; the destruction of the great arsenal and fortress was a heavy blow to Russian power in the Black Sea, and the retention of it had been made so definitely a point of honour by Russia that its capture was a formal symbol of defeat. With the spring of 1856 terms of peace were agreed on, which included the prohibiting any ships of war to sail on the waters of the Black Sea. At one moment it seemed as if France would have acceded to terms which required from Russia practically no sacrifice; but Napoleon III. yielded to remonstrance from England, coupled with the assurance that England was now able, and quite prepared, to carry on the war alone.

The history of England is full of evidence that there is almost no limit to the power which an industrial nation, having command of the sea, can bring gradually to bear upon a warlike enterprise, always assuming that she has the necessary resolution. And no more striking evidence is to be found than from comparing the state of the English army in the Crimea in December 1854 and in December 1855, especially if we bear in mind the expenditure in men and material during the year. Whether anything of the same kind could happen again, whether in another war time would be available for utilising resources which must in a sense be latent till war begins, whether other nations have gained on England in the race of material progress, whether England would again exhibit the national tenacity displayed in the Peninsula and in the Crimea, are questions which every lover of peace will desire to see remaining, as they are at present, matters of speculation.

INTERMEDIATE NOTEINFERIOR RACES

It is more than probable that Wellington's Indian experience stood him in good stead when in the Peninsula he had to face the task of converting the untrained Portuguese into good troops. Discipline is essentially the same, whatever the race or character of the men to be subjected to it. They have to learn prompt obedience to orders, the habit of relying implicitly on their officers for military guidance, familiarity with the idea that duty must be done first and personal safety left to take care of itself, coolness and presence of mind in encountering danger, even unexpectedly. All this the Portuguese had to learn, but in other respects they were like enough to his English troops, already disciplined to his hand. They were Europeans and Christians, that is to say they recognised more or less the same moral code: they were patriotic, striving with foreign assistance to deliver their homes from the foreign conqueror. They had motives for responding to the call made on them which are intelligible, and cogent, to any European. The native troops that Wellington had learned to employ in India were like them in one important point, their being called on to trust and follow a foreign leader; they were like them also, as the event proved, in capacity to profit by training; but in ideas and habits they were totally different.

The British conquest of India is one of the most astonishing, as well as important, things in modern history: and the wonder of it consists mainly in the fact that the English from the first were successful not only in getting their subjects to fight for them, but in transforming them, for military purposes, almost into Englishmen. Men of the most varied types were from time to time brought under the spell. Hindoos with a peculiar and very ancient civilisation of their own, the higher castes regarding themselves as socially and morally the salt of the earth, the lower castes accustomed to permanent and almost degrading inferiority; Mahommedans who had once been conquerors and deemed themselves the born superiors of their former slaves; fierce hill-men very low down in the scale of civilisation; strangest of all, the Sikhs with their national and religious enthusiasm still young, – all alike became the zealous soldiers of their rulers from over the sea. Nor was this all: the sepoys imbibed the military qualities of the men who fought beside them, including the superb tenacity which makes the British soldier always hard to beat.

The English battles in India were nearly all fought against odds, occasionally enormous; and in every case, except in some of the battles during the Mutiny, the bulk of the army consisted of native troops. What is the explanation of this phenomenon, unique in history? One main cause clearly was, to quote Colonel Malleson's89 words: "the trusting and faithful nature, the impressionable character, the passionate appreciation of great qualities, which formed alike the strength and the weakness of those races;" but this description hardly applies to all the multifarious races of India, though doubtless it does to many, and pre-eminently to the people of Bengal, where practically the British dominion was founded. Half of the explanation must be looked for on the other side. Unless the natives of India had been capable of receiving the impression, obviously none could have been made: but the Englishmen who laid the foundation of our Indian empire possessed the requisite qualities for creating it. They made their followers understand that when an Englishman said a thing he meant it, and this in two senses. If he made a statement he believed it to be true; also, and more important, if he gave a promise or declared a purpose, he would fulfil it. Further they taught the natives to understand that when a thing was undertaken, it must be done; difficulties must be vanquished, odds, no matter how great, must be encountered, if such things came into the day's work. The coolness with which they assumed the certainty of success naturally went a great way towards achieving it, and was all-powerful in convincing the natives, ignorant, but by no means stupid, that the English possessed an inexhaustible reserve of strength and resource. Then the English treated their native soldiers well, looked after them more steadily and intelligently than any Indian princes would have cared or known how to do, and taught them to feel that they were invincible. The very strangeness of the Englishman's motives and principles of action made them all the more impressive to men who saw that they were successful. And the fact that the sepoys were assumed by their officers to be capable of great things went far to make them so. Never give in, never mind odds; these were the maxims on which the men of whom Clive is but the most conspicuous, habitually acted; and the results were that these became the accepted rules of conduct for Englishmen in India, and that the native soldiers of whatever race learned to rely implicitly on their officers.

Scores, hundreds of times in the last century and a half, in matters great and small, English officers have acted on these principles as a matter of course; and equally as a matter of course their native soldiers have done under English leadership what they never would have dreamed of doing if left to themselves. Courage, most of the races which furnished sepoys possessed in abundance; and that courage they placed at the disposal of the foreigners in whom they recognised fertility of resource, power of combination, so far above their own level, that they seemed to belong to a superior order of beings. Nor can there be any doubt that the fact of their being so regarded helped to raise the English above their natural level.90 They must live up to their position, both to the traditions of the service and to the idea entertained of them. When they cease to do this, the hold of England on India will be precarious. Whether they are tending to do so may be judged from the history of any and every little war, such for instance as the Kanjut expedition in 1891, the most notable feature of which was the storming of Thol, and which is fully and picturesquely described in Mr. E. F. Knight's book, Where Three Empires Meet. Even more characteristic of the needs, and the achievements, of British rule in India, is a narrative of an incident on a very small scale, done in the way of everyday business, which is given in a tolerably recent newspaper (the Spectator of April 23, 1892) from a letter of the chief actor.