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THE STORY OF THE CAMPAIGN.-PART 11.

WRITTEN IN A TENT IN THE CRIMEA.

[At the last moment we received the following continuation of "The Story of the Campaign" from our friend in the Crimea, accompanied by a private letter, from which we give an extract :-" Camp before Sebastopol, 7th Dec.-Several days that I have set apart for writing up have been spent in the saddle. Could I have managed it, you should have had the account of the battle of the 5th; but the divisions of the army are scattered at such a distance from me-several miles-that I have been unable to collect the information necessary for accuracy in describing the events of the day, and I was too much occupied myself to see all that passed, being in the thick of it, as you will believe when I tell you that my horse, receiving three wounds, was killed by a cannon-shot, which passed through him behind my leg; and a poor sergeant, in the act of extricating me, had his thigh carried away by another. It was a gloomy, but a glorious business. The cannonade, far more tremendous than at Alma, lasted, almost without intermission, for more than nine hours."]

CHAP. IX. THE POSITION BEFORE SEBASTOPOL.

MOST of the inhabitants of the valley had left the doors of their houses locked, as if they intended to return shortly, and expected to find things as they had left them. But, notwithstanding a general order (called forth by a great slaughter of turkeys, geese, and hens. with rifles and revolvers) that private property was to be respected, the houses in Kadukoi, the village at the entrance of the valley, were pillaged, and the doors, windowsashes, and rafters for the most part taken away for firewood. Some of the chiefs of the army took up their quarters in Balaklava; a post-office was established, and ships laden with siege materials were brought into the harbour and ranged along the road in front of the houses, which the great depth of water close to the shore rendered almost as accessible and convenient as a wharf. Private speculators set up stores for the sale of grocery and clothing; cargoes of the same articles were brought from Constantinople in the hired transports; and in most instances advantage was taken of the necessities of the troops to demand shamefully exorbitant prices.

Meantime the third, fourth, and light divisions were moved up to the Sebastopol, and bivouacked

cannon-range of the forhe shot, pitched into their

positions, forced them to move, on different occasions, a little to the rear; but, after a time, this ineffectual annoyance was for the most part discontinued, and at the beginning of October the rest of the allied army was moved up to the position it was intended to occupy, leaving the cavalry, a troop of horse-artillery, the 93d Regiment, and some marines and seamen, with guns from the fleet, to protect Balaklava.

For eight days the time was spent in landing and bringing up the materials and armament for the batteries of attack; and these being collected in sufficient numbers, the trenches were opened. This process was rendered very difficult and laborious by the soil, which was extremely rocky, and the progress made in it necessarily slow. As the whole interest of the campaign was now focussed in this particular portion of the Crimea, it will be well to describe minutely the position which was soon to become the theatre of a series of conflicts. These would be but imperfectly understood without a fuller idea than a map can give of the whole of the ground occupied by the allied army, and by the enemy.

Looking at a map of the Crimea, the reader will see that a valley extends from the inner end of the har

bour of Sebastopol, where the Tchernaya runs into it, to that of Balaklava. From the former harbour to the ruins of Inkermann the valley is from twelve to fifteen hundred yards wide; then the heights on either side separate till, at the point where the road to Mackenzie's Farm crosses the Tchernaya, they are nearly four miles asunder. Here a rounded cluster of gentle eminences divides the valley into two defiles: these, sweeping round from south-east to south-west, unite in one plain, which, traversed by small hills, spreads to the gorge of the valley of Balaklava, and up to the heights right and left. Thus this valley, extending from one harbour to the other, forms a wide neck to a small peninsula, of which Cape Kherson is the extremity, and on which the allied troops took their position. This peninsula, having steep cliffs at the sea-shore, consists of a high undulating plain, or range of plains, cleft by deep gullies that descend gradually to the basin in which lies Sebastopol. From a point opposite the ruins of Inkermann, to that where the road from Sebastopol descends to Balaklava, the range of heights bound ing the valley is unbroken, except at a point easily defensible, where the Woronzoff road crosses it. But to the left of the point opposite the ruins of Inkermann the ground south of the Tchernaya slopes upward so gradually as to oppose no serious obstacle to the advance of troops to the heights, while the English division posted there was not on the ridge looking into the valley, but on another ridge in rear of it. Thus the space between the right of the allied batteries of attack and the heights opposite Inkermann was, while unintrenched, the weak point of the position. The ground will be more minutely described in an account of the two actions of which it was the scene.

The harbour of Balaklava lies, as has been said, in a cleft between high and steep mountains. Beyond the inner extremity of the harbour this cleft continues itself for about half a mile in the small cultivated valley described in the last chapter.* A row of low isolated hills extends

across the entrance of the valley and up the heights on each side, to the plains of the peninsula on the one hand, and to the cliffs above the sea on the other, thus forming a natural line of defensive posts. At about 3000 yards in front of these, on the plain, sweeping, as before described, from the valley of the Tchernaya, is another range of isolated hills, the left of which is within cannon-shot of the heights held by the Allies, and the right one near the village of Kamara, which lies on the mountains forming the southern boundary of the plain. This last range of hills, crowned with small intrenched works armed with artillery, and garrisoned by Turks, formed the outposts of the Allies in front of Balaklava. Thus, the position extended from the seashore in front of Sebastopol round the heights of the peninsula to the Woronzoff road, and thence across to the last hill on the plain near Kamara; while an inner line of posts extended across the entrance of Balaklava valley, up to the heights of the peninsula on the left and round to the seacliffs on the right, enclosing valley, town, and harbour.

Of the gullies already mentioned as chaunelling the plains, the principal one divides the peninsula nearly in half. Resembling at first a wide ditch between grassy slopes, it gradually becomes a deep winding ravine with steep rocky sides like the dry bed of a wide river, and descends to the basin of the inner harbour. The left of the English lines in front of Sebastopol rested on one margin of this ravine, the right of the French lines on the other. The greater part of the French troops were encamped behind their lines on the site of the ancient Khersonesus, leaving a large space by the sea unoccupied. Their supplies were landed at Kamieth Bay, one of the deep narrow recesses of Cape Kherson, from whence to Sebastopol the coast is indented by many inlets. There a fleet of transports assembled, so numerous that their masts looked like a forest; and a wharf afforded the necessary convenience for landing the multitude of stores which crowded the beach

* See our last Number, p. 637.

VOL. LXXVII.-NO, CCCCLXXI.

H

and the environs of a small city of tents.

Half-way between Cape Kherson and Balaklava the bold coast line turns back at a sharp angle, close to the site of an ancient temple of Diana, now occupied by the monastery of St George. It stands on the edge of a high sloping cliff, and consists of a long low range of white buildings, with pillared porticoes and green roofs and domes. The cliff it stands on is of yellow clayey stone-the next headland southward, abutting far beyond it, is of extreme richness of coloura deep pearly grey, dashed with dark red, of a tone which, even on a gloomy day, imparts to the mass a kind of sunset radiance and glow. A sergeant's guard of Zouaves is stationed in one of the buildings, and many Russian families continue to inhabit the place. Passing through the edifice by a steep flight of steps, a gallery is reached extending along the upper face of the cliff. Terraces connected by a winding path jut out below, and near its base the rock is clothed with a shrubbery of small firs. There was a sound of chanting as we passed along the balcony: the Zouave who accompanied us opened a door, and motioned us in without ceremony. The place was a very small low chapel, its walls hung with sacred pictures executed with elaborate vileness. A priest in a red garment was reading prayers to some others who sung the responses. He was bareheaded, but the rest, clad in black gowns, wore tall cylindrical caps, from which black veils descended behind. There was something strange in coming thus suddenly from a great camp into the presence of this secluded

brotherhood, whose devotions, usually accompanied only by the dashing of the waves below, were now broken by the less seemly sound of the distant bombardment.

The whole of these plains are probably much the same in aspect now as in the days when Diana's worshippers crossed them on the way to her temple. A short dry turf, scarcely clothing the grey rock, which everywhere pushes its fragments through, is, except the patches of coppice, the only verdure. No fields nor gardens tell of an attempt to make the soil productive, but here and there vines cling to the side of a slope where the earth is deepest, and are enclosed by walls of loose stone. A few trees, soon cut down for firewood, surrounded the farm-houses, and others grew at intervals down the course of the larger ravines. Lit by a warm sun, bounded by a blue sea, and enlivened by the view of the white-walled city, the aspect of the plains in October was fresh and almost cheerful, while, looking inland, the tumbled masses of hills always lent grandeur to the landscape. But when a north wind whistled piercingly across the heights

when the dense fogs of November hung their grey drapery along the horizon, and rested in cold white masses on the hills-when the green turf grew mire, and the leafy coppice a texture of wet brown twigs and roots, and yellow turbid pools settled along the course of the ravines, it was no wonder that the tents of the Arab, who is at least dry and warm in his desert, seemed preferable to the camp before Sebastopol, and the hardiest soldiers turned now and then a longing thought to the firesides of England.

CHAP. X.-COMMENCEMENT OF THE SIEGE.

The ravines already mentioned, five in number, beginning in the middle of the plains of the peninsula, descend in courses, more or less winding, to the basin of the harbour. On the slopes of the plain, between these ravines, the English batteries were traced. In front of them, in the angle made by the outer and inner harbours, and on the right of the latter, stand some large public buildings belonging to the dockyard, and a large barrack. These,

in the absence of permanent defensive works, were covered by strong and solid earthen batteries on commanding points, thrown up simultaneously with the progress of our own trenches. In front of the right of our attack was a round tower, surrounded by an intrenchment armed on all sides with heavy guns. Next was a very large battery, composed of two faces meeting in a salient angle; this was known during the siege as the Redan. Near

the inner barbour was another, known as the Barrack Battery, capable of firing on our left batteries or on the French. These were all that were immediately opposed to us, besides the broadsides of a line-of-battle ship in the inner harbour, and the long guns of some steamers.

Between the English camps and the fortress the ground sloped upward to a ridge, and then downward towards the Russian batteries. It is evident that the farther down these slopes our trenches were placed, the more they were commanded by the enemy, and the higher must be the parapets to cover us from their fire. In such very stony and deficient soil it would have been almost impossible to obtain the requisite amount of earth very low down on the slopes, and our first batteries were placed on some spots where the ground rose gently upward for a space on the face of the descent.

From the left of the great ravine to the Quarantine Harbour the ground is comparatively flat and unbroken, and on the right portion of this space the French trenches were opened at much shorter range than those of the English. In the angle of the outer and inner harbours, opposite the French attack, stands the town of Sebastopol, protected partly by parapets of masonry, partly by earthen batteries.

The distinctive features of the campaign have been noticed in a preceding chapter; the siege now commenced has also its peculiarities.

In ordinary sieges, the place having been completely invested so as to confine the garrison to its own resources, the trenches are opened at about six hundred yards, enclosing one or more salient points of the fortifications. Thus the works of the assailants being on the arc of the outer of two concentric circles described from a point within the fortress, while the defences are on the arc of the inner one, six hundred yards nearer the centre, it follows that the besiegers always have space for a far greater number of guns than are mounted on the works to oppose them. When the superior fire from the batteries in the trenches has overpowered that of the place, the works are pushed forward; other batteries are established close enough to breach the walls; and the breach becoming

practicable, the assault is made, and the garrison being overpowered by superior numbers, the place is taken.

In the present instance, the assailing force being insufficient to enclose the whole extent of front, the southern side of the harbour only was invested, leaving the formidable forts on the north unassailed, and the road from the interior free for supplies of all kinds. The front attacked being about three miles in extent, the space at the disposal of the garrison enabled them to reply with at least as many guns as the besiegers could bring to attack them. But had the Russian batteries been totally silenced, and the south side taken by assault, the outer harbour, acting as a huge wet ditch, presented a fresh obstacle, backed by a fresh line of batteries, and rendered a new series of operations necessary. If the harbour had remained open, the fleet might have come in to support an assault of the land forces; but, on entering Sebastopol after the defeat at the Alma, Menschikoff had caused eight large ships to be sunk across the entrance. Henceforward, so long as this obstacle existed, the operation of the fleets was limited to making a diversion by attacking the forts at the entrance'; and this was the part it took in the combined attack.

Until the whole of the allied batteries were ready to open together, not a gun replied to the fire which the Russians did not cease to direct, first upon our camps, and afterwards on our trenches. Hidden as the allied camps were behind the crest of a hill, there must have been something of mystery and awe for the garrison in this strange silence, almost the only token of the presence of an enemy being the increasing height of the parapets of the trenches.

On the 17th at daylight, pursuant to the general orders of the night before, the silence was broken by such a peal of artillery as has scarcely ever before, in the most famous battles or sieges, shaken the earth around the combatants. A hundred and twenty-six pieces, many of them of the largest calibre, opened at once upon the Russian defences, and were answered by a still larger number, of equal range and power. The din was incessant, and the smoke in the batteries so dense

that after a few rounds the gunners laid their pieces rather by the line on the platforms than by a view of the object aimed at. The first visible effect of our fire was on the Round Tower, the pieces mounted on which were soon dismounted, and its surface deeply scarred by the shot of the heavy 68-pounder guns in the naval battery on the right, practising at a range of more than 2000 yards. Several explosions took place this day -the first in a French battery, where a magazine blew up at half-past eight in the morning, killing and wounding fifty men and disabling the battery; another less serious one occurred after wards in the French lines. In the afternoon the Russian magazine in the Redan was fired by a shell from the English batteries, and silenced a great number of its guns; and shortly afterwards a number of cases filled with powder blew up in rear of the English trenches, doing but little damage. The Lancaster guns (a new invention now tried for the first time in war), of which there were several in our batteries, sent forth their missiles with a rushing noise exactly like that of a railway train, and were distinguishable at each discharge amid the din of the cannonade.

At one o'clock the French and English fleets, whose attack had been anxiously expected, stood in, and engaged the forts at the mouth of the harbour, the former on the south, the latter on the north side; and the deep volleying thunder of their broadsides, continuing without an instant's pause, gave a new character to the cannonade, while a dense canopy of smoke, hanging heavily above the scene, hid the sea, the harbour, and the town, from the spectators on the heights in front of the English camps. The Agamemnon and the Sanspareil maintained on this occasion a position much nearer to the forts than the rest of the fleet, which anchored, for the most part, at upwards of 2000 yards.

When the fire ceased at nightfall, and the gains and losses were counted up, the result was by no means commensurate with the expectations previously afloat in the allied army. High authority had been quoted for the opinion that we should silence the Russian batteries in a few hours.

The less sanguine had prescribed
three days as the limits of the contest
Our progress hitherto had fallen
short even of the latter estimate.
On the Russian side many guns had
been disabled, the works had been
much damaged, and Fort Constantine
was said to be seriously shaken by
the fire of the two line-of-battle ships;
but on ours, the French attack had
totally ceased since the explosions of
the morning. The Russian works,
being of earth like our own, were re-
paired with equal facility, and the
disabled guns were replaced by fresh
ones from the arsenal. It was while
watching the renewed vigour of the
enemy's fire, and seeing our own
wounded borne by from the trenches,
that we received on the 18th the mail
bringing the absurd and mischievous
announcement of the fall of Sebas-
topol, and read the details of our own
imaginary victory-an announcement
happily characterised afterwards in a
newspaper article as "discounting"
the glory of the conquest.
It was
robbing success of its best rewards
thus to give us our honours before
they were due.

The interest excited by a contest of artillery, without decided advantage on either side, soon languishes; and in a few days the thunder of the bombardment was almost unheeded. But the troops in the trenches and batteries were hardly worked, and exposed by day incessantly to a tremendous fire. The space in the magazines in our batteries was at first insufficient to hold ammunition for the day's consumption, and to take in fresh supplies formed one of the most trying duties which artillerymen can be called on to perforin. Waggons filled with powder, drawn by horses of the field-batteries, were driven down the face of the hill for upwards of half a mile, in full view, and quite within range of the enemy's guns. A shell bursting in the waggons would have blown horses and men into the air; and to the risk of this were added the usual chances of being struck by shot or splinters; yet neither the officers (often mere boys) nor the drivers ever showed the slightest hesitation in proceeding on their perilous errand. Several horses were killed by cannon-shot, and on

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