Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys

by Neil Oliver

  To make matters worse, the Duke of Wellington, the Iron Duke who had destroyed Napoleon and freed Britain from decades of nightmare and fear of invasion—had been the antiquated system’s strongest supporter. He had died in 1852 but the shadow he cast over the Army was as persistent as it had been during his lifetime. The problem, of course, was that the Iron Duke had been one of the greatest military geniuses of his own or any other age. If there were deficiencies in the way the Army ran its affairs under his command, then it mattered not a jot. All the time he was in overall charge, his daring and vision had been enough to transcend any obstacle and disguise any shortcoming of the tools he used to get the jobs done.

  But the Iron Duke was gone now, and the first question that had faced the government, as war with Russia loomed closer, was who to place in command of the British force. Europe had been at peace since 1815 and the Army’s senior figures had pursued their trade elsewhere, if at all. The commander-in-chief, Lord Hardinge, was nearly 70 and far too old for the job of leading an army in far-off, foreign climes. Several of the other tried and tested warhorses, veterans of India and elsewhere, were older still. In the end the top job went to Lord Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan. Given his résumé, he had nearly been the obvious choice in any case.

  At the outbreak of the Peninsular War in 1808, just five years after his father bought him a commission in a cavalry regiment at the age of 15, young Somerset was made aide-de-camp to one Arthur Wellesley. By the time Wellesley was created Duke of Wellington after his narrow but vital victory at the Battle of Talavera the following year, the pair were firm friends as well as colleagues. The relationship would remain close for the rest of the Duke’s life.

  During the fighting at Waterloo, Raglan’s right elbow was shattered by a French musket ball. The arm had to be amputated below the shoulder—without anesthetic and with knife and saw—but he made not a sound until the surgeon tossed the severed limb into a basket.

  “Hey, bring my arm back,” he said. “There’s a ring my wife gave me on the finger.”

  The wife who had given him the ring was none other than the Iron Duke’s own niece, and Raglan was the Iron Duke’s man. He was 66 years old when Britain went to war with Russia—clearly getting on a bit himself—and was placed at the head of a set of divisional commanders that could hardly be said to inspire confidence.

  Sir George de Lacy Evans, in charge of the 2nd Division, was the best of them. He was 67 years old, but a decorated soldier who had seen celebrated action in Spain, India and America. The Duke of Cambridge, the Queen’s own cousin, led the 1st Division. He was young—just 35 and one of only two of the divisional commanders aged under sixty at the start of the war—and had never taken battlefield command in his life. The 3rd Division was led by Sir Richard England, who up until that time had made no impact of note on the story of the British Army, and the 4th by the unremarkable Sir George Cathcart. The 5th and last infantry division was commanded by Sir George Brown, whose reputation was primarily that of a vicious disciplinarian whose men feared rather than respected him.

  The portents for disaster were most glaringly obvious in the Cavalry Division. Overall command was given to George Charles Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan. He had all the necessary pride and sense of grandeur required to carry off the role of commanding the Army’s mounted men—but little else. His birthright and wealth had enabled him to buy his way into the highest levels (he had once purchased the command of the 17th Lancers for the rumored sum of £25,000), but his active military experience was minimal. If the 54-year-old was known for anything at all, it was snobbish arrogance. Under his command, the 17th Lancers had become an over-dressed, over-disciplined and decidedly unhappy body of men. It did not bode well.

  On the bright side, Brigadier General James Scarlett, a man respected and trusted by his men, commanded the Heavy Brigade. On the dark side, the Light Brigade had at its head a man even more comprehensively loathed than Lord Lucan. James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, was another strutting fop whose family name—and family money—had secured him a status he could never have obtained any other way. Though he was now in command of the Light Horse, he had no experience of leading men into battle. Rather more worrying than any of this, however, was the state of Cardigan’s personal relationship with his divisional commander. The two men were brothers-in-law but Lucan had split acrimoniously from his wife Anne, Cardigan’s sister. The separation had happened years before but Cardigan bore a seething grudge.

  Weaknesses at the top of the pyramid of command hardly eased or improved the lot of the men at the bottom. In the middle years of the 19th century the enlisted men of the British Army were as poorly regarded by their leaders as they had ever been. Life in the ranks still beckoned only to those who had nowhere else to go—the poor and the wretched, men routinely described as the dregs of humanity. They were brutally disciplined and poorly paid and yet in time of war they were the people depended upon by the very society that despised them. The Iron Duke himself once said: “I don’t know what they do to the enemy, but by God they frighten me!”

  And yet for all the shortcomings and outright failings, these were the men—rich and poor, empowered and oppressed—of whom legends were about to be made. Immortality would be assigned to them not because of who or what they were, but because of what they were about to do.

  A site on the Dardanelles peninsula was the base of operations originally proposed for the British, but an advance party concluded that the available site was poorly supplied with fresh water and, in any case, too far from the Black Sea. If you’re going to embark on a bit of good old-fashioned posturing, you want your opponent to be close enough to see you flexing your muscles. Scutari, across the Bosphorus from Istanbul, was chosen as the alternative.

  It was here that the British forces came face to face for the first time with their French brothers-in-arms. Right away they saw that their allies were far better supplied with the accoutrements of war. In particular they noticed that the French medical supplies were wholly superior to anything on their own side.

  Lord Raglan’s opposite number was the proud and ambitious Marshal Armand-Jacques Leroy de St. Arnaud, and almost at once the Frenchman sought to have himself placed in command of the Turkish forces as well as his own. Raglan demonstrated his talent for diplomacy by persuading St. Arnaud that all three armies should retain a degree of independence from one another, and it has to be said that despite their differences the French and British fighting men at every level demonstrated a willingness to work together.

  From their base at Scutari, the British moved up first of all toward the Black Sea port of Varna. This was at the request of the Turkish commander, Omar Pasha, who wanted both French and British troops to be on hand to help force an end to the Russian siege of Silistria on the River Danube. Austria, on her own account, had already massed troops on the Transylvanian border, and in the face of all that opposition, Russia pulled her forces back into the motherland.

  Instead of stopping at that point, short of any bloodshed and with Russia seemingly acknowledging her neighbors’ consternation about her expansionist behavior, the Allies pressed on. The principal objective remained the Russian naval base at Sebastopol on the Crimea, and in all likelihood Britain would never have stopped short of an outright assault on the city. Russia had to be put in her place, and the Black Sea Fleet had to be tackled.

  During the third week in September a combined Allied force of British, French and Turkish infantry and cavalry numbering around 60,000 men landed on a wide, shallow bay at a place called Kalamita on the Crimean coast. Sebastopol was a two day march away to the southeast, and the huge army began its lumbering advance on September 19. On the morning of the following day they found their way blocked by the River Alma and a Russian force of 40,000 men, commanded by Prince Alexander Menshikov, deployed on high ground above them. The battle that followed was a victory for the Allies—but, in every way that mattered, an inconclusive one.

&
nbsp; The fighting began at 1:30 p.m. with an artillery bombardment—and when the French advanced on the right they drove the Russians in front of them so quickly they brought themselves to a halt for fear of losing touch with their British comrades.

  On the left, the British had embarked upon a full-frontal assault of strongly defended Russian positions in hope of supporting the French, but found themselves bogged down by heavy fire. It was largely the strength and commitment of the Highland Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Sir Colin Campbell, that maintained the British sense of purpose and kept the advance moving. By around 4 p.m. the Allies had broken the Russian front line along its entire length, and were in position up on the plateau to turn the retreat into a rout. But Lord Raglan passed up the chance of outright victory—and perhaps an early end of the war. Fearing that the Russians were retreating in good order—and that his own forces might be drawn into a trap—he decided against unleashing his own cavalry. The Russian forces lived to fight another day and the Allies were faced now with the prospect of following them all the way to Sebastopol and besieging them there. Raglan’s caution would cost him dearly.

  While the Allies considered their options—notably how best to approach Sebastopol—the Russians used the time to prepare the defenses around their city. The work was overseen by Lieutenant Colonel Franz Edward Todleben, a military engineer of genius, and in short order he repaired and strengthened the city’s perimeter. By the time the Allies arrived, his work was complete and six great bastions faced the attackers—the Quarantine, the Central, the Flagstaff, the Redan, the Malakoff and the Little Redan. It was a cordon to strike fear and trepidation into the hearts of any would-be attackers.

  Some historians have insisted that had Raglan and St. Arnaud taken the initiative and chased their foes back toward the city in the heat of the Battle of the Alma, the main prize could have been taken before Todleben had time to get the job done. Instead the Allies faced the prospect of an army dug in on the motherland with nothing to do but fight to the death.

  After waiting at the Alma long enough to bury their hundreds of dead and dispatch the wounded to the misery of hopelessly inadequate field hospitals back at Scutari, the Allies began their march toward Sebastopol on the 25th. Rather than tackle the place from the north, the commanders marched their men around toward the south of the city and by 26 September they were at the harbor town of Balaclava. It was from here that St. Arnaud was placed aboard a ship to carry him back to Constantinople. He had been sick from the start of the campaign and by now was dangerously ill. He would die before the sea journey was over.

  French command was now in the hands of General François-Certain Canrobert—known to the British troops as “Bob-can’t”—and he insisted on a further delay in fighting until he could get his heavy guns into position for the assault on Sebastopol. More waiting for the men, more time for the Russians to prepare the welcome for their guests.

  Word of the victory at the Alma reached Britain by the start of October. But along with that happy news came a report of the conditions being endured by the Queen’s wounded soldiers at Scutari. It was a tale of misery, disease and, most gallingly of all, inadequate medical provision. Why, asked the British public, were Her Majesty’s troops being so neglected after spilling their blood on her behalf? Among those who stepped up in response—not to answer the question but to try to ease the suffering—was one Florence Nightingale. A trained nurse, she rounded up a team of women and set out to see what could be done. History has shown that her methods became part of the short-term problem. Failure to understand the nature of disease and the importance of hygiene meant men would continue to die, and in even greater numbers. But in the long term her actions paved the way for the eventual review of the medical care of fighting men.

  Such improvements were still a job for the future. The immediate task for Menshikov, safely ensconced at Sebastopol, was how to cut the Allied supply lines. He knew the port at Balaclava was vital to the British. Every boot and jacket worn, every morsel of food and drink consumed, every bullet and shell fired, came through that harbor from Royal Navy ships. Now Balaclava was the objective for the Russians themselves and Menshikov marshaled his forces for an attack designed to cut the British throat.

  On high ground above the harbor town were British, French and Turkish soldiers. They were calling the high points “Canrobert’s Hill” and “Causeway Heights” and had created a linked series of redoubts from which to defend them. On October 25 a massed Russian force numbering 25,000 infantry and accompanied by cavalry and heavy guns advanced toward the Allies. When the first news of the action began to filter through to Lord Raglan, he refused to believe the scale of it and carried on eating his breakfast. By the time he had wiped his chin and set off to work, the Russians were grinding their way through the defenders up on Causeway Heights.

  Historians used to say the Turkish soldiers were the first to crack under the pressure—as though they quickly turned tail and fled. Nowadays it’s acknowledged that they fought and died where they stood, until a quarter of their number were cut down. Only then, after more than an hour of bloodshed, did the remainder begin to waver under the seemingly unstoppable advance, before withdrawing from their positions.

  As the Russian infantry advanced and their cavalry hovered on the wings looking for their opening, they reached the Fedioukine Valley and the 93rd—the Sutherland Highlanders—under the command of 61-year-old Sir Colin Campbell. Here was a soldier who had fought and led with distinction in India and by rights should have been far higher up the chain of command in the Crimea. He had lacked the cash and the connections to secure his advancement, however, and perhaps it’s just as well. For it was here in the Fedioukine that his moment came—his chance to show just who he was—and he drew a line that will be remembered as long as soldiers fight.

  Lord Raglan and his staff were approaching the fray now, and from where they stood could see Campbell and his Highlanders, together with a few hundred Turkish soldiers and British men of other regiments, up on the Heights. They could also see, thundering toward the British position, a massed force of Russian horse. Surely, thought Raglan, an infantry force could not long stand in the face of cavalry in such numbers. He sent word to Lord Lucan to dispatch the Heavy Horse in support of the foot soldiers. But for now they could only watch as the Russian horsemen bore down on Campbell and his men.

  The military textbooks made it clear that infantry survived best in the face of such an attack if they formed up four ranks deep—or better yet, in squares. But up on the slopes of the Fedioukine Valley, Campbell had neither the time nor the inclination to issue either order.

  “I did not think it worthwhile to form them four deep,” he said later, cooler than cool. And he was right.

  Instead he had his men form up in a line just two deep, armed with their French-designed Minie rifles, bayonets fixed and shoulder-to-shoulder. His Highlanders were at the center, giving backbone to the formation, while the rest of the British soldiers and the Turks made up the left and right of the line. Mounted upon his horse, Campbell rode along the ranks to remind them what was at stake and what he expected of every man: “Remember, there is no retreat from here,” he shouted. “You must die where you stand.”

  “Aye, Sir Colin,” replied John Scott, Campbell’s military aide. “Needs be we’ll do that.”

  Such was the stuff of which those men were made, and it caught the eye of war correspondent W. H. Russell, covering the war for the London Times. He watched as the Russian horsemen galloped onward: “They dashed on towards that thin red streak, topped with a line of steel,” he wrote—a phrase misquoted almost ever since to give “the thin red line” of legend. “As the Russians came within 600 yards, down went that line of steel in front and out rang a rolling volley of Minie musketry.”

  The cavalry advance was staggered, galled by the steel and the lead and the stubbornness of those bearded Highlanders. Some of the horsemen broke away toward their left, hoping to get aro
und into the flank of the footsoldiers. But there was to be no success there either. Campbell wheeled part of his force around to the right, the better to face the encircling horse, and unleashed another rolling volley from even shorter range. Horses and riders fell. Not content with halting the cavalry, knots of the Highlanders now stepped forward, ready to make their own advance into the ranks of horsemen halted in front of them. It took another immortal line from their commander to pull them back into line.

  “93rd!” he roared. “Damn all that eagerness!”

  The defense was holding against all the odds but Lord Raglan knew, as did Campbell, that the thin red streak could hardly be expected to hold back the Russian advance forever.

  General Scarlett’s Heavy Horse, having found their way through orchards and vineyards that had blocked their advance, burst into view now on the slopes beneath. The 800 British horsemen, sabers in hand, were outnumbered four to one by their foes and, to make matters worse, were approaching from below. As before with Campbell’s infantry, it was drill that made the difference in the end. While the Russian cavalry massed into position above them ready to engulf the inferior numbers below, they could only watch as Scarlett took the time to order his men into the perfect alignments befitting British fighting men. Content that all was as it should be, Scarlett ordered the attack and led from the front. Plunging into the packed mass of the enemy, he received five different wounds, while his military aide Lieutenant Elliot collected 14. The fighting was so claustrophobic, with men and horses hemmed in on all sides, that there was no room to use the sabers with the thrusting motion for which they were designed. Instead the men of the Inniskilling Dragoons, the Scots Greys and the Dragoon Guards had to hack and chop like butchers. After fewer than ten minutes of this horror, the Russian cavalry broke and fled.