Hazard's Command

by V. A. Stuart

  “And you do not?” General Airey gestured to the pile of papers on the desk and, from these, to the unslept-in bed. “You take too much out of yourself.” His tone was reproachful. “That despatch could have waited, surely?”

  “So that The Times correspondent’s report might reach London first? No, Richard.” The British Commander-in-Chief spoke with bitter emphasis. “You know as well as I do that Mr Russell’s pen is inclined to run away with him and I shudder to think what he may have written about the Inkerman Ridge attack. I have had to accept the fact that, since The Times reaches and is read in Sebastopol, his reports of the number and disposition of our troops are of material assistance to the enemy. But I will not permit the Duke of Newcastle to hear the first news of a major engagement between our forces via The Times!”

  Richard Airey inclined his good-looking head. “I understand your anxiety, sir, on that account. But even so, your health is of great importance to the army under your command and to the successful prosecution of this war. It behooves you to take some care of it and to work throughout the night …” he shrugged helplessly. “Why did you not call on me? I am ready and anxious to serve you and—”

  “I know that, Richard. And you serve me as no other man could.” The gentle, affectionate smile was again in evidence. “Nevertheless this was a task only I could perform and, since it is done, let us say no more about it. You’ll see that my despatch goes off this morning, won’t you?”

  “Of course, sir.” His Chief-of-Staff gathered up the documents, glancing at them, his brows meeting in an anxious frown. But he offered no comment and Lord Raglan, aware that his decision regarding the future of Balaclava would be received with approval by Airey, if not by everyone else, hastened to make it known to him.

  “Ah!” The younger man’s face lit with relief. This was what he had advocated, stressing his view as vehemently as Admiral Lyons had put forward one that was completely contrary. “I am sure you are right, sir. Balaclava is too small to serve as our base. Already it is reduced to chaos, with half the perishable stores which have been unloaded rotting where they lie … and the rest rot in the holds of ships that cannot be unloaded! But you do not need me to tell you what a shambles the place is and must remain, since we cannot enlarge its facilities. It will be an immense weight off my mind to be rid of it.”

  “Those are precisely my sentiments,” the military Commander-in-Chief agreed.

  “Do you wish me to make out orders for the evacuation?” Airey asked. “Captain Dacres already has instructions to permit no more supply ships to enter, so that the harbour is as clear as it can ever be. But Dacres, I feel sure, would appreciate a preliminary warning, because there will be pressure brought to bear on him by ships’ masters anxious to discharge their cargoes and there are still wounded to be taken off. …” He was all eagerness, his quick brain busy with the problems that might be expected to arise and, in his enthusiasm, he was prepared then and there to act upon this most welcome decision. But, to his dismay, Lord Raglan shook his head.

  “Not yet, Richard. I must first discuss the matter with Admiral Lyons who is, after all, at least as concerned with it as I am. It is the Navy’s responsibility to keep us supplied and, for this reason, the Admiral must be allowed his say.”

  “Your lordship knows what he will say,” the Quartermaster-General objected.

  “Indeed, my dear fellow, I do. In fairness, however, I am bound to listen to him when he says it and he will, I understand, be here during the course of the morning. Besides, there are others with whom this question will have to be discussed—General Canrobert, for one. He may not welcome us at Kamiesch or even at Kazatch, and it is essential that we find an alternative to Balaclava before we decide finally to relinquish it.” Lord Raglan’s tone was dry. “Inadequate though the place is, it is the only supply base we have at present.”

  “True, sir. But—” Airey began. His Chief interrupted him. “Officially Admiral Dundas will have to be consulted also. We can do nothing without his approval and I think we should call a conference of the Divisional Commanders—although that, perhaps, might wait until I have put my suggestion tentatively to the French. You could ride over to the French headquarters this morning, if you like, and get an idea of how the suggestion that we share Kamiesch with them will be received. Then you can call a General Officers’ conference for this afternoon.”

  “As your lordship pleases,” Richard Airey acknowledged. He scribbled some notes on his pad and let the pen fall adding, as if it were an afterthought, “Sir Edmund Lyons’s son is due here in a day or so, he told me.”

  “His son?” Lord Raglan frowned, in an effort to remember. “The one in the Diplomatic Corps?”

  “No, sir, the younger—Jack Lyons—who is in the Navy. He is in command of the Miranda, steam frigate, and distinguished himself, the Admiral told me, when serving with the Baltic Fleet earlier this year. The Miranda and the Valorous sailed in company with the Jura transport from Plymouth, with the 46th Regiment and the rest of the reinforcements we are expecting.” He smiled, the smile lighting his freshly shaven face and making him look younger than his fifty-one years. “It just occurred to me, sir, that the subject of Captain Lyons’s impending arrival might—ah—well, it might possibly be introduced before your lordship mentioned Balaclava to Sir Edmund.”

  “To little purpose, I fear,” Lord Raglan demurred. “But rest assured, my dear Richard, that I shall use all the powers of persuasion I possess in order to convince Sir Edmund. We …” he broke off, hearing the clatter of horses’ hooves outside and Airey, crossing to the window, exclaimed in surprise, “Here is the Admiral in person, my lord! He is early astir, is he not? I wonder what that portends.”

  “Instruct our good Hans to serve breakfast to him,” the Commander-in-Chief requested. “While he is partaking of our modest fare, I shall endeavour to talk to him informally. And, Richard—”

  “My lord?”

  “See that we are not interrupted. And I think, perhaps, you had better have Nigel wakened.”

  “Very good, my lord.” The Quartermaster-General gathered up his commander’s despatch, glanced curiously at the sketch map of the Balaclava defences and then spread it out, using an inkstand and a paperweight to keep it flat. This done, he took his leave, as Lord Burghersh, the Commander-in-Chief’s nephew and senior aide-de-camp—unshaven but alert and wakeful—ushered in Sir Edmund Lyons.

  “Ah, Sir Edmund … it is a pleasure to see you.” Lord Raglan advanced to greet his visitor, his left hand extended in welcome, his handsome, patrician face wearing its accustomed warm and charming smile.

  “And you, my lord …” Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons accepted the proffered hand, his own smile also warm. A deep and sincere friendship had grown up between the two men dating, on Lord Raglan’s part, from the weeks preceding the embarkation of the British Expeditionary Force from Varna to the Crimea, the entire organization of which had been undertaken with faultless efficiency and minute attention to detail by the Rear-Admiral. They were of an age and, if Lyons lacked the aristocratic background and breeding of his military contemporary, his twenty years’ distinguished service in the Diplomatic Corps—to which he had been seconded from the Navy at the age of forty-five—gave him intellectual equality.

  He had served as British Minister to the Court of King Otho of Greece from 1835 until the summer of 1849 and his knowledge of the Balkans was extensive so that, as an adviser, he had proved invaluable. As a young officer in the Navy, he had also won fame and rapid promotion and, when commanding HMS Blonde, the 46-gun frigate which had been chosen to convey Sir Robert Gordon to Constantinople as British Ambassador in 1828, he had contrived to obtain permission from the Sultan to embark on a cruise in the Black Sea. His had been the first British warship to pass through the Bosphorus, with the full knowledge and consent of the Turks, since the signing of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, twenty years before … and Lyons had not wasted his time there. With the enterprise that was typical
of him, he had visited and drawn careful plans of the defences and fortifications of both Sebastopol and Odessa and, in addition, had made an extensive survey of the Black Sea coast.

  For this reason, the Board of Admiralty had recalled him on the outbreak of war with Russia and appointed him as second-in-command of the British Black Sea Fleet … a wise choice, Lord Raglan reflected, as young Burghersh drew up a chair for the Admiral facing his own. It would have been wiser still, of course, had Their Lordships appointed Lyons in place of his present superior, Admiral Dundas. Whilst his last active command might have been that of a frigate in 1835, Edmund Lyons had proved again and again since his arrival in the Black Sea, that he had lost none of his professional skill. It had been he, in his fine steam-screw ship-of-the-line HMS Agamemnon, who had demonstrated with great courage and resource, when the Allied Fleets had bombarded Sebastopol’s formidable sea defences on 17th October, just how such an operation should be fought and led. His senior, in the Britannia, had stood off, virtually out of range of the Russian guns, and had then had the effrontery to claim, in an acrimonious note addressed to himself, Lord Raglan recalled, that the action had been “a false one … with which, as a naval officer of fifty years’ experience,” he had been “profoundly dissatisfied and which he declined to repeat.”

  Small wonder, the British military Commander-in-Chief thought with bitterness, that he had sought Edmund Lyons’s opinion and taken his advice on naval matters, in preference to those of Admiral Deans Dundas who, in any event, never came ashore or did him the courtesy of offering either, save in notes entrusted to his second-in-command for delivery—and even these usually belated and bluntly critical. How could Admiral Dundas, lying off-shore in his comfortable and well-provisioned flagship, possibly know or attempt to understand the problems that beset the military command? Living like a king on the pigs and sheep he had crammed into the Britannia’s ample hold, he cared little that the unfortunate soldiers and seamen, serving their guns on the Upland existed on a diet of ship’s biscuit, salt junk, and green coffee beans. When asked for Marine reinforcements, Dundas made excuses and delayed landing them for as long as he could and then did so grudgingly, as if the Army had no right to ask for them.

  The Admiral had no conception, Lord Raglan thought wearily, of the obstructions and the difficulties caused almost daily by their French allies. He had not troubled to find out, before writing his critical and discourteous note, that it had been General Canrobert—not himself—who had, by his completely unexpected refusal to launch the agreed and simultaneous land attack on the city, rendered the naval bombardment of Sebastopol’s sea forts abortive. He sighed, glancing across at his caller, his smile faintly apologetic, as if fearing that the other might have read his thoughts. But Sir Edmund Lyons smiled back, murmuring his thanks, as a servant carried in a tray and set it in front of him.

  “This is most kind of your lordship. I broke my fast before dawn as, I rather think”—his gaze was concerned, as it rested on Lord Raglan’s thin, tired face—“you yourself must have done? You look, if you will forgive my saying so, as if you had not slept well.”

  “I had some urgent paperwork to attend to,” Lord Raglan evaded. The Admiral inclined his head but did not reproach him. He had offered no reproaches following the naval bombardment either, the military Commander-in-Chief reminded himself. Although he had risked his ship, his own life and the lives of her crew by taking the Agamemnon to within less than six hundred yards of Fort Constantine, so that he might bring his guns to bear on the towering, stone-built walls, Sir Edmund Lyons had voiced no criticism. The Navy’s losses, in men and ships, had been heavy, but unlike his Commander-in-Chief, the Rear-Admiral had not called the action false because no assault from the land had been launched. He had understood, because he had had past experience of French vacillation. He knew, because he had been there and had heard Canrobert, at the Allied Councils of War, promise his full support to an attack on Sebastopol, how often the French Commander-in-Chief had failed—often at the eleventh hour—to keep his word.

  As if, this time, he had read his host’s thoughts, Sir Edmund said, setting down his coffee cup, “It is a sobering thought, is it not, Lord Raglan, that we once listened to and were deterred by Marshal St Arnaud’s estimate of five hundred casualties which, he claimed, would have resulted from an attack on Sebastopol immediately after the Alma?” He spread his small, well-kept hands in a despairing gesture. “What haunts me now is the knowledge that, had I been able to lead my steam squadron into the harbour, I could have done so almost with impunity! It would not have been difficult at that time—the enemy did not sink their infernal line of battleships across the harbour mouth until September the twenty-fourth.”

  “I know,” Lord Raglan agreed, with infinite sadness. “But the French would not have it, Sir Edmund, they would not have it at any price. And now we are paying that price and shall, I very much fear, have to go on paying it until the spring …” he hesitated. This was the moment to mention his desire to abandon Balaclava, although he had planned to introduce the subject after the Admiral had finished his meal and to lead up to it with care and forethought after, perhaps, as Richard Airey had suggested, some passing and complimentary reference to young Captain Lyons of HMS Miranda. Sensitive always to the feelings of others, Lord Raglan, in his turn, subjected his caller’s face to a searching scrutiny. Lyons was not a robust man. His physique did not match his courage and, like himself, the Admiral worked long hours, dividing his time between his ship and the steam frigate squadron that was his special command, and his liaison duties ashore. He performed the latter conscientiously, as if in an endeavour to compensate for his Commander-in-Chief’s failure to do so and he had missed no major land action, save the battle at the Alma River, since the beginning of the Crimean invasion. At the Alma engagement, he had been at sea, his ship’s guns protecting the Allied right flank and afterwards, he had organized the collection, evacuation, and transport to hospital of the wounded, which … the Admiral’s quiet, pleasant voice broke into Lord Raglan’s thoughts.

  “My son is due to join the Fleet in a day or so,” Lyons offered. “He has command of one of the new steam-screw sloops, the Miranda, of fourteen guns.” His pale high-boned face—which, Lord Raglan recalled, had in his youth been said to bear a close resemblance to Nelson’s—lit suddenly with affectionate pride, as he went on to speak modestly of his son’s achievements with the Baltic Fleet, under Sir Charles Napier. “In company with the Eurydice, a steamer of 26 guns, and the steam screw Brisk, the Miranda entered the White Sea in June and there they remained until mid-September, conducting an amazingly successful blockade of the enemy’s Arctic ports. The Miranda alone boarded over three hundred merchant vessels, my son told me in one of his letters. Landing parties from the squadron destroyed a number of fortifications on shore … and Jack seems to have taken a small fortune in prizes.”

  “It will rejoice you to see him again, I have no doubt,” Lord Raglan said. “And I shall be rejoiced to see the reinforcements his ship is carrying.” He smiled, aware that he had lost his opportunity to speak of Balaclava but not ill-pleased, as he urged his guest to help himself to more coffee. There would be time enough for what he knew inevitably must lead to a difference of opinion, an argument and, perhaps, even a clash of wills but he was tired and he had always intensely disliked forcing his own point of view upon anyone. Edmund Lyons was a friend, a man whose company he enjoyed and whose professional ability he respected and, for a while, they relaxed together, talking first of the Admiral’s son and then of his own favorite daughter, Charlotte, known to him by the childhood nickname of “Puggums.”

  It was, in the end, Lyons himself who introduced the subject of Balaclava and now Lord Raglan knew that he could no longer avoid it. After describing, with enthusiasm, a new naval gun position he was proposing to build, in order to improve the port’s defences, the Admiral added, accepting a cigar with an appreciative smile, “I should like to permit the Jura troop t
ransport to enter Balaclava when she arrives. The harbour has a good depth of water—your lordship will no doubt remember that I brought the Agamemnon in and met you on board, after the flank march. The Jura has a regiment to unload and ferried ashore. At present the port is fairly clear of shipping and it will save time if the men do not have to be transhipped.”

  “I should be grateful,” Lord Raglan put in quickly. “If it could so remain, Sir Edmund.”

  “I do not understand. …” Admiral Lyons was clearly surprised by such a request. “Do you mean that the harbour should be kept clear? My lord, there are supply ships which I have held at anchor outside Balaclava for over a week, some for longer than that. If the wind shifts or bad weather blows up, there’s no shelter for any of them.” Quietly, as one professional to another, he explained the situation, emphasizing the need to provide a safe anchorage for the laden supply ships and stressing the risk, with so many vessels obliged to lie off the port of Balaclava awaiting entry. “At this time of year, there is always the chance of a storm … and storms in the Black Sea can be very severe. Anchored so close up to the high cliffs which surround the port, these ships could all be driven on shore and wrecked. Your troops need the supplies they carry, my lord and, in addition, there are still wounded awaiting evacuation from the Hospital Wharf … they could be taken to Scutari in the transports, once we get them unloaded.”

  “I am aware of all that, Admiral.” Lord Raglan spoke gently and persuasively. With all the eloquence at his command, he endeavoured to explain the reasons for his urgent desire to abandon Balaclava. The Admiral heard him in polite and noncommittal silence but his expression, the military Commander-in-Chief saw, was glum. When he had done, Lyons rose.

  “It is for you to decide, Lord Raglan,” he said. “Naturally in this, as in all other major decisions, I shall respect your wishes and convey these to my Commander-in-Chief—who is, I am given to understand, anxious concerning the Fleet anchorage off the mouth of the Katcha should the weather deteriorate. As”—again he spread his hands in the odd little Continental gesture he had acquired as a result of his long stay in Athens—“the glass leads me to fear that it well may. But …” he broke off, his eyes meeting Lord Raglan’s in a swift and searching glance.