ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THE CHINESE IRONCLAD "CHEN YUEN" AND THE JAPANESE CRUISERS ITSUKUSHIMA,” NANIWA" AND "HIYEI"

Battles, Volume Two, Chapter Forty-five

dead and dying Russians. The 4th division, besides losing its three generals, had seven hundred casualties, being more than one-quarter of its strength. Such was the struggle which has been aptly called the "Soldiers' Battle."

The siege of Sebastopol was now pushed on by the allies, and continued throughout the winter of 1854. No words can depict the horrors of that investment, with storms of wind and snow, and with a scanty commissariat and little fueling for the troops exposed on the open plateau to the rigors of an arctic climate. Service in the trenches was very arduous. Sickness decimated the troops, and eight thousand men were sent on board ship within seven weeks, ending the 20th of January, 1855, and according to official report, "the covering party for the entire right attack, upward of a mile in extent, never exceeded three hundred and fifty men, and the guard for the other attack was equally small."

The second bombardment of Sebastopol lasted between the 9th and 17th of April without any decisive result, though the Malakhoff and Mamelon suffered considerably. The 77th regiment carried the rifle pits in advance of the right attack on the 19th of April, when Colonel Egerton and eleven officers and men were killed, and fifty-six men wounded. In May the Piedmontese division, of seventeen thousand men, under General La Marmora, arrived to participate in the siege, and General Canrobert resigned the command of the French army to General Pelissier.

On the 6th of June the third bombardment commenced, the British batteries mounting one hundred and fifty-four guns and mortars, and at 6 P.M. on the 7th was delivered the assault on the quarries by the British troops, while their allies attacked the Mamelon. The storming party, led by Colonel Campbell, of the 90th regiment, carried the quarries with a rush, and during the night repelled several attempts of the enemy to retake the position. The British casualties were ten officers and one hundred and seventeen rank and filed killed and thirty-six officers and four hundred and eighty-six men wounded. Of the six engineer officers engaged, two were slain, and Captain (afterward Lord) Wolseley, who had been doing duty with this branch of the army, was wounded in the thigh by a bullet from a canister shot. This, and V-VOL. II.

the capture by the French of the Mamelon, was the first advantage gained by the allies since the commencement of the siege seven months before.

The fourth general bombardment of Sebastopol was opened on the 17th of June, the British batteries mounting sixty-two pieces of ordnance on the right attack, and one hundred and four on the left, and on the 18th an assault was delivered on the Redan and Malakhoff. The result was a sanguinary repulse for both the British and French columns of attack. The British loss, including the naval brigade, was twenty-two officers, among whom were General Sir John Campbell and Colonels Shadforth and Yea (a specially fine officer), and two hundred and forty-seven men killed; and seventy-eight officers, including Generals Sir William Eyre and Harry Jones, and Colonels Tylden (mortally), Lysons, Johnson, Gwilt and Cobbe, Captain Peel, R.N., and one thousand and ninety-seven men, wounded. The French had thirty-nine officers killed and ninety-three wounded, and about three thousand two hundred men hors de combat, while the Russians admitted a loss of five thousand eight hundred. Ten days after this disastrous repulse, Lord Raglan died, having soon followed his colleague, St. Arnaud, and his enemy, Prince Menschikoff. Sir James Simpson, chief of the staff, succeeded, as senior officer, to the command of the army, though there was present in the camp the veteran, Sir Colin Campbell, in every way his superior.

On the 16th of August the Russians delivered a counter-attack on the line of the Tchernaya, but were driven back by the French and Sardinians, with the loss of over twelve thousand men. Fighting continued almost daily in the trenches, and on the 5th of September the allied batteries opened the last bombardment of Sebastopol, the British guns numbering two hundred and two, and those of the French no less than six hundred and twenty-seven. Three days later was delivered the grand combined assault by the French with thirty thousand men on the Malakhoff and Little Redan, while the British attacked the Redan with only the light and second divisions, under the command of Sir William Codrington.

The French captured the Malakhoff, but the British storming columns suffered a disastrous repulse. The light division succeeded in

effecting an entry into the Redan, and were followed by the storming columns of the second division, issuing out of the fifth parallel; but all the brigadiers, except Colonel Windham, were killed, and the Russians returning into the work in large numbers, the British fell into confusion, and, as no supports were sent by the general officer in command, they retreated from the Redan followed by the Russian fire. Though the 1st, 3d and 4th divisions had not been engaged, Sir James Simpson was disinclined to renew the conflict. But with the loss of the Malakhoff, the key of the position, the Russian hold of the Redan became untenable, and that night they evacuated it, together with the city they had so long and gallantly defended, which was now left a burning and blood-soaked ruin. They sunk their ships, blew up their forts, and retired to the north side without molestation, carrying off most of the stores and trophies.

So frightful had been the carnage sustained during the last bombardment by the concentrated fire of the allied batteries, that no part of the city, except the bomb-proofs in the batteries, were safe, and the Russians owned to a loss of three thousand men a week, and during a considerable period their loss was stated to be five hundred daily. Sir William Codrington, who had commanded the light division on the retirement of Sir George Brown, succeeded to the command of the army on the 12th of November, but beyond the capture of Kinburn, no military operations were undertaken, and on the 2d of April, 1856, proclamation of peace was made to the allied armies by salutes of one hundred and one guns. Sebastopol and the Crimea were evacuated, but it was not until the 12th of July that the last British troops, a detachment of the 50th regiment, delivered up Balaclava to a party of Russian Cossacks. During the expedition, the British army had lost, killed in action or died of wounds, three thousand five hundred; died of disease, twenty thousand two hundred and forty-four. Of these two hundred and seventy were officers. The French loss was estimated at sixty-three thousand five hundred, and that of the Russians was placed as high as half a million of men. These losses are exclusive of the wounded.

The operations in the Baltic were almost entirely conducted by

the fleet, the only soldiers engaged being some engineers at the siege of Bomarsund. The generation succeeding the one which made these enormous sacrifices to limit the pretensions of Russia have seen the provisions of the treaty of Paris, one by one, torn up, until little now remains of that instrument, and the great Northern power continues her slow but persistent advance toward the realization of the Slavonic idea of domination in the Balkan peninsula and Eastern Europe generally.

CHAPTER XXXIII

CAWNPORE AND LUCKNOW

THE INDIAN MUTINY-THE RISING AT BARRACKPORE-MUTINIES AT BENARES AND ALLAHABAD MASSACRE OF CAWNPORE SIEGE OF DELHI-SIEGE OF LUCKNOW — BATTLES FOR PEACE

B

A. D. 1857-1859

RITISH military prestige, which had suffered considerably

by the events of the Crimean War, was enhanced by the heroic defense of Lucknow, by the series of battles fought by Havelock to effect its relief, by the dogged determination of the stand on the historic ridge before Delhi, which was rewarded by its capture, by the brilliant campaign in Central India, and, more than anything, by the resolute bearing of the British race, who proved their right to the appellation of "Imperial," by their steadfastness when struggling against overpowering odds in numberless cantonments and forts and outstations throughout the peninsula.

Sir Richard Temple was of opinion that the Indian Mutiny was due to the home government reducing the British army in India to a dangerous point, while increasing the native forces. The sepoys, also, came to entertain an overweening confidence in their own prowess, and were spoiled and flattered by government and by their own officers; while a great blow was dealt to discipline