Part 4

As the Spanish Admiral had orders not to engage in hostilities till he should have seen the Prince of Parma’s army landed in England, he took no notice of the English fleet, but steadily directed his course up the Channel. The Armada sailed in the form of a crescent, of which the horns were seven miles asunder. Its motion was slow, though every sail was spread; “The winds,” says the historian, “being as it were tired with carrying the ships, and the ocean groaning beneath their weight.” The English ships, which were smaller and more active than those of the Armada, followed to harass it and cut off stragglers, and during the six days which it took to reach Calais, it suffered considerably from their persevering attacks. At Calais the Admiral learned that the Prince could not embark his troops for want of stores and sailors, and while he waited, the Armada narrowly escaped destruction from fire-ships sent into it by the English. A violent tempest succeeded, which drove it among the shoals on the coast of Zealand; and a council of war determined that, as it was now in too shattered a condition to attempt anything against the enemy, it were best to return to Spain without delay; but as the passage down the Channel was so full of hazard, it was resolved to sail round Scotland and Ireland. The Armada, therefore, set sail; the English pursued it as far as Flamborough-head, where want of ammunition forced them to give over the chase. Storms, however, assailed the Armada, and several of the vessels were cast away on the coast of Ireland, where the crews were butchered by the barbarous natives. The total loss was 30 large ships and 10,000 men. Philip received the intelligence with great tranquillity, and ordered public thanks to God and the saints for the calamity not having been greater.

In this great danger of herself and kingdom, Elizabeth had shown the spirit of a heroine. She visited the camp at Tilbury, rode along the lines mounted on a white palfrey, and cheered the soldiers by her animated language. When the danger was over she went in state to St. Paul’s, and publicly returned thanks to Heaven. She granted pensions to the disabled seamen, created the Admiral, Earl of Nottingham, and bestowed honours and rewards on his officers. The sudden death of Leicester, shortly after he had disbanded his army, intercepted the favours she might have designed for him.

ARMED NEUTRALITY.--A confederacy of the Northern powers against England, commenced by the Empress of Russia, in 1780. It resulted in the destruction of the Danish fleet before Copenhagen, April, 1801. This gave England the acknowledged claim to the empire of the sea. The neutrality was soon after dissolved.

ARMAGH.--This battle was fought A.D. 1318, against Edward Bruce, who was defeated, taken, and beheaded at Dundalk, and with him 6200 Scots lost their lives.

ARMISTICES, CELEBRATED.--The most celebrated armistices recorded in Modern History are the following:--That of Leobon, in 1797, was signed a few days after the victory of Tagliamento, gained by Napoleon I over Prince Charles. It was Bonaparte himself who proposed it. This armistice was followed by the preliminaries of Leobon and the treaty of Campo-Formio. The armistice of Stayer, concluded on the 25th December, 1800, took place after the battle of Hohenlinden. It was signed by Moreau, on the 16th January, 1801. Brune signed the armistice of Treviso, which delivered into the hands of the French the fortified places of Ferrara, Peschiera and Porto-Legnano. He was reproached with not having demanded Mantua. In 1805, Murat concluded an armistice at Hollebrun, which saved the Russian army, and was the cause of a severe letter written to him by the Emperor. On the very evening of the battle of Austerlitz, the Emperor of Austria demanded and obtained an armistice, which was preliminary to the peace of Presburg. Another armistice, also celebrated, was signed after the battle of Friedland, and led to the peace of Tilsit. At Wagram took place the armistice of Zoaim, which was the prelude to the peace of Vienna, 1809. Lastly, on the 4th of June, 1813, after Bautzen, was signed the armistice of Pleiswitz, which the Emperor Napoleon I himself considered a fault.

ARTILLERY.--The first piece was invented by Schwartz, a German Cordelier monk, soon after the invention of gunpowder, in 1330. First used by the English by Edward III at the battle of Crecy, in 1346, when that king had 4 pieces of cannon, which greatly aided in his gaining the battle. Brass cannon, first used 1635--improvements made by Browne in 1728, and have continued ever since.

ASCALON.--This battle was fought A.D. 1192. Richard I of England, commanding the Christian army, met and defeated the Sultan Saladin’s army of 300,000 Saracens and other infidels. No less than 40,000 of the enemy were left dead on the field of battle, and the victorious Richard marched to Jerusalem.

ASPERNE.--This battle was fought between the Austrian army under the archduke Charles, and the French, on the 21st of May, 1809, and two following days. In this most sanguinary fight the loss of the former army exceeded 20,000 men, and the loss of the French was more than 30,000; it ended in the defeat of Bonaparte, who commanded in person, and was the severest check he had yet received. The bridge of the Danube was destroyed and his retreat endangered; but the success of the Austrians had no beneficial effect on the subsequent prosecution of the war.

ASSAYE.--Fought September 23rd, 1803, between the Duke of Wellington (then General Arthur Wellesley) and Scindiah and the Rajah of Berar. This was Wellington’s _first_ great battle in which he opposed a force fully ten times greater than his own. In Stocqueler’s Life of the “Iron Duke” we have the following account of this battle: “Scindiah’s army having changed its position, occupied the whole space between the Kaitna and Assaye, with a great number of guns in front, and commenced a murderous cannonade. The small number of British guns was quite incapable of coping with this vast battery. General Wellesley, therefore, directed his infantry to advance with the bayonet.

With the determined courage which had given them victory at Seringapatam, in the actions with Dhoondia Waugh, and on the walls of Ahmednuggur, the line dashed forward, carried the guns on the right, and approached Assaye. At this moment a cloud of Mahratta horse had stolen round the village, and fell upon them--sabre to bayonet--with characteristic fury. The 74th regiment wavered--the charge was too much for them.

Colonel Maxwell of the 19th Light Dragoons saw that the critical moment had arrived, _Forward!_ was the word. Falling upon the Mahratta cavalry, the Dragoons gave the British infantry time to rally, cut up the Mahratta horse, pushed through the Scindiah’s left, and threw the whole of that part of the army into confusion. In the meantime the enemy’s centre, which had remained untouched, closed in upon the ground before occupied by their left wing, and uniting with such of their infantry and artillery as had been passed over unhurt by the British cavalry, formed itself into a kind of crescent, with its right horn resting on the river Jouah, and its left on the village of Assaye; thus presenting themselves in a fresh position on the flank of our infantry, on which, having collected a considerable number of guns, they recommenced a heavy fire. The battle was now to be fought over again, with this difference, that the contending forces had changed sides, and had the enemy’s horse behaved with the least spirit, while our cavalry was absent in pursuit of their broken battalions, there is no guessing what the consequences might have been; but, happily for General Wellesley, they kept aloof. To oppose the enemy in their new position, the Sepoy battalion on the right was immediately advanced against them, but without effect, being obliged to retire. Another was brought forward and equally repulsed. The cavalry, having by this time returned from the pursuit, and formed on the left, and the enemy’s horse having disappeared before them, the General ordered the 78th regiment and the 7th cavalry up, to head a fresh attack against the enemy’s infantry and guns, which still defended their position with obstinacy. No sooner, however, had he formed the 78th regiment in line, in directing which his horse’s leg was carried off by a cannon shot, than the enemy without waiting an attack, commenced their retreat across the Jouah, which they passed in tolerable order before our troops could come up with them. Previously to this last attack Colonel Maxwell had requested and obtained permission to charge a considerable body of infantry and guns, which having formed part of the reserve, were seen retiring in good order, along the right bank of the Jouah.

The 19th Dragoons were not long in coming up with the enemy, who having formed with their left to the Jouah, steadily waited their approach. The charge was sounded. The Dragoons advanced with rapidity, amidst a shower of musketry and grape, and had already got almost within reach of the bayonets of the enemy, who still gallantly stood their ground.

“At this moment,” writes an officer engaged in the charge, “instead of dashing among their ranks, I suddenly found my horse swept round as it were by an eddy torrent. Away we galloped right shoulders forward, along the whole of the enemy’s line, receiving their fire as we passed, till having turned our backs on them, we took to our heels manfully; every one called out _Halt! Halt!_ while nobody would set the example! till at last a trumpet having sounded, we pulled up, but in complete disorder, dragoons and native cavalry, pell-mell. On this occasion Colonel Maxwell fell, pierced by a grape-shot. He was gallantly leading the charge when he received his death blow. Having involuntarily checked his horse and thrown his arm back, when he received his wound, the soldiers immediately behind him, not knowing the cause, mistook the gesture for a signal to retire, and did so accordingly. At least this was the reason afterwards assigned for the failure, and if true, shows how the fate of armies, and even of nations, may depend on the direction of a single shot.” Recovering from their disorder, the Dragoons renewed the charge with terrible effect, and the enemy gave way in every direction.

Thus closed this memorable battle, one of the most bloody on record to the victors. Out of about 4500 men in action, upwards of 2000 were either killed or wounded, the former amounting to more than one-third of the whole number.”

ASSYRIANS AND JEWS.--the Battles, &c., between--B.C. 710. These battles resulted in the total destruction of the army of Sennacharib, so graphically described by the Sacred penman--and afterwards in the destruction of Jerusalem, the overthrow of Solomon’s Temple, and the exile of the Jews to Babylon, for 70 years.

ATHLONE.--The English army under General Ginckel stormed Athlone, then a town of prodigious strength--crossing the Shannon in the face of the Irish army, yet not losing more than 50 men. This bold and successful enterprise procured for Ginckel the title of Earl of Athlone, 1691. _See Aughrim._

ATTILA.--Surnamed _The Scourge of God_, ravaged all Europe, A.D. 447. He invaded the Roman empire with an army of 500,000 Huns, and laid waste all the provinces at Chalons-sur-Marne. Aetius, the Roman prefect, met him, and defeated him with the loss of 200,000 men. Afterwards he was as signally defeated by Thorismond, King of the Goths, and died in the midst of his career.

AUERSTADT, BATTLE OF.--In this most sanguinary conflict, between the French and Prussian armies, October 14th, 1806, the Prussians were routed on every side, having lost 200 pieces of cannon, 30 standards, and 28,000 prisoners, and leaving 30,000 slain on the battle field. Both the King of Prussia and Napoleon commanded at this engagement. The French Emperor immediately afterwards entered Berlin, from which city he issued his memorable Berlin Decrees.

AUGHRIM, BATTLE OF.--Near Athlone, in Ireland. This battle was fought, July 12th, 1691, between the Irish, headed by the French General St. Ruth, and the English under General Ginckel, when the former lost 7000 men; the latter only 600 killed and 960 wounded. St. Ruth was slain. This engagement proved decisively fatal to the interests of James II in Ireland, Ginckel was immediately created Earl of Athlone; the ball by which St. Ruth was killed is still preserved suspended in the choir of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

AUGSBURG, BATTLE OF.--Fought between the Imperialists and the French army, the latter commanded by Moreau; who obtained so complete a victory, that Augsburg and Munich were opened to him. It was fought August 26th, 1796; Moreau, September 2nd following, again defeated the Austrians on the Jun, and again, September 7th, at Mainburg.

AUSTERLITZ, BATTLE OF.--Fought December 2nd, 1805, between the French and Austrian armies; gained by the former. Three Emperors commanded at this battle, Alexander of Russia, Francis of Austria, and Napoleon of France. The killed and wounded exceeded 40,000 on the side of the Allies, who lost besides, 40 standards, 150 pieces of cannon, and many thousands of prisoners. This decisive victory of the French led to the treaty of Presburg, which was signed December 26th same year.

B.

BABYLON.--This city was first taken by Ninus, B.C. 2059, then by Esar-haddon, B.C. 680. Both Darius and Cyrus took the city, the first through the fidelity of his officer Zopyrus, who having cut off his nose and ears fled to the Babylonians, and was admitted within the walls, and found means shortly afterwards to betray the city--the other by turning the course of the river Euphrates, and marching his soldiers up the dry bed into the city.

BADAJOS, SIEGE OF.--This important frontier fortress had surrendered to the French, March 11th, 1811, and was invested by the British under Lord Wellington, on March 16th, 1812; and stormed and taken on April following. The siege is one of the most important in the annals of warfare; for the victory was not only a glorious military achievement in itself, but it obliged the French, who had entered Portugal for the purpose of plunder, to commence a precipitate retreat from that kingdom. For particulars, see Life of Wellington, and Napier’s Peninsular War.

BADEN, TREATY OF.--Between France and the Emperor, September 7th, 1814. It was erected into a grand duchy of the Rhenish Confederation in 1806. Its territorial acquisitions, by its alliance with France, was guaranteed by the Vienna Congress of 1815.

BALAKLAVA, BATTLE OF.--Fought October 25th, 1854. If the exhibition of the most brilliant valour, of the excess of courage, and of a daring which would have reflected lustre on the best days of chivalry can afford full consolation for the disaster of to-day, we can have no reason to regret the melancholy loss which we sustained in a contest with a savage and barbarous enemy.

I shall proceed to describe, to the best of my power, what occurred under my own eyes, and to state the facts which I have heard from men whose veracity is unimpeachable, reserving to myself the exercise of the right of private judgment in making public and in suppressing the details of what occurred on this memorable day. Before I proceed to my narrative, I must premise that a certain feeling existed in some quarters that our cavalry had not been properly handled since they landed in the Crimea, and that they had lost golden opportunities from the indecision and excessive caution of their leaders. It was said that our cavalry ought to have been manœuvred at Bouljanak in one way or in another, according to the fancy of the critic. It was affirmed, too, that the Light Cavalry were utterly useless in the performance of one of their most important duties--the collection of supplies for the army--that they were “above their business, and too fine gentlemen for their work;” that our horse should have pushed on after the flying enemy after the battle of the Alma, to their utter confusion, and with the certainty of taking many guns and prisoners; and, above all, that at Mackenzie’s farm first, and at the gorge near Inkermann, subsequently, they had been improperly restrained from charging, and had failed in gaining great successes, which would have entitled them to a full share of the laurels of the campaign, solely owing to the timidity of the officer in command. The existence of this feeling was known to many of our cavalry, and they were indignant and exasperated that the faintest shade of suspicion should rest on any of their corps. With the justice of these aspersions they seemed to think they had nothing to do, and perhaps the prominent thought in their minds was that they would give such an example of courage to the world, if the chance offered itself, as would shame their detractors for ever.

In my last I mentioned that several battalions of Russian infantry had crossed the Tchernaya, and that they threatened the rear of our position and our communication with Balaklava. Their bands could be heard playing at night by the travellers along the Balaklava road to the camp, but they “showed” but little during the day, and kept up among the gorges and mountain passes through which the roads to Inkermann, Simpheropol, and the south-east, of the Crimea wind towards the interior. The position we occupied, in reference to Balaklava was supposed by most people to be very strong--even impregnable. Our lines were formed by natural mountain slopes in the rear, along which the French had made very formidable entrenchments. Below those entrenchments, and very nearly in a right line across the valley beneath, are four conical hillocks, one rising above the other as they recede from our lines; the furthest, which joins the chain of mountains opposite to our ridges being named Canrobert’s Hill, from the meeting there of that General with Lord Raglan after the march to Balaklava. On the top of each of these hills the Turks had thrown up earthen redoubts, defended by 250 men each, and armed with two or three guns--some heavy ship guns--lent by us to them, with one artilleryman in each redoubt to look after them. These hills cross the valley of Balaklava at the distance of about two and a half miles from the town. Supposing the spectator, then, to take his stand on one of the heights forming the rear of our camp before Sebastopol, he would see the town of Balaklava, with its scanty shipping, its narrow strip of water, and its old forts on his right hand; immediately below he would behold the valley and plain of coarse meadow land, occupied by our cavalry tents, and stretching from the base of the ridge on which he stood to the foot of the formidable heights at the other side; he would see the French trenches lined with Zouaves a few feet beneath, and distant from him, on the slope of the hill; a Turkish redoubt lower down, then another in the valley, then, in a line with it, some angular earthworks, then, in succession, the other two redoubts up to Canrobert’s Hill. At the distance of two or two and a half miles across the valley there is an abrupt rocky mountain range of most irregular and picturesque formation, covered with scanty brushwood here and there, or rising into barren pinnacles and _plateaux_ of rock. In outline and appearance this portion of the landscape is wonderfully like the Trosachs. A patch of blue sea is caught in between the overhanging cliff’s of Balaklava as they close in the entrance to the harbour on the right. The camp of the Marines, pitched on the hill sides more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea, is opposite to you as your back is turned to Sebastopol and your right side towards Balaklava. On the road leading up the valley, close to the entrance of the town, and beneath these hills, is the encampment of the 93rd Highlanders.

The cavalry lines are nearer to you below, and are some way in advance of the Highlanders, but nearer to the town than the Turkish redoubts. The valley is crossed here and there by small waves of land. On your left the hills and rocky mountain ranges gradually close in towards the course of the Tchernaya, till at three or four miles’ distance from Balaklava, the valley is swallowed up in a mountain gorge and deep ravines, above which rise tiers after tiers of desolate whitish rock, garnished now and then by bits of scanty herbage, and spreading away towards the east and south, where they attain the Alpine dimensions of the Tschatir Dugh. It is very easy for an enemy at the Belbek, or in command of the road of Mackenzies’s farm, Inkermann, Simpheropol, or Bakshiserai, to debouch through these gorges at any time upon this plain from the neck of the valley, or to march from Sebastopol by the Tchernaya, and to advance along it towards Balaklava, till checked by the Turkish redoubts on the southern side, or by the fire from the French works on the northern side--_i.e._, the side which, in relation to the valley to Balaklava, forms the rear of our position. It was evident enough that Menschikoff and Gortschakoff had been feeling their way along this route for several days past, and very probably at night the Cossacks had crept up close to our picquets, which are not always as watchful as might be desired, and had observed the weakness of a position far too extended for our army to defend, and occupied by their despised enemy, the Turks.

At half-past seven o’clock this morning, an orderly came galloping in to the head-quarters camp from Balaklava, with the news, that at dawn a strong corps of Russian horse, supported by guns and battalions of infantry had marched into the valley, and had already nearly dispossessed the Turks of the redoubt No 1, (that on Canrobert’ Hill, which is farthest from our lines), and that they were opening fire on the redoubts Nos. 2, 3, and 4, which would speedily be in their hands unless the Turks offered a stouter resistance than they had done already.