Trench Warfare: Massacre in the Redoubts
Is that Peninsula doomed to be the grave of our most gallant fellows?
Consul Robert Colquhoun to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, 1 July 1855
The third bombardment of Sevastopol began in the late afternoon of 6 June 1855 and once again great things were expected. It continued throughout the night and by dawn the following day the allied batteries were still blazing away as the British and French infantry waited in their lines for the rockets which would be the signal to attack. Fanny Duberly spoke for many in the British camp when she hoped that ‘this time the guns will not play an overture for another farce’. Others were not so sanguine. Riding beside her as the French infantry moved up to the attack, Bosquet found tears coursing down his cheeks. ‘Madame,’ he said, turning to her, ‘à Paris on a toujours l’exposition, les bals, les fêtes, et dans une heure et demie la moitié de ces braves seront morts.’*
Inevitably there would be casualties, just as Bosquet had foretold. The very nature of the frontal assault would bring a heavy bill: for all that the artillery pieces and howitzers had done sterling work in bombarding the well-defended Russian positions, the fortifications would still have to be won by infantrymen attacking across open and defended ground.
Why then had Pélissier taken the decision to push ahead with the assault when he knew that there would be an uncomfortably large casualty list? First, he believed that concentrated force was the only way of ending the siege. Diversions of the kind suggested by the emperor were useful but, none the less, secondary considerations: in his mind the direct approach was to be preferred even though, as he admitted to Bosquet, the ‘conquest of the enemy counter-approaches will cost us definite sacrifices’. His thinking was clear. Because the Russians had invested so heavily in Todleben’s defences, these had to be the main target. Destroy them and the enemy’s will to resist would crumble.
Second, it is clear from the despatches between Paris and Kamiesh that Pélissier was becoming increasingly irritated by Napoleon’s continual interference and by Niel’s unthinking support for any imperial diktat. Here the French commander-in-chief had the backing of his old friend Vaillant but, even so, he was running a considerable risk by disobeying orders and effectively running his own show. Occasionally, Napoleon’s exasperation at being so far removed from the battlefront got the better of him. Three days before the attack began he begged Pélissier to remember that an engineer was the best soldier to handle a siege and that an infantry attack on the Russian lines would only succeed ‘after fierce and bloody struggles which will cost you your best troops’. Fortunately, Pélissier had the backing of Raglan, Kingscote noting that the two commanders were in complete accord during the planning of the attack.
The idea behind the attack was that, once the artillery had softened up the Russian positions, the French would assault the Mamelon Vert defences. Then it would fall to the British to begin their offensive against the new Quarries defences in front of the Redan. The British knew what to expect. During the campaigning in the Peninsula British infantrymen had put their lives in the balance attacking the French in entrenched positions whose names were emblazoned on the colours of many of the regiments serving in the Crimea – Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo and San Sebastian. The memory of the ‘forlorn hope’ was still strong – the infantrymen who formed the first line of attack – and those who remembered knew only too well that siege battles produced appalling carnage balanced by incredible gallantry. At Badajoz Wellington lost more soldiers than in any battle of the Peninsular War, save only Albuera and Talavera. Then the French were only armed with muskets; at Sevastopol most the Russian sharpshooters were now equipped with rifles which swept the field with a fearsome density and range. Raglan and his senior commanders knew that the forthcoming offensive would take a dreadful toll on their weakened and untried infantry, yet, like Pélissier, they were committed to it.
At 6.30 in the morning of 7 June the attack went in, a shower of rockets from the French lines marking the first stage of the battle. The French, whose zig-zag parallel trenches had taken them closer to the Russian lines, attacked first, advancing rapidly and with great momentum towards their target. For the watching Henry Clifford it was an awe-inspiring spectacle, line after line of whooping French soldiers streaming up to the attack:
The Russian sharpshooters in the Rifle Pits took to flight at once, and many of them were turned over before the French reached the ‘Mamelon’. It was as splendid as it was awful to see the brave Frenchmen rushing up under such fire and my heart beat as I never felt it before and the tears ran down my face when in less than ten minuts after they left the trenches I saw the ‘tricolor’ flag flourishing over the parapet of the ‘Mamelon’.1
There was more to the French initiative than sound and fury. So complete was the attack that the Mamelon was soon in their hands – the honour of taking the position fell to Colonel Brancion of the 50th Regiment – but the French over-reached themselves. Sensing that the Russians were about to yield before the intensity of the attack the French officers urged on their men to assault the Malakov itself. With their blood up it was difficult to quell the urge – soldiers at the sharp end of a battle often prefer instinct to judgement – but it was a tactical error. Regrouping behind their fortifications the Russian infantrymen mounted a spirited counter-attack which forced the French to retreat. Once more they were forced to set about retaking control of the Mamelon by clearing the Russian trenches at bayonet-point. By the evening the position was safely in their hands and in honour of the gallant colonel whose regiment had taken it, the Mamelon Vert was immediately renamed the Brancion Redoute.
By then, too, the British had achieved their objective, having successfully stormed the Quarries, sweeping the Russians from their positions and capturing their naval guns. According to Kingscote, the battle had provided ‘one of the grandest and most soul stirring sights ever seen’. For those who survived the spectacle had indeed been impressive, the rattle of rifle fire and the sound of bugles heard above the rumble of artillery, and in front of them the flash of fire from the Russian redoubts. But Bosquet’s tears had not been misplaced. There was a shocking price to be paid for the triumph: the French lost 5443 casualties, the British 671.
Not without reason, though, the capture of the Russian advance defences was a tremendous filip to morale and those who had taken part in the battle were confident that another attack would surely break down the resistance from the Malakov and Great Redan. An excited Rose, his mind still reeling from witnessing the battle alongside Pélissier, wrote immediately to Clarendon, claiming that the Russians ‘must now, more than ever, think that the time is come to leave a Fortress which is doomed, and fall back on Russian resources’.2 If that were to be the outcome the momentum had to be maintained but already Pélissier was under renewed pressure from the emperor to call off the assault. Unlike Raglan who had received a courteous message from his political masters, praising him for the victory and for maintaining the ‘best feeling’ with the French, Pélissier received nothing but cold water from Napoleon III:
I wished before sending congratulations on the brilliant success to learn how great the losses were. I am informed of the figure by Saint-Petersburg. I admire the courage of the troops but I would observe to you that a battle fought to decide the entire fate of the Crimea would not have cost you more. I persist then in the order which I had the Minister of War give you, to make all your efforts to enter resolutely into a field campaign.3
This was the last message which Pélissier wanted to hear but, being in constant contact with Paris through the telegraph system, he could hardly turn a blind eye. When the occasion demanded, he could claim that there had been hold-ups in the reception and sending of signals – a common problem – but it would be impossible to ignore the emperor’s order to conserve French forces for a battle with Gorchakov’s field army. His response was typical of the man. In a fit of carefully contrived pique he told the emperor that, ‘at the somewhat paralysing end of an electric wire’, he was caught between insubordination and loss of self-respect, that the army’s blood was up and that a fresh assault could win the day. Unless he were allowed to continue he would have no option but to resign. It was a risky strategy – battlefield commanders who offer their resignation frequently find it being accepted by their superiors at distant headquarters – but Pélissier clearly believed that he had no other option. At that critical stage, any French backsliding would put him in a poor position with his allies.
On 10 June General H.D. Jones and General Niel met with the senior sapper and gunner officers to study the Russian defences and to plan the next stage of the attack. It was decided that the siege operations had to continue and five days later Raglan and Pélissier held a council of war at which it was agreed that the French should mount their offensive against the Malakov while the British attacked the Great Redan. It was a risky business. Both targets contained artillery pieces and provided well-built embrasures for the Russian infantry: unless these were neutralised the allied infantrymen would attack the walls under punishing fire. For that reason the artillery barrage would have to be heavy and sustained.
At first the signs were good. When the guns opened up on 17 June they produced a wall of fire all along the line and later Todleben admitted that the Russian defences were in a parlous state. ‘I don’t remember any of the preceding bombardments having been even a little like this one,’ claimed an officer in the Malakov. ‘This time it was pure hell. It was clear that they had prepared themselves for something out of the ordinary.’4 Even the Russians’ ability to reconstruct Todleben’s flying entrenchments seemed to have deserted them. Over six hundred allied guns took part in the barrage in addition to the fire provided by the fleet lying off-shore and the watching infantrymen began to grow in confidence. Surely this latest assault was the endgame for it seemed that no one could survive before its onslaught. Even the date was propitious – the following day would mark the anniversary of Waterloo.
And yet, as so often happens in a battle, the outcome would be decided not by events on the battlefield but by equally tortuous incidents elsewhere. Two days earlier Pélissier had seen fit to sack Bosquet who disapproved of the plans to attack the Malakov. Little love was lost between the two men who had been rivals in Algeria; they might have been able to tolerate one another in the Crimea but for two errors of judgement on the part of Bosquet. First he failed to hand over to Pélissier a plan of the Russian defences found in the uniform of a dead Russian officer and, second, he had sent a stream of bitter despatches back to Paris criticising Pélissier’s conduct of the war – both unpardonable offences in a subordinate officer. Pélissier had little option but to replace him but the move unsettled the army on the eve of a vital battle.
Also, the row may have unsettled the French commander-in-chief and interfered with his judgement. For reasons that remain unclear he suddenly decided to bring forward the French attack to 3 a.m. and to order the infantry to go in without the preliminary bombardment. Although Jones was present when the decision was taken he did not demur and as a result Raglan was left with no option but to comply. Any other consideration was out of the question as the British had been accused many times before of tardiness on the eve of battle. The last thing Raglan wanted was a fresh rupture and, late in the evening, he was forced to issue fresh orders to his men to bring them up to the start line in time to meet the new timetable.
Then fate took a hand. The night was cloudless and together with the brightness of the fires from the Russian lines, it provided no cover for the British troops as they marched into position in the forward trenches. It was impossible to conceal their movements and the Russian defenders were quick to assess the danger. Artillery pieces were redeployed and primed and infantrymen poured into the entrenchments. Even then a concerted attack might have succeeded but when a stray shell was shot over the French lines the officer commanding the division on the right, General Mayan, gave the order to advance, having mistaken its firey trail for the rockets signalling the beginning of the attack. Seeing what was happening Pélissier ordered the remaining two divisions to attack but by the time the rockets had been fired the French were moving forward in broken order, the planned co-ordinated attack reduced to a desperate rush against the concentrated fire from the Russian lines.
It was an appalling sight. The lines in front of the Malakov became a killing ground as the French infantrymen walked into a hail of bullets and ball. Rudimentary landmines exploded beneath their feet while shrapnel and grapeshot thinned their ranks. Still they stumbled on; some managed to engage the enemy with the bayonet; others fell like ninepins before the weight of the artillery fire. Smoke enveloped the battlefield, adding to the confusion, and wounded men screamed out for mercy from God or help from their mothers, anything to gain release from the hell in which they found themselves. This was the face of battle which few had expected to encounter only an hour or two beforehand.
Watching the plight of his allies Raglan was strangely moved. To join in the attack was to produce inevitable British casualties, yet to have left the French to their fate would have been a stain on British honour. Attack they must, whatever the consequences. As he told Panmure in his next despatch he considered it to be his duty to attack for had he not done so, he was ‘quite certain that, if the troops had remained in our trenches, the French would have attributed their non-success to our refusal to participate in the operation’. Pride and duty: combined, they were powerful considerations.5
Brown was given the order to attack but with the lack of time available to him, he was denied the luxury of planning its timetable and execution. If the French were to be assisted the British forces had to attack immediately and this they did in two flank columns which left their trenches and advanced steadily across the quarter of a mile between them and the Russian defences. Led by General Sir John Campbell (4th Division) and Colonel Lacy Yea (Light Division) they were soon in difficulties. As had happened to the French they came under withering fire from the Russian batteries – after the battle Raglan told Panmure that he ‘never had a conception before of such a shower of grape as they poured down from the Russian works’, far worse than anything he had experienced in the Peninsula – and, predictably, this led to heavy casualties. Amongst the first to be killed was Campbell, gunned down as he left the security of the trenches; his second-in-command met a similar fate immediately afterwards.
First into the breach were the ‘forlorn hope’, riflemen drawn from the Rifle Brigade and the 33rd Foot, who cleared the way for the combat engineers and naval parties with their ladders and sacks but, shorn of artillery support, the two columns were soon halted. Men took cover in shell craters as best they could while the bullets and shell splinters rained over them. After the battle the survivors likened the experience to running into a deadly hail storm and in many versions of the fighting the soldiers are described as running forward with their heads down as if they were in the teeth of a living gale. Amongst them was a young Midshipman called Evelyn Wood who carried the memory of the attack into a ripe old age which had seen him transfer to the army, win a Victoria Cross and rise to the rank of field-marshal. Commanding one of the ladder parties he rushed forward with his men only to see them cut down by rifle-fire and he himself was wounded twice in the arm before he managed to escape back into the trenches. There he fell unconscious only to regain his senses when he heard a surgeon say, ‘I’ll have your arm off before you know where ye are.’ Happily that severe treatment proved unnecessary and the young sailor survived.6
Wood was one of the lucky ones. Just as Clifford had observed with a sense of agonised awe the fate of the French a week earlier, so too was Hamley moved by the fate awaiting his fellow countrymen:
In vain the officers stood up amid the iron shower and waved their swords; in vain the engineers returned to bring up the supports; the men could not be induced to quit the parapets in a body. Small parties of half a dozen, or half a score, ran out only to add to the slaughter. The party of artillerymen, whose business it was to follow this column and spike the guns, sallied forth, led by their officer, and, of the twenty, only nine returned unwounded; and the sailors who carried the scaling ladders, and the naval officers who led them, also suffered very severe loss.7
Some soldiers managed to enter the Redan and there were reports that parties of French infantrymen had fought their way into Sevastopol but the attack was slowly turning into a disaster. Thankfully help was at hand. Raglan was observing the battle from the mortar batteries in the forward trenches and the scale of the tragedy was only too obvious to him. He ordered the artillery to give covering fire in an attempt to silence the Russian batteries and to enable his men to retire in a semblance of order, and it was a measure of the man that he took the same risks as his own troops. Then, seeing that the attack had failed, he rode hurriedly over to Pélissier’s headquarters where the commanders agreed to order their men to retire.
For both armies the failure of the attack was hard to take and with typical candour Pélissier accepted the blame for the setback when the commanders met for a post-mortem a few days later:
General Pélissier [has also] expressed his great regret that he sanctioned the change [of plan] and freely admits that it was a most objectionable one, having been the cause,
1. that the abattis laid down in front of the Enemy’s defences were not destroyed.
2. that the Allied Troops had to march for some hundred yards to the Assault of the Russian Works under a heavy fire of Artillery and musketry, without any cover, such an operation being entirely opposed to the experience of sieges, and of the rules and custom of war.8
Amongst the French regimental commanders, though, there was a strong feeling that they had been asked to bear the brunt of the fighting and that their British allies had not pushed their attack with enough determination. While this was unfair – so fierce was the Russian fire that the assault parties stood no chance of reaching their objectives – some British officers felt that the plan of attack was suicidal and should never have been attempted. Garnet Wolseley had been present in the trenches close to Raglan’s positions and had entertained high hopes of success but at the end of the day, like so many other British officers, he admitted to feeling ‘humbled in spirit by failure’. But while leading his commander-in-chief out of the trenches they came across some of the wounded and the young officer was forced to witness an unbelievable scene:
On the first stretcher that Lord Raglan encountered lay a young officer – I withhold his name and regiment for the sake of the old and historic corps to which he was a disgrace. As to himself I hope his hateful and undistinguished name has been forgotten as he himself should be. Lord Raglan, going up to him in the kindest way, said in the most feeling and sympathetic tone and manner, ‘My poor young gentleman, I hope you are not badly hurt?’ or some words to that effect. This brutal cur – I subsequently knew the creature well – turned upon him, and in the rudest terms and most savage manner, denounced him as ‘responsible for every drop of blood that had been shed that day.’ Wounded though this ungenerous officer was, I could with pleasure have run my sword through his unmanly carcass at the moment.9
While Wolseley admitted that his later military experience made him see that Raglan was out of his depth in the Crimea, he realised that the man’s courage and natural dignity could never be called into question.
As dawn broke over the battlefield the French began making their way back to the safety of their trenches and both armies were left to compute their casualties. The figures were unacceptably high – the British lost 1500, the French 3500 – and for Raglan the defeat could not have come at a worse time. As bad luck would have it, the British soldiers were dying at the very time that Roebuck presented his report to parliament on the mishandling of the British Army in the Crimea. It had harsh words to say about the administrative and operational failures and, when it was debated, there was a renewal of the attacks on Britain’s commander-in-chief. To add to Raglan’s discomfiture he had been informed by Panmure that his pre-war post of Master-General of the Ordnance had been abolished as, henceforth, the department’s duties would be taken under the direction of the minister for war. Despite Raglan’s protests – he believed that its work was beyond the powers of a secretary of state – Panmure was adamant. Because the system had failed the army in the Crimea, it had to be changed.
The criticisms at home and the loss of the Ordnance Board added to the sense of despair which enveloped Raglan after the failure of the attack on the Great Redan. A Coldstream Guards officer is supposed to have noticed the change and to have pronounced that Raglan was a dying man. The story might be apocryphal but it was undoubtedly true. Not only was Raglan bowed down by a sense of failure but he was suffering the first symptoms of a debilitating illness. On 23 June he was diagnosed as having severe diarrhoea and the death of Estcourt from cholera the following day only added to his gloom. Raglan continued working at his despatches, but his staff could see that their chief was getting weaker and on 26 June he took to his bed. Two days later he was dead, whether from dysentry or simple exhaustion it was difficult to tell. Those close to him felt that it might even have been from heartbreak.
So unexpected was the news of Raglan’s death that it sent a profound shock round the British camp. Since the beginning of the campaign he had been a constant and reassuring figure. His calmness under stress and his many kindnesses were legendary; even those who had only caught a glimpse of him in cocked hat and unostentatious frock coat felt that they knew him well, and the feelings of loss were entirely genuine. ‘Everyone who knew him loved and respected him and justly so,’ wrote Clifford on 30 June, ‘for his manners were most pleasing and he was gifted with the most sensitive feelings and kind heart.’10 That was all true but it was Raglan’s fate to leave an uneven reputation to history. Soon he would be castigated as an incompetent blunderer, the scapegoat for the army’s shortcomings in the Crimea. The failure to take Sevastopol, the loss of the Light Brigade, the catalogue of disasters in the Commissary and Medical departments, the disastrous losses in front of the Great Redan: all these would be laid before his memory as evidence of his military culpability and with the presence of reporters on the scene there was no little confirmation. All that was true, but it was not the whole story.
As the commander-in-chief Raglan had to accept some of the blame for the direction of the campaign but it would be ungenerous to place the whole opprobrium on his head. When he took the expeditionary force to the Crimea, in effect, Raglan was commanding the same army that had served Wellington so well. True, its weapons had changed with the introduction of the Minié rifle but its tactics, uniforms and equipment had hardly altered at all. With no other example to follow, for he had never been a Sepoy General, Raglan followed Wellington’s style of command, even to the extent of refusing to wear a uniform and paying strict attention to his despatches. Like his great predecessor, too, Raglan was prepared to show himself to his troops in the heat of battle. He led his men to the Alma and was present in the trenches when his men attacked the Great Redan, meeting one near-miss in the trenches with the exclamation, ‘Quite close enough!’ He might have lacked Wellington’s ability to utter timely words of encouragement but his presence at the point of danger certainly raised morale. It was also necessary for the direction of the battle. Despite the power of the British and French rifles most of the combat against the Russians took place at close range and Raglan was rarely so divorced from the action that he was unable to make decisions on what he was able to observe.
The worse that can be said of him was that he was indecisive and failed to communicate his ideas, or sometimes his orders, to his subordinates. As for the more general failings, such as his inability to understand the changing face of warfare, these were the shared blunders of a society which held its army in little regard – even Wellington, who was not known for his love of the ordinary British soldier, deprecated his country’s lack of care towards its army. The best that can be said about Raglan was that he was responsible for maintaining the French alliance; as a commander he was an honourable man who did his best when his country asked it of him. He also cared about his men and in battle guarded their lives jealously. ‘One of the last times I rode with him, the men ran all sides to cheer him,’ wrote his military secretary Colonel Steele in a letter of condolence to Lady Raglan. ‘He was mobbed by soldiers who never give a cheer unless it comes from the heart, and with these he was greeted on all sides.’11 Even Panmure, never a great admirer, got close to the truth when he sent a brief letter of condolence to Raglan’s headquarters staff:
I feel it to be scarcely possible to estimate the loss which the country has sustained by Lord Raglan’s death, as he not only possessed the finer qualities of a soldier but in his courteous and conciliatory manners, his calm and equable temper enabled him to maintain with rare success the kind feeling which has existed between us and the allies of all nations.12
It was no bad epitaph but unfortunately for Raglan’s reputation that generosity was not shared by subsequent critics who preferred to view his career from the standpoint of later ages and, in so doing, to belittle all that he accomplished. With full military honours his embalmed body (a final service by the French who also mourned his passing) was taken to the steamer Caradoc on 3 July. On arrival in Britain it was taken for burial at the family home, Badminton House, and privately buried. No public statue was ever raised in his honour.
His successor was Major-General Simpson who made no secret of the fact that he did not regard the promotion as a particular honour. ‘I feel it very irksome and embarrassing to have to do with these Allies!’ he famously told Panmure, and he lamented the absence of Raglan’s soothing diplomacy in dealing with the obstreperous Pélissier. Within weeks he was asking Panmure to replace him with the ‘most eminent and best known soldier we have’. Unassuming his stance most certainly was, but it hardly smacked of the kind of firm leadership which the British forces in the Crimea needed at such a critical moment in the war.