The Great Cat Massacre (9 page)

Lucan prepared for what even he knew was a suicide mission. Russian batteries lined the sides of the valley. Riding directly towards cannon while other cannon fire at
you from the sides was the sort of military strategy that got you into the history books for all the wrong reasons. Still, he had his orders.

Or, to be more precise, Cardigan had his orders because it was he who had to lead the 673 troops on the insane expedition, followed by Lucan and the Heavy Brigade.

As soon as Cardigan set off, Nolan realised what had happened and galloped after him, presumably to clarify the order, but he was struck by a shell and killed. So the Light Brigade rode on. Despite a storm of fire from all sides, they somehow managed to reach the Russian forces at the end of the valley and engaged them in fighting. Cardigan reached the Russians, but then turned around, later claiming that it was because he disdained to ‘fight the enemy among private soldiers’. His men were also driven back (partly because he had left them leaderless) and they then had to endure the mile-long ride back with fire from behind them now, as well as the sides.

Seeing the carnage, Lucan and the Heavy Brigade stayed in their positions, offering their comrades no support – Lucan’s enmity for his brother-in-law ran deep, although he later said he had seen no point in both brigades being cut to pieces.
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Of the British men, 118 were killed, 127 wounded and about 60 taken prisoner. Cardigan, however, survived and spent the evening on his yacht, where he enjoyed a
champagne dinner. On his return to Britain, he lied about his exploits, hugely exaggerating his own bravery and success. According to his biographer, Saul David, ‘a more misleading account of his own exploits could hardly have been given’. He became a national hero and his knitted waistcoat became a national fashion.

Perversely, the exploit only strengthened the reputation of the British cavalry. After all, men who would ride into certain death were capable of anything.

Although it is the most famous one, the charge was far from an isolated act of incompetence in the Crimean War. In the 1929 edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
F.J. Huddleston, formerly librarian of the War Office, described some of the absurdities of the various forces:

Of course, regulations were there to be followed. That is why when, in November 1854, after 12,000 greatcoats arrived at Balaclava for the men – many of whom were dying from exposure – they sat in the stores without being distributed. Because regulations said that greatcoats must only be issued to each man once every three years. So those who had lost theirs on the battlefield would just have to put up with it until the three years were up. Perhaps they could try sharing one with another soldier who had not been so profligate with his kit.

At the same time, many of the men were starving, sometimes going for days without any food. Sent to relieve the problem was the supply vessel
Harbinger
, with tons of fresh vegetables. But it left port in the Bosphorus without the right papers, so that when it arrived at Balaclava the captain couldn’t find anyone willing to accept the cargo, which was instead thrown over the side. The next month, the
Esk
docked with a cargo of lime juice needed to prevent scurvy among the men but the cargo sat on the boat until February 1855 because the officer in charge of supplies, Commissary General Filder, said it wasn’t his job to tell the Army it had arrived. So it remained a secret. It
was also Filder who insisted that coffee beans be shipped over unroasted because they might go mouldy on the voyage. This resulted in the troops at the front being given inedible green beans that they could do absolutely nothing with. The commander of the 1st Regiment commented: ‘A ration of green raw coffee berry was served out, a mockery in the midst of all this misery. Nothing to roast coffee, nothing to grind it, no fire, no sugar; and unless it was meant that we eat it as horses do barley, I don’t see what use the men could make of it except what they have just done, pitched it into the mud!’

Things weren’t much better regarding other types of supplies. One young officer at the Front wrote to his mother: ‘Will you also be kind enough to send me a map of the Crimea with the forts etc well marked out in Sebastopol. I see them advertised at Wylds in The Strand. You can choose which you think best and send it by post.’

It might have intrigued the Russian troops to know that their enemy’s battlefield intelligence was being supplied by the soldiers’ mothers.

It wasn’t just British soldiers who were having trouble with their officers. The ‘Crimean’ war also took place at sea in the Pacific Ocean and Baltic Sea, and one of the odder experiences for the British sailors took place in the China Sea. Here, Britannia was busy Ruling the Waves with a
five-ship
battle group under the command of Rear Admiral David Price in the
President
. With him was a French group
of four vessels commanded by the aged and ailing Rear Admiral Febvrier-Despointes in the
Forte.

The Russian fleet was represented by Rear Admiral Poutiatin, who felt quite outgunned as they squared up to the Anglo-French force outside the port of Petropavlovsk. Had he known he was up against Price, he might have felt differently. Somewhat elated, in fact.

For Price was not relishing the battle. Price did not relish battles – or so he presumed, having never actually been in a single one in his 64-year life. His naval career had been long, stretching to nothing short of 53 years, but, sadly for the men in his flotilla, he had spent 49 of those years on land, 45 of them on half pay and without a post. This major battle was, in fact, his first command. Appointing him had straddled the fence between blunder and insanity.

Some men rise to the occasion – cometh the hour, cometh the man. In this case, the hour cameth and Price wenteth away: he decided the best naval strategy was to take to his cabin and quietly shoot himself. Yet he couldn’t even achieve that properly, it seems. Aiming for his heart, he missed and instead shot himself in the lung. His death was therefore lingering and agonising – he pleaded with the ship’s surgeon to ‘Kill me at once’ but that act of mercy was not forthcoming, the surgeon perhaps not wishing to be recorded as having killed his own commander. At least this way Price had time to explain that he had chosen suicide because he ‘could not bear the thought of taking so many noble and gallant fellows into action’. You have to conclude that he probably did his men a favour.

Chaplain Holnie, who witnessed the scene, later
explained: ‘The poor old man was always weak and vacillating in everything he did. And what all will say at home of an English [Price was actually Welsh] Admiral deserting his post at such a moment we cannot conceive.’

The loss of their commander threw matters into disarray, and, after a brief, disastrous sortie into Petropavlovsk, the Anglo-French battle group gave up and left the port to the Russians.

For 14 years in the mid-nineteenth century, Britain and America were on the brink of war over a pig that liked to wander.

America and British Canada both laid claim to the Oregon Country, a huge area now encompassing the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, and parts of Montana, Wyoming and the Canadian province of British Columbia. A treaty of 1818 had allowed for joint occupation of the land, but by 1845 both sides were unhappy with the deal. Britain was annoyed by the number of Americans hopping over the Rocky Mountains to settle on land they claimed was British. The Americans declared the treaty was outdated and said they wanted the land. To sort things out, another treaty was therefore signed: The Oregon Treaty of 1846.

As so often happens in these situations, though, there was a bit of an error when it came to the document. It gave the US the land south of the 49th parallel, up to ‘the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island; and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel to the Pacific Ocean’. Britain got the rest.

What no one seems to have noticed is that there are two channels, not one, and in the middle of them was a small island called San Juan. Each country chose the channel it preferred to call the border, meaning both laid claim to this tiny outcrop of rock.

In 1850 Britain’s Hudson Bay Trading Company built a salmon-curing station, and then a sheep farm, Belle Vue Farm, on San Juan. At the same time, around 25 Americans also settled on the island, believing that they owned it and the British were the invaders. On 15 June 1859 the incident that put a spark to this international powder keg of intrigue happened. A British pig owner, Charles Griffin, failed to properly secure his livestock and one of them went exploring on the potato patch owned by his American neighbour, Lyman Cutler. Cutler, apparently a pig-hater, shot the creature dead. This open act of pig-aggression was not taken lying down. Griffin protested to the British government, which threatened Cutler with arrest. In return, the American residents of the island complained to their government, demanding military intervention.

Never one to avoid a battle, the American government happily complied and sent an infantry unit. In a measured, proportional response, Britain sent three full-scale warships to teach the stupid Yanks a lesson. The Yanks, however, refused to leave, even though they were completely outnumbered: the Pig War was up and trotting.

The British officer in charge, Captain Geoffrey Hornby, seemingly a sensible chap, did not want to fight over a pig, so he refrained from ejecting the Americans, and for two months the opposing forces directed nothing more than
harsh language at each other. They did, however, continue to enlarge their forces so that, if war did come, by God, they were going to win it. By August, there were 461 American troops supported by 14 cannon, whereas Britain wasn’t messing about, with 2,140 soldiers, 167 cannons and 5 warships. They could have invaded Washington and won.

Speaking of Washington, in the American capital, the government was bemused by the idea that they were about to go to war with the world’s greatest empire over an escaped farm animal. Similarly, Rear Admiral Robert Bayes, commander of the British Navy in the Pacific, told the Governor of British Columbia he did not want to involve ‘two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig’. A peace agreement was finally reached, involving both sides removing most of their belligerent forces and setting out what military presence San Juan needed. The Americans could keep a company of soldiers on the island, while Britain could moor a warship in the harbour to keep an eye on pigs and whatnot.

Thus it stayed until 1872, possibly the oddest cold war in Britain’s history. Even the method of final resolution was strange, with mediation between the two sides conducted by Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany of all people. This eventually led to a new treaty properly defining the borders between the United States and Canada.

When Queen Victoria looked at a map of the world, she must have kept saying: ‘Really, I own that as well? And this
one? What about that place? Really,
that too
?’ But in 1857, when she came to that huge blob known as India, her question became slightly trickier to answer.

The Indian Mutiny of that year, in which many locals rebelled against British rule, sent shockwaves through the Empire. If the Jewel in the Crown, as India was held to be, could go it alone, then so could all the little islands and stuff that Victoria kept saying ‘And this one
too
?’ about.

Also known as the Sepoy Rebellion, the Mutiny started with the sepoys – regiments of local soldiers employed by the East India Company, who had enabled a colonial governorship backed up by a small number of regular British troops to rule 150 million. The underlying causes of the revolt were complex, to do with identity, religion and culture. But the final spark was to do with the wrong kind of grease.

Giving Muslim soldiers cartridges oiled with pork fat was not a clever move. Presenting Hindu troops with cartridges oiled with beef fat was equally foolish. Doing both at the same time was really asking for trouble. Yet that’s what happened.

In 1857 all troops – British and locals – were issued with the new Enfield rifle. The bullet and the gunpowder that would send it on its way came in paper-wrapped cartridges and, as was the norm of the time, the end of the cartridge had to be bitten off
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before powder was poured down the barrel. Then the rest of the cartridge, which was in greased paper to ease its journey, would be pushed down after it.

Already there had been fear on the part of many natives that their British masters wanted to forcibly convert them all to Christianity. This wasn’t an entirely baseless fear – for years the number of Christian missionaries devoted to bringing more lost souls to Anglican salvation had been steadily increasing. As one missionary said at the time: ‘The missionary is truly the regenerator of India. The land is being leavened and Hinduism is everywhere being undermined. Great will some day, in God’s appointed time, be the fall of it.’