Lord Raglan says we ought to be kept in a bandbox. Did any one hear of cavalry in a bandbox doing anything?
Captain Edward Lewis Nolan to William Howard Russell, 21 September 1854
For the cabinet in London the first news of the victory on the Alma arrived through Stratford in the Constantinople embassy. He had sent Raglan’s battlefield despatch to Belgrade for onward telegraphic transmission to London and it arrived, written in French, on the morning of 1 October: ‘Les armées alliées ont attaqué la position de l’ennemi sur les hauteurs au defens de l’Alma hier, et l’ont emporté après un combat acharné environ une heure et demi avant le coucher du soleil.’* Following the long uneasy silence and the growing concerns about the lack of communication, it provided blessed relief. ‘Raglan has covered himself with glory,’ replied a jubilant Clarendon, ‘and his calmness and judgement in the field, as well as the modesty and the terseness of his despatch would, I am sure, have made the old Duke proud.’1
The official despatch, written the day after the battle, was brought to London by Lord Burghersh whose steamer arrived in Marseilles on 7 October. From Paris, Cowley arranged for a special train to take him to Boulogne and Raglan’s text was published in full in The Times on 10 October. ‘Your fame is now established in history,’ was Newcastle’s response in a private letter written that same day. ‘God grant that you may live many years to enjoy the reputation you have won.’2 From her Highland holiday home at Balmoral, Queen Victoria described the news as ‘glorious’ although she added the cautionary note that she could not feel ‘quite sure of its truth’ – a further indication of the disquiet which she and her government had felt about the lengthy delays in receiving accurate reports from Raglan’s army.
The French, too, had reason to celebrate. Not only had the entente held firm but if Saint-Arnaud were to be believed, their army had taken part in a glorious passage of arms. The jubilant French commander had also penned his report the day after the battle and it, too, was published in full, together with eye-witness reports, in the French press. Whatever else it was, it was certainly colourful. The French Army was hailed as true sons of Jena and Austerlitz, much was made of Bosquet’s attack and the overwhelming impression was that the Zouaves, tirailleurs and légionnaires had triumphed over the Russians with some British help on the left flank. Saint-Arnaud had had the good grace to praise Raglan’s bravery – ‘In the midst of cannon and musket fire he displayed a calmness which never left him’ – but the publication left a sour taste and Cowley was forced to lodge an official complaint with Drouyn de Lhuys. ‘When these reports went back to the East,’ he told the French foreign minister, ‘not all the calm or prudence that the commander-in-chief could exercise would prevent young officers from showing their indignation at such language. Answers would be made, quarrels would ensue and all cordiality cease between the two armies.’3
By then the news had also reached the tsar’s court although it was to be some days before the extent of the defeat became generally known. One of Menshikov’s aides had ridden from the battlefield with the simple instruction to tell the tsar exactly what he had seen. Not unnaturally perhaps, Nicholas was unwilling to accept the young man’s version of events particularly as they seemed to portray the Russian troops in a bad light. ‘I can hardly understand it,’ wrote Nicholas of his army’s supposed lack of courage, ‘knowing from earlier reports how good they were and what spirit they were in.’4 That impression was confirmed by Menshikov’s own report and the feeling grew in St Petersburg that all was lost in the Crimea and that it would only be a matter of time before Sevastopol fell to the allied armies.
Initially, that, too, was Stratford’s belief and following receipt of Raglan’s despatches he sent a breezily optimistic letter to the foreign secretary:
All our anxieties now point to the last scene at Sebastopol. I am led to suppose that there will be no more fighting till after the passage of the Balbek and the attack on Fort Constantine where we may or may not be able to take up a position clear of the guns. That the Russians will make a vigorous resistance I have no doubt. It is most unlikely that they will make a desperate one. Their discipline and ruse in a position with which they are familiarised must tell in their favour. Nevertheless I have little doubt that our people will prevail. They may be detained, they may be staggered – they may suffer an enormous loss but if anything can take the place, I verily believe that they will take it. Still, it is a nervous and tremblingly anxious struggle!5
In the weeks to come Stratford’s despatches to London were to betray a bewildering oscillation of emotions, ranging from triumphalism to bleak despair, but for the time being Raglan’s victory had put him in a good humour not least because it seemed to vindicate the wisdom of his opposition to Russian expansionism. ‘Allow me to say that I have read your printed despatches with an unbounded delight and admiration,’ he told Raglan. ‘Every step you take adds something to our national glory, and to the appreciation of English characters by foreigners.’6
On the plateau above the Alma, though, things were not so clear-cut. In fact, as light faded on the evening of 20 September there were elements in the British Army who felt that Raglan had failed to capitalise on his success and that the defeat of the Russian Army could have been turned into a decisive rout. That belief was particularly strong in the Light Brigade whose 1000 cavalrymen had been forced to play a watching role, idling in a field by the Alma while the infantry attacked the heights opposite them.
From the very outset Raglan had determined to use his light cavalry as a reconnaissance force, the role for which they were best equipped, and at the Alma they were held in reserve to the left with the field artillery. No orders were given to them because, as Raglan explained later, he wanted ‘to shut them up’, reasoning that the battlefield offered no opportunities for the cavalry arm. He was also aware that the Russians had a superior force numbering 3000, many of which were heavy cavalry formations, and no field commander would dare risk a fragile material asset against superior opposition. This was prudence taking precedence over enterprise, yet Raglan was right to be so cautious. Scarlett’s Heavy Brigade had not yet arrived and there was a serious shortage of remounts. In those circumstances it would have been folly to have committed the Light Brigade into action against the Russians.
However, that was not how the cavalry saw it. They still believed that they were the decisive factor on the battlefield whose spirit and determination could make victory complete by breaking the enemy’s determination to fight. As the Heavy Brigade was still on its way from Varna there could be no question of integrating the lightly armed hussars and lancers into the attack on the Russian lines, but both Cardigan and Lucan believed that they should have been deployed as a ‘pursuit arm’. This, too, was ideal for the light cavalry role for, in the aftermath of Ramillies in 1706, Marlborough’s cavalry had ruthlessly chased the fleeing French forces for some fifteen miles, utterly destroying its appetite for further action.
Unfortunately for Raglan, that is precisely what was on Lucan’s mind when he ordered the Light Brigade to advance up the slopes of Kourgané Hill with a battery of horse artillery. ‘We pushed on in haste,’ remembered Private Albert Mitchell, 13th Light Dragoons, ‘expecting to be called into play on the top of the heights.’7 As Mitchell and his fellow troopers passed through the ranks of the dead and dying – ‘many poor fellows we passed begged for assistance, but we could not stay to render any’ – they could hear the cheers of the Highlanders and the Guards and suddenly realised that the battle was over. If so, there might still be a chance to pursue the defeated Russian army and the sight from the top of the hill seemed to confirm that fond hope.
Menshikov’s army was swarming back southwards in the direction of Sevastopol and from the heights it seemed to be in complete disarray. One officer in the 17th Lancers wrote later that the Russians were ‘running as hard as they could go, throwing away their knapsacks, arms and even their coats to assist them in their flight’.8 In fact, although there was a rout, there was still some order to the Russian retreat. A handful of commanding officers managed to control their men so that the regiments leap-frogged one another, offering cover to the flanks and rear, and to the south of Telegraph Hill the Uglitz Regiment, as yet untested, had taken up a new defensive position. The allies’ response was to use their artillery. From the heights of Kourgané the six guns of the horse artillery battery opened fire on the Uglitz position, breaking the column and creating heavy casualties. At the same time Canrobert’s guns opened fire on the retreating Russians from Telegraph Hill. For the disillusioned Captain Chodasiewicz this was the bitter end:
We passed numbers of unfortunate men who cried out to us for help we could not give them. Some asked for water to quench their intolerable thirst, while others begged hard to be put out of their agony by a speedy death. These sights and sounds had a very visible effect on the morale of the men, as they saw how little care was taken of them when they most required it. They exclaimed amongst themselves while passing through these horrors, ‘Happy is he who a merciful Providence permits to die on the field of battle.’9
Other Russian officers also had harsh words to say about the effects of the allied artillery fire and of the complete lack of medical facilities to succour the wounded men. Kornilov, who had fretted in Sevastopol until the sounds of gunfire and his own growing impatience called him to the battlefield, was shocked by what he found: ‘There were neither hospitals nor field dressing stations, nor even stretcher-bearers,’ he wrote in his diary that night, ‘and this explains the large numbers of wounded left on the field of battle.’ Despite the attempt to cover its retreat this was a badly demoralised army and long after the fighting had ended there was relief mingled with some scorn that the allies had not exploited the position:
The enemy took the heights, yet he used them only to direct artillery fire on our troops withdrawing from the area of the bridge [over the Alma]. He then sat there, rejoicing at his victory over what he imagined to be the advanced guard of our army; his mistake saved us and Sevastopol. For who could have thought that our handful of men was the Crimean Army, particularly since it was customary at that time to talk of the Russian million-strong force? It is frightful to think what might have happened, had it not been for this cardinal error of the enemy’s.10
Had Lucan been able to read Kornilov’s account he would have felt fully vindicated. Like every other cavalryman on the Kourgané heights that afternoon his instinct was to give chase to the fleeing Russians. Raglan must have sensed his impatience for he sent over Adjutant-General Estcourt with strict instructions that the cavalry was not to attack. Instead Lucan was to take two regiments – 8th Hussars and 17th Lancers – to escort some field guns on the left while Cardigan followed suit on the right with the 11th Hussars and 13th Light Dragoons. This took the Light Brigade forward towards the plain and, sensing an unmissable opportunity, Lucan ordered his men to pursue the Russian stragglers, a number of whom were brought back, most of them wounded.
Raglan was not amused. Not only was Lucan disobeying orders but he was risking the Light Brigade. A second command to break off the pursuit was despatched, then a third, before a furious Lucan deigned to obey. In protest he released the prisoners and later that night he sent a terse formal message of complaint to his commander-in-chief: ‘Lord Lucan trusts that Lord Raglan has that confidence in him, as commanding the cavalry, that he would allow him to act on his own responsibility, as occasion should offer and render advisable, for otherwise opportunities of acting will frequently be lost to the cavalry.’11 But if Lucan was angry, so were his men and, unfairly, some of them blamed him. The impetuous Nolan went further, telling Russell: ‘It is too disgraceful, too infamous. They [the generals] ought to be—!’ Coming on top of the enforced restraint shown at the Bulganek a few days earlier it was too much for some cavalrymen to bear and more than one was heard to call Lucan a cautious ass.
Added to the fact that Cardigan was equally furious, because Lucan seemed to be intruding on his area of responsibility by directing the Light Brigade, the cavalry was not in a particularly happy frame of mind following the war’s first serious encounter. Typically, Raglan attempted to soothe the two commanders’ ruffled feathers with a plea for them to co-operate but on the question of pursuit he was adamant that he had taken the correct option. He realised that the Russian cavalry were still massed to the south-east and still posed a threat. He also knew, but Lucan did not, that the French had refused to support any move to attack the Russian rearguard. With a few hours of daylight remaining Raglan reasoned that a pursuit force of cavalry, horse artillery and infantry could combine to attack the Russians along the Sevastopol road but only if the French joined it. But Saint-Arnaud would have none of it. Exhausted by the battle and desperately ill – only a cocktail of opiates and his own determination had kept him in his saddle – the French commander declined to offer any assistance, arguing that his men would have to retrieve their packs from the banks of the Alma and then tend to the wounded.
Raglan was disappointed – and would have been doubly so had he known that Saint-Arnaud would write to his wife boasting that he would have won the war then and there if cavalry had been available – but, shorn of French support, pursuit would have been too risky a business. Besides, so far away from home and with scant resources, he preferred caution to chance. And he had already seen grim evidence of the effects of battle as he rode down Kourgané Hill and recrossed the Alma. Calthorpe remembered ‘a horrible scene – death in every shape and form’ and Kinglake noted the strain on Raglan’s face as he passed by the scores of wounded crouching in the ruins of Bourliuk waiting with various degrees of patience for what treatment could be provided. Elsewhere burial parties were at work, hurriedly shovelling corpses into makeshift trenches. While the British had come to the Crimea prepared to fight a war, as Albert Mitchell and many other soldiers discovered that night, little thought had been given to the consequences of battle:
By this time, the greater part of the army was asleep, and then it was that we heard around us the groans of the wounded and the dying; some calling for the love of God for a drop of water. Others were praying most devoutly, well knowing this to be their last night in this life. We had already seen sufficient to harden our feelings, and make us callous to human suffering, but I lay some time thinking very seriously and praying to God for protection from all dangers.12
And so the day ended with the victorious allies resting and taking stock while the Russians made good their escape. Later Kinglake, so solicitous of Raglan in the aftermath of battle, would criticise him for failing to adopt ‘a sterner method’, claiming that the allied army could have ‘drunk of the Katcha that night’. While it is true that more could have been done to exploit the success it is unlikely that the battle-weary troops could have marched the seven miles suggested by Kinglake. Certainly the British forces could not have done it alone and Saint-Arnaud’s unwillingness to commit his own troops made any pursuit impossible. Not that Raglan was not keen to push on to Sevastopol. According to Lyons, who visited his headquarters the next day and who reported the British commander-in-chief’s words, Raglan had once again been stymied by his French allies:
With the troops perfectly fresh and fit to march on and the weather very fine, I [Raglan] sent to Maréchal St-Arnaud to propose that we should march on to Sebastopol and assault the place at once (to take our ground above the town, I forget which was the expression) and the answer to me was that the French troops were fatigued and cannot move on any further. That cannot be the real reason, as the march has not been long enough to fatigue the troops – but however as they cannot move of course I cannot either.13
Lyons, of course, was not a disinterested reporter, being one of the allies’ more bullish commanders and an enemy of the kind of procrastination advocated by Dundas. Indeed, Stratford was strongly of the opinion that Lyons and Raglan would make an ideal partnership and lost few chances of promoting the suggestion – ‘Sir Edmund too – what more can be said than that he is worthy of you?’ he reminded the British commander-in-chief in the days following the Alma. ‘In reading your letters and tracing your progress I seem to breathe again the air of my younger days of Waterloo and Trafalgar.’14 Newcastle was prepared to go further, advising Raglan in a despatch of 9 October that if Dundas failed to support the army in its operations Lyons should be persuaded to disobey them.
Fortunately this was never put to the test but a comment made by Clarendon to Stratford that same week shows that Lyons’ star was in the ascendant: ‘What a fellow Lyons is! He makes one proud of one’s country and what fine fellows there are too under him; so there are also under Sir C. Napier and it is melancholy that two such splendid fleets should be under such inefficient Crs in Chief for Napier is not a bit better than Dundas is.’15 By then, of course, Napier would soon be on his way back to Britain and disgrace while Lyons was on the verge of supplanting Dundas.
Despite that elevation and his later need to paint himself in a good light, Lyons’ account of his meeting with Raglan is a fair reflection of what had happened. Twice that day Raglan had attempted to persuade the French to move and on both occasions he had been rebuffed, hence the admiral’s description of finding his colleague tired and ‘dispirited’.
A more commanding personality might have pursued the point – Saint-Arnaud was dying and in no position to be decisive – but Raglan was too courteous a man to force a colleague to act as he did not choose. Had he been a Wolfe, far less a Wellington, matters might have been different but as he was the commander on the spot, the choice of the British government, and nine days short of his sixty-sixth birthday he was hardly likely to start changing his ways. Besides, he was also mindful that he was under orders to preserve and maintain the entente with his French allies. Not only did this mean acting in concert with them in military operations but, when the occasion demanded, bowing to their wishes. To Raglan, despite his obvious disappointment, this seemed to be such an occasion to defer to his touchy allies. Rather than complain, though, he confined his disappointment to an ironic comment about the French army’s penchant for bugle calls. ‘Ah! there they go with their infernal toot-toot-tooting,’ he protested to his staff, ‘that’s the only thing they ever do!’16
Instead of moving forward, the allies used the time to tend to their wounded. With fewer casualties and better facilities the French fared better than the British could ever hope to do. Providing that they did not succumb to cholera or to gangrene, those who were treated by the banks of the Alma stood some chance of surviving. Not so those who were despatched by transport ships to Scutari. Over a quarter of their number died during the four-day voyage and once in Constantinople their chances of survival were to prove little better. ‘Numbers of men wounded at Alma have been five days without having their wounds looked at by a medical man, and many men died from their wounds mortifying,’ wrote Captain Henry Clifford to his parents. ‘All this is the fault of the Heads of the Medical Department, for quantities of medicine etc have been provided and sent out as far as Scutari and Varna.’17 Inevitably, given the presence of the accompanying correspondents, the plight of the wounded was soon being reported in the London press and the revelations would ensure that the war was remembered for its blunders and the neglect of the ordinary soldier.
However, all that trouble lay some weeks in the future. At this time the country was still basking in the glory of a famous victory and as early as 2 October The Times had optimistically published a story under the headline ‘Fall of Sevastopol’ which was supposed to be based on ‘decisive intelligence’. In fact it derived from an ill-advised piece of boastfulness in Boulogne by Napoleon III who told departing reinforcements that the flags of the victorious allied army were already flying from the city’s ramparts. Unfortunately, even those in positions of authority were inclined to believe what they wished to believe. Claiming that the decision to attack Sevastopol was his and his alone, Sir James Graham wrote to Raglan on 8 October that he could not have anticipated ‘so grand a result in so short a time’ and that Wellington would have been proud of him. Even Newcastle felt confident enough to state that Sevastopol might have fallen and wrote to Raglan expressing the hope that ‘may have’ would have become ‘will have’ by the time his letter arrived.
Raglan was furious and rightly so. After reading The Times’s stories he reminded Newcastle that the operation to attack Sevastopol, was ‘one of extreme difficulty, and of no certainty’ and that to talk of easy victories did his troops very little justice. Prudently, Clarendon advised circumspection. If the mood of elation turned to ashes, he warned an increasingly ebullient Stratford, then there would be no winners either in the army or in the government:
Public anxiety is, if possible, on the increase and one thing and one thing alone is spoken of – the newspapers ever since the commencement of the war have never missed an opportunity of doing mischief that the fall of Sebastopol is a fait accompli and as a matter of not the merest doubt, so that if we fail no allowance can be made for the generals and if we succeed little credit will be awarded to them.18
In fact while these letters were flying to and fro between London and the army in the field, Raglan was wrestling with an increasingly intractable tactical situation. The march south had recommenced on 23 September but while the troops were in good humour and full of confidence, there was still no definite plan about what should be done next. It was not until the next morning, when they were beyond the River Katcha and in sight of Sevastopol itself, that the allied commanders sat down to confer. By then Saint-Arnaud was desperately ill and to Raglan’s eyes at least he was obviously at death’s door. By then, too, the ailing marshal had been told that in the event of him being incapacitated Canrobert carried the emperor’s warrant to take over command. This glum information had been withheld from him until after the armies were safely ashore and in fact Saint-Arnaud had written to his wife a fortnight earlier that he would be ‘obliged to leave the party, and as soon as I have established the army in the Crimea, I will ask the emperor for a replacement.’19
Despite the concern raised by the marshal’s predicament the conference ended on an optimistic note mainly because a plan had been proffered and accepted by the allied commanders. Drawn up by Burgoyne in a succinct memorandum it called for an allied attack from the south, making use of Balaklava and the other nearby bays as supply bases. The obvious alternative – a direct attack on the north side – was out of the question not just because it was covered by the Star Fort but also because naval intelligence had revealed a rapid reinforcement of the landward defences. Raglan was inclined to agree, arguing that he had ‘always been disposed’ for such an operation and he knew, too, that his worries about resupply would be eased by seizing the southern bays. The French were happy to concur as they, too, had evidence from a Polish deserter that the Russians had moved naval guns to the northern defences to counter the anticipated allied assault.
Inevitably, given the future course of the war, the decision to attack from the southern uplands has left history with another ‘what if?’, the argument being that Raglan was wrong not to commit his forces to an immediate assault on Sevastopol. At home in London The Times certainly thought that he should have done so, arguing a year later that the British commander ‘had not sufficient spontaneous energy to take it [Sevastopol]’. Other armchair strategists have also criticised him for lack of foresight and initiative in pressing home an immediate coup de main. There are substantial attractions to the argument. Menshikov’s army was in disarray, there was a certain amount of panic in Sevastopol, a bombardment by the allied fleet could have been decisive and, from a military point of view, there is much to be said for continuing the momentum of a successful battle. That was certainly what Captain Chodasiewicz and his fellow defenders in Sevastopol expected:
In the town the people were as busy as ants, working day and night at their defences. The greater number of wives and families of the naval officers were at this time in the town. As it was not known where the enemy might be expected, they were afraid to retire to Simferopol [town to the north]. In fact, all seemed to be seized with a kind of panic. Korniloff [sic] appeared to have the power of multiplying himself, for he was everywhere, promising large rewards to all if they could only keep the town.20
A bold commander might have been prepared to risk everything for the prize but the ever-prudent Raglan was not that kind of soldier.
Besides, he was unhappily aware that he had little in the way of accurate intelligence about his enemy’s movements. Was Menshikov’s army in Sevastopol or was it preparing a fresh assault on his flanks or rear? What was the true state of the Russian defences at the Star Fort and how many men and guns defended them? Where were the Russian reinforcements? Obviously the capture of the Star Fort held the key to the capture of the city but what good would come from it if the allies lost precious men and resources in the assault? These doubts crowded in on the information which Raglan did have. Reports had come in that Kornilov had ordered ships of the Black Sea fleet to be sunk across the harbour approaches and that their guns had been removed to fortify the city’s defences. There was also sufficient intelligence from the warships lying offshore that the Russians were rapidly strengthening their fortifications. Given those doubts and the growing certainty that any attack on the northern defences was beset with dangers Raglan was justified in accepting Burgoyne’s plans. Once again discretion was the order of the day.
And so the allies set off for the southern coast, making a flanking movement to avoid marshy ground, and slowly heading over territory with names which would soon become as familiar to the British Army as the positions on the western front in Flanders would be to their successors sixty years later: Traktir Bridge, Fedioukine Hills, Canrobert’s Hill, Kadikoi and, most prominent of all, the base at Balaklava. Not that the deployment was uneventful. At one stage the cavalry lost its way and in so doing led Raglan and his staff into firing range of the Russian rearguard. Only Raglan’s coolness, some luck and the covering fire of the horse artillery retrieved the situation, but it was an indication of the dangers facing the allied army, dispersed as it was over several miles of exposed countryside. Only a sudden thick fog and Menshikov’s failure to exploit the situation saved them from attack.
On the morning of 26 September Raglan had reached the village of Kadikoi and was able to look down on the narrow inlet of Balaklava which would be the British forces’ lifeline to the outside world. To Henry Clifford, it was a charming sight, ‘a most beautiful harbour, not more than two miles round – a basin in its shape, where the water is almost like a mill-pond, though deep enough for any line-of-battle ship to come within stone throw of the shore’.21 Bitter experience would expose the inadequacies of the harbour but on that late September day of 1854, when the fall of Sevastopol was thought to be within reach, Raglan was sure that the port and the surrounding saucer-shaped plateau would provide an ideal base for operations.
That same day Saint-Arnaud surrendered to the inevitable and resigned his command. The steamer Berthelot took him back to Constantinople but he was destined not to survive the voyage. Shortly before arriving he died of heart failure exacerbated by cancer and cholera and also by the demands of the campaign. The Berthelot continued its voyage to Marseilles taking with it the marshal’s body and some electrifying news. ‘The steamer brings the intelligence that the investment of Sevastopol was completed on 2nd,’ an exultant Cowley telegraphed to London that same night, ‘and that the Allied Armies would probably be in possession of the place on the 8th’. For a brief moment it seemed that the war might indeed be over but in distant Paris they were not to know that in their positions ‘before Sebastopol’ the allied armies were experiencing the first hint of winter weather with the Russian fortress as secure as it had been a month earlier.
Once again the absence of reliable information from the battlefront made it impossible for either government to understand what was happening. (In the first week of November a Queen’s Messenger actually lost Raglan’s despatches whilst travelling through France.) After receiving Cowley’s despatch and the subsequent disclaimer Clarendon wrote once more to Stratford berating him for his tardiness in communicating news from the Crimea. The ambassador replied in measured tones that while ‘no one was more anxious than myself to meet the wishes of Her Majesty’s Government in that respect’, he refused to pass on the first wild rumour which came his way:
In most instances, be it observed, I have no official advisers on which to rely. Other sources of information, such as private letters and oral narratives, are subject to much uncertainty and in stating what is derived from them under circumstances of so deep and delicate an interest, I have to guard myself, and, what is more, to guard Your Lordship from the effects of mistake and exaggeration. Of the incidents which attended the progress of Her Majesty’s Army from Alma to Balaclava I had no reliable information until I received intelligence of Lord Raglan’s arrival at the latter place. At this very moment I am in total darkness of the very important occurrences which took place between the 24th and 28th instant.22
Stratford was right to defend his corner and to warn against the danger of over-optimism, but his words arrived at a time when the British government was desperate for good news from the Crimea to divert attention from the alarming stories which were beginning to appear in the London press. Suddenly, without warning, the first cracks were beginning to appear in the public solidarity which had cheered the troops off to war with such ardour earlier in the year.