The Crimean War (53 page)
Authors: Orlando Figes
Tags: #History, #Military, #General, #Europe, #Other, #Russia & the Former Soviet Union, #Crimean War; 1853-1856
Eager to repair relations with the British, Pélissier agreed to revive the operation against Kerch, although he concurred with Raglan that the main target of the allied operations should remain the Sevastopol defences. On 24 May sixty ships of the allied fleet set off with a combined force of 7,000 French, 5,000 Turks and 3,000 British troops under Brown’s command. Seeing the approach of the armada, most of the Russian inhabitants of Kerch fled to the countryside. After a brief bombardment, the allied troops were able to come ashore without opposition. Brown was met by a deputation of the Russian civilians who were left. They told him they were frightened of attacks by the local Tatar population and begged him to protect them. Brown ignored their pleas. Ordering the destruction of the arsenal in Kerch, Brown left a small force of mainly French and Turkish toops in the town and marched with the remainder of his troops to the important fort at Yenikale, further along the coast, where the looting of Russian property continued under Brown’s supervision. Meanwhile, the allied warships entered the Sea of Azov, sailed towards the Russian coastline, destroyed Russian shipping, and laid waste to the ports of Mariupol and Taganrog.
ax
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General Pélissier
The attacks on Russian property in Kerch and Yenikale soon descended into a drunken rampage, and some terrible atrocities by the allied troops. The worst took place in Kerch, where the local Tatar population took advantage of the allied occupation to carry out a violent revenge against the Russians of the town. Aided by the Turkish troops, the Tatars looted shops and houses, raped Russian women, and killed and mutilated hundreds of Russians, including even children and babies. Among the excesses was the destruction of the town’s museum, with its rich and magnificent collection of Hellenic art, an outrage reported by Russell in
The Times
on 28 May:
The Times
on 28 May:
The floor of the museum is covered in depth with the debris of broken glass, of vases, urns, statuary, the precious dust of their contents, and charred bits of wood and bone, mingled with the fresh splinters of the shelves, desks, and cases in which they had been preserved. Not a single bit of anything that could be broken or burnt any smaller had been exempt from reduction by hammer or fire.
For several days Brown did nothing to stop the atrocities, even though he had received reports that a contingent of French and British troops had taken part in the looting. Brown saw the Tatars as allies, taking the view that they were engaged in a ‘legitimate rebellion’ against Russian rule. Eventually, having been informed of the worst atrocities, Brown dispatched a tiny force (just twenty British cavalrymen) to restore order. They were far too few in number to have any real effect, though they did shoot some British troops whom they had caught committing rape.
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According to Russian witnesses, it was not just the allied soldiers who had taken part in the looting, the violence and rape; it was also officers. ‘I saw several English officers carrying to their ship furniture and sculptures, and all sorts of other items they had plundered from our homes,’ recalled one resident of Kerch. Several women claimed they had been raped by British officers.
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The development of all these broader plans was held back because, with the coming of the spring, the British and French troops got bogged down once again in the siege of Sevastopol, which still held first place in the allied strategy. Despite the recognition that a change of plan was needed for the siege to work, the allies remained wedded to the idea that one last surge would bring the walls of Sevastopol tumbling down and force Russia to accept a humiliating peace.
In terms of actual fighting, the siege had gone through a quiet period in the winter months, as both sides concentrated on the strengthening of their defensive works. The French did most of the trench digging on the allied side, mainly because the British-held ground was very rocky. According to Herbé, they dug 66 kilometres of trenches, and the British just 15, during the eleven months of the siege. It was slow, exhausting, dangerous work, cutting into the hard ground in freezing temperatures, dynamiting the rock that lay underneath, under constant fire from the enemy. ‘Every metre of our trenches was literally at the cost of one man’s life and often two,’ recalled Noir.
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The Russians were particularly active in their defensive works. Under the direction of their engineering genius Totleben, they developed their earthworks and trenches on a more sophisticated level than ever before seen in the history of siege warfare. In the early stages of the siege the Russian fortifications were little more than hastily improvised earthworks reinforced with wickerwork, fascines and gabions; but new and more formidable defences were added in the winter months. The bastions were reinforced by the addition of casemates – fortified gun emplacements dug several metres underground and covered with thick ship-timbers and earthworks that made them proof to the heaviest bombardment. Inside the most heavily fortified bastions, the Malakhov and the Redan (the Third), there was a maze of bunkers and apartments, including one, in the Redan, with a billiard table and ottomans, and in each there was a small chapel and a hospital.
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To protect these crucial bastions the Russians built new works outside the city walls: the Mamelon (the Kamchatka Lunette) to defend the Malakhov, and the Quarry Pits in front of the Redan. The Mamelon was constructed by the soldiers of the Kamchatka Regiment (from which it derived its Russian name) under almost constant fire from the French during most of February and early March. So many men were killed in building it that not all of them could be evacuated, even under cover of the night, and many dead were left in the earthworks. The Mamelon was itself a complex fortress system protected by the twin redoubts of the White Works on its left flank (so named because of the white clay soil exposed by the excavation of the defences). Henri Loizillon, a French engineer, described the surprise of his fellow-soldiers at what else they found inside the Mamelon when they captured it in early June:
Everywhere there were shelters in the ground covered up with heavy timbers where the men had taken cover from the bombs. In addition, we discovered an enormous underground capable of holding several hundred men, so the losses which they suffered were much less than we supposed. These shelters were all the more curious for the surprising comfort we found there: there were beds with eiderdowns, porcelains, complete tea services, etc., so the soldiers had not been badly served. There was also a chapel whose only remarkable object was a rather beautiful gilded wooden sculpture of Christ.
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Amid all this frenzied building there was little major fighting. But the Russians launched sporadic raids at night against the trenches of the British and the French. Some of the most daring were led by a seaman called Pyotr Koshka, whose exploits were so famous that he became a national hero in Russia. It was not entirely clear to the allied troops what the purpose of these sorties was. They seldom caused any lasting damage to their defensive works, and the losses they inflicted on the men were trifling, usually less than the Russians lost themselves. Herbé thought their aim was to add to the allies’ fatigue because the constant threat of an attack at night made it impossible for them to sleep in the trenches (that was in fact the Russians’ intention). According to Major Whitworth Porter of the Royal Engineers, the first intimation of an imminent attack would be ‘the discovery of several dusky forms creeping over the parapet’.
The alarm is instantly given, and in another moment they are upon us. Our men, scattered as they are, are taken by surprise, give way step by step before the advancing foe, until at length they make a stand. And now a hand-to-hand struggle ensues. The cheers, the shouts, and the hallos of our men; the yells of the Russians raging like so many maniacs from the effects of the vile spirit with which they have been maddened before making the onslaught; the sharp cracks of the rifles, resounding momentarily on all sides; the hastily shouted words of command; the blast of the Russian bugle, ringing out clear in the midst of all of the din, sounding their advance – all conspire to render it a scene of confusion, enough to bewilder the steadiest nerves. When to this is added the probability that the scene of the struggle may be in a battery, where the numerous traverses, guns and other obstacles cumber up the space, and render it difficult for either party to act, some idea may be formed of this extraordinary spectacle. Sooner or later – generally in the course of a very few minutes – our men, having gathered together in sufficient numbers, make a bold dash forward, and drive the enemy headlong over the parapet. One smart volley is rattled after them to increase the speed of their flight, and the loud, ringing British cheer …
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The allies also launched surprise attacks against the Russian outworks – their aim being not to capture these positions but to weaken the morale of the Russian troops. The Zouaves were the ideal soldiers to carry out these raids: in hand-to-hand fighting they were the most effective in the world. On the night of 23/4 February, their celebrated 2nd Regiment stormed and briefly occupied the newly constructed White Works, just to show the Russians that they could capture them at will, before retreating with 203 wounded men, and 62 officers and soldiers dead, whom they carried back, under heavy fire, rather than abandon them to the Russians.
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In contrast to the sorties of the allies, some of the attacks by the Russians were large enough to suggest that their intention was to drive the allies from their positions, though in reality they were never powerful enough for that. On the night of 22/3 March, the Russians launched a sortie of some 5,000 men against the French positions opposite the Mamelon. It was their largest sortie yet. The brunt of the assault was taken by the 3rd Zouaves, who held off their attackers in fierce hand-to-hand fighting in the dark, illuminated only by the flashes of the rifles and muskets. The Russians spread out in a flanking movement and quickly captured the weakly defended British trenches on their right, from which they aimed their fire into the French side, but the Zouaves continued to hold firm, until at last British reinforcements arrived, enabling the Zouaves to push the Russians back towards the Mamelon. The sortie cost the Russians a great deal: 1,100 men were wounded, and more than 500 killed, nearly all of them in or near the trenches of the Zouaves. After the fighting was over, the two sides agreed to a six-hour armistice to collect the dead and wounded who were clogging up the battlefield. Men who had been at war only a few moments previously began to fraternize, speaking to each other with hand signals and the odd word in each other’s language, though nearly all the Russian officers could speak French well, the adopted language of the Russian aristocracy. Captain Nathaniel Steevens of the 88th Regiment of Foot witnessed the scene:
Here we saw a crowd of English officers & Men mingled with some Russian Officers & escort, who had brought out the Flag of Truce; this was the most curious sight of all; the Officers chatted together as freely and gaily as if the warmest friends, and as for the Soldiers, those who 5 minutes before had been firing away at each other, might now be seen smoking together, sharing tobacco and drinking Rum, exchanging the usual compliments of ‘bono Ingles’ &c; the Russian Officers were very gentlemanly looking men, spoke French and one English; at length on reference to watches it was found ‘time was nearly up’ so both Parties gradually receded from each others’ sight to their respective works, not however without our men shaking hands with the Russian soldiers & some one calling out, ‘Au revoir.’
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Apart from these sorties, the troops stayed on their respective sides in the early months of 1855. ‘The siege is now only nominal,’ Henry Clifford wrote to his family on 31 March. ‘We fire a few shots during the day, but all seems at a standstill.’ It was a strange situation, since there was plenty of artillery sitting idle, implying almost a loss of belief in the siege. In these months there was far more digging than shooting to be done – a fact that did not please many of the troops. According to Whitworth Porter of the Royal Engineers, the British soldier did not like ‘spade-work’, thinking it not soldier-like. He quotes an Irishman in the infantry:
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