The Banner of Battle

by Alan Palmer

  Significantly the order dismissing Menshikov was signed, not by Nicholas I, but by his eldest son, Grand Duke Alexander, writing in his father’s name; ‘the health of the sovereign is not good,’ he explained to the disgraced Commander-in-Chief. On the previous Saturday the Tsar had attended the wedding of a leading court functionary’s daughter; he appeared well, although his face looked weary. ‘Influenza...has taken hold here. I have been near to it for a few days,’ he admitted in a letter to his sister, Anna, that night. He was not, however, worried about his health, for he added that, if danger continued to threaten his empire, he would shortly be joining the army in the field.[405] Meanwhile, despite bitterly cold weather, he did not cancel his engagements. Next morning he inspected troops at the cavalry school, where an icy wind blew straight off the frozen Neva into the city. Two days later he thought that, like so many members of St Petersburg society at that time of year, he was suffering from a feverish cold. Even when he took to his bed on Tuesday there was no great concern at court. Not until the small hours of Friday morning (18 February/ 2 March) did his physician realize that the Tsar’s lungs were badly congested. Nicholas died later that day, technically from pneumonia. According to his widow, he insisted that ‘the heroic defenders of Sebastopol’ should be assured that he would continue to pray for them in the next world.

  Rumour immediately created a mystery from the suddenness of the Tsar’s death, as so often in Russia’s history. He died, it was said, from a heart broken by the failure of his troops to inflict a decisive defeat on the enemy. More sensational stories recounted how he had committed suicide: he had shot himself, said some; he had swallowed poison, said others. But almost certainly Nicholas I died a natural death. That generation of Romanovs had never been robust. Although only fifty-eight, Nicholas lived longer than his three brothers and five of his six sisters; and he had always found difficulty in relaxing from the cares of government. His last private letters reflect his intense irritation with Menshikov and his renewed anger with Francis Joseph for Austria’s ingratitude in concluding an alliance with Britain and France. But they show, too, that he had every intention of continuing to prosecute the war vigorously, unless his enemies were about to offer favourable terms. Of this he had little hope.[406]

  Russia’s new sovereign, Tsar Alexander II, was thirty-six when he came to the throne. By temperament he was not so autocratic as his father and in July 1853 he had strongly opposed the decision to march into the Danubian Principalities; but he was proud of the army which had schooled him, and he was determined not to begin his reign by accepting a shameful peace. Foreign observers who thought the Grand Duke’s accession would bring a speedy end to the war were soon put in their place. On the day following Nicholas’s death Alexander II gave the assembled diplomatic corps a clear indication of the policy he advocated for the conference about to open in Vienna, seeking a peace based on last August’s ‘Four Points’. Alexander told the diplomats that, like his father, he wished for an end to the conflict; but he emphasized that if the conference did not produce an honourable settlement, ‘I, and my faithful Russia, will go on waging war’ since ‘I would rather perish than surrender.’[407]

  The immediate fate of Russia was, largely by chance, in the hands of two first cousins that month: General Prince Michael Gorchakov travelled from Kishinev to Crimean Army headquarters on the Belbec; and Prince Alexander Gorchakov, having emerged in July 1854 from thirty years of small-power diplomacy to become ambassador in Vienna, was responsible for rejecting any humiliating terms which Russia’s enemies might put down on the conference table. The principal British spokesman, Lord John Russell, reached Vienna at the end of the first week in March, travelling by way of Paris and Berlin. Preliminary conversations with the Conference’s president, Count Buol, went smoothly; and by 10 March Lord John was almost ready to concede that ‘an equilibrium of forces in the Black Sea’ might afford ‘enough security’ for the Powers. ‘I doubt, however, whether people in England would be satisfied, they have tasted blood, and must be gorged with the garrison of Sebastopol before they are ready for peace,’ noted the Foreign Secretary’s nephew, Thomas Lister, who was attached to the Russell mission.[408]

  When formal sessions began, on 15 March, Gorchakov made little difficulty over defining what was meant by the first two of the Four Points, and Lister was able to write in his journal: ‘The first conference on the 15th was very satisfactory.’ But within a week there was trouble over Point Three, with its stipulation that the movement of warships in and out of the Black Sea should reflect the European Balance of Power. Gorchakov at once insisted that Russia would not permit any naval restraints in the Black Sea. ‘Of course, on this rock the Conference must split,’ Lister commented. ‘In England I hear that everyone says that the destruction of Sebastopol must he a condition of peace. And Russia won’t even tolerate a limitation of her warships.’ But Lord John was not so impetuous as his young attache. Rather than allow the Conference to break up, he proposed that the Russians should themselves define how a balance of power might be achieved in the Black Sea. So serious a problem required reference back to St Petersburg; and the Conference went into recession until mid-April.[409]

  Neither Palmerston nor Clarendon held high hopes of the Vienna Conference. They saw it as a useful talking-shop which, if the Russians rejected Buol’s proposals, would persuade Francis Joseph to impose armed mediation on Alexander II, just as the failure of the Prague Conference in 1813 had persuaded Francis I to impose armed mediation on the great Napoleon. The Vienna talks had a secondary importance, too, both for the British statesmen and for the leading advisers of the Emperor in Paris: so long as there was a prospect of a sudden armistice in the East, followed by the drawing up of a comprehensive peace settlement for Europe in general, Napoleon III needed to be at the centre of affairs. lithe talks broke down, it would be harder to prevent Napoleon III from carrying out an idea he had cherished since the previous July — to go to the Crimea himself, and take command of the armies in front of Sebastopol.[410]

  Marshal Valliant (the French Minister of War), the Empress Eugénie and other members of the imperial family, Napoleon’s Foreign Minister, and several of his oldest supporters all tried to persuade him that an Emperor’s place was in Paris, not in the Crimea. Those with longest memories gave the gravest advice. Marshal Boniface de Castellane, who had been at his sovereign’s side when Moscow was burning, bluntly told Napoleon III that a military reverse could prove disastrous if the Emperor were there in person; and another veteran of 1812-13, the Comte de Flahault — Talleyrand’s natural son — sought out the British ambassador and asked if Her Majesty’s Government could not persuade Napoleon III to stay away from the Crimea.[411]

  From the War Office, Lord Panmure wrote to Raglan on 2 March saying that he believed Napoleon would ‘positively go to the Crimea’ and that Raglan would find him ‘a more sincerely disposed co-operator than...his generals’. But ‘Mars’ Panmure was alone among Palmerston’s cabinet ministers in favouring the idea; it was felt that public opinion at home was not ready for a campaign in which British troops and seamen would be serving as auxiliaries to a Bonaparte Emperor. Clarendon hurried across to Boulogne on 3 March, saw Napoleon III, and persuaded him that the time was not ripe for new imperial management in the Crimea. If the war was not ended by the Vienna talks it would be better, Clarendon argued, to wait for ‘le dernier coup de main’, and then ride into Sebastopol in triumph. Meanwhile perhaps the Emperor and Empress of the French would like to exchange state visits with the British sovereign and her consort? If Napoleon and Eugénie came to Windsor in April, they could entertain Victoria and Albert at Saint-Cloud in August. Such a programme would, of course, make it difficult for the Emperor to fit in a campaign against the Russians. By 16 April, when the French imperial visitors stepped down from their train at the Bricklayers’ Arms (careful preparations being taken to avoid roads, stations or bridges which commemorated Waterloo), Napoleon was no longer inclined to go ou
t to the Crimea. But he was in no hurry to tell his hosts that he had changed his mind. The possibility of French imperial leadership remained a convenient weapon to prod the British into closer collaboration and his generals in the field into positive action.[412]

  *

  By now Napoleon III had more than 80,000 troops in the Crimea and there were new faces under the gold-braided képis at French headquarters. Canrobert remained in command, although there was a feeling in Paris that he lacked the iron will of a victorious campaigner; but in the second week of February General Pélissier had arrived at Kamiesh from Oran, to take charge of what was now called the 1st Army Corps, with the 2nd Corps entrusted to Bosquet. At the same time Napoleon III sent a personal representative to Headquarters, General Adolphe Niel, who had distinguished himself at Bomarsund in the previous summer. These appointments increased the distrust at headquarters, where there was already much ambitious jockeying for position — or, as some maintained, for the marshals’ batons which the Emperor would, no doubt, distribute once the tricolour was flying in Sebastopol. Pélissier was fifteen years older than Canrobert, who regarded him as a ruthless soldier, inclined to make personal enemies very easily.[413] Niel, little known a year before, was mistrusted on three counts: he was an engineer; he had never commanded troops in action before the attack on Bomarsund, although he had been under fire in North Africa; and he was, in a sense, the Emperor’s personal spy, entitled to communicate directly and confidentially with Napoleon. In reality, Niel was a remarkably able organizer and administrator in the tradition of Carnot; and he brought a fresh eye to the problems of the Crimea. But this, too, did not make him popular at headquarters.

  Although Raglan and Sir George Brown stayed on, there were also changes in the British command. The Admiralty had always intended that Sir Edmund Lyons should succeed Sir James Dundas at the end of December 1854; and this transference of authority was duly carried out. Lord Rokeby arrived in January to take the place of the Duke of Cambridge at the head of the ist Division, while in the 2nd Division Sir George De Lacy Evans had been succeeded, first by General Pennefather and, later, by General Markham. After Lucan’s recall to London, the Cavalry were entrusted to Sir James Scarlett, who had commanded the Heavy Brigade on 23 October. Panmure would have liked other changes, and his earliest despatches to Lord Raglan were so hostile that a more temperamental field marshal would instantly have asked to be relieved of his command. But Raglan, although distressed that the politicians were taking their cue from what he regarded as ill-informed newspaper reports, possessed an almost inhuman calm: patiently he rebutted each complaint from Panmure, staunchly defending what Palmerston privately called ‘that knot of incapables’ who were his closest advisers. Raglan insisted, in particular, that Burgoyne should remain at headquarters, to give advice on the preparations for the coming spring’s siege operations. But Panmure decided that he, too, needed the benefit of Burgoyne’s experience; and on 20 March the old war horse, by now in his seventy-fourth year, left Balaclava for home. Four weeks later he was at Windsor giving his views on grand strategy to a war council in which Napoleon III, Prince Albert, Palmerston, Panmure, Clarendon, and Marshal Vaillant also participated.[414]

  Panmure succeeded in imposing a new chief-of-staff on Lord Raglan. Lieutenant-General Sir James Simpson, a lowland Scot who served as a Guards subaltern under Wellington in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, reached Balaclava a few days before Burgoyne sailed for home. At first he was treated with suspicion: if Niel was Napoleon’s spy, then no doubt Simpson had come as Palmerston’s spy. But Simpson, a good professional, was not politically receptive. Within a month of his arrival he felt able to report to Lord Panmure that he considered ‘Lord Raglan the most abused man I ever heard of’, served by ‘a very good set of fellows at Headquarters’, and with ‘no staffofficer objectionable in my opinion’.[415] Panmure evidently found this message reassuring, for he began to treat Raglan more generously, perhaps because by now the War Office was in closer contact with headquarters in the field, for by the third week in April a submarine electric cable at last linked Balaclava with Varna and thence by way of Bucharest and Vienna with Europe’s rapidly spreading telegraph system.

  Theoretically, from the spring of 1855 onwards, a message put into cipher at Balaclava could reach London and be decoded at the Foreign Office and brought to the attention of the War Secretary within twelve hours. There were, of course, the customary technological teething troubles, one of which was caused by typically Crimean mismanagement: although an electric cable had reached the Crimea, standard cipher books had not. Shortly after the installation of the cable, Panmure informed Raglan: ‘Your telegraph message which arrived this morning is utterly unintelligible at the Foreign Office. From its length we deem it to be of importance, but we must wait in patience for a solution of it from yourself...Ask General Rose to help you as he is fully acquainted with the Book cipher of the Foreign Office’.[416] A cipher book, Panmure assured Raglan, was on its way, by sea; and by early May the telegraph link was working effectively.

  *

  Yet, despite the efforts of London and Paris to inject a vigorous fighting spirit at headquarters, the allied commanders still seemed reluctant to tighten the grip around Sebastopol or to unleash a new bombardment of the city. At a series of war councils, the French argued that if the guns opened up on Sebastopol, it would provoke Gorchakov into a major attack; and neither Canrobert nor Niel thought that the allies as yet possessed the numerical strength to contain a determined Russian thrust. Sardinia-Piedmont had indeed declared war on Russia at the end of January, but the Italian expeditionary force would not arrive until mid-May. Meanwhile Canrobert was reluctant to risk a general engagement, unless the bulk of the Turkish troops which had fought so well at Eupatoria in February could be shipped to Balaclava. Raglan did not agree with his ally: he was unenthusiastic over the merits of Turkish support, but he was also deeply conscious that by now the British were the junior partners. There were eight full-strength French divisions in the Crimea, with more troops promised by the early summer; and Raglan had only six divisions, with their numbers depleted by sickness. Both Raglan and Simpson realized that it would be difficult for the British to impose their views on Canrobert and his staff, however good their personal relationship might be.[417]

  Events at Easter emphasized the difficulties. Now that the Balaclava Railway could keep ammunition supplied to the batteries on the Heights, Raglan proposed that Sebastopol should be bombarded for the first time that year: the guns would open up at dawn on 6 April, an allied assault following once the outer defences were reduced to rubble. Canrobert appeared to agree, but on 4 April he insisted on postponing the bombardment: the date chosen by the British Field Marshal was Good Friday, which in 1855 was observed on the same date by both the Latin and Orthodox Churches. On the previous Orthodox Good Friday (7 April, 1854, a week ahead of the Latin observance) there had been a naval bombardment of Odessa, and Tsar Nicholas subsequently denounced the barbarity of Christian nations whose missiles fell on good churchgoers at such a time. Raglan accepted the postponement, although his staff believed that Canrobert’s scruples were linked with the imminent arrival of powerful Turkish reinforcements. But the people of Sebastopol were at least allowed to celebrate Easter in deceptive peace. There was even a military band concert on the Sunday evening in the Mitchmanski Boulevard, while a few miles away Russia’s enemies were welcoming the arrival of Omar Pasha, with a contingent of 13,000 Turks from Eupatoria.[418]

  Next morning, at a quarter past five, nearly 400 French and 123 British field guns and mortars began their bombardment of the outer forts; and for six and a half hours the boom of cannon and whistle of shells echoed along the ravines around the city. In theory the Russians could reply with 900 well-sited guns but, uncertain of what would follow this thunderous bombardment, they dared not waste ammunition and their response was therefore muted. Inexplicably the allied guns fell silent well before noon on that first Monday; and no attack f
ollowed. For ten days the bombardment continued, intermittently. Each night Totleben was able to bring up labourers to repair the most dangerous gaps in the defences. The Russians assumed that the allies would send in their infantry after the first days of bombardment, as indeed Raglan had wished. But Canrobert argued that any attack against so formidable a position would lead to a heavy toll in lives needlessly cast away; he thought that the artillery should continue to pulverize Totleben’s improvised fortifications, until a shattered city silently admitted the enemy at its gates.[419]

  Wars of attrition rarely bite so deeply or decisively as their advocates expect. During the bombardment the Russians lost more men than at the battle of the Alma, most of the casualties being infantrymen stationed in the front line to await the assault that never came. Yet materially the 200 tons of ammunition fired each day against Sebastopol inflicted relatively little lasting damage. Only the southernmost fort, the Flagstaff Bastion, was put out of action. Even so, Tolstoy, who was stationed there for nine of the ten days, wrote in a letter to his aunt that ‘the bombardment wasn’t as terrible as most people describe it’. When it was over he found accommodation in an apartment on the boulevard, where there was music every afternoon and he could bathe in the sea.[420]