CHAPTER II.

Defeat of the Russians--Renewal of hostilities--Bravery of the Allied Armies--Tenacity of Russian Attack--Usual prognostication of Retreat--Letter of Emperor read to Russian troops--Enumeration of troops engaged on the side of the Allies--Despatch of Marshal Pelissier.

On the 16th of August the long-threatened attack of the Russians took place, and ended in their complete defeat. Movements of large numbers of troops in the neighbourhood of Sebastopol, the unanimous reports of the deserters, of whom several came in every day, and information gained from Tartars, had given intimation that the Russians intended to try their luck once more in an offensive operation. Although, at first, the line of the Tchernaya suggested itself as the point which the Russians would most probably attack, a supposition which was moreover confirmed by all the deserters, yet, as large numbers of newly-arrived troops were seen concentrated in and about the Russian works, apprehensions were entertained that they might attempt the positions before Sebastopol.

[Sidenote: POSITIONS OF THE ARMIES.]

Several deserters came in on the 15th, and spoke with the utmost certainty of an intended attack on the Tchernaya; but no particular attention was paid to their reports, and no special orders were given to the troops, except "to be prepared;" and this had been so often repeated that it made no impression. In Baidar, whence the English cavalry had been withdrawn, two regiments of heavy French cavalry, and detachments of Chasseurs and Zouaves, were stationed. On the 15th, General d'Allonville sent word by semaphore, that large numbers of Russian troops were concentrated on the heights, and that he expected to be attacked. Late in the evening, notice of this message was sent to General Della Marmora and Osman Pasha. No additional precautions were taken on the Tchernaya line, and the advance was scarcely less a surprise than that of Inkerman. The first news of the attack was brought about daybreak by some Chasseurs forming part of a patrol who fell into an ambuscade and escaped, while their comrades were taken prisoners. Soon afterwards the outposts across the Tchernaya were driven in, and at daybreak the cannonade began.

The Tchernaya, issuing from the narrow gorge in which it runs after leaving the Valley of Baidar, at the Tower of Karlovka, flows between a succession of hillocks, which formed the basis of the position of the allied armies. On the extreme right, the Turks were stationed. They occupied two hillocks, between which are two roads leading from Higher Tchorgoun and the Tower of Karlovka into the Woronzoff Road. The Sardinians leant on the little mountain stream which limited the Turkish position to the left, and on the large hillock above the road from Balaklava to Tchorgoun, and occupied a position of the utmost importance in the defence of the line of the Tchernaya. In front, and divided from it by the aqueduct, was another hillock, smaller but equally steep, accessible from the first by a stone bridge on which the Sardinians had a small _épaulement_. They had outposts at the other side of the Tchernaya, on the hillock near the Mackenzie Road. The French occupied three hillocks to the left of the Sardinians, and guarded the road leading to Balaklava over the Traktir Bridge from Mackenzie's Farm. The first of these, to the right, was separated from the others by the road to the bridge; and the third, on the left, was protected by the basin of the aqueduct. In front of the bridge there was an _épaulement_, beyond which were the outposts.

The first attack of the Russians was against the outposts of the Sardinians. Corresponding to the hillocks on the south side of the Tchernaya were three plateaux from which their guns could command not only the ground opposite occupied by the Sardinians and Turks, but the plain which opens towards the French position. A company of infantry, and a company of bersaglieri, formed the Sardinian outposts. They were attacked at dawn. As the troops were not under arms, it was necessary to hold this position for a while, and General Della Marmora sent Major Govone, of the Etat-Major, with a company of bersaglieri, to reinforce the companies. They crossed the aqueduct and the river, and went up the plateau; but, when they arrived on the crest, the two companies had just left the _épaulement_, which had become untenable, as it was swept by the guns which the Russians had brought up on the plateaux, and was exposed to be taken in the rear. The Sardinians retired in good order across the river, and went to reinforce the post which occupied the second hillock on the aqueduct.

The cannonade on both sides commenced. Scarcely had the cannonade opened when three compact columns of infantry advanced towards the French position, and attacked the bridge and the hillock to the right.

The French outpost beyond the bridge consisted of a company of the 2nd regiment of Zouaves. The other _avant postes_, to the right of the Zouaves up to the Sardinian outposts, were furnished by the 20th _léger_ and the 22nd of the line. The _réveillée_ had not yet gone in camp, when the sentinels were alarmed by hearing the tramp of men, whose forms were yet invisible in the darkness. The posts had not time to stand to their arms ere they were driven across the river; but the desultory firing had given timely warning to the main guards and to the camps, and the men turned out just as a storm of round shot began to rush over the ground.

The Russian columns, protected by the fire of their artillery, moved in excellent order down to the river side, notwithstanding the heavy fire of artillery which greeted them in front from the French, and in flank from the Sardinians. At the river the first column detached itself from the rest, and dividing into two parts crossed the river, which is easily fordable in summer.

Before the troops were properly under arms the Russians were at the bridge and at the foot of the hillock. The 20th _léger_ and the 2nd battalion of Zouaves had to stand the first shock, and they certainly stood it gallantly. The Russians, without losing time in firing, advanced with an _élan_ scarcely ever seen in Russian troops. They were new troops, belonging, according to the prisoners and wounded, to the 5th division of the 2nd _corps d'armée_, lately arrived from Poland.

The aqueduct which ran close to the foot of the hillock, formed the chief defence of the French. About nine or ten feet wide and several feet deep, it skirts the steep hills so close, that it is nearly in all places supported by a high embankment, offering considerable difficulties for an advancing force, and exposing them as soon as they reach the top of the embankment, to commanding musketry fire. Notwithstanding this, the Russians crossed it on the right, and were beginning to scale the heights, when, taken in flank by the Sardinian batteries, which fired with admirable precision, they were swept down wholesale and rolled into the aqueduct.

[Sidenote: ORDINARY SIGNAL OF RUSSIAN RETREAT.]

This first rush did not last ten minutes. The Russians fell back. Scarcely had they gone a few hundred yards when they were met by a second column, which was advancing at the _pas de charge_, and both united and again rushed forward. This second attempt was more successful than the first. They forded the river on the right and left, at the bridge, and forced its defenders to fall back. The moment the bridge was free two guns of the 5th Light Brigade of Artillery crossed it and took position between two of the hillocks on the road which leads to the plain of Balaklava. A third gun crossed the river by a ford, and all three began to sweep the road and the heights. The infantry, without waiting for the portable bridges, the greater part of which had been thrown away during the advance, rushed breast-deep into the water, climbed up the embankment, and began to scale the heights. They succeeded in getting up more than one-half of the ascent, where the dead and wounded afterwards showed clearly the mark they reached; but by this time the French met them in the most gallant style. The Russians were by degrees forced back, and driven across the bridge, carrying away their guns.

While this conflict took place on the bridge, the other column attacked the French right in such a swarm that they could neither be kept back by the aqueduct, nor cowed by the Sardinian guns, which were ploughing long lanes through their ranks. On they came, as it seemed, irresistible, and rushed up the steep hill with such fury that the Zouaves, who lined the sides of it, were obliged to fall back. The officers might be seen leading the way and animating their soldiers. This furious rush brought the advancing column to the crest of the hillock, where it stopped to form. But the French had not been idle. Scarcely did the column of the enemy show its head, ere the guns opened upon it with grape, and a murderous fire was poured in by the French infantry. The column began to waver; but the impetus from those behind was so powerful that the head was pushed forward a few yards more, when the French, giving one mighty cheer, rushed upon the enemy, who, shaken already, immediately turned round and ran. But the mass was so great that all the hurry could not save them, and more than 200 prisoners were taken, the banks of the aqueduct, the aqueduct itself, and the river side were covered and filled with the dead and the wounded. The Sardinian and French artillery poured a murderous cross-fire into the scattered remains of the column. It was a complete rout. The French drove them far across the plain. This defeat completely depressed them; nothing more was attempted against this side.

Not so on the bridge. Notwithstanding the heavy loss suffered in the second attack, the Russians collected the scattered remains of the column which had been routed on the right of the French, and brought up all their reserves. They crossed the river, and the aqueduct too, but the French were now thoroughly prepared, and the tenacity of the Russians only served to augment their losses. This last failure was decisive, and immediately the advance of the artillery--the usual Russian preparation for retreat--showed they were on the point of retiring. Three batteries, each of twelve guns, began to open fire, while the remains of the infantry rallied behind a rising ground leading up towards the plateau of Ayker, or Mackenzie's Height.

The Sardinians, who, with the exception of the little outpost fight on the opposite side of the Tchernaya, had only supported the French by their artillery, began to move across the aqueduct. The Russian riflemen, after the last defeat on the right, had retired behind the banks of the Tchernaya. A battalion of Piedmontese, preceded by a company of bersaglieri, advanced in beautiful order as if on parade, and soon drove these riflemen from their position. It even advanced some way, but it was not intended to force the heights. The French brought up a new division (Dulac's). The English and French cavalry were in readiness on the ground of the Light Cavalry charge, to receive the enemy if they should debouch on the plain. But General Morris would not risk the cavalry on the plain, intersected as it was by the branches of the river, and defended, as it was still, by the Russian guns on the height; so only two squadrons of Chasseurs d'Afrique followed the retreating enemy.

The guns which the Russians had brought up to cover their retreat suffered so much by the fire, which from our side was increased by Captain Mowbray's battery from the open ground between the Sardinian and the French positions, that they made off. As the guns retired, a brilliant line of cavalry appeared from behind the rising ground. I could distinguish five regiments--three in line and two other regiments in second line. They advanced at a gallop, and wheeling round, allowed twelve guns to pass, which again opened fire, but at half-past nine or ten o'clock black lines moving off, through clouds of the dust on the Mackenzie Road, were the only traces which remained of the so long threatened attack of the Russians.

Although not quite so obstinate and sanguinary as the Battle of Inkerman, this affair resembled it in many points. The Russians gave up manoeuvring, and confided entirely in the valour of their troops. The difference was in the manner of fighting. At Inkerman the Russians fell under file firing; on the Tchernaya it was the artillery which did the greatest execution. On the banks of the aqueduct particularly, the sight was appalling; the Russians, when scaling the embankment of the aqueduct, were taken in flank by the Sardinian batteries, and the dead and wounded rolled down the embankment, sometimes more than twenty feet in height.

According to the account of the prisoners, and judging from the straps on the shoulders of the wounded and dead, three divisions were engaged in the actual attack,--the 5th of the 2nd _corps d'armée_ (of General Paniutin), then lately arrived from Poland, under the command of General Wrangel; the 12th division of the 4th _corps d'armée_ (Osten Sacken's), formerly under the command of General Liprandi, afterwards under General Martinolep; and the 17th division of the 6th _corps d'armée_ (Liprandi's), under Major-General Wassielkosky. Before the attack began, General Gortschakoff, who commanded in person, read a letter from the Emperor before them, in which he expressed a hope that they would prove as valorous as last year when they took the heights of Balaklava; and then there was a large distribution of brandy. Besides the three divisions which attacked, the 7th occupied Tchorgoun and the heights, but was not engaged except in the small outpost affair of the Sardinians.

The French had three divisions engaged--the Division Faucheux to the right, the Division d'Herbillon in the centre, and the Division (Camou) on the left of the bridge; their loss was about 1,000 in killed and wounded. The Sardinians had only one division engaged (the Division Trotti), and lost but a few hundred men; they had to regret the loss of a distinguished general officer, the Brigadier-General Count de Montevecchio, who died of his wounds; but they gained great confidence from the day, and were proud of holding their own so well under the eyes of their allies.

The battle had been raging for an hour ere I reached the line of the French works at Fedukhine. From the high grounds over which I had to ride, the whole of the battle-field was marked out by rolling columns of smoke, and the irregular thick puffs of the artillery. All our cavalry camps were deserted; but the sun played on the helmets and sabres of the solid squadrons, which were drawn up about two miles in advance of Kadikoi, and just in rear of the line of hills which the French and Sardinians were defending, so as to be ready to charge the Russians should they force the position. The French cavalry, chasseurs, hussars, and two regiments of dragoons, were on our left. Our light and our heavy cavalry brigades were formed in two heavy masses, supported by artillery in the plain behind the second Fedukhine hillock, and seemed in splendid case, and "eager for the fray." The Allies had, in fact, not less than 6,000 very fine cavalry that day in the field; but they were held in check, "for fear" of the artillery, which there is no doubt they could have captured, in addition to many thousands of prisoners, if handled by a Seidlitz or a Murat. But the French General would not permit a charge to be executed, though French and English cavalry leaders were alike eager for it, and so this noble force was rendered ineffective.

Having passed by the left of the cavalry, I gained the side of the hill just as a large body of French troops crowned it at the _pas double_, deployed, and at once charged down towards the aqueduct, where a strong column of Russians, protected by a heavy fire of artillery on the crest of the ridge, were making good their ground against the exhausted French. This new regiment attacking them with extraordinary impetuosity on the flank, literally swept the Russians like flies into the aqueduct, or rolled them headlong down its steep banks; and at the same moment a French battery on my right, belonging, I think, to the Imperial Guards, opened on the shattered crowd with grape, and tore them into atoms. This column was the head, so to speak, of the second attack on the lines, and emerging through the flying mass, another body of Russian infantry, with levelled bayonets, advanced with great steadiness towards the aqueduct once more. As far as the eye could see towards the right, the flat caps and grey coats were marching towards the Allied position, or detaching themselves from the distant reserves, which were visible here and there concealed amid the hills. As the French battery opened, a Russian battery was detached to answer it, and to draw off their fire; but our gallant Allies took their pounding with great gallantry and coolness, and were not diverted for a moment from their business of dealing with the infantry column, the head of which was completely knocked to pieces in two minutes. Then the officers halted it, and tried in vain to deploy them--the column, wavering and wriggling like a great serpent, began to spread out from the further extremity like a fan, and to retreat towards the rear. Another crashing volley of grape, and they are retreating over the plain.

And now there breaks high over all the roar of battle, heavier thunder. Those are the deep, angry voices of the great English heavy battery of 18-pounders and 32-pounder howitzers, under Mowbray, which search out the reserves. These guns were placed far away on my right, near the Sardinians, and it is acknowledged by all that they did good service upon this eventful day. The advance I had just witnessed was the last effort of the enemy. Their infantry rolled in confused masses over the plain on the other side of the Tchernaya, were pursued by the whole fire of the French batteries and of the 8-inch English howitzers in the Sardinian redoubt, and by a continuous and well-directed fusillade, till they were out of range. Their defeat was announced by the advance of their cavalry, and by the angry volleys of their artillery against the positions of the Allies. Their cavalry, keeping out of range, made a very fair show, with lances and standards, and sabres shining brightly; but beyond that they did nothing--and, indeed, they could do nothing, as we did not give them a chance of action. The Russians were supported by guns, but they did not seem well placed, nor did they occupy a good position at any time of the fight. The infantry formed in square blocks in the rear of this force, and then began to file off towards the Mackenzie Road, and the French rocket battery opened on them from the plateau, and, strange to say, reached them several times. It was about eight o'clock when their regular retreat commenced, and the English cavalry and artillery began to retire also at that hour to their camps, much discontented, because they had had no larger share in the honours of the day.

The march of the Russians continued till late in the day--their last column gained the plateau about two o'clock. It must have been a terrible march for them--not a drop of water to be had; and even when they gained their arid camp, it is only too probable that they had nothing to drink; indeed, the prisoners told us the men were encouraged to the attack by being told that if they gained the Tchernaya they would have abundance of water--the greatest inducement that could be held out to them. I rode down towards the _tête-du-pont_. In order to get a good view of the retreat, I descended to the bridge, which was covered with wounded men. Just as I gained the centre of it, a volley of shells was pitched right upon it, and amid the French, who, with their usual humanity, were helping the wounded. Some burst in the shallow stream, the sides of which were crowded with wounded men; others killed poor wretches who were crawling towards the water,--one in particular, to whom I had just an instant before thrown a sandwich; others knocked pieces out of the bridge, or tore up the causeway. As the road was right in the line of fire, I at once turned off the bridge, and pulling sharp round, dashed under an arch just as the battery opened on us a second time, and there I remained for about ten minutes, when the Russians seemed ashamed of themselves, and gave us a respite for a few moments. The next time they fired was with round shot; and as I retreated up the road, to obtain shelter behind the hills, one of these knocked a wounded Zouave to pieces before my eyes. In the rear of the hill, there was a party of about five hundred Russian prisoners _en bivouac_. Many of them were wounded; all were war-worn, dirty, ill-clad,--some in rags, others almost bootless. The French sentries who guarded them seemed to commiserate the poor fellows; but two or three of their own officers, who sat apart, did not look at them, but smoked their cigars with great nonchalance, or talked glibly to the French officers of the fortune of war, &c.

In a short time I returned to the front, and saw General Simpson and a few staff-officers descending from the Sardinian position, whence they had watched the battle. They were on their way back to head-quarters; but Captain Colville, aide-de-camp to the General, a young officer of ability and promise, and always of an inquiring turn of mind, turned back with me, and we rode over the bridge. The French were, however, obdurate, and would not let us cross the _tête-du-pont_, as we were _en pleine portée_ of the guns posted behind a white scarp on a hillock on the opposite side. We could see that the Sardinians had recovered their old ground, and occupied the height from which their advanced posts were driven early in the day. Further, we could see the Russian cavalry, but the great mass of infantry was in full retreat; and at nine o'clock the road to Mackenzie's Farm was thronged with a close column of thirsty, footsore, beaten Russians. The aspect of the field, of the aqueduct, and of the river, was horrible beyond description;--the bodies were closely packed in parties, and lay in files two or three deep, where the grape had torn through the columns. For two days the bodies rotted on the ground which lay beyond the French lines, and the first Russian burying party did not come down till the 18th, when the stench was so very great that the men could scarcely perform their loathsome task. General Read was killed early in the battle; and the Russians lost every officer in command of an attacking column. Their total loss was, we estimated, at from 12,000 to 15,000 men.