The square-topped mounds coming into focus in the growing light of dawn atop the rolling Causeway Heights were manned by over 1,000 Esnan or Turkish militia. These North African irregulars were used to warm, sunny climes, not the bleak, cold and wet conditions they were enduring. It had rained the two preceding nights and at intervals by day and this night. Conditions underfoot inside the earth palisades were soft and muddy. Construction work had begun ten days before. The militia were in a miserable state and half-starved. Since the Battle of the Alma on 20 September to the beginning of the work on the redoubts, they had only received a daily allowance of two biscuits per man. Only recently had the British started to issue biscuits, rice and fresh meat, pork and rum was declined on religious grounds, so they received an additional ½lb of biscuit in lieu, which was barely sustenance. Pay was frequently in arrears, making them totally dependent upon the commissariat for the sort of comforts their British and French counterparts could readily buy. One of the Turkish soldiers had told John Elijah Blunt, Lucan’s unofficial Turkish interpreter, ‘that during the last two days they had nothing to eat but biscuit and very little water to drink’.1
Their small fortifications, which could be ridden over by a Cossack on horseback, were in a mile-long chain along the Causeway Heights. A battalion of Esnan defended the furthest eminence, which was redoubt number 1, roughly 600 men with three 12-pound cannons. Redoubts 2 and 3 further west had two guns each with half a battalion of militia, and number 4 redoubt had three guns. Redoubts 5 and 6 leading up to the Sapoune Heights were still being constructed. An English artillery NCO supervised each cannon. The Turks were not long enrolled, had never been in action, and could be forgiven for thinking they had been positioned there by the ‘infidel’ to be sacrificed. Their role as ‘tripwire’ was to ensnare any Russian approach materialising from the east, behind the Sevastopol siege lines. It was generally accepted that Turkish soldiers could do no more than defend fixed emplacements, because they were judged incapable of mounting operations in the open. The Ottomans were not entirely overawed by their allies, having already given a good account of themselves during defensive battles against the Russians along the Danube River. The Esnan in the redoubts were nervous, knowing there was a substantial Russian force somewhere out there to the east, across the Chernya River amid the foothills of the Yayla Mountains. Russian watchfires had been seen and military bands regularly heard playing in the outlying villages.
Only a week before, the redoubts had opened fire into dense white fog that had blanketed the advance of a large Russian force. Captain George Woronsov with I Battery Royal Horse Artillery screening Balaclava recalled just three days before at night, ‘the Turks began to fire away in a great hurry at an imaginary enemy about 12 o’clock’. It was a false alarm. The cavalry were called out again but ‘as the night was very dark it was some time before they found out their mistake’. Two hours later, nervous Marines outside Balaclava harbour were also blazing away with muskets and guns ‘thinking the Russians were advancing, so we had a wretched night of it’.2 Nerves were on edge. Turkish spies had detected an imminent attack, and yet the Esnan, glancing anxiously over their shoulders, could see no sign of any activity at all in the Allied camps to their rear. False alerts had demonstrated it took the British infantry hours to come up in the event of a crisis. If anything happened, they were clearly going to be on their own.
The first time the British met the Turks was at Constantinople, en route to Varna and the Crimea. ‘Constantinople is a magnificent city to look at from the harbour,’ Cornet Fiennes Wykeham Martin with the 4th Light Dragoons remembered, ‘but when you get on shore it is the filthiest hole.’ Lieutenant Henry Clifford with the Rifles commented that ‘they look upon us I think with suspicion and wonder how it will all end’. The Ottoman Empire was clearly in decline, ‘an old Pasha said the other day to me through an interpreter: “Oh! young man – we are not what we have been,”’ Clifford recalled, ‘“we are fast going down hill.”’ They had been labelled the ‘sick man of Europe’. ‘We have allowed the Christians to build a church in Constantinople,’ the Pasha explained, ‘and the veils of our women fall lower and lower every day.’ Not low enough for many young officers enraptured by the beauty of many of the ‘one hundred wives’ they sought to meet. ‘I have no doubt the old Turks are delighted the troops are leaving Constantinople,’ Clifford conjectured.3
The English lower ranks were as uncompromising as ever in their blatant disregard of any fighting qualities foreign soldiers might possess. Corporal Thomas Morley with the 17th Lancers glibly pronounced Turks are ‘a dirty, lazy lot of people – they think about nothing but smoking’. ‘When I was at Constantinople we were in the Turkish barracks,’ he wrote to his father, ‘and a very dirty barracks it was; we were eaten up with fleas, and they were fleas – the largest I ever saw.’ He too was taken aback at the reports of successful Turkish resistance against the Russians besieging Silistra. ‘They say the Turks have been fighting four and six to one,’ but in his opinion ‘one Englishman is worth six Turks’. He echoed the prevalent view in the ranks. Sergeant John Hill with the 1st Dragoons thought them ‘an idle lazy race’ and Corporal George Senior with the 13th Light Dragoons wrote them off as ‘a degraded, dirty, idle lot, and they rob us whenever they can’ and ‘they are sure to give you the wrong change’. What made it worse was they were the wrong religion. Albert Mitchell with the 13th Light Dragoons remembered a small church desecrated by the Turks in the Crimea. ‘The [altar] was broken down, and the pictures (of which there were many) torn to pieces and strewn about the floor, and to complete the work of desecration, all kinds of nuisances and abominations were strewn about the floor.’
The women had been chased off. Cornet Wykeham Martin summed up Turks as ‘a most disgusting race of people and not worth fighting for’; in fact, ‘I would almost sooner fight for a Russian if it was not a treason to say so.’
By contrast, and contrary to the British soldier’s tendency to belittle foreign armies, the French were accepted, even though the Napoleonic Wars were a recent memory. ‘You would be surprised to see the good feeling existing between the English and French soldiers,’ Corporal George Senior wrote home. ‘The latter you might see kissing our men and pulling them about, particularly our Guardsmen, whom they appear very partial to.’ As was often the case, comradeship was alcohol-fuelled, with ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Oui’ exchanged with ‘the greatest nicety, when at the same time neither party understood what the other was saying’. Whereas Raglan was leading an army very much in Wellington’s image, it became quickly apparent to the British soldiers that the French were in a different league, practically schooled by recent warfare in their colonies. French infantry were seasoned veterans and tactically aware although British gunners and engineers were more technically proficient, well suited to the type of siege operations being conducted around Sevastopol. The British were led by ‘gentlemen’, the French had officers. French logistics were noticeably more competent than the hand-to-mouth subsistence conducted by English civilian sutlers and amateur merchants around Balaclava. The French shared the same jaundiced view of their Ottoman allies. ‘The French detest the sight of them,’ George Senior insisted, ‘and say, “Turks no good, English good”.’4
At 5.30 a.m. ten Russian guns supporting Gribbe’s column opened up at redoubt number 1 from Kamara. They were soon joined by an eight-gun battery shooting in Semyakin’s central column, deploying in the North Valley opposite the Woronsov road. After thirty minutes, Levutsky’s ten-gun battery joined in, bombarding redoubt number 2. Lieutenant Koribut Kubitovich watched from the lancer screen. ‘The redoubts loomed menacingly before us,’ he recalled, and ‘we did not doubt that we would take them and that they would fall on our first attempt.’ He had a grandstand view of the battle, being left of Semyakin’s Azov Regiment, forming up to assault Canrobert’s Hill. For an hour Russian artillery lashed the redoubts on the crest of the Causeway Heights, with twenty-eight guns delivering fifty-six solid shot and shell each minute.
‘The first rays of the rising sun’ accompanied ‘the opening shot from our cannons reverberating between the hills,’ remembered Ingermanland Hussar officer Yevgenii Arbuzov. The sun was only on the high ground, whereas visibility in shadowy valley bottoms was patchy. Kubitovich observed General Liprandi ride by with the staff to encourage the infantry, dressing their lines for the assault. The men were ‘electrified’ and a ‘tremendous “Ura!”’ was bellowed out in response. Liprandi, unlike many Russian commanders, had charisma. ‘This was not that response which is given so languidly and calmly on exercises,’ Kubitovich recalled, ‘it was a cry foretelling victory, unaffectedly rising from the mighty chests of our soldier heroes.’ They watched and waited as salvo after salvo of heavy artillery fire crashed into the Turkish redoubts.5
No trace of the redoubts exists today. The largest, number 1, was pentagonal or square shaped, covering an area of 150 to 200 square yards, sufficient to house a battalion of infantry. Ramparts were shallow, negotiable by horsemen and being earthen and newly constructed, had settled in height with the rain. There was space for three 2-pound cannon, positioned to cover the main threat from the east. The soil depth on the hill was low, which meant walls had to be raised as distinct from digging down. Excavated soil was piled high to create a defensive ditch, but walls were relatively flimsy, depending upon thickness. Conditions inside were wet and unsanitary, disposal of human waste a problem, and the defenders had scant, if any, bomb-proof shelter, only rudimentary shelter from the elements. For an anonymous hour, while the Allies sought to react, Turkish militia had no recourse except to cower at the base of their earth walls and endure the storm of solid shot and shell. Round shot splattered and gouged chunks from the parapets or was aimed to bounce inside. There was no protection from shell bursts overhead. Russian artillery was the elite arm of the service and the competent gunners knew what they were doing. The Turks crouched at the far side of the ramparts, away from the direction of incoming shot, to avoid the worst of the velocity of incoming shot. Despite heavy losses, the Turks clung on. Tenacity was driven less by resolve, more by ingrained stoicism and acceptance they were more likely to survive inside the redoubt than outside, in the open. One soldier later complained, ‘the guns in the redoubt were too small and ill supplied with ammunition’. They served the guns as best they could and continued to resist. 6
The Russians did not have it all their own way. Colonel Obolensky’s Cossack Don battery managed to unlimber at the foot of the Heights. ‘At that moment a shot burst forth from the redoubt and hissed over the battery without causing any damage,’ one of its officers remembered. ‘As the fifth gun was moving into position, a cannon ball tore off the head of the driver on the first lead horse.’ The rest of the battery were appalled by the crimson impact; Cossack Sazonov from the Veshenskaya Settlement was well known. ‘He did not fall from his horse right away, but rode some distance without his head and then fell off,’ a shocked eyewitness recalled. The decapitated torso riding a horse ‘made a horrifying picture’. By now the leading elements of the Russian infantry were entering the bushes that covered the slope in front of the redoubt summit.
Down in the shadowy low ground Captain George Maude’s I Troop Royal Horse Artillery galloped up from base of the Heights and unlimbered between redoubts 2 and 3. They had been encamped in a vineyard by redoubt 6 and provided the Turks with the first tangible indication that support might at last be coming. He had four 6-pounders and two howitzers. ‘It was so dark at first,’ he recalled, ‘that nothing could be seen but the flashes of the Russian guns on which accordingly our guns were laid.’ The stand-off was unequal, thirteen to fifteen light British 6-pounders versus more than thirty Russian heavy guns, including many 18-pounders. Lord Lucan’s cavalry, in the saddle at dawn, was beginning to move forward into the eastern part of the South Valley, behind the Woronsov road to the rear of the redoubts. Lieutenant Temple Godman with the 5th Dragoon Guards realised with the first firing ‘something was going on’, and on approaching they could clearly hear multiple battery fire. This was no false alarm; ‘this time I knew we were in for it,’ he recalled. They halted 300 yards from number 2 redoubt, with the Light Brigade on the left and the Heavy Brigade on the right. Lucan injudiciously halted close enough to receive stray solid shot off-shoots that glanced off the Heights, from Gribbe’s battery firing in front of Kamara.7
After 6.30 a.m. Campbell’s 93rd Highlanders, the only regular battalion of British infantry in Balaclava, hastily departed its encampment outside Kadikoi village, just north of the port. He marched toward the sound of the guns. Frequent false alarms had produced this well-rehearsed prompt response. Campbell was a seasoned campaigner, having fought with Moore and Wellington in the Peninsular War. Service in China and India had given him a practical understanding of the capabilities of irregular troops. He had an instinctive feel for what his Esnan Turkish militia might accomplish. ‘Capital fellows,’ he had confided to his aide Lieutenant Colonel Sterling, ‘and dig better even than our own men.’ ‘But we cannot speak to them further than “Bueno Johnny” and “Bueno Ingles”,’ Sterling had observed. This was the fundamental problem. ‘We will have race horses called “Bueno Johnny”,’ Sterling wrote home, and ‘Johnny Turk’s’ nickname came into being.
Campbell had achieved his seniority through merit and was a no-nonsense robust-mannered soldier who did not suffer fools gladly. Lucan uncharacteristically deferred to his judgement because Campbell was non-confrontational with his superiors and mature enough to ignore Lucan’s predictable idiosyncratic behaviour. He did not pose a social threat like Cardigan. Campbell had never been happy with the dispersed linear deployment of the redoubts he had inherited. His innate understanding of the Esnan, coupled with the ruthlessness that characterises most senior officers, led him to regard the Turkish redoubts as a virtual write-off. The absence of real support for the redoubts ‘rendered a lengthened defence very problematical’. Sterling explained: ‘The ditch and parapet, although as deep and thick as time allowed them to be made, were very poor defences; the Cossacks rode over both.’
A strong cavalry vedette posted behind, rather than on top of Canrobert’s Hill, would have achieved the same purpose. Only infantry could hold ground and there was not enough of them to defend Balaclava, hence the Turkish ‘tripwire’ scheme. It worked so far as Campbell was concerned and was buying them the time they needed. The Esnan were correct in their estimation the infidel were indeed prepared to sacrifice them. When Campbell marched out of Kadikoi village he did not head for the redoubts, he made for a small hillock identified as a potential screen position blocking any passage of the gorge that led from the South Valley across Kadikoi village to Balaclava harbour. The artillery and siege park at Kadikoi village had to be protected.
The blunt-speaking Campbell could be pitilessly frank with ‘foppish’ young officers who did not understand the business of war. He had endeared himself to Lucan during the ‘Look-on’ affair, when Raglan had reined in the cavalry. Campbell was uncomplimentary about ‘Those young officers of the cavalry who would fall out from their regiment and go to the front and give their opinion on matters they knew nothing about.’
In this he was in agreement with Lord George Paget, critical of the sniping from men like ‘Captain Nolan, who writes books, and was a very great man in his own estimation’. ‘These young gentlemen talk a great deal of nonsense,’ Campbell pointed out; action was not all about honour and glory, ‘he was there to defend Balaclava and he was not going to be tempted out of his strong position by jeers’. It was in this vein that the Turks would be sacrificed, for the greater good. They would not be relieved, the 93rd would occupy a secondary line in depth, blocking the approaches to Balaclava. The redoubts would be lost, but he might save some Turks.8
Lucan could do nothing with cavalry alone, except pose a threat from the flank, should the Russians try to rush Balaclava. He was in the correct place to menace the intent, but displayed inexperience by getting unnecessarily close to the redoubt fight. Perhaps he sought to reassure the Turks. Lord George Paget, in Cardigan’s absence, took up the command position in front of the Light Brigade line. ‘All sorts of gesticulations and cries of “Look out, Lord George!” met my ears,’ Paget recalled as heavy fire came in. Bewildered by the shouting, he inadvertently moved his horse two or three paces directly into the line of the round shot his men had spotted coming through. One bounced between his horse’s front and rear legs, throwing up a cloud of dust into his face. ‘Ah, ha!’ one of his orderlies laughed, ‘it went right between your horse’s legs.’ Paget was not amused. ‘I don’t see anything to laugh at,’ he said. Moments later another round shot shrieked through the ranks and spun a man round in the front line of the 4th Dragoons. ‘I can well remember,’ he later recalled, ‘the slosh that sounded as it went through the centre of his belly.’ It was to become a disturbingly familiar sound.
Campbell also sent Captain Barker’s W Battery Royal Artillery to back up Maude’s unequal firefight with the Russian gunners. Exchanges bouncing across the rocky ground produced frequent near misses amongst the cavalry. Many of the solid shot balls ‘missing the hilltop fell among us,’ Lieutenant Temple Godman with the 5th Dragoons recalled. ‘One could see them drop, and in another moment the fragments flying far and wide.’ The involuntary response was ‘to bob one’s head, though knowing it was no use, as the pieces whistled and hummed over’. Sergeant Maughan with the Inniskillings saw: ‘Sergeant Bolton had his leg knocked off. The shot hit my horse first, came between us and doubled my sword up like a hoop and grazed my leg.’
Unnerved soldiers were obliged to sit, knee to knee in two ranks held together by discipline and the example of their officers out front. Officers sat motionless, conscious as much of their men’s eyes on them as the incoming cannonballs.
Lieutenant Colonel John Yorke commanding the 1st Dragoons railed at Lucan’s inept positioning in the line of fire. Shot arcing over the redoubts ‘bowled like cricket balls into our ranks’. Corporal Joseph Gough nearby recalled ‘the shot and shell were coming in pretty fast’. Unable to move, all they could do was shout ‘look out boys!’ ‘They came with such force against the ground, that they would rise and go for half a mile before they would touch the ground again. Us and the Greys lost some horses there.’
Troop Sergeant George Cruse saw ‘several round shot fall into the ranks’ of the 1st Dragoons, ‘breaking the legs of two horses’. ‘One large ball struck a man named “M” right in the face,’ he recalled, ‘of course killing him instantly.’ Cruse gave short shrift to the wobbling he detected in the ranks when ‘the men began to bob their heads’. He and another NCO ‘pitched into them for being so foolish, just as if they could avoid a 32-pound shot by moving their heads one side or another’. Yorke remembered the helpless predicament of soldiers having to remain in line. ‘The officers could escape,’ he recalled, ‘we had only to move our horses a few yards to let the shot pass’, but not the men. The shot ‘generally took a front and rear rank horse, and sometimes a man, or a single horse’.9
Captain George Maude’s I Battery began attracting considerable Russian artillery fire. Limbers were serving the guns while the horses remained in the traces. Five horses with the number 6 limber were struck down and spokes were punched out of the limber by shrapnel, but the crews seemed to have charmed lives. Shell bursts scoured gun carriages and round shot swooshed between the guns. After fifteen to twenty minutes of this a shell appeared to burst inside George Maude’s horse. ‘My God!’ exclaimed Albert Mitchell’s troop leader Lieutenant Smith with the 13th Light Dragoons, ‘there is Captain Maude blown up’. Mitchell glanced across at ‘what appeared at first to be a man blown to pieces’; the horse had been totally eviscerated. George Maude’s left leg and arm were slashed to the bone by splinters carrying away much of the muscle, slicing the radial artery, and shattering his left hand. His left eye was blinded. Lieutenant Dashwood took over command but he too was abruptly bowled over by another round shot as he mounted his horse. He remounted and that horse too was struck down. Lucan rode up and seeing the shambles – a third of the battery’s horses were dead in their traces and the limbers almost emptied of ammunition – ordered them to limber up and retire. As they moved off Gunner McBride with the 4th gun was knocked clean from his saddle, killing the centre two horses of the team. It was at this inopportune moment that Lord Cardigan suddenly appeared, having finally ridden up from Balaclava harbour.
Cardigan, a parade ground soldier, was late on parade. He was completely out of his depth in the midst of this crisis with the cavalry apparently committed and no infantry in sight. Lacking confidence in what to do, his only response was to raise his voice and project authority, as if he was on the drill square. ‘Where are you going with your guns, Captain Shakespear?’ Albert Mitchell heard him peremptorily ask. ‘Who ordered you to retire?’ ‘We are going for more ammunition my lord,’ was the response.
Thirty Russian guns firing at the rapid rate of two rounds a minute could conceivably fire over 3,000 rounds in an hour. This intensity of fire was directed against the redoubts and any identified British artillery. Like Maude’s battery, running short of limber ammunition after an hour, the Russians were also limited by what they could carry on limbers and wagons. Some 1,800 to 2,000 rounds were likely poured into the Turkish redoubts. The Esnan had been at the centre of this crucible of fire for well over sixty minutes. They had retired to the back end of the redoubt, seeking cover from the worst of the shot and shell slapping remorselessly against the forward earthworks. Lord Lucan on the periphery of this storm had turned to his Turkish interpreter and shouted, ‘Blunt, those Turks are doing well!’10
With the lessening of British artillery fire after 7.30 a.m. Russian infantry moved on redoubt number 1. Lieutenant Arbuzov saw ‘the Turkish artillery began to slacken noticeably’. Lieutenant Kubitovich observed as ‘under the leadership of Colonel Fabian Krüdener the Azov men went forward in company columns in a fine orderly fashion,’ their long grey greatcoats hitched up by hooks to facilitate ease of movement. ‘General Liprandi judged this moment to be the most suitable for the attack,’ Arbuzov remembered. The Turks had clearly been battered into virtual submission. ‘Accurate enemy artillery and rifle fire did not make them [the Russians] waiver,’ Kubitovich observed, ‘the soldiers went on with no regard to artillery and musket fire.’
Russian foot infantry tactics had progressed little since the Napoleonic Wars. Still armed with the M1845 smooth bore muzzle-loading musket, poorly factory made and maintained, their effective range was only 150 to 200 paces. The imperative, therefore, became to quickly close with the bayonet and rely upon shock action. Reloading the 12-pound musket was difficult and slow, and could only be done from a standing position. Only one round per minute was achievable and barrels became fouled by powder residue after a few cartridges, making it even more difficult to ram down the .700in spherical bullet. Effective firepower came from skirmishers sent ahead, armed with the more efficient semi-grooved Belgian Stutze rifle, and artillery fire. They attacked in dense columns, like the French revolutionary armies of the previous century.
The Azov Regiment advanced line after line at a regular measured pace in a compact square. A forest of bayonets approached as soldiers advanced with the musket carried at the vertical position close to the soldier’s right side, only the front rank of the column marched in the ‘on guard’ position with the bayonet lowered towards the enemy. With drums beating and colours flying, the formation resembled a well-drilled ancient Macedonian phalanx. General Liprandi recalled the first 2,400 men marching forward in ‘two lines in company column, not more than 100 paces between the lines’ with two more battalions, some 1,600 men, coming on in attack formation in the third line. This appeared less an attack, more a well-drilled parade movement advancing in close formation. ‘A Russian soldier forms part of a machine,’ Captain Hodasevich with the Taroutine Regiment explained, ‘which is composed of enormous masses of men that never have thought and never will think.’ Colonel Krüdener leading the attack recalled, ‘I didn’t take my sabre from the scabbard. I only crossed myself and waved my hat on both sides.’ He had set the machine in motion. ‘Everybody rushed after me and I was protected by the stern Azovs,’ he remembered. The Russian soldiers were philosophical about what lay ahead, they were told what to do and, as Hodasevich explained, ‘it is the business of God and the Emperor, but none of his’.11
The Turks fought with the desperation of no options, knowing there would be no support. The Russian infantry assault spelt finis for them. Hussar officer Arbuzov watching from the North Valley saw his ‘fine infantry fellows showered with a storm of bullets and canister, go bravely into the attack … With each casualty they closed up as if on training manoeuvres.’ Kubitovich watched as ‘now in a well-formed mass they reached the foot of the hill.’ Bushes and undulating ground meant ‘it is impossible to maintain the previous order’; they had 150 paces to go.
The British cavalry could only look on. Lieutenant Temple Godman saw ‘the Turks outside the fort, on their extreme right commenced to fire musketry’. It was a confusing situation as the Turkish Esnan inside the redoubt attempted to reform in order to beat off the assault. ‘As we were only about 300 yards off, with my glasses I saw everything,’ he explained. ‘Up the hill came the Russian infantry, meeting a warm fire from the Johnnys, who at that moment turned and rushed up again under their fort.’
It looked as though the Russians were enfilading the redoubt and trying to get in from the rear. ‘On came the Russians, shouting and running up in a column in fine order, and giving a heavy fire. The Turks again showed a front, rushed at them, then waivered, and in went the enemy over their works.’
‘The Turks made a brave resistance at this point,’ recalled one Scots Greys sergeant, ‘being nearly all killed before they gave in, and we could give them no assistance.’ Albert Mitchell with the Light Brigade could see ‘there was something up at the redoubt near Kamara [village], for the Turks were beginning to run down out of it down the hill into the plain.’ The redoubt was being overrun:
Soon we saw a compact body of Russian infantry, perhaps 300 strong, mount the hill in gallant style, cheering as they came. They soon entered the redoubt, not taking the slightest notice of the fire kept up by a few Turks who stood their ground for a time.
‘A long drawn out shout of “Ura!”’ accompanied this moment Kubitovich remembered, ‘and the steep slope is covered with a dense crowd of soldiers making their way up.’ The Russian infantry momentum was irresistible, ‘success cannot be long in doubt,’ he observed. ‘Our soldiers climb up to the fortification itself and cover it like a swarm of buzzing bees!’ They were soon inside. ‘There are many already on the wall, many are going through the embrasures’ and he saw ‘a good many drop down into the fortification … Then the bayonet work of the Russian soldier began.’
About 170 Turks were killed inside the redoubt, a high proportion from a battalion of 600. The Azov Regiment lost two officers and 149 men storming the position and were unforgiving once inside. Few prisoners were taken because the enemy were the wrong religion. By 8 a.m. redoubt number 1 was lost, the anchor to the right of the line upon which the defence of Balaclava was based. The Azov Regiment colours now fluttered over the earth-walled bastion.12
Lord Raglan probably took the first of his Balaclava decisions in his nightshirt. He was rudely awakened after 5.30 a.m. by the sound of a Russian cannonade reverberating around the valley floors at the foot of the Sapoune Heights. At the same time the strikingly tall Sergeant Timothy Gowing was making his way along the Heights to Balaclava, on fatigue duty. ‘We could hear the firing at Balaclava,’ he recalled, ‘but thought it was the Turks and Russians playing at long bowls, which generally ended in smoke.’ Raglan’s headquarters began generating a flurry of anxious activity. ‘We noticed too,’ Gowing observed, ‘mounted orderlies and staff officers riding as if they were going in for the Derby.’
William Russell was at the Bracker farmhouse by 7.30 a.m., just as Lucan’s galloper from Balaclava arrived with the news that ‘a strong corps of Russian horse, supported by guns and battalions of infantry, had marched into the valley.’ Redoubt number 1 was under serious threat and redoubts 2 to 3 were teetering, ‘unless the Turks offered a stouter resistance than they had done already’. The timings of reports are variable but it appears that Raglan did not set off to the edge of the Sapoune escarpment much before 7.30 to 8 a.m., which involved a twenty-minute ride. The rumble of artillery to the east was being picked up in the Sevastopol siege lines. Lieutenant John Hume, manning a 55 Regiment picket, learned he would not be relieved that morning, recalling, ‘heavy firing was heard towards Balaclava’. Likewise, Lieutenant John Image near the French lines with Cathcart’s 4th Division learned his 21st Royal Scots picket would also not be relieved as planned. 13
As Raglan rode towards the edge of the Sapoune Heights he likely rued the decision not to respond to the Turkish spy’s intelligence the night before, about this impending attack. ‘What would the Iron Duke have done?’ went through his mind. Russell remembered the ride toward the direction of firing ‘over the thistles and large stones which cover the undulating plain’. He got there before the commander, whose arrival by inference was somewhat tardy. ‘The booming of artillery, the spattering roll of musketry,’ he recalled, ‘were heard rising from the valley, drowning the roar of the siege guns in front before Sevastopol.’ Battle was well under way.
Raglan, unlike Wellington, whom he subconsciously emulated, did not have a core of veteran subordinates around him able to take the initiative. Wellington had never been much of a delegator, because he was such an intellectual heavyweight himself, but he would quietly grip a situation with steely resolve. Raglan was neither; he cultivated a calm demeanour, maintained in a crisis, but was unable to grip reluctant subordinates to make things happen. He maintained his imperturbable facade, secure in his own mind that this was likely a feint. When he drew up at the edge of the escarpment, he was confronted with the same scene described by Russell: ‘Looking to the left towards the gorge, we beheld six compact masses of Russian infantry, which had just debouched from the mountain passes near the Chernya [River], and were slowly advancing with solemn stateliness up the valley.’ There had to be at least twenty artillery pieces deployed before them, while another two batteries ‘were already a mile in advance of them, and were playing with energy on the redoubts, from which feeble puffs of smoke came at long intervals.’
Clearly, things were not going well. ‘Enormous bodies of cavalry’ were behind the guns and ahead of the infantry, ‘in six compact squares, three on each flank, moving down in echelon towards us’. It was both a majestic and menacing sight. ‘The valley was lit up with the blaze of their sabres, and lance points, and gay accoutrements,’ while ahead of them ‘were clouds of mounted skirmishers, wheeling and whirling in front of the march like autumn leaves tossed by the wind’. Hardly a feint, Raglan appreciated. Gallopers were dispatched to bring up the 4th and 1st British infantry divisions from the Sevastopol siege lines, many of whom were just emerging from a night in the trenches. This would be a thirty-minute ride; two more hours would be needed for the infantry to march down, therefore no appearance until much before 10 a.m. or later. All Raglan could do was anxiously scan the line of Turkish redoubts.14
His position at the easternmost edge of the Chersonese Plateau offered a striking view of the Balaclava plain, with its ridges and valleys arrayed before him like a three-dimensional map. The early morning light made the height differentials stand out in sharp relief. ‘Fleecy vapours still hung around the mountain tops,’ Russell remembered, ‘and mingled with the ascending volumes of smoke; the patch of sea [by Balaclava harbour] sparkled freshly in the rays of the morning sun, but its light was eclipsed by the flashes which gleamed from the masses of armed men below.’
The Sapoune Heights, where Raglan and his staff stood, is a great bluff or escarpment rising 600ft above the plain. Directly ahead and to the east was the shallow South Valley, 2 miles long and half a mile broad. It was bounded to its left by the long spine of the Causeway Heights, running for 2 to 3 miles in the same direction. Russell, standing by Raglan, ‘could see the Turkish gunners in the redoubts, all in a confusion as the shells burst over them’. He and his staff had arrived at the climax of the action, having missed the desperate stand fought from daybreak until now. ‘Just as I came up, the Russians had carried number 1 redoubt, the furthest and most elevated of all,’ Russell remembered, ‘and their horsemen were chasing the Turks across the interval which lay between it and redoubt number 2.’ Lucan’s cavalry could be seen ‘formed in glittering masses’ on the south side of the Causeway Heights, concealed from the Russians by a ‘slight wave’ in the plain.
The view offered by Raglan’s Olympian grandstand was virtual theatre. They overlooked the entire battlefield, but 600ft up was an entirely different perspective to that of his lesser mortal subordinates fighting down on the distant valley floors below. The ‘slight wave’ Russell distinguished was the key terrain feature, dominating both the North and South Valleys, the Causeway Heights. Line of sight at ground level below was, however, impeded by ridges and hills, which restricted the view of enemy positions. The 65-year-old Raglan did not appreciate that his ‘bird’s-eye’ view from the Heights across the intervening terrain was not shared by his subordinates on the rolling plain below. Moreover, any commands he issued meant a ride of twenty minutes or more for his gallopers or dispatch riders to make their way down the scrub strewn rocky escarpment; and events were moving faster below.
‘The successful seizure of redoubt number 1 decided the affair in our favour,’ Lieutenant Kubitovich remembered. ‘The Turks occupying redoubts number 2 and 3 hardly saw the right wing troops being directed towards them before they quickly turned to flight.’
The small Turkish garrisons, each of about 200 men and two cannon, were attacked by 3,800 men from the Ukrainian Regiment under Colonel Dudnitsky-Lishin. At the same time 3,500 men from the Odessa Regiment bore down on redoubt number 4 further right. Thousands of grim-faced grey-coated Russian infantry were cresting the Causeway Heights and Woronsov road at the point of the bayonet. The Turks were facing odds of nearly twenty to one. ‘When the Russians advanced,’ the newly arrived Russell saw that ‘the Turks fired a few rounds at them, got frightened at the distance of their supports, and then “bolted”.’ This dispatch by Russell, perhaps more than any of the other later, often contradictory reports, was the genesis of the myth that ‘cowardly’ Johnny Turk simply ran at Balaclava.15
The impossible tactical situation in which the Turks found themselves, bereft of any support, was subsidiary to the racist view of the soldiery, that Johnny Turk was simply dirty and lazy. Constantinople, the exotic jewel of the East, had been an odious disappointment for many British soldiers. Turks did not drink, they hid their women and they had the wrong religion. The fact that the River Thames flowing through Queen Victoria’s own capital was labelled the ‘great stink’ was irrelevant. The British soldier traditionally held a tawdry opinion of foreign martial skill, particularly non-European combatants. Few soldiers actually saw what happened at the redoubts, but prejudice – also voiced by officers – left them in no doubt. Private Charles Howell with the 1st Dragoons gave his opinion in later years ‘as an old soldier and in the langue of an old soldier’. He was not ‘grammatical’ he explained, but described the manning of the redoubts by ‘I was going to say Turkish soldiers, but they hardly deserved that name’, who ‘fled from the guns and left them before they [the Russians] got near them’. Howell’s badly spelt opinion echoed that of the ordinary British soldier, who unquestionably accepted what others had seen: ‘I have read that they stood theire ground until driven out by the Russian baynots, that may be so but it was the sight of it, and not the fell [feel] of it.’
Only about seven of ten defending Turks made it back to the British lines, the highest unit casualty rate that day. Corporal Thomas Morley with the 17th Lancers was similarly uncomplimentary. ‘They have little bits of swords,’ he wrote to his father, ‘… their firelocks all go off with flint and they alarm the Russians with them, and they can take an aim with them at half a mile’s distance.’
What did people expect? Lieutenant Robert Scott Hunter wrote to his sister that ‘the Turks absolutely ran away from the other batteries; before the enemy got there.’ Albert Mitchell with the 13th Light Dragoons saw the Turks running down the hill ‘Completely routed, everyone going his own way, with no one to direct or rally them. Many were shot down as they ran.’
Scott Hunter saw them pursued ‘by a cloud of Cossacks, who speared the unfortunate Turks, who were running away and begging for mercy in all directions’. It was ending badly. Trumpet Major William Forster with the 1st Royal Dragoons watched as the Cossacks ‘skewered the Turks as fast as they could handle their lances’.16
Contemplating all this from the Sapoune Heights, Lieutenant Colonel Somerset Calthorpe with Raglan remembered, ‘many were the curses loud and deep heaped on their heads’. Raglan had ridden up just in time to witness the collapse. Russell nearby observed the Turks in redoubt 2 running in scattered groups towards redoubt 3 and Balaclava, ‘but the horse-hoof of the Cossack was too quick for them, and sword and lance were busily plied among the retreating herd’. Not only could they see the debacle unfolding, the noises that came up gave the crisis an alarming immediacy. ‘The yells of the pursuers and pursued were plainly audible.’ ‘Thus in a few moments,’ Calthorpe complained, ‘we lost, through the confounded cowardice of the Turks, the key of our advanced line of defence.’ Mesmerised spectators around Raglan continued to watch as number 3 redoubt was subjected to intense cannon fire. Soon, ‘the Turks swarm over the earthworks, and run in confusion towards the town, firing at the enemy as they run.’ Russell from his ringside position authentically reported events with modern TV immediacy, enthralling readers back home with his descriptions of Cossacks falling upon running fugitives:
Again the solid column of cavalry opens like a fan, and resolves itself into a ‘long spray’ of skirmishers. It laps the flying Turks, steel flashes in the air, and down go the poor Moslem quivering on the plain, split through fez and musket-guard to the chin and breast-belt.17
The Russians, like British soldiers, anticipated a rapid collapse of the redoubts. Liprandi’s cavalry commander Major General Ivan Ryzhov recalled, ‘Some kind of panic and fear overcame the Turks, so that they were unable to withstand the approach of our infantry and betook themselves away almost before they had to.’
The Cossack Don Battery positioned itself near redoubt 2 on the Causeway Heights supporting the Russian infantry attack. They approached to within 1,400 yards and opened fire, which silenced the guns. ‘Our infantry attacks quickly took it and killed all its defenders.’ They then moved to redoubt 3, requested once again to assist with their heavier guns ‘setting off again into position at a walk’. They knocked out one of the Turkish cannon and managed to blow up an artillery caisson. ‘The fire from the enemy guns slackened after a short but rapid bombardment from our side,’ the officer remembered, ‘and then the infantry stormed the redoubt.’
Some of the Russian low-level accounts suggest deliberate attacks were carried out in concert with artillery, which took time, not the rapid collapse described in Russell’s accounts. General Liprandi’s final after-action report to Prince Menshikov and the Tsar glosses over the detail. His account suggests steady progress from departure at 5 a.m. from his assembly area to the capture of the redoubts by 7.30 a.m. Nothing is said about Turkish resistance at all, apart from being irresolute. ‘The Turks waivered’ and ‘did not stand firm’ and ran, according to Major General Ryzhov’s notes written after the battle. Lieutenant General Liprandi was hardly going to admit to the Tsar that 1,000 irregular Turkish militia had in any way thwarted the advance of his 27,000-strong force on Balaclava, with a superiority of twelve to one on the Causeway Heights. Neither was the two-hour delay imposed by the Turks recognised in any way by the British press.
For the moment the Russians were on a high. ‘Russian flags were planted on the redoubts of the Balaclava Heights,’ Hussar Lieutenant Arbuzov triumphantly remembered. ‘The impression made by this magnificent attack was extraordinarily strong … Tears of joy and emotion were flowing freely,’ he emotionally recalled. The cavalry brigade cheered the Don battery as its horse-drawn caissons rattled by and Arbuzov remembered ‘the forage caps of the brave artillerymen flew high into the air, and with one voice a “Ura!” joyously spread through the ranks of our forces.’ It was all going to plan.18
British cavalry, meanwhile, pulled back towards their original camp area. Russian artillery had made their position just short of the Causeway Heights untenable. Morale was intact and troopers were calmly phlegmatic about the retrograde movement. Trumpet Major Forster with the 1st Dragoons simply felt, ‘let them [the Russians] come down from the hills and have a fair fight’; they were quietly confident.
Fleeing Turks streamed past Albert Mitchell’s 13th Dragoon’s troop, ‘crying and calling upon “Allah”,’ he remembered, but ‘however great their haste, they were very careful of their kettles and pans, for they rattled and clattered as they ran past us’. ‘No bono Johnny,’ the men called out, ‘but that made no impression on them, for soon they were off as fast as they could go towards Balaclava.’ A round shot shrieked past his head and splattered the ground in front of him; ‘had it been a trifle lower, any troubles in this world would have been over,’ he recalled. Looking up towards number 3 redoubt as they passed, ‘we saw a man haul down the Turkish flag, which in their hasty flight the Turks had left flying,’ which seemed to encapsulate the moment. ‘At the same time someone, apparently an officer[,] mounted the breastwork and waved his sword at us triumphantly.’ A disgruntled English artillery NCO passed them by and ‘complained bitterly of the manner in which the Turks had left him’. Nevertheless, he assured them ‘they won’t fire the guns on you from this redoubt for I spiked them before I left.’
Lucan’s interpreter, John Blunt, was sent off to try and rally the Turks to the 93rd Highlander’s colours at Kadikoi, just north of Balaclava. He gathered a band of parched and exhausted Esnan around them and explained the order to their ‘bimbashi’. ‘One faint and bleeding from a wound in his breast asked why no support had been sent?’ Another with a bandaged head and ‘smoking a pipe half a yard long’ confided to Blunt in Turkish, ‘What can we do sir? It is God’s will.’ The British cavalry, as Troop Sergeant Major George Smith with the 11th Hussars recalled, could do little more than watch as Cossacks swooped around the foot of the Heights lancing and sabring fleeing Turks: ‘Some of them being unarmed raised their hands imploringly, but it was only to have them severed from their bodies. Had a dozen or two of us been sent out, numbers of these poor fellows might have been saved.’
Lucan could have harassed these Cossack forays but, lacking tactical experience, he chose, as Raglan would have wished, to keep the British line together. It formed at an oblique, flanking the approach to Balaclava. Redoubt number 4 above them was carried at that moment and down came ragged files of running Turkish militia, preceded by an officer who Mitchell recalled rode by shouting ‘all is lost!’ Cossack cavalry was in hot pursuit, lancing fugitives in the back, one was impaled in front of them, ‘who uttered a loud scream and fell’. Two Cossacks were seen bearing down on another Turk a short distance ahead. ‘Before they could reach him,’ Mitchell recalled, ‘Johnny, who had his piece loaded and bayonet fixed, turned suddenly and fired at the foremost, knocking him off his horse.’ The other had closed in and was about to lance the straggler and ‘made a point, but whether it touched the Turk or not I cannot say; but in an instant he had bayonetted the Cossack in the body, and he also fell from his horse.’ This sangfroid performance impressed the British, and ‘Johnny resumed his journey at a walk’, a fillip to everyone’s morale. ‘Now this exploit was witnessed by many of our men,’ Mitchell remembered, ‘who cheered Johnny lustily.’ The Turks still had teeth. The implications of the fall of redoubt 4 were not lost on the simplest trooper in the British line. Private Charles Howell explained that the Russians:
Knew all the supplies were taken from Balaclava to the army in front of Sevastopol. So if they could drive us from that position we should have been in rather an unpleasant fix. If our supplies had been cut off we could not fight long without food.19
Raglan had ordered up two divisions of infantry but they were unlikely to appear for at least two hours. At 8 a.m. he sent a galloper off to Lucan with an order for the ‘cavalry to take ground to the left of the second line of redoubts occupied by the Turks’. Its imprecise wording caused confusion amid the welter of activity on the valley floor below. Which redoubts occupied by Turks? They had all been abandoned. There was no second line of redoubts, only the one seized along the Causeway Heights. Left or right depended on which way Raglan was facing when the order was written. Lucan correctly deduced his commander meant west, where he would be in dead ground and therefore unseen by the Russians covered by the Causeway Heights and able to potentially menace their flank. Fortunately, the aide and Lucan sorted out the detail on the ground, but clearly Raglan’s three-dimensional view did not equate to the two-dimensional realities on the valley floor below. The order took the cavalry nearly 2,000 yards from Campbell’s position, occupying the small knoll at the entrance to the main approach to Kadikoi and Balaclava. Visibility for the cavalry was virtually nil and they were barely on the extremity of being able to support Campbell’s infantry.
Fanny Duberly had been summoned by a note from her husband Henry that said a ‘hot’ battle was about to take place. She was soon clattering through the ‘narrow and crowded streets’ of Balaclava as fast as she could. A commissariat officer advised ‘that the Turks had abandoned all their batteries, and were running towards the town’. She should therefore veer left to avoid them and ‘lose no time in getting amongst our own men’. ‘For God’s sake,’ the officer appealed, ‘ride fast, or you may not reach the camp alive.’ The road ahead was almost blocked by Turks fleeing towards the town, some ‘running hard’ and shouting ‘Ship Johnny! Ship Johnny!’ She saw that, bizarrely, they were ‘laden with pots, kettles, arms and plunder of every description’. Caught up in the popular myths and rumours of the collapse, she later recalled, ‘had I known more of their brutal cowardice, I would have ridden over them all.’ ‘Every Turk turned tail and ran,’ she complained, ‘like rabbits.’ She could not understand why so many insisted on carrying ‘old bottles, for which the Turks appear to have a great appreciation’. Henry met her at the camp, ‘where I stood, superintending the striking of our tent and the packing of our valuables’; 2,000 yards away Cossacks were running down Turkish stragglers to the accompaniment of scattered musket fire. ‘Henry flung me on the old horse; and seizing a pair of laden saddlebags, a greatcoat, and a few other packages’, they made their way up to the high ground that Raglan’s staff was occupying.20
One of the ship’s officers aboard HMS Himalaya, a steam troopship off Balaclava harbour, was attracted by the sound of heavy firing on shore, ‘increasingly towards 9 o’clock and from that time incessant’. It looked serious. The harbour appeared under threat because he ‘could see occasionally shells bursting over the high hills by which the bay is surrounded’. Frantic efforts were being made by ships’ crews to raise steam and unfurl sails to get out of the crowded harbour. With Turks running into the harbour area crying ‘Ship Johnny!’ it looked as though anything might happen. ‘There was literally nothing’ beyond the 93rd Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Sterling with Campbell admitted, ‘to hinder the cavalry which came down on the 93rd from galloping through the flying Turks, and destroying all the stores in Balaclava.’ The confined shelter offered by the precipitous harbour walls might instead prove to be its nemesis. Craft could not swiftly exit the harbour without the certainty of chaotic entanglements. ‘There was indeed, a frigate in the harbour,’ Sterling remembered, but should Russian cavalry appear in the streets, ‘the frigate must have fired through our own shipping, if she could have got a spring on her cable in time to fire at all.’ There was no plan to evacuate the harbour in the event of a crisis; there was not even an agreed procedure to disembark stores.21
Fleeing Turks poured through the Highland camp, liberating anything of usefulness, especially food in their starving state. As they ran through, Mrs Smith, married to Private Smith, a soldier servant with Quartermaster Sinclair of the 93rd, was still attending her washing, despite the sound of round shot whooshing overhead. Described as a ‘large powerful bony woman’ she assumed the first Turk entering her tent was intent on stealing or taking liberties. She was to become the stuff of legend, further embellishing stories of Turkish cowardice. Surgeon George Munro with the 93rd remembered, when the Turks ‘trampled on things, which being washed, she had spread out to dry, she broke out into a towering rage, and seizing a large stick … laid about her right and left in protection of her property.’
Realising they had bolted from the battle and deserted her regiment, ‘she abused the “Johnnys” roundly in braid Scotch’. Captain Edward Fisher-Rowe with the 4th Dragoon Guards summed up popular army feeling when he commented: ‘the Turks are found out at last; they are a black-guardedly, cowardly race, without honour amongst the officers or honesty amongst the men.’ Whereas before he received ‘a nod and “Bono Johnny” from everyone’, now he more likely ‘stands a good chance of a blow across the mouth’. The 93rd, Fisher-Rowe pointed out, ‘who like all Highlanders can bear malice, swear, if they get a chance, to drive bayonets through the whole lot’ of them, adding indignantly, ‘they stole all the highlanders kits while they were actually defending them from the enemy’. Mrs Smith became known as ‘Kokana Smith’, meaning ‘woman’ in Turkish and attained celebrity status, myth was transformed by word of mouth to fact.22
Private John Vahey and Paddy Heffernan had come to their intoxicated senses in the 17th Lancers’ guard tent. ‘We must have had a long snooze,’ Vahey recalled, ‘for it was broad daylight before we were wakened by the loud thundering of a tremendous cannonade close by, making the very tent poles quiver.’ Both had monumental hangovers. ‘I still felt decidedly muzzy, for commissary rum, as you would know if you ever got tight on it, is hard stuff to get sober off.’ Reverberating booms gave ‘a shrewd guess what all the row was’, but there was no sentry at the tent flap to tell them what was going on. They languidly stretched in the cool air outside and realised the camp was ‘utterly deserted’. Nonplussed but cheerfully unconcerned, they went back inside to confer ‘over a refresher out of the inexhaustible rum bottle’, and try ‘in a boozy sort of way, to argue out the position’.
Private Christopher Fox with the 4th Dragoons, another incorrigible hard-case, had also been left behind in the Light Brigade camp on extra fatigues. The 26-year-old Fox had a jaundiced view of authority, having appeared forty-three times in the regimental defaulters’ book, court-martialled four times and imprisoned twice during seven years’ service. Fox had watched the brigade saddle up and ride off towards the sound of firing early that morning. He had no intention of missing what appeared to be the first likelihood of action that campaign and took a troop horse and set off after them, to find his unit. His action leaving his post against orders constituted a flogging offence.
Vahey and Heffernan, left in camp, could hear but not see what was going on. The sound of continuous gunfire was kept up on the other side of a low ridge, projecting from the Causeway Heights, which blocked their view. ‘We could tell it must be pretty warm work,’ Vahey remembered. ‘Why the devil should we be out of the fun?’ they agreed, and went to the horse lines ‘half drunk as we were’ to look for sick horses. Vahey picked up his butcher’s axe while Heffernan still had a sword. Two lame horses had been left behind, one with ‘a leg like a pillar box’ and the other ‘down on his side and did not look much like rising again’. Increasingly frustrated, they strode off toward the Heavy Brigade, which they could see forming up in the distance behind the escarpment to their front.23
By now Raglan’s gallopers had reached the Sevastopol siege lines to summon the 1st and 4th Infantry Divisions. The irrepressible and cheery Captain Jem Macdonald, the Duke of Cambridge’s ADC, had no problem getting the 1st Division moving. ‘There’s a row going on down in the Balaclava plain,’ he told the staff, ‘and you fellows are wanted.’ Captain Ewart, Cathcart’s 4th Division ADC, met with reticence. ‘Lord Raglan requests you, Sir George,’ he appealed, ‘to move your division immediately to the assistance of the Turks.’ They were still in the midst of a relief operation. ‘It is impossible for my division to move,’ the irritable Cathcart responded, ‘the greater portion of my men have just come from the trenches’; they were tired and reorganising and had yet to eat. There was bad blood between Cathcart and Raglan. The former held a dormant commission to be Raglan’s successor if anything should happen to him. It produced tensions, not helped when Raglan ignored Cathcart’s advice to storm Sevastopol after the flank march, when its defences had been at their most vulnerable. Just two days before he had marched his division down to the plain, responding to yet another false alarm. ‘The best thing you can do is to sit down and have some breakfast with me,’ Cathcart advised Ewart. The ADC pluckily stood his ground, saying he was not going anywhere until he saw Raglan’s clear instruction being carried out.
The stand-off caused another forty-minute delay. The 4th Division was the nearest to the Col entry point descending to the plain. Raglan forbade the use of the Woronsov road, which was a more direct route because the French feared an unexpected engagement with the Russians, who had already occupied its east end. ‘I will see if anything can be done,’ Cathcart acquiesced and bugles were blown and drums rolled until the division set off at a leisurely pace towards Balaclava.
On the Russian side, Liprandi’s opening moves had gone completely to plan, aside from the tripwire delay imposed by the Turkish redoubts. The first four redoubts had been captured at the eastern end, giving the Russians control of the Woronsov road leading to Sevastopol. By driving back the British cavalry and artillery, they had swung open a door enabling clear access to Balaclava. Lieutenant Kubitovich with Yeropkin’s lancers had spotted English cavalry off to their right flank. ‘The appearance of the English cavalry made us glad,’ he remembered; ‘we hoped that our wish to fight them would come true.’ The route to Balaclava looked open and ‘after a short period of inactivity following the occupation of the redoubts, Major General Ryzhov, the cavalry commander in our force, received the order to make an attack.’ Ryzhov’s cavalry formed the ‘enormous bodies of cavalry’ that Russell had seen advancing in ‘six compact squares’ behind Semyakin’s central column, on the north side of the Causeway Heights.
All Kubitovich could see in the way was a ‘Scottish regiment’, which had appeared ‘almost at the very beginning of the battle,’ he remembered, and ‘alarmed by our attack, deployed in the front of the village of Kadikoi, in the main path of our force’s advance’. Fleeing Turks had congregated around the ends of this ‘thin red streak’, identified by correspondent William Russell, from the Sapoune Heights. This small red line appeared dwarfed in the immense space it was trying to block ahead of the wide gorge leading down to Kadikoi and Balaclava.
Lord Raglan pensively regarded this space. Thirty minutes before he had caused confusion, diverting Lucan’s cavalry away from the same gap, isolating Campbell’s 93rd regiment 2,000 yards from its nearest support. Raglan now dispatched a second galloper to Lucan at 8.30 a.m., directing ‘eight squadrons of heavy horse to be detached towards Balaclava to support the Turks who are wavering’. Lucan had barely reached this position twenty minutes before when he received an exasperating order to go back. Thirty minutes in a cavalry action can be an eternity. The Turks were not wavering around Campbell, they had been overrun and were seeking support. Lucan was being asked to move four regiments of the ‘Heavies’ back onto the open plain, separating them from the five Light regiments and isolating the last Heavy Brigade regiment from its parent command. Transmission of orders from Raglan’s Olympian heights to the reality of the fast-moving action below took twenty to thirty minutes. It was unwise to divide the cavalry force by as much as a mile in the face of the enemy. Frustrated and nonplussed, Lucan told Brigadier General James Scarlett commanding the Heavy Brigade to execute the move and go back to where he had come from.
Back up on the Sapoune Heights, William Russell remembered watching every move ‘as though they were looking on the stage from the boxes of a theatre’. The time was approaching 9 a.m. – thirty minutes after Raglan had dispatched his last order – already invalidated by the disturbing developments they saw shaping up below. The huge masses of Russian cavalry that Russell had spotted coming across the North Valley were emerging on the ‘crown of the hill across the valley’. Starting from the left they began to trickle over the spine of the Causeway Heights. Riding beneath, and oblivious to the storm about to break over them from above, was Scarlett’s painfully thin lines of four regiments of horse marching in open column. Both sides were clearly unable to see each other. Tension on the Heights became physically palpable.
The enormous Russian mass below came to a halt, ‘and squadron after squadron,’ Russell recalled ‘flies up from the rear, till they have a body of some 1,500 men along the ridge – lancers, and dragoons, and Hussars’. They regrouped into two huge squares, with another in reserve, and began to trickle forward onto the lower slope. Brigadier General Scarlett could be seen at the head of his column below, unaware of this dark, menacing cloud forming and about to burst over them. On the Heights, Russell remembered ‘nearly every one dismounted and sat down, and not a word was said’. It had taken Lord Raglan barely twenty minutes to set up Scarlett’s command for likely execution. Every man on the escarpment knew the storm would break in a lot less time than this. They were helpless inanimate observers, resigned to accepting the calamity that must ensue.24