Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  Balaklava Harbour. Photograph by R. Fenton. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  The cavalry Kinglake mentioned consisted of Lucan’s 1,500 sabres, deployed north-west of Kadikoi. Campbell had great confidence in Lucan, and the earl, in turn, frequently deferred to his more experienced, but junior, major-general. He wrote of Campbell, ‘a more gallant or useful soldier there is not in the army’,6 and his respect was reciprocated.** ‘Whilst others have been croaking, grumbling and dissatisfied, you have always laughed at every difficulty’, Campbell told Lucan.7 That said, Campbell’s regard for Lucan’s officers was more grudging. Having ‘been a good deal taunted with not having yet done anything’,8 their eagerness grated. Campbell complained to Lord George Paget*** that cavalry officers:

  would fall out from their regiment and come to the front and give their opinion on matters they knew nothing about, instead of tending to their squadrons, as I would make them do. Why, my lord, one with a beard and moustaches, who ought to have known better, said to me to-day, ‘I should like to have a brush at them down there’, when I replied, ‘Are you aware, sir, that there is a river between us and them?’ These young gentlemen talk a great deal of nonsense … I am not here to fight a battle or gain a victory; my orders are to defend Balaklava, which is the key to our operations, my lord, and I am not going to be tempted out of it.9

  Temptation, in the form of General Liprandi’s Russian army, had moved off at 5 a.m. on the 25th: 24,000 men and seventy-eight guns in three massive columns.10 By 6 a.m. the mist which had hidden their advance had lifted enough for Liprandi’s artillery to take aim. Lucan was out early with his staff. ‘We rode on at a walk across the plain, in the direction of the left of “Canrobert’s Hill” in happy ignorance of the day’s work in store for us’, recalled Paget:

  By the time we had approached to within about three hundred yards of the Turkish redoubts in our front, the first faint streaks of daylight, showed us that from the flag-staff, which had, I believe, only the day before been erected on the redoubt, flew two flags, only just discernible in the grey twilight.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Lord William Paulet, Lucan’s assistant adjutant-general. ‘Why, that surely is the signal that the enemy is approaching’, replied Major McMahon. ‘Hardly were the words out of McMahon’s mouth when bang went a cannon from the redoubt in question.’11

  At Kadikoi, Surgeon Munro of the 93rd was ‘startled by the boom of a gun away in the distance on our right, followed almost immediately by the nearer report of answering guns, and by wreaths of white smoke curling upwards from our No. 1 Redoubt’.12 Immediately, Campbell ordered out every soldier under his command. ‘The batteries were all manned, and the Royal Marines lined the parapets on the eastern heights of the town’, recalled Raglan’s nephew.13 Campbell then rode across the valley to confer with Lucan and get a closer look at the enemy. As the sun rose, dust clouds marking the Russian advance were visible. A column under General Gribbe had already swept up the Baidar Valley and taken the village of Kamara. From here he could pound Redoubt No. 1, assisted by ten guns under General Semiakin, who occupied the higher ground to the north. Heading for Redoubt No.2 were three more battalions and ten guns under General Levoutsky, while Colonel Scudery bore down on No. 3 with four battalions, a company of riflemen, three squadrons of Cossacks and a field battery.

  The Turks at Redoubt No. 1 opened fire before the Russians could unlimber their guns, taking the head off one of the enemy drivers, but the Russians returned fire, hitting a powder magazine. At the same time, the Marine artillery east of Balaklava tried desperately to target the enemy, but the range was too great. Campbell despatched his one field battery under Captain Barker to Redoubt No. 3, but Barker found he could not hit the Russians assaulting Canrobert’s Hill, so instead aimed at those occupying the Fedioukine Heights. Lucan ordered Captain Maude’s 6-pounder battery to set up between Redoubts nos 2 and 3, but his guns were light, his ammunition scanty, and Maude himself was soon blown into the air by a Russian shell. Barker sent more guns under Lieutenant Dickson in support while Lucan led his Heavy Brigade in ‘demonstrations’ towards the Russians. His manoeuvres left the enemy unfazed.

  It took the Russians an hour and a half to subdue Redoubt No. 1, by which time 170 Turks lay dead. Rustem Pasha’s men, mainly raw recruits from Tunisia, had been without food (or more accurately, food acceptable to Muslims) for days.14 Having seen their first redoubt fall, ‘some kind of panic and fear overcame the Turks,’ reported General Ryzhov, ‘so that they were unable to withstand the approach of our infantry’.15 ‘Directly the Turks found they were being fired into, they dispersed like a flock of sheep,’ wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Calthorpe, ‘numbers throwing away their arms and accoutrements to facilitate their flight.’*16 As they fled, Russian cavalry and artillery pursued them without mercy. Finding themselves under fire, Lucan’s cavalry now pulled back westwards beyond Redoubt No. 4. ‘Our gradual retreat across that plain, “by alternate regiments”, was one of the most painful ordeals it is possible to conceive,’ wrote Paget, ‘seeing all the defences in our front successively abandoned as they were, and straining our eyes in vain all round the hills in our rear for indications of support.’17

  It was now around 7.30 a.m. ‘Never did the painter’s eye rest on a more beautiful scene than I beheld from that ridge’, reported William Russell of The Times, from his position next to Raglan on the Sapoune Ridge. ‘The fleecy vapours still hung around the mountain tops, and mingled with the ascending volumes of smoke; the patch of sea sparkled freshly in the rays of the morning sun, but its light was eclipsed by the flashes which gleamed from the masses of armed men below.’18 Even from this distance General Canrobert could make out Campbell, Shadwell and Lieutenant-Colonel Ainslie of the 93rd outside Kadikoi. Canrobert had already ordered infantry brigades under Vinoy and Espinasse, plus eight squadrons of Chasseurs d’Afrique,** down to the valley below. Raglan had instructed the rest of Cambridge’s 1st Division to march for Balaklava, ordering the duke to put himself under Campbell’s orders. Sir George Cathcart’s 4th Division would follow in support. Meanwhile, worried that the attack might be a huge feint, Raglan warned Sir Richard England to be on his guard for a Russian sortie from Sebastopol. ‘Lord Raglan was by no means at ease’, wrote Russell.’There was no trace of the divine calm attributed to him by his admirers as his characteristic in moments of trial … Perhaps he alone, of all the group on the spot, fully understood the gravity of the situation.’19

  Cambridge’s men set off at double quick time at 8 a.m. Cathcart, however, having read his orders, assured Raglan’s ADC (Captain Ewart of the 93rd) that it was quite impossible. Brigadier-General Goldie had been on a wild goose chase to Balaklava five days ago, and received no thanks from Campbell for his efforts, so Cathcart advised Ewart to sit down and have some breakfast instead. Ewart replied that he would not leave until the 4th Division was ready to move. Cathcart offered to confer with his staff and after a while Ewart heard the bugles sounding the order to turn out.

  Until these reinforcements arrived, the only force in the valley available to Campbell was Lucan’s cavalry. Granted permission to live aboard his steam yacht Dryad in Balaklava harbour, Lord Cardigan had yet to emerge, so Lucan took direct command of the Light Brigade. Campbell and Lucan had agreed that if the redoubts fell, the cavalry would take up position to the north-west of Kadikoi, so that, should the Russians cross the South Valley, Lucan could bear down on their flank, while still leaving the 93rd a clear shot at the enemy. Raglan had other ideas and ordered eight squadrons of heavy cavalry to support the 93rd, while the rest of the cavalry redeployed beyond Redoubt No. 6.

  While these dispositions proceeded, Campbell formed up the 93rd a little way down the north slope of the hill north of Kadikoi, with their left slightly forward and the light company in front. As the routed Turks piled past towards Balaklava, Lieutenant Sinclair of the 93rd, claymore in hand, tried unsuccessfully to stop them. Behind the rise was Mrs Smith, spouse of S
inclair’s batman, ‘a stalwart wife, large and massive, with brawny arms, and hands as hard as horn’, according to the regimental surgeon, but within whose ‘capacious bosom beat a tender, honest heart’. She had been laying laundry out to dry next to the small stream which snaked behind the hill. Flushed with rage at the sight of Turks trampling her washing, and spitting profanities, she laid into them with a stick, and, grasping one by the collar, dealt him a well-aimed kick.20 The Balaklava harbour master, Captain Tatham, benefiting from a light grasp of Turkish, managed to re-form some, but most bolted. One eyewitness saw them pour into the port, ‘laden with pots, kettles, arms and plunder of every description, chiefly old bottles, for which the Turks appear to have a great appreciation’.21

  Back on the rise, the Highlanders now felt the force of the Russian guns unlimbered between Redoubts Nos. 2 and 3. ‘Round shot and shell began to cause some casualties among the 93rd Highlanders and the Turkish battalions on their right and left flanks’, reported Campbell, so ‘I made them retire a few paces behind the crest of the hill’.22 The barrage had cost Private McKay his leg, while Private Mackenzie suffered a shell splinter to his thigh. At the same time, ‘Tens of thousands of cavalry and infantry could be plainly seen pouring down from Kamara, up from the river and valley of the Tchernaya, and out of the recesses of the hills near Tchorgoun to challenge our grip on the Chersonese’,* reported Russell. ‘The morning light shone on acres of bayonets, forests of sword blades and lance-points, gloomy-looking blocks of man and horse.’23 Their first goal was to obliterate Campbell’s little force. General Scarlett’s orderly in the Heavy Brigade saw the Russian cavalry bearing down on them: ‘As they passed in front of us a few hundred yards the thought was in my mind, oh, the poor 93rd, they will all be cut up. There is more than fifty to one against them.’24

  The 93rd at Kadikoi were under strength, two companies under Major Gordon having been despatched to the heights east of Balaklava to help the Marines with their entrenchments, so Campbell had sent Sterling to Balaklava to raise the alarm; Lieutenant-Colonel Daveney scrabbled together 100 invalids while two Guards officers, Verschoyle and Hamilton, appeared unprompted with another thirty to forty men. Lastly a Polish interpreter with the Royal Artillery secretly crept up and joined the rear rank of the 93rd, armed with an elderly shotgun. By now 400 Russian cavalrymen had broken away from the main corps under General Ryzhov, and were thundering towards the 93rd. Barker’s battery, on the left of the Highlanders, together with the guns on the Marine Heights, started plugging away as they came within range. Normal practice for infantry facing cavalry was to form square, as Colonel Browne had done forty-three years ago at Barrosa Hill, but it reduced potential firepower in front by three-quarters. Instead, Campbell ordered the men into line, two deep, ready to advance over the crest of the rise to meet the enemy. He was placing great trust in their mettle: the 93rd’s record for steadfastness was patchy. In 1831, at Merthyr, their bayonets had been batted aside by Welshmen armed only with staves.25

  Campbell had seen the power of the Minié rifle at the Alma, and though tutored in the close action, cold steel school of warfare, he had grasped the new weapon’s potential to kill at long range. Even so, if the line broke or the Russians skirted round the end, the Highlanders would be slashed to pieces. It was a supreme gamble, an all-or-nothing tactic. Campbell knew it, and rode down the line shouting, ‘Remember, there is no retreat from here, men! You must die where you stand!’ ‘Ay, ay, Sir Colin, and needs be we’ll do that!’ replied Private John Scott in No. 6 company, his cry soon echoed by the rest.26

  Just as the Scotsmen prepared to face their enemy, Major Gordon’s two missing companies appeared. When Gordon had seen the Turks abandoning the redoubts, he had marched his men as fast as possible the 2 miles to Kadikoi. Sadly his arrival was more than offset by the flight of the Turks on each flank, scared away by the rumble of the accelerating Russian cavalry, thus robbing Campbell of two-thirds of his men.** ‘The advancing Russians, seeing this cowardly behaviour on the part of our allies, gained fresh courage themselves’, explained Raglan’s nephew, ‘and came on with a rush, yelling in a very barbarous manner.’27 At the Light Brigade camp, one of the officer’s wives watched in dread as the enemy swept across the valley towards the 93rd: ‘Ah, what a moment! Charging and surging onward, what could that little wall of men do against such numbers and such speed?’28 ‘With breathless suspense’, wrote Russell, ‘every one awaits the bursting of the wave upon the line of Gaelic rock.’29

  Campbell launched the first volley at the very limit of the Minié’s range. The order ‘Fire!’ echoed across the valley, immediately muffled by the crack of 600 rifles. ‘Being in the front rank, and giving a look along the line, it seemed a wall of fire in front of the muzzles’, wrote one private. In his excitement Campbell had ridden in front of the Highlanders, and had to wheel rapidly out of the way. Yet through the gunsmoke, he saw scarcely a single Russian unseated. The Highlanders fired a second volley, but it too seemed to have little effect on the wall of riders nearing the hill. Now the first Russian squadron started to swerve off to its left, to exploit the thin British line at its end, from where the Turks had fled. ‘Shadwell, that man understands his business’, said Campbell to his ADC.30

  ‘93rd! Damn all that eagerness!’ Campbell bellowed as some of the men in their enthusiasm brought their rifles up to the charge. To meet the new threat, he ordered the grenadier company under Captain Ross to wheel to the right and form a line at right angles. As the Russians closed in for the kill, they found themselves enfiladed at close range.*** ‘It shook them visibly’, wrote Surgeon Munro, ‘and caused them to bend away to their own right until they had completely wheeled, when they rode back to their own army, followed by a burst of wild cheering from the ranks of the 93rd.’31

  ‘Had the 93rd been broken,’ claimed Sterling, ‘there was literally nothing to hinder the cavalry which came down on the 93rd from galloping through the flying Turks, and destroying all the stores in Balaklava.’32 Aside from the two men wounded early on by enemy artillery, there had been no other casualties among the 93rd. From Russell’s viewpoint, the Russian charge seemed to have been repelled by little more than a ‘thin red streak topped with a line of steel’, or as in Kipling’s abbreviated version, a ‘Thin Red Line’* (see Plate 14).

  But amid all the backslapping and hurray-ing, one uncomfortable fact intruded: the Russians now knew just how few men guarded the gorge to Balaklava. The 93rd had withstood 400 Russian cavalrymen, but the enemy could send five times that number next time.

  Raglan, convinced that the enemy’s goal was Balaklava itself, warned Captain Tatham, ‘The Russians will be down upon us in half an hour; we will have to defend the head of the harbour; get steam up.’33 Cathcart’s division, still marching down the Col, received new orders to turn northwards and retake the Causeway Heights. On seeing the redoubts a shocked Cathcart exclaimed, ‘It is the most extraordinary thing I ever saw, for the position is more extensive than that occupied by the Duke of Wellington’s army at Waterloo.’34

  Meanwhile, the rest of the Russian cavalry had been proceeding along the North Valley. Under fire from British guns on the Sapoune Ridge, they rode over the Causeway Heights and into the South Valley, but found themselves facing General Scarlett’s little brigade of heavy cavalry. From where Lord Euston stood, up on the ridge, the Russian cavalry next to the Heavy Brigade looked like ‘a large sheet to a small pocket handkerchief’.35 Heavy cavalry relied on shock tactics, on weight and momentum to blast through the enemy, but the Russian squadrons up the slope in front of Scarlett formed one huge, unwavering mass. In any case, charging uphill at superior enemy cavalry was most unwise, but this was Scarlett’s first battle, and unencumbered by cavalry precedent he ordered his men into formation.

  Like Campbell at the Alma, Scarlett was determined to advance ceremoniously. The British had not finished dressing their ranks before the Russians began to descend, ‘advancing at a rapid pace over ground most
favourable, and appearing as if they must annihilate and swallow up all before them’.36 As the enemy drew near, the British troopers continued their dispositions until they met with their commander’s approval, and then the portly, short-sighted Scarlett, furiously brandishing his sword, began his first and last charge (see Plate 15).

  William Russell. Photograph by R. Fenton. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  The Russians were formed rather in the manner of the Zulu ‘horns of the buffalo’, with a broad rank in front spreading out in two wings to the sides, and cavalry in column behind the middle. They graciously halted, watching incredulously as the little band of gilded troopers in front of them gathered speed. ‘We followed with our eyes and our hearts as the Greys began to advance slowly, then to quicken their pace, until at a gallop the whole line rolled along like a great crested wave, and dashed against the solid mass of the enemy, disappearing from our sight entirely’, reported Surgeon Munro, watching from across the valley.37 First in were the Scots Greys beside the Inniskilling Dragoons, hacking at anything that moved, swiftly followed by the Royals and the 4th and 5th Dragoon Guards. Finding their sabres were bouncing off the thick Russian overcoats, they resorted to punching their enemy with their sword hilts. Scarlett received five wounds, but kept gamely slogging away. ‘We soon became a struggling mass of half-frenzied and desperate men,’ wrote Sergeant Major Franks of the 5th Dragoon Guards, ‘doing our level best to kill each other.’38

  From Kadikoi, Campbell had watched with respect and disbelief as Scarlett ordered his brigade to charge. He had sent forward two of Barker’s guns, assisted by the Marine artillery, to rain down round shot over Scarlett’s head and into the centre and rear of the enemy cavalry. Campbell saw the light mounts of the 2nd Dragoons, the Scots Greys, as they galloped into the Russian throng, their bearskins visible above the multitude. Then, to the amazement of the British, the Russians began to falter. The staggered charge of the different regiments had had the effect of landing repeated hammer blows on the enemy. Some well-placed shots from the Marine batteries further unsettled the Cossacks at the rear. ‘Yet another moment and the enemy’s column was observed to waver, then break, and shortly the whole body turned and galloped to the rear in disorder’, reported Shadwell.39 As the Russians rode pell-mell back down the Woronzoff Road, the guns of the Royal Marines, of Captain Barker’s battery and C Troop the Royal Horse Artillery hounded them. But the one mounted corps which could have pursued them stayed rooted to the spot. Throughout Scarlett’s charge, Lord Cardigan, who had made it from his yacht to shore, stood with his Light Brigade not 500 yards away. He was not about to advance without specific orders, and he had received none.