The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood Part 27

No doubt the enemy had now an overwhelming superiority in numbers. The total land forces under Prince Menschikoff's command, including the garrison of Sebastopol, were 120,000 strong. Those numbers included a large body of cavalry and a formidable field artillery.

The entire allied army was barely half that strength. It was called upon, moreover, to occupy an immense front--a front which extended from the sea at Kamiesch to the Tchernaya, and from the Tchernaya, by a long and circuitous route, back to the sea at Balaclava. This line, offensive as regards the siege-works, but defensive along the unduly extended and exposed right flank at Balaclava, was close on twenty miles. The great length of front made severe demands upon the allied troops; it could only be manned by dangerously splitting up their whole strength into many weak units, none of which could be very easily or rapidly reinforced by the rest.

Perhaps the weakest part of the whole line was the extreme right, held at this moment by the British Second Division. Here, on an exposed and vitally important flank, the whole available force was barely 3,000 men. For some time past it had been intended to fortify this flank by field-works, armed with heavy artillery. But, although the necessity for protecting it was thus admitted, the urgency was not exactly understood, or at least was subordinated to other operations; as a matter of fact, this flank was "in the air," to use a military phrase, lying quite open and exposed, with only an insufficient, greatly hara.s.sed garrison on the spot, and no supports or reserves near at hand.

The utmost a.s.sistance on which this small body could count, as was afterwards shown, under stress, too, of most imminent danger, was 14,000 men. Not that all these numbers were fully available at any one time; they were constantly affected and diminished by casualties in the height and heat of the action; so that never were there more than 13,000, French and English, actually engaged.

On the other hand, the Russian attacking force was 70,000 strong, and they had with them 235 guns.

It was in truth another battle of giants, like Waterloo. "Hard pounding," as the great duke said of that other fight; a fierce trial of strength; a protracted, seemingly unequal, struggle between the dead weight of the aggregate many and the individual prowess of the undaunted, indomitable few.

The enemy's plan of action had been minutely and carefully prepared.

We know it now. He meant to use his whole strength along his entire front--in part with feigned and deceiving demonstrations to "contain"

or hold inactive the troops that faced him, in part with determined onslaught, delivered with countless thousands, in ma.s.sive columns, against the reputed weakest point of our line.

This plan Menschikoff hastened to put into execution. Time pressed: the enemy had learnt through spies that an a.s.sault on Sebastopol was close at hand. Besides, the Grand Dukes had arrived, and the troops, worked up to the highest pitch of loyal fanatic fervour, were mad to fight under the eyes of the sons of their father, the holy Czar.

Dawn broke late on that drear November morning: November the 5th--a day destined to be ever memorable in the annals of British arms: a dawn that was delayed and darkened by dense, driving mists, and rain-clouds, black and lowering.

Nothing, however, had broken the repose of the British camp, or hinted at the near approach of countless foes.

The night had been tranquil; the enemy quiet; only, in the valley beneath our pickets on the Inkerman heights, some sentries had heard the constant rumbling of wheels, but their officers to whom they reported did not interpret the same aright, as the movement of artillery.

An hour or more before daylight the church-bells of Sebastopol rang out a joyous peal. Why not? It was the Sabbath morning. But these chimes, alas! ushered in a Sunday of struggle and bloodshed, not of peaceful devotion and prayer.

The outlying pickets had been relieved, and were marching campwards; the Second Division had had its customary "daylight parade"; the men had stood to their arms for half-an-hour, and, as nothing was stirring, had been dismissed to their tents; the fatigue-parties had been despatched for rations, water, fuel--in a word, the ordinary daily duties of the camp had commenced, when the sharp rattle of musketry rang out angrily, and well sustained in the direction of our foremost picket on Sh.e.l.l Hill.

"That means mischief!" The speaker was General Codrington, who, according to invariable rule, had ridden out before daylight to reconnoitre and watch the enemy. "Halt the off-going pickets; we may want all the men we can lay hands on."

Then this prompt and judicious commander proceeded to line the Victoria ridge, which faced Mount Inkerman, with the troops he had thus impounded, and galloped off to put the rest of his brigade under arms.

The firing reached and roused another energetic general officer, Pennefather, who now commanded the Second Division in place of De Lacy Evans.

"Sound the a.s.sembly!" he cried. "Let the division stand to its arms.

Every man must turn out: every mother's son of them. We shall be engaged hot and strong in less than half-an-hour."

As pugnacious as any terrier, Pennefather, with unerring instinct, smelt the coming fight.

His division was quickly formed on what was afterwards called the "Home Ridge," and which was its regular parade-ground. But the general had no idea of awaiting attack in this position. It was his plan rather to push forward and fight the enemy wherever he could be found.

With this idea he sent a portion of his strength down the slope to "feed the pickets," as he himself called it, whilst another was advanced to the right front under General Wilders, and with this body went the Royal Picts. The Second Division benefited greatly by this advance, for the Russians were now absolute masters of the crest of the Inkerman hill, where they established their batteries, and poured forth volley after volley, all of which pa.s.sed harmlessly over the heads of our men. Meanwhile the alarm spread. A continuous firing, momentarily increasing in vigour, showed that this was no affair of outposts, but the beginning of a great battle. The bulk of the allied forces were under arms, and notice of the attack had been despatched to Lord Raglan at the English headquarters.

In less than a quarter-of-an-hour, long before 7 a.m., Lord Raglan was in his saddle, ready to ride wherever he might be required most.

But whither should he go? The battle, as it seemed, was waging all around him, on every side of the allied position. A vigorous fire was kept up from Sebastopol; down in the Tchernaya valley the army, supposed to be still under Liprandi, but really commanded by Gortschakoff, had advanced towards the Woronzoff road, and threatened to repeat the tactics of Balaclava by attacking with still greater force the right rear of our position; last of all, around Mount Inkerman, the unceasing sound of musketry and big guns betrayed the development of a serious attack.

Lord Raglan was not long in doubt. He knew the weakest point of the British position, and rightly guessed that the enemy would know it too.

"I shall go to Inkerman," he said. "That is their real point, I feel sure. And we must have up all the reinforcements we can muster. You, Burghersh, tell Sir George Cathcart to move up his division and support Pennefather and Brown. You, Steele, beg General Bosquet to lend me all the men he can spare."

Pennefather had his hands full by the time Lord Raglan arrived. With a paltry 3,000 odd men he was confronting 25,000; but, happily, the morning was so dark and the brushwood so thick that his men were hardly conscious that they were thus outnumbered.

Not that they would have greatly cared; they were manifestly animated with a dogged determination to deny the enemy every inch of the ground, and with unflagging courage they disputed his advance, although they were so few. Once more it was the "Thin Red Line"

against the heavy column: hundreds against thousands, a task which for any other troops would have been both hopeless and absurd.

But Pennefather's people stoutly held their own. On his left front, one wing of the 49th Regiment routed a whole Russian column, and drove it back at the point of the bayonet down the hill; to give way in turn, but not till it was threatened by 9,000 men. Next, four companies of the Connaught Rangers stoutly engaged twenty times their number, and only yielded after a stubborn fight. General Buller came up next, with a wing of the 77th, which was faced by a solid ma.s.s five times as strong.

"There are the Russians," cried Egerton, who commanded the 77th. "What shall we do, general?"

"Charge them!" was Buller's prompt reply.

The next instant the slender line, with a joyous hurrah, was engulfed in a giant column. The effect was instantaneous. The Russian column reeled before the fiery charge, wavered, then broke and fled.

More to the right, Mauleverer prolonged the line with the 30th, and gave so good an account of the Russians in his front that they, too, fell back in disorder; and Bellairs, with a party of the 49th, was equally triumphant.

Beyond these forces, General Wilders, with whom young McKay now rode as extra aide, led a fraction of his brigade, including the Royal Picts, against the Sandbag Battery, a point deemed important because it commanded the extreme right of the position.

On the far sides of the slopes, beyond the battery were 4,000 Russian troops, and the mere sight of Wilders with his deployed line sufficed to shake the steadiness of the foe. The Russian bugles sounded a retreat, the leading companies faced about, and, communicating the panic to those behind the hill, the whole ma.s.s gave way and ran down the slope, followed by a destructive fire from the British line.

Thus ended the first phase of this unequal contest. Pennefather had triumphed to an extent of which neither he nor his heroes were fully aware. Barely 1,200 men had routed 15,000! The few had achieved a decisive victory over the many.

But the struggle had only just begun. Many more and still severer trials awaited our starving, weary, sorely-beset soldiers that day.

The enemy had numberless fresh and still untried troops at hand.

Column after column had been moving steadily forward, some from the town, some from the eastern side of the Tchernaya, and already the Russian generals were in a position to renew the fight. A new onslaught was now organised, to be made by 19,000 men under cover of ninety guns.

So far in those early days of the battle the brunt of it had fallen upon the Second Division, supported by a portion of the Light. Stout old General Pennefather had had the supreme control throughout.

"I will not interfere with you," Lord Raglan said, as, standing by his staff, he watched the progress of the fight from the ridge. "You know your ground, as you have occupied it so long with your camp. I'm sure I can trust you."

"Thank you, my lord. I'll do my best, never fear," replied Pennefather.

"Their artillery fire is very troublesome, and must be over-mastered.

If I could only get up some of the siege-train guns to help you. Let some one go back to the artillery park, and tell them I want a couple of eighteen pounders."

An aide-de-camp at once galloped off with the order, but two or three eventful hours elapsed before these guns were brought to bear upon the action.

Pennefather's men, although for the moment triumphant, had their hands full. They showed an undaunted front or "knotted line" of fighting-men: the remnants of the pickets, fragments, and odds-and-ends of many regiments, mixed up and intermingled, still in contact with the enemy, and so far still without supports.

Officers came back rather despondingly to ask for help.

"I cannot send you a single man," was the firm reply to one applicant.

"You must stand your ground somehow."

"We should be all right, sir, but the men have run out of ammunition."

"It's no use. I can't give you a round. What does it matter? Don't make difficulties. Stick to your bayonets. And remember you've got to hold on where you are, or we shall be driven into the sea."

The want of cartridges was what the troops felt most direly. They growled savagely and grumbled at the mismanagement that kept back these indispensable supplies.