It is the morning of Saturday, the 8th September, 1855. For a year now the allied forces have been before Sebastopol; but the flag of St. Andrew is still flying in defiance upon its forts, and on this memorable morning the columns of attack are forming for the great assault. In the preceding June, amid the din of the ceaseless cannonade, poor Lord Raglan had passed away to a quieter world; and the picturesque Sardinians, with their green uniforms, billycock hats, and Bersaglieri plumes--each private a species of Fra Diavolo--had come to aid us in the reduction of this place, the Gibraltar of the Euxine.
It was a cheerless morning. From the sea, a biting wind swept over the land; clouds of white dust and dusky-brown smoke, that came from more than one blazing street and burning ship--among the latter was a two-decker, fired by the French rockets--rose high above the green spires and batteries of Sebastopol, and overhung it like a sombre pall, while shorn of its rays the sun resembled a huge red globe hung in mid-air above us. Gradually it seemed to fade out altogether, and then the whole sky became of a dull, leaden, and wintry gray. By this time our epaulettes had entirely disappeared, and our uniforms were hopeless rags; in some instances eked out by plain clothes, or whatever one could pick up; and the government contractors had such vague ideas of the dimensions of the human foot, that some of the boots issued to the soldiers would not have fitted a child of ten years old, and as they dared not throw away her Majesty's property, many men went bare-footed, with their boots dangling from their knapsack or waist-belt.
"In our present toggery we may meet the Russians," said Dyneley, our adjutant; "but I should scarcely like to figure in them before the girls at Winchester, in 'the Row,' or at the windows of 'the Rag.'"
In great masses, 30,000 Frenchmen were forming to assault the Malakoff, with 5,000 Sardinians as supports.
A long line of cavalry--Hussars with their braided dolmans, Lancers with their fluttering banneroles, Dragoons with glittering helmets, and all with loaded carbine on thigh, had been, from an early hour, thrown to the front, to form a cordon of sentinels, to prevent straggling; while a similar line was formed in our rear to keep back idlers from Balaclava; yet to obtain glimpses of the impending attack, groups of red-fezzed Turks, of picturesque-looking Eupatorians, and fur-capped Tartars, began to cluster on every green knoll at a safe distance, where, in their excitement, they jabbered and gesticulated in a manner most unusual for people so generally placid and stolid.
At half-past eleven A.M. the pipes of the Highland Brigade were heard, as it marched in from Kamara, and got into position in reserve of the right attack; and the fine appearance of the men of those mountains--"the backbone of Britain," as Pope Sylvester called them of old--elicited a hearty cheer from the Royal Welsh as they defiled past, with all their black plumes and striped tartans waving in the biting wind.
During all the preceding day, the batteries had thundered in salvoes against Sebastopol; and hence vast gaps were now visible in the streets and principal edifices, most of which were half hidden in lurid sheets of fire; and by the bridge of boats that lay between the north and south side, thousands of fugitives, laden with their goods and household lares, their children, sick, and aged, had been seen to pour so long as light remained.
Until the French began to move, the eyes of all in our division were turned on our famous point of attack--the Redan; and I may inform the non-military reader, that a redan in field fortification means simply an indented work with lines and faces; but this one resembled an unfinished square, with two sides meeting at the salient angle in front of our parallels, i. e., the trenches by which we had dug our way under cover towards it.
With a strong reinforcement, Nicholaevitch Tolstoff, now, as before stated, a general, had entered the Redan by its rear or open face; and since his advent, it had been greatly strengthened. In the walls of the parapet he had constructed little chambers roofed with sacks of earth, and these secure places rendered the defenders quite safe from falling shells. In the embrasures were excavations wherein the gunners might repose close by their guns, but ever armed and accoutred; and by a series of trenches it communicated with the great clumsy edifice known as the Malakoff Tower.
By a road to the right, the Redan also communicated with the extensive quadrangle of buildings forming the Russian barracks, one hundred yards distant; and in its fear there lay the Artillery or Dockyard Creek. The flat caps, and in other instances the round glazed helmets, of the Russians and the points of their bayonets, bristling like a hedge of steel, could be seen above the lines of its defence and at the deeply-cut embrasures, where the black cannon of enormous calibre peered grimly down upon us.
Our arrangements were very simple. At noon the French were to attack the Malakoff; and as soon as they fell to work we were to assault the Redan, and I had volunteered for the scaling-ladder party, which consisted of 320 picked men of the Kentish Buffs and 97th or Ulster Regiment.
In the trenches of our left attack could be seen the black bearskins of our Brigade of Guards, and massed in dusky column on the hill before their camp, their red now changed to a very neutral tint indeed, were the slender battalions of the Third Division, motionless and still, save when the wind rustled the tattered silk of the colours, or the sword of an officer gleamed as he dressed the ranks. A cross cannonade was maintained, as usual, between our batteries and those of the enemy. The balls were skipping about in all directions, and several "roving Englishmen," adventurous tourists, "own correspondents," and unwary amateurs, who were there, had to scuttle for their lives to some place of shelter.
As I joined the ladder party, I could not help thinking of many a past episode in my life: of Estelle, who had been false; of Valerie, who was lost to me; and of the suspicion that Winifred Lloyd loved me. Ere another hour, I might be lying dead before the Redan, and there forget them all! Our covering party consisted of 200 of the Buffs and Rifles under Captain Lewes; but alas for the weakness of our force, as compared with thousands of men to oppose. The strength of the Second Division detailed against the Redan consisted only of 760 men of the 3rd, 41st, and 62nd regiments, with a working party of 100 from the Royal Welsh. The rest of Colonel Windham's brigade was in reserve.
Brigadier Shirley, who was to command the whole, had been ill on board-ship; but the moment the gallant fellow heard that an assault was resolved on, he hastened to join us. Prior, however, to his coming, Colonel Windham and Colonel Unett of the 29th were deciding which of them should take precedence in leading the attack. They coolly tossed up a shilling, and the latter won. Thus he had the alternative of saying whether he would go first, or follow Windham; but a glow spread over his face, and he exclaimed,
"I have made my choice, and I shall be the first man inside the Redan!"
However, it was doomed to be otherwise, as soon afterwards a ball from the abattis severely wounded and disabled him. When we had seen that our men had carefully loaded and capped and cast loose their cartridges, all became very still, and there was certainly more of thought than conversation among us. Many of the men in some regiments were little better than raw recruits, and were scarcely masters of their musketry drill. Disease in camp and death in action had fast thinned our ranks of the carefully-trained and well-disciplined soldiers who landed in Bulgaria; and when these--the pest and bullet--failed, the treachery of contractors, and the general mismanagement of the red-tapists, did the rest. Accustomed as we had been to the daily incidents of this protracted siege, there was a great hush over all our ranks; the hush of anticipation, and perhaps of grave reflection, came to the lightest-hearted and most heedless there.
"What is the signal for us to advance?" I inquired.
"Four rockets," replied Dyneley, our adjutant, who was on foot, with his sword drawn, and a revolver in his belt.
"There go the French to attack the tower!" cried Gwynne; and then a hum of admiration stole along our lines as we saw them, at precisely five minutes to twelve o'clock, "like a swarm of bees," issue from their trenches, the Linesmen in kepis and long blue coats, the Zouaves in turbans and baggy red breeches, under a terrible shower of cannon and musketry, fiery in their valour, quick, ardent, and eager! They swept over the little space of open ground that lay between the head of their sap, and, irresistible in their number, poured on a sea of armed men, a living tide, a human surge, section after section, and regiment after regiment, to the assault.
"O'er ditch and stream, o'er crest and wall,
They jump and swarm, they rise and fall;
With vives and cris, with cheers and cries.
Like thunderings in autumnal skies;
Till every foot of ground is mud,
With tears and brains and bones and blood.
Yet, faith, it was a grim delight
To see the little devils fight!"
With wonderful speed and force, their thousands seemed to drift through the gaping embrasures of the tower, which appeared to swallow them up--all save the dead and dying, who covered the slope of the glacis; and in two minutes more the tricolor of France was waving on the summit of the Korniloff bastion!
But the work of the brave French did not end there. From twelve till seven at night, they had to meet and repulse innumerable attempts of the Russians to regain what they had lost--the great tower, which was really the key of the city; till, in weariness and despair, the latter withdrew, leaving the slopes covered with corpses that could only be reckoned by thousands. The moment the French standard fluttered out above the blue smoke and grimy dust of the tower, a vibration seemed to pass along all our ranks. Every face lit up; every eye kindled; every man instinctively grasped more tightly the barrel of his musket, or the blade of his sword, or set his cap more firmly on his head, for the final rush.
"The tricolor is on the Malakoff! By heavens, the French are in! hurrah!" cried several officers.
"Hurrah!" responded the stormers of the Light and Second Divisions.
"There go the rockets!" cried Phil Caradoc, pointing with his sword to where the tiny jets of sparkles were seen to curve in the wind against the dull leaden sky, their explosion unheard amid the roar of musketry and of human voices in and beyond the Malakoff.
"Ladders, to the front! eight men per ladder!" said Welsford, of the 97th.
"It is our turn now, lads; forward, forward!" added some one else--Raymond Mostyn, of the Rifles, I think.
"There is a five-pound note offered to the first man inside the Redan!" exclaimed little Owen Tudor, a drummer of ours, as he slung his drum and went scouring to the front: but a bullet killed the poor boy instantly, and Welsford had his head literally blown off by a cannon ball.
In their dark green uniforms, which were patched with many a rag, a hundred men of the Rifle Brigade who carried the scaling ladders preceded us; and the moment they and we began to issue, which we did at a furious run, with bayonets fixed and rifles at the short trail, from the head of the trenches, the cannon of the Redan opened a withering fire upon us. The round shot tore up the earth beneath our feet, or swept men away by entire sections, strewing limbs and other fragments of humanity everywhere; the exploding shells also dealt death and mutilation; the grape and cannister swept past in whistling showers; and wicked little shrapnels were flying through the air like black spots against the sky; while, with a hearty and genuine English "hurrah!" that deepened into a species of fierce roar, we swept towards the ditch which so few of us might live to recross.
Thick fall our dead on every hand, and the hoarse boom of the cannon is sounding deep amid the roar of the concentrated musketry. Crawling and limping back to the trenches for succour and shelter, the groaning or shrieking wounded are already pouring in hundreds to the rear, reeking with blood; and, within a minute, the whole slope of the Redan is covered with our redcoats--the dead or the helpless--thick as the leaves lie "when forests are rended!"
