Victors and Lords

by V. A. Stuart

  Contact was made with the fleet at the river mouth and the sick were transferred to the ships. From the fleet came also the news that the main Russian army from Sebastopol, under the command of Prince Menschikoff, was established on the Heights above the Alma, prepared to dispute the invaders’ march south. A major battle was now, it seemed, inevitable and it remained only to decide upon a plan of action. Lord Raglan, in the deserted posthouse he had taken over as his headquarters, conferred with some of his senior generals and, toward evening, received a visit from Marshal St Arnaud. The French commander-in-chief had drawn up a plan for the coming battle, which he urged Lord Raglan to accept.

  Details of the plan were not made known, even to the British divisional commanders but they, as well as the brigade commanders, were soon in possession of as much information concerning the Russian troop depositions as the observers on board the Allied warships were able to supply. Sir Colin Campbell’s subordinate command precluded his presence at Lord Raglan’s council of war but he kept his small staff busy gathering reports from French as well as British sources until, working far into the night, he had finally satisfied himself that he had learnt all he could of the situation.

  Alex, working under his direction, compiled a sketch map, which showed clearly that the Allies’ task was likely to be a formidable one, if they were to dislodge Prince Menschikoff from the line he had elected to defend—and whose defense he had apparently been preparing since news of the landing at Calamita Bay had reached him. Based on naval observations, it appeared that the Russian commander-in-chief had positioned his army along a line of hills which, starting as a sheer cliff at the mouth of the Alma, ran precipitously to a high point known, from an unfinished telegraph station at its summit, as Telegraph Hill. From here, the Heights curved into a ravine-indented natural amphitheatre, about a mile across and half a mile in depth, with the post-road from Eupatoria to Sebastopol running through it.

  On the other side stood Kourgane Hill, marked on the map as being four hundred and fifty feet high and rising from the river in a series of steep plateau, which afforded excellent concealment for heavy gun batteries. Sir Colin Campbell, studying the map with furrowed brows, expressed no opinion as to grand strategy to his staff. As a mere brigadier-general this was not his concern and, with the good sense which characterized him, he confined himself to his own immediate responsibilities, only issuing such orders as he deemed necessary for the direction of his brigade. But it was evident, even to the weary Alex, that he was thinking deeply. He said, before retiring for the few hours that remained of the night, “If I were Prince Menschikoff, I should station no troops at all on these cliffs within a mile or so of the shore, where they would be at the mercy of our naval guns. The cliffs themselves may be depended upon to keep his line inviolable and a few trenches, dug above the coast road, well-manned, could hold them . . . with covering fire from the artillery on the Heights. To my mind, Kourgane Hill is the key to the whole position, for it is there that he will almost certainly concentrate his artillery where it will command, from above, the low ground south of the river, which we must cross in order to commence our attack. But I wonder . . .”

  He sighed and was silent, as if reluctant to express his thoughts and fears aloud, even to the members of his own staff.

  The next morning, without bugle or trumpet call, the British army was roused to a hot, sultry day. As the divisions were wheeled into line and the ammunition train was brought up, details of Marshal St Arnaud’s plan were rumored and talked about.

  This was, it seemed, for the French to cross the river at the Almatamak and attack from the right, striking the Russians on their left flank and rolling it up toward the centre. While this operation was in progress, the British were to attack the centre and the right flank—mounting their attack from the village of Bourliouk, where they would cross the river, with Kourgane Hill as their objective—and catch the Russians in a pincer movement.

  General Bosquet’s division of Zouaves and the Turks were to begin the battle by attacking the sparsely held cliffs close to the shore, supported—as Sir Colin Campbell had suggested—by the guns of the fleet. When Bosquet had attained his objectives, the French, in line with the British, would cross the Alma . . . .

  Marshal St Arnaud paid a visit to the British lines, where he received an ovation which obviously moved him very deeply. Alex, attending an unusually grim and uncommunicative Sir Colin Campbell, witnessed the marshal’s departure and, soon after ten o’ clock, the order to advance was given. The British army marched in square formation, the Light Division leading, with the 1st in support on the left and the 2nd on the right, in line with the French division commanded by Prince Jerome Napoleon. It was very hot and frequent halts had to be made, but by noon the Heights of the Alma came into sight and, two miles ahead, down a gentle slope, the river ran between lines of poplar trees to the sea. Another halt was called, in a sunny cornfield where the troops ate their midday meal and Lord Raglan rode forward with his headquarters, to reconnoiter the enemy position.

  From below, this looked impregnable. On the opposite side of the river rose a double line of heights. The first were steep green hillocks, upon which masses of Russian infantry could be seen, the sunlight glinting on their bayonets. Behind and above rose a series of rocky plateau on which gun batteries had been placed, to command the whole of the flat, low-lying ground on the south bank of the Alma. Highest of all, steeper and more rugged, the crest of the hills held reserves of infantry and still more gun emplacements, whilst a dark mass of cavalry could just be discerned, over to the left, where they waited in support of the infantry, on the lower slopes.

  The advance proceeded until, at about two o’ clock, the first Russian guns opened fire. The order was given to deploy into line and at this point, it was found that the British and French armies had drawn too close to each other. The 2nd Division of the British army, commanded by Sir George de Lacy Evans, was jostled by Prince Jerome Napoleon’s and, in turn, crowded into Sir George Brown’s Light Division on its left. Sir George ordered his men to take ground to the left in fours but the Russian fire had now become heavy and the order was not complied with in sufficient depth to relieve the congestion. The men of the two leading British divisions were left without room in which to maneuver and the flank regiments were soon inextricably muddled and marching on each other’s heels.

  Sir Colin Campbell, watching the imperfect deployment of the Light Division with some dismay, exclaimed to his brigade major, in Alex’s hearing, “By God, those regiments are not moving like English soldiers!”

  But when the 1st Division’s turn came to deploy, his own divisional commander, the Duke of Cambridge—anxious not to make the same mistake as Sir George Brown—spread his line on so wide a front that it stretched far beyond the Light Division’s left. To make matters infinitely worse, the right encroached on the ground which Sir Richard England’s 3rd Division would need for its own deployment and in consequence, the 3rd had to be pulled out and placed in support. Then the order came for the two leading divisions to halt their advance and lie down. In their rear, the supporting divisions, still out of effective range of the Russian batteries firing from the lower slopes of Kourgane Hill, were halted and stood at ease.

  Now began a time of nerve-wracking strain for the waiting men of the 1st and Light Divisions, few of whom had been in action before. They were compelled to lie inert for over an hour, under heavy fire, without the means to retaliate. Lord Raglan, whose personal courage was never more admirably demonstrated, seeking to share his men’s ordeal, rode up and down in full view of the enemy, the plumed hats of his staff drawing upon them and himself a fierce but apparently disregarded fire. He was waiting—although they did not know this or realize that it was the cause of the delay—for news of General Bosquet’s assault on the cliffs behind Almatamak, the essential prelude to the main British and French attack. Until this came, they could do nothing but wait. Bosquet’s Zouaves and the Turkish infantry had accom
plished the first part of their mission with speed and dash, finding the cliffs—as Sir Colin had said they would be—virtually unmanned, but they were now held up by the almost insuperable difficulty of getting their artillery up the steep cliff path. Finally, however, word reached Marshall St Arnaud that Bosquet had succeeded in establishing himself firmly on the Heights by the river mouth but had neither enough guns nor enough men to continue his advance.

  The marshal, waving his arm toward the river, ordered General Canrobert and Prince Jerome Napoleon to go to Bosquet’s support and attack the left of the Russian centre. They began their attack but, just before three o’ clock, an urgent request for help reached Lord Raglan. Prince Napoleon’s division was being massacred, the message stated, Canrobert’s had crossed the river but was pinned down and driven to seek shelter beneath the overhanging rocks they were endeavoring to ascend. Bosquet was now under heavy pressure and would be compelled to retreat, unless the British launched an immediate counter-attack on the Russian right.

  Lord Raglan ordered the British line to advance and not to halt until the Alma was crossed. The men in the leading divisions sprang to their feet, eager, after the long wait they had endured, for action. Under continuous fire, they were meticulously dressed into line, two deep and thus, in splendid alignment, two miles in width, the Light and 2nd Divisions began their advance, preceded by men of the Rifle Brigade in extended order. As they did so, the Russians set fire to the village of Bourliouk, which stood in the path of the 2nd Division. Partly due to the dense pall of smoke which rose from its blazing houses, partly due to the uneven nature of the ground—which was broken by walls and fences, enclosing vineyards—the line of advance was broken and swiftly became disorderly. De Lacy Evans’s leading brigades were compelled to separate and pass on either side of the blazing village. The general himself led the troops on the left, his brigadier, Pennefather, wheeling to the right, and both reached and forded the river to begin the ascent to the lower slopes under a withering fire from the Russian guns above them.

  The men of the Light Division crossed the river as best they could, further to the left, some wading up to their necks in water, their rifles and ammunition pouches held above their heads, others finding a sandbank and wading across, little more than ankle deep. A murderous fire of grape and cannister, directed on them from above, took heavy toll, and, in places where the river was deep and swift-flowing, many were swept off their feet and drowned. By the time they reached the steep bank on the opposite side and started to draw themselves up on to a narrow ledge of dried mud immediately beneath it, they had become completely disorganized. Regiments were mixed, officers had lost touch with their men and small groups, cut off from the sight of others to the right and left by bends in the river, found themselves isolated and without any clear idea of what they should do.

  Here and there an officer appeared who took command of any groups, irrespective of formation, that he could rally round him. General Codrington ordered the remnants of his brigade to fix bayonets and advance to the attack and they did as he bade them, with splendid gallantry. Colonel Lacy Yea, of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, and Colonel Blake, of the 33rd Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, led another spirited up-hill bayonet charge against a column of Russian infantry, descending the hill to meet them. General Buller, with two regiments of his brigade, the 77th and the 88th, halted on the far side of the river, apparently expecting a cavalry attack, but the rest went on. On his left, the 19th Regiment joined with Codrington’s Brigade, together with some of the 95th from the 2nd Division. The 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers had contrived somehow to keep together under their own officers and, with the 7th, under Yea, they drove back the first wave of Russian infantry.

  The British line, ragged and nowhere more than two deep, followed them, now pausing to fire into the grey mass of Russians, reloading to fire a second volley, then continuing the advance. The Russians, unnerved by their dauntless, purposeful steadiness, wavered and took flight, seeking the protection of the well-entrenched battery of twelve brass guns in the Great Redoubt to their rear and confident of their gunners’ ability to break and drive back the straggling, irregular line of British soldiers. The guns were unable to fire until their own men were out of range, but once they were the Russian gunners opened up with deadly precision. For several minutes, the advancing line was halted, then, backed up by more men scrambling up to the top of the river bank, it came on again. Great gaps were torn in its ranks but they were filled; whole groups of men fell under the hail of exploding shells and were mown down by grape and cannister and round shot . . . yet always there were others to take their places.

  The line was too thin, too elastic to break; those who composed it were too courageous and too well-disciplined to fall back when their orders had been to advance. They came on, spent and breathless, straight into the mouths of the guns—men of the 33rd, the 95th and the Rifle Brigade, under officers who were strangers to them, in many cases, and N.C.O.s whom some of them had never seen before. Colonel Yea’s Fusiliers were in the van, close on their colonel’s heels, cheering as they ran. Then suddenly, to their stunned astonishment, the Russian gunners started to remove their guns, hitching them to cavalry horses and galloping off at full speed. An ensign of the 23rd, first to reach the Great Redoubt, died as he planted the Queen’s Colour of his regiment on the parapet, but his men swarmed in to take possession of it, yelling in triumph, only to find themselves under heavy fire from other gun emplacements higher up the hill. Despite support from two British batteries, which had come up from behind the burning village of Bourliouk to open accurate fire, their position became desperate when strong reserves of Russian infantry started to pour in volleys of musketry from above, preparatory to counter-attacking. Sir George Brown, despairing of support for his shattered division, ordered them to retire.

  Support was, at that moment, on its way to them from the 1st Division but had been delayed by undue caution on the part of the Duke of Cambridge. He had advanced to the vineyards on the south bank of the Alma but here halted his men and ordered them to lie down and take cover. Able to see little of what was going on through the smoke of battle, he hesitated to risk the lives of his men in what appeared to be the rout of the Light Division. But he risked his own in going forward to seek the advice of General Buller, who confessed to being himself in no little confusion and somewhat uncertainly advised an advance. This suggestion the duke, in spite of the fact that he had asked for it, neglected to take, until General Airey sought him out and repeated it.

  Alex, with Sir Colin Campbell on the left of the line, sensed a growing restlessness both in his commander and the Highlanders of his brigade, borne of inaction and a common reluctance to take cover when other men were engaged in battle. But this vanished when one of the duke’s aides came galloping up to inform them that they were now to advance across the river in support of the Light Division.

  Sir Colin addressed his men briefly before leading them off.

  “Now, men, you are going into action. Remember this: whoever is wounded, I don’t care what his rank is, must lie down where he falls till the bandsmen come to attend to him. No soldier must go off carrying wounded men. Be in no hurry to fire. Your officers will tell you when to do so and then—aim low. Be steady. Keep silent.” And then he concluded gruffly, “The army will be watching you—make me proud of the Highland Brigade!”

  The brigade moved off in echelon, the 42nd (the Black Watch) slightly ahead on the right; the 93rd (Sutherland Highlanders) in the centre and the 79th (the Camerons) somewhat withdrawn on the left.

  To their right, Alex could see the Guards Brigade advancing with parade ground steadiness, the Scots Fusilier Guards in the centre, leading the advance. Ordered to break ranks on reaching the river, the Scots were over first and were starting to align themselves when General Codrington’s A.D.C. reached General Bentinck pleading for instant support. Bentinck, without waiting for the arrival of the Grenadiers and Coldstream, spurred his horse to their head
, shouting above the roar of the guns and the crackle of musketry for them to follow him. They did so, into so fierce a hail of fire that, still in imperfect formation and without support on either side, they lost over a hundred men in a matter of minutes. To add to their confusion, the Russians had now brought strong reserves to the Great Redoubt and these, firing a shattering volley at point-blank range into the gallant remnants of the Royal Welch, sent them hurtling downwards into the ranks of the advancing Fusilier Guards.

  This would have been damaging to the morale of the finest troops, for it broke the already straggling line and added immeasurably to the Scots Fusiliers’ difficulties, but worse was to follow. A shout was heard, which was taken up and repeated on all sides: “Fusiliers retire! The Fusiliers must retire!”

  Intended, undoubtedly, for Yea’s 7th Royal Fusiliers, who were isolated on the right of the Great Redoubt, it was heard in the heat and confusion of the battle by the Scots and they obeyed it. A number formed about their Colours, borne by Ensign Robert Lindsay, and held their ground, unable to believe that they had been ordered to retreat; the rest broke and fell back, as the order was repeated by their own adjutant, to whom Bentinck, hoping to save his men from massacre, had now given it. The Russian reserves leapt from the epaulement of the Great Redoubt, with bayonets fixed, and charged after them.

  The Grenadiers and Coldstream, five minutes behind them in crossing the Alma, were held by their regimental commanders until they were property aligned. Then, in the order which Bentinck’s haste had not permitted the Scots, they advanced up the Kourgane Hill with magnificent steadiness—but with a great gap in their centre where the Scots should have been—to be met by the main body of the Russian infantry reserves. The Guards greeted them with volley after volley of withering and accurate fire and, as the Russians fell back, they continued their advance. With great gallantry, the Scots Fusilier Guards reformed and came toiling back up the hill to fill the gap which their precipitate retreat had left in the line.