Battles of the Crimean War

W. Baring Pemberton

• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787204195
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia británica

The Crimean War has been called 'the last great war to be fought without the help of modern resources of science'. It was also the last great war to be fought by the British army in all its splendour of scarlet and gold, using weapons and tactics which would not have astonished the Prince Rupert or the Duke of Marlborough. Many who fought in the First, and not a few who fought in the Second, World War will have known personally those who took part in such battles and heard their accounts from their own lips.On the other hand no campaign should be more familiar, because none has been 'covered' more fully and more candidly. The historian of the Crimean battles has then (it would appear) only to make a synthesis of the innumerable letters and reports and his story is complete. Unfortunately this is not so. With smoke from the black powder then used drifting across the battlefield, lying heavily over batteries, the combatant could often see and report little more than what had happened in his vicinity; and even in this he is not necessarily reliable…As for those who recollected in tranquillity—and there were many—it is enough to record the remark of a contemporary Canadian military historian: 'Memory can play tricks upon an officer after some lapse of time, especially when the officer's own interest and prejudice are engaged.'Beset by these difficulties the writer who surrounds every incident with reservations and qualifications will rapidly weary his readers. He must on matters of moment, such for example as Nolan's responsibility for the Light Brigade charge, use his judgment on the evidence available and make up his own mind. This I have tried to do."

1 — Peace and War

‘England is the only country in the world thoroughly and universally impressed with the constant desire for peace.’—Sir John Burgoyne

‘CONSTANTINOPLE? NEVER! It is the key of the world!’ Whether or not the story is true which attributes this assertion to Napoleon, when at Tilsit Alexander had demanded the Ottoman capital as his share of a European settlement, it supplies the clue to the Crimean War.

In the hands of Russia, Constantinople would have given her navy egress into the Mediterranean while ensuring it a secure retreat from any pursuing enemy; it would have provided her with a backdoor into the Balkans and must have extended her influence eastward throughout the Levant and the Holy Land as far as Egypt. But by the middle of the century it had become clear to Nicholas, who had succeeded his brother in 1825, that the Concert of Europe would never permit such aggrandisement. Austro-Hungary because of her proximity to the Balkans, France because of her own Near East ambitions, Great Britain because of her concern for the ‘Avenues to India’, would none of them tolerate without a war a Russian annexation of Constantinople. All that Nicholas now aspired to was a large measure of influence in the governance of the Porte. This he believed he might achieve without the use of force from which he was by nature averse. The abortive Montenegran revolt in 1852 had given point to some hints he had thrown out eight years before when on a visit to England. In January, 1853, a notorious colloquy with the British ambassador, Sir Hamilton Seymour, he returned to the subject. ‘Turkey is falling to pieces. The sick man is dying. We must come to some understanding.’ It was a mere feeler, but it was put forward by one whose innermost wishes clearly coloured his vision, yet in a sincere endeavour to avert what he believed would be an ugly scramble following the abrupt disintegration of the Sultan’s patchwork dominions. The executors of the deceased party, he hinted, need be no more than two: Great Britain and Russia. To the first, in return for services rendered, could go Egypt and, if need be, Crete. The second would take Constantinople not en propriétaire—he had (he said) entirely abandoned ‘the plans and dreams of Catharine’—but en dépositaire, pending a settlement of the Balkans which would establish Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria as independent states under Russian protection.

The Foreign Office when informed was not impressed. The integrity of the Porte had long become one of its diplomatic shibboleths. Once anything like a break-up was permitted France, always hankering to revive Napoleon’s Egyptian dreams, would hasten to stake her claims and the overland routes to India could be imperilled. The pith of the Foreign Secretary’s reply was embedded in Lord John Russell’s dry remark, ‘Nations are not apt to die in such a hurry.’ Nevertheless, Nicholas may have felt that by laying his cards on the table he had proved his honesty and could be assured, if not of England’s goodwill, at least of her neutrality in an affair which had just aroused his ire while at the same time equipping him with the means of reaching his goal by a less direct route. He was not the first nor the last European ruler to think that in her preoccupation with trade and money-making England would decline to fight in a cause not directly affecting her purse.

The nature of this alternative route was such as to give Nicholas an advantage over every other sovereign. The Czar of Russia was ex officio head of the Orthodox Greek Church; he was, in current jargon, ‘Big Brother’ to fourteen million Christians out of the Sultan’s thirty-six million subjects. This status was further enhanced by certain features of Ottoman rule. Where, as throughout this empire, all expression of public opinion was forbidden to Orthodox subjects it seeped out in consequence through the pulpit and the presbytery. A religious champion was automatically a political champion. Accordingly when, soon after his conversation with Seymour, Nicholas took up the question of the Holy Places, he was making not only a spiritual but a political demarche. It was this duality which supplied the immediate cause of the Crimean War.

In supporting the claims of the Greek Church to various privileges connected with the Holy Places, Nicholas was bringing himself into conflict with a man whom he detested on principle. To the Czar of All the Russias Louis Napoleon represented everything that was detestable in popular government and to show his feelings he had addressed this parvenu prince disparagingly as mon ami when protocol had required mon frère. Their paths need not, however, have crossed but for the association of France with the Holy Land. Her right to act there as Protector of Christians dated from the Crusades and under her aegis the Latin or Roman Catholic monks had acquired over the centuries certain privileges from the Sultan. There was the right to have the custody of the key to the main door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as well as of the two doors leading therefrom into the Manger; there was the privilege of placing a silver star stamped with the royal arms of France in the Sanctuary of the Nativity. But, during the second half of the previous century, and especially during the period of the Revolution, the interest of France had flagged to the advantage of the Orthodox monks. There, however, the matter might have rested, productive only of an occasional monkish squabble, but for the circumstances of Louis Napoleon’s rise to power. Indebted to the church and parti prêtre and conscious of the need for la gloire, if his régime was to survive, he approached the Sultan regarding the lapsed rights of the Latin monks, quoting in particular certain Capitulations dated 1740. The French case was conclusive and the Greeks were ordered to hand over the keys to the Latin monks just two weeks before the Czar unbuttoned himself to the British ambassador. It was an affront which Nicholas could not tolerate in silence. His reactions were unequivocal. Here again the Montenegran uprising gave him encouragement. By rattling sabres Austria had compelled Turkey to withdraw her army once the revolt was over. He would ape her example. Two army corps were ordered to the frontier between Russia and the Turkish Christian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. To Constantinople was despatched Prince Menschikoff, a man on whom he could perfectly rely to talk to the Porte in the only language he believed it would understand.

Early in March, 1853, Menschikoff arrived, breathing arrogance and defiance and behaving with calculated insolence. Ominously he was accompanied by a military retinue. His demands at once indicated that his master was determined to use the occasion for gaining that paramount influence to which he aspired. The keys and privileges were not only to be restored to the Greeks but the Sultan was to acknowledge the right of the Czar to be Protector of the Greek Church throughout his domains. In achieving this he would score a double victory over Napoleon. Counselled by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the British ambassador and the most influential man in Turkey, the Sultan gave way on the first demand and a compromise settlement more or less satisfactory to all parties was reached. The second demand, likened by Stratford de Redcliffe not to a plan for an amputation but for an injection of poison into the entire Turkish system, was rejected. Menschikoff thereupon withdrew in a rage. Six weeks later the two army corps crossed the Pruth and occupied the Principalities as ‘material guarantees’ (so the Czar proclaimed) for the fulfilment of his demands. A period of agitated diplomacy ensued while ambassadors of the Great Powers assembled at Vienna and produced in all 11 notes and declarations. None was acceptable to both sides and then the Porte lost patience. Confident in the ultimate support of England and France, she ordered the Russians to quit the Principalities within 15 days. This they declined to do and war was declared.

The Turks started well by putting up a good fight on the Danube, but on the last day of November their fleet was caught in Sinope harbour and sent to the bottom. Coming on top of nine months of Russian blustering and bullying this perfectly legitimate act of war aroused the greatest resentment both in England and France. From that moment the two countries marched in step. A joint demand that Russia withdraw from the Principalities by April 30th was refused, and on March 27th and 28th France and England respectively declared war.

‘The view [wrote Harold Temperley] that wars are always fought for economic interests finds little support in the origins of the Crimean War. National ambition, rivalry and fear are the motives which impelled the nations to what proved to be a severe struggle.’ There was a drifting, not a propelling into war. The British Premier, Lord Aberdeen, had seen it at close quarters 40 years before at Leipzig and hated it. Neither the Queen nor the Prince Consort agitated for war. The influential Times, reviled by a belligerent contemporary as ‘The Russian organ of Printing House Square’, was against it. The country, although since Sinope ‘furiously Turkish and anti-Russian’, was not spoiling for a fight. In Paris, where so recently Napoleon had made his pronouncement, ‘L’Empire, c’est la paix’, no crowds filled the boulevards shouting ‘À St. Petersbourg’. Even the Czar showed little enthusiasm. Aberdeen had been right when he exclaimed sadly: ‘Some fatal influence seems to have been at work.’ Fatal but indefinable.

After 40 years Britain was called upon once more to fight on European soil. Except along the outposts of Empire war was a prospect which no one could have seriously contemplated. When off and on there had been fighting in New Zealand, South Africa and India, it was something remote from the high noon of Victorian prosperity. Few, who in 1851 had thronged the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, could very well have imagined that within three years of this spectacular affirmation of the arts of peace their country would be party to a European war. Had not the almost simultaneous death of the old Duke been symbolical of the passing of the age of war? Did not the future of England lie in her machines rather than her muskets? It might be diverting to gallop (if one was in the cavalry) about Phoenix Park or if a foot soldier take part in those ‘picnics’ or field exercises on the Surrey hills, and in either case to swagger about in resplendent uniforms. But the business of war was over. The army had never been a profession for which an officer need prepare himself, nor once commissioned take seriously. It had consequently persisted throughout these years of peace without a hard core of specialists, without even an organisation. It remained as it had been in the eighteenth century a collection of regiments, each a self-contained unit, efficient or not depending upon the qualities of its commanding officer and its non-commissioned officers. There was no system by which these units could be combined, provisioned, moved and brought to manœuvre in the field, or even taught to attack or defend. There were no brigades or divisions. There was no Army Service Corps—its painfully-built-up equivalent in the Peninsular War having been abolished at the peace in response to the usual Parliamentary howl for military economies. The spirit of the dead Duke, critical of change in his lifetime, hung heavily over the Horse Guards, where were housed both Secretary-at-War and commander-in-chief. The army’s nine departments, which comprised its organisation, all jealously guarded each its own independence and were often in conflict one with one another. Of these, by no means the least in importance, the Commissariat was staffed entirely by civilians and was under the direct control of the Treasury.

Used (in default of an efficient police force) to keep order or put down riots, the army at home was never a popular service. Nor did the system of recruitment assist to integrate it with the people. Enlisting, till 1847 for 21 years which meant virtually for life and since then for 12, the soldier was not easily absorbed in old age into society. He remained a thing apart, untrained if not untrainable for civilian life. From this it followed that there could be no reserves except those provided by hurriedly trained recruits. To bring the regiments chosen to serve overseas up to strength others were stripped of their best men and N.C.O.s, leaving them only indifferently manned to deal with the influx of recruits. On the other hand this eclectic process did create an ‘Expeditionary Army’ the like of which had never left these shores. In the opinion of a military surgeon: ‘The men that filled its ranks were the finest soldiers I ever saw in stature, physique and appearance.’

The quality of the officers was less satisfactory. All except the Gunners and Engineers had entered the army by purchasing their commission and in general they left the training and instruction to the N.C.O.s. And what they had bought they could and did sell at any time they felt bored, aggrieved or disposed to do so, even in the midst of war. No standard of education was required.{1}

There was no full-time staff. Very few officers were sufficiently dedicated to their profession to attend what then passed for a Staff College, the Senior Department of Camberley. If they did they found all teaching in the hands of civilians. Although a Royal Warrant prescribed instruction for service in the departments of the Quartermaster-General or the Adjutant-General, no staff or administrative work of any kind was taught. In the last 18 years only 216 had gone through the course and of these only 21 ever obtained employment in the departments where favouritism and interest counted, and continued to count, for more than enthusiasm or proficiency. At the time when war was declared there were only seven serving officers who held the Department’s Certificate.

The command of the army was given to Lord Raglan. It was practically an automatic choice and it is a commentary on the military state of the country that it should have been so. As Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the youngest of the Duke of Beaufort’s 11 sons, he had served under Wellington in the Peninsula and had lost his right arm by what was supposed to be the last shot fired at Waterloo. Later he had gone to the Horse Guards, where for a quarter of a century he had acted as Military Secretary to the Duke of Wellington, then commander-in-chief. Since Wellington’s death he had been Master-General of the Ordnance. He was 67 and had never commanded even a company.

Five infantry divisions were formed and with one exception were given to Peninsular veterans. The exception was the Queen’s cousin, the Duke of Cambridge, who was promoted to command the 1st Division at the age of 3 5. Otherwise all were between 60 and 70, with Sir John Burgoyne of the Engineers, who functioned as a sort of Elder Soldier, as much as 72. Naturally these ages invited such criticism as that made by the highly capable George Maude of the Artillery. ‘There is an old commander-in-chief, an old Engineer, old brigadiers—in fact, everything old at the top. This makes everything sluggish.’ Such comments, however, were not wholly justified. The country naturally expected its army to be led by those who had seen muskets fired elsewhere than on a range, even if it happened 40 years before. It was not their age but their competence which mattered—Sir De Lacy Evans with 47 years’ service and Sir Colin Campbell with 46 had more knowledge of the business of war than all the other generals combined, but the first commanded a division and the second only a brigade.

Where the Horse Guards blundered more egregiously was in their cavalry appointments. It would have been as well if their choice had been as humdrum. While war was still over the horizon Lord Lucan, in his darting impulsive handwriting so revealing of character, had written offering his services in any capacity. Now there were assuredly in India cavalry officers far more experienced in war and of much greater capacity than Lucan: in particular there was John Jacob, perhaps the greatest British cavalry commander of the century. But to indict the Government for not choosing him or any other ‘Indian’ officer is to ignore time and distance factors. Even under the most favourable conditions it would have taken four months to bring him home. Who in the meantime was to act? And when he arrived would an imported general who had spent all his life dealing with native troops be a success, notwithstanding his abilities, in command of a number of exclusive, pampered, Society regiments, destitute of experience in the field? The selection of Lucan was on paper not unjustified. He was a superb horseman, his courage unquestioned. He had even experience not enjoyed by an ‘Indian’ officer which might be of inestimable worth—he had served as supernumerary on Prince Woronzoff’s staff in the Russo-Turkish War of 1829. Where the Horse Guards went wrong was in placing under him in command of the Light Brigade his brother-in-law, Lord Cardigan.

The story of the mordant family quarrel between Lucan and Cardigan has been too well told in The Reason Why to need more than a passing reference. What perhaps Miss Woodham Smith has not sufficiently emphasised is that but for initial parental opposition Cardigan, three and a half years older, would have entered the army three and a half years earlier and been so much the senior to Lucan instead of being eight years his junior. As the principle of seniority, when combined with birth, had nearly the force of Holy Writ in the Horse Guards, Cardigan and not his detested relative Lucan would have received the cavalry division. Yet knowing their intense mutual dislike, deducing as they should the degree of aggravation caused by putting a jealous, ambitious Cardigan under an impulsive, imperious Lucan, the authorities nevertheless proceeded with the appointment. Had they chosen a commander of the Light Brigade as sensibly as they chose James Scarlett for that of the Heavies, Balaclava might have shown very different results.

To give the Government credit it should be said that some regiments had already been embarked for Malta before the declaration of war. Throughout April and May others were constantly to be seen in seaport towns, marching with difficulty through dense, cheering crowds to the tunes of The British Grenadiers, Cheer Boys Cheer and We’re Going Far Away. Their incomparable army was setting out ‘to vindicate the Public Law of Europe’, although most people would not have expressed it so orotundly as the Prince Consort. At any rate it was going to give Nicholas, ‘this fiend in human form’, the thrashing his bullying of the poor Turks deserved. Few in their martial enthusiasm asked themselves how its losses were to be made good or what experience Whitehall had in maintaining and supplying such an army at such a distance from home. Fewer still are likely to have commented upon the unserviceability of the gay uniforms or upon the lack of equipment. The headgear of the Guards was the bearskin, of the line regiments ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENT
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• DEDICATION
• 1 - Peace and War
• 2 - The Alma
• 3 - Balaclava
• 4 - Inkerman
• 5 - Winter
• 6 - The Redan
• APPENDIX
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER