The Banner of Battle

by Alan Palmer

  As a first move towards safety, General Gorchakov pulled his troops back across the Danube within thirty hours of receiving his new orders. Seven thousand Bulgarian families were ferried across the river, too, for fear of savage reprisals from the Turks. At his new headquarters near Bucharest a letter reached the Russian commander from the Tsar: ‘How sad and painful for me, dear Gorchakov, that I had to agree to the insistent arguments of Ivan Fedorovich [Paskevich] as to the danger threatening the army, from the faithlessness of Austria, whom we had saved.’ It was said that, in the Winter Palace, Tsar Nicholas was so angry with his fellow autocrat in Vienna that he turned a portrait of the Emperor Francis Joseph to the wall and scrawled on the back of it, in German, ‘You ingrate!’[133]

  *

  Rumours of the Russian withdrawal reached the British advance camp at Devna on Friday, 23 June. At first no one believed them. But riders exercising their horses that morning sensed something uncanny and realized that the sides of the valley were no longer throwing back the pounding iteration of preceding days. By Sunday morning the news was confirmed and Raglan at once ordered Lord Cardigan to take some 200 troopers from the 8th Hussars and the 13th Light Dragoons and find out ‘if the Russian Army was still on this side of the Danube’. For sixteen days this reconnaissance patrol scoured the Bulgarian countryside, going right up to the banks of the Danube, where they at last saw —and were seen by — a Russian force across the river. But it was a strange affair. ‘We marched 150 miles without ever seeing a human being, nor saw a single house in a state of repair or inhabited, and not an animal to be seen except those which inhabit the wildest regions,’ Cardigan declared in a public speech in London eight months later. North-eastern Bulgaria seemed to him ‘a perfectly wild desert’. There is no doubt that Cardigan drove his men and their horses too hard in hot weather through a region where he was surprised to find little water and no forage. A Hussar officer’s wife, who watched the horses staggering back into Varna on 11 July, was appalled by this ‘cruel parade of death’. Mrs Fanny Duberly, a vivacious 24-year-old horsewoman more perceptive than her husband and his brother officers, was unsparing in her comments on the Light Brigade’s commander: ‘I hope and trust that Cardigan — whom all abhor — will get his head into such a jolly bag that he will never get it out again,’ she wrote home to her sister in Hampshire. Her indignation was fully justified. Almost a hundred first-rate chargers were lost to the Light Brigade, from an exercise which had little value except to expose the general’s ignorance of the terrain in which they were still planning to give the enemy battle.[134]

  Or were they? As early as 25 June three British frigates, patrolling off the mouths of the Danube, spotted a force of 500 cavalry on the march northwards along the coast.[135] Soon it began to look as if the Russians were not just retiring north of the Danube, but evacuating Wallachia and probably Moldavia as well. Saint-Arnaud, already angry with the Russians for pulling away from Silistria and robbing him of what he believed was certain victory, made it clear to his brother that he was in the dark over what would happen next. He thought, from messages reaching him from Paris, that the Austrians would come into the war and expect the Anglo-French forces to advance on their right flank; but there was so much talk going on in Vienna that he mistrusted them. He would do nothing until he heard that the Austrians were definitely on the move.[136] Meanwhile the battered bastions of Silistria awaited inspection, British troops were ready for review (‘none of you can have any idea of the friendliness, sense of unity and sympathy between the two armies’), and there were always new French regiments over whom a tired and sick commander must somehow project the magnetic aura of a Marshal of France.

  *

  In retrospect it seems strange that Raglan and Saint-Arnaud lingered so long at inhospitable Varna once the Russians had pulled back from the Danube in that fourth week of June. London, after all, knew well enough what it wanted. An article in The Times on 15 June spoke with single-minded clarity: ‘The grand political and military objects of the war cannot...be attained so long as Sebastopol and the Russian fleet are in existence...We hold, therefore, that the taking of Sebastopol and the occupation of the Crimea are objects which would repay all the costs of the present war, and would permanently settle in our favour the principal questions of the day.’ Legend maintains that in this leading article ‘the journal...embodied the soul of the nation’; and Kinglake, who first attributed to The Times such authoritative influence, goes on to recall a fortnight of press thunder, culminating in a memorable post-prandial cabinet meeting at Pembroke Lodge, Lord John Russell’s home in Richmond. Kinglake’s pen-portrait of the Duke of Newcastle reading to acquiescent and somnolent colleagues his orders for Raglan to besiege Sebastopol has found a place in almost every subsequent narrative of the Crimean War.[137]

  The truth is less dramatic. Sebastopol had beckoned the more warlike cabinet ministers ever since they had heard news of Sinope. Graham, who had told Admiral Dundas to keep his eye on Sebastopol at the start of the year, seems almost to have become obsessed with its importance. ‘The operation which will be ever memorable and decisive is the capture and destruction of Sebastopol,’ he wrote to Clarendon three and a half months befhre the famous Times leader. ‘On this my heart is set, the Eye tooth of the Bear must be drawn,’ Graham added and, lest the parallel be missed, he wrote on the back of the copy which he retained of this letter, ‘Delenda est Carthago’.[138]

  Occasionally, in cooler moments of reflection, the ministers shrank from proposing an assault on so powerful a fortress, as they had after reading Burgoyne’s original memoranda in January. Vice-Admiral Dundas feared that, if his wooden warships came close enough inshore to be effective, Russian batteries would fire ‘red hot shells at them’: and Captain Drummond, who in January had brought HMS Retribution into the Bay of Sebastopol, considered the fortress impregnable, although he thought ‘the north side’ of the bay ‘presented some favourable points for the disembarkation of troops under the ship’s guns’.[139] But any note of optimism from the war zone swiftly swung ministerial opinion in favour of an expedition to the Crimea. Graham thus attached great importance to a letter which his friend, Rear-Admiral Lyons, sent from his flagship, Agamemnon, on 6 April arguing that ‘too much is thought’ of the defences of Sebastopol and that the destruction of Russia’s naval base must he the prime objective in any Black Sea campaign. ‘To me the bare idea of our not striking a successful blow at Sebastopol is painful. It haunts me in my solitary evening walks on the deck of this splendid ship.’[140] Graham circulated Lyons’s letter and wrote back to him, urging him to make his views known among the other senior officers at Constantinople while, at the same time, trying to discover all he could about the fortress and its defences. On 13 June, two days before the Times editorial, Graham again wrote to Lyons, this time confirming to him that the cabinet as a whole thought other enterprises of secondary importance compared to the seizure of the great Russian base.[141]

  It is therefore clear that plans for the investment of Sebastopol were considered individually by ministers and by the cabinet as a whole long before the celebrated midsummer night’s session at Richmond. Palmerston completed the last of several memoranda recommending a landing in the Crimea on the morning of the Times editorial and even the naturally cautious Gladstone had come to accept Graham’s reasoning by the beginning of the fourth week. Only the Prime Minister himself held back, hoping that a general peace would follow Russia’s withdrawal from the Danube; and he had recognized the need for an attack on the naval base at a cabinet meeting on the previous day.[142]

  Despite the licence with which Kinglake described events at Pembroke Lodge, his narrative is accurate in one respect. There was, that summer, a ‘rare concurrence of feeling’ in London on the need to deprive the Tsar’s fleet of its principal base in order to ensure lasting peace around the Black Sea. This was known, and appreciated, in Paris, and the allied commanders had received letters from England and France emphasizing the im
portance of a landing in the Crimea. It would accordingly be wrong to assume that the orders to attack Sebastopol, which reached British headquarters on Sunday, 16 July, took Raglan by surprise. Yet, in a sense, he had feared their coming: for he knew next to nothing about the geography of the Crimea, let alone the details of its forts and garrisons.

  There were three attributes which Wellington used to praise in this loyalest of aides-de-camp: his intelligence, his truthfulness, his obedience. Now Raglan was in a dilemma. Tradition bound him unquestioningly to accept the instructions sent by the Government in London. Instinct made him doubt the wisdom of the whole enterprise. ‘A commander-in-chief,’ Wellington once told Major-General Lord Beresford, ‘must not be beaten; therefore do not undertake anything with your troops unless you have some strong hope of success.’[143] But what if you knew so little of your enemy that you could not confidently predict success or failure? Sebastopol, everyone said, was a tough nut to crack; but, as Saint-Arnaud remarked, the Russians were ‘an enemy who had pulled away’. After their retreat from the Danube, it was hard to look upon the Tsar’s ‘million strong’ army as a formidable force.

  For three days Raglan hesitated: at seventy-six no one would take a quick decision over so grave a matter. On Monday he sent for his senior divisional commander, General Sir George Brown, a martinet who had fallen back on Corunna with Moore forty-five years before and who had seen as much active service as the Commander-in-Chief. But Brown was little help. Like Raglan, he thought of the Great Duke’. Wellington would have wanted more information before embarking on such a venture, Brown said; but, he added, if London believed Raglan was procrastinating, ‘they’ would simply send out another commander in his place.[144] It was, no doubt, the best advice Raglan could expect from a youngster of sixty-six.

  Fortunately Raglan could turn elsewhere, for Saint-Arnaud, too, had received orders from Paris. It is a tribute to the good sense of British and French Commanders-in-Chief, and to the growing trust between the unexpected allies, that the whole enterprise was at once referred to a joint council of war which met under Saint-Arnaud’s chairmanship on Tuesday, 18 July. The Marshal had been uneasy about the Sebastopol project in recent weeks because he was short of good cavalry horses, and heavy guns were still awaiting shipment from Toulon. But that Tuesday found him in an optimistic mood: his confidence was boosted by the arrival, on the previous Saturday, of the first consignment of siege equipment; there were, the Marshal told his brother, ‘a few cases’ of cholera in the army, but he was ‘taking precautions and the storm will pass. He would himself speak for the French army. and Raglan for the British; most of all he wished to sound Out the seamen — Admirals Dundas and Lyons of the Royal Navy. and the French Admirals, Hamelin and Bruat. Six men only would do the talking. But, at this conference and at later ones, the principal participants were briefed by other senior officers not admitted to the conclave; Dundas, for example, looked for advice on how to handle the French to the officer-diplomat whom he had scorned in the spring of 1853, Brigadier-General Rose.[145]

  Rose’s personal journal provides an interesting insight into the troubled minds of his eminent colleagues in this critical week. For some days they had known that a decision over invasion of the Crimea was imminent; and several of them were unsure of the wisdom of such an enterprise. Yet they hesitated over tendering unpopular advice. On Sunday, 16 July, Admiral Dundas showed Rose a letter from the Duke of Newcastle which emphasized the importance of landing close to Sebastopol before making a decisive assault on the great naval base. Rose, who for the past three years had studied closely every military report from the Black Sea region, thought the operation ill-timed. In conversation with Dundas, he ‘urged very much making a feint and capturing Theodosia’, in the eastern Crimea, thus confusing the enemy and drawing troops away from Sebastopol. The septuagenarian admiral was, however, strongly opposed to any expedition whatsoever: army and navy were weakened by cholera; and he doubted if the fleets could give the troopships adequate protection. But what ought he to say at the inter-allied council of war which, he assumed, would take place later in the week? ‘I advised him, as a friend, at the Council not to give an opinion against taking the Crimea,’ Rose wrote in his journal that Sunday. ‘There would be those at the Council who would be glad to shift the responsibility of not going there on him. If he gave an adverse opinion it would be noted down.’ Advice of this character — not dissimilar to the warning Brown gave Raglan — hardly made for strong and resolute leadership. ‘Aren’t you coming?’ Rose was asked on the Tuesday morning. He was not invited, and had to content himself with giving Admiral Dundas a memorandum on the Crimea’s defences.[146]

  It was, Saint-Arnaud wrote next day, ‘a great and lengthy conference of absorbing interest’. There would be ‘a daring enterprise’, for it was not right that ‘two fine armies, two fine fleets should remain inactive and let themselves fall victim to disease [dévorer par les fièvres]’. Both commanders were more concerned with ways to implement the instructions from London and Paris than with challenging their good sense. The Admirals were less sure of themselves. Dundas, in the end, did not conceal his qualms. Even Sir Edmund Lyons, consistently a champion of an assault on the Crimea, was subdued by the enormity of the task which now confronted the two navies: they were expected to embark a huge army from open sandy beaches and land it on enemy shores close to a garrison which had long anticipated its coming. The French Admirals seemed similarly divided: Hamelin was reluctant while his deputy, Bruat, favoured the expedition. But, despite doubts, there were no divisions. The conference was a success. General Brown, General Canrobert and the Admirals constituted an informal planning committee to look for suitable invasion points and the navies agreed to extend their reconnaissance patrols to the shores of the Crimean peninsula. The war would he fought and won in Russia, not in the Balkans.[147]

  On 19 July Raglan duly acknowledged receipt of the Duke of Newcastle’s orders. The allied commanders were beginning preparations for an invasion of Russia, but, as he told the Duke, they were acting more in deference to the views of the British and French Governments than to their own judgement.[148] After letting London know of this one qualification, Raglan never again allowed any doubt or difficulty to weaken his determination to mount an invasion. on at least two occasions in the following six weeks, Saint-Arnaud was to look for a way of escape from an enterprise which filled him with foreboding. But not Lord Raglan: he had long believed that what was resolved must he accomplished. In that simple and dutiful personal philosophy lay his strength and his weakness.

  Chapter Six – ‘When’s the Fighting Going to Begin?’

  The British public lionized its first hero of ‘the War with Russia’ long before the shooting started. Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Napier — ‘Mad Charlie’, ‘Black Charley’, cousin of ‘Peccari’ Napier who conquered Sind, kinsman of the Laird Napier who invented logarithms — was one of those officer eccentrics whose vanity condemns them to success. Although a strict disciplinarian, he was personally casual over the wearing of regulation uniform, quarrelsome and ambitious. Other flag-officers never liked him, but he cut a good figure with the public, affecting a quarter-deck jauntiness to recall old acts of initiative and daring.

  Of these, as even Napier’s personal enemies admitted, there were many in nearly a half-century afloat. He had chased French privateers off the West Indies, commanded a Mediterranean frigate in the afterglow of Trafalgar, and, in 1814, fought his way up Chesapeake Bay to attack Baltimore. After losing a fortune pioneering a steamship service on the Seine, he captured Lisbon and won a victory off Cape St Vincent while fighting for ‘the liberties of Portugal’ in a civil war. Back in the Royal Navy once more in 1838-40 he won Palmerston’s backing in the Levant by defiant independence of a conventionally-minded commander-in-chief. ‘I hope the “Nelson touch” will not be necessary,’ Sir James Graham wrote to the Foreign Secretary from Balmoral in the autumn of 1853, ‘but if unhappily it should be so, Charles Napier i
s the Boy to advocate it.’ By an odd coincidence, ‘the Boy’ (aged sixty-seven) was, on that same day, assuring a public meeting that, if he held command at sea, ‘instead of reviewing a grand fleet at Spithead, I would treat the Russians to the old Nelson trick in the Baltic’. On the following Saturday The Illustrated London News was circulating Napier’s remarks to a hundred thousand homes.[149]

  ‘Most men of sixty are too old for dash and enterprise,’ a flag-officer on half-pay had written anonymously three years before, as he surveyed critically ‘the Present State of the Navy’.[150] Now, in 1853, that same flag-officer was eagerly campaigning to lead a fleet into the unfamiliar waters of northern Europe. ‘I held out to him only a distant prospect of a possible command of a Baltic Fleet, and he rushes at once to the last extremity of warlike conclusions,’ Graham told Clarendon after meeting Napier at the end of the first week in December.[151] By Christmas ‘Black Charley’ had the backing of The Times. Some members of the cabinet, notably Russell, needed to be convinced that there was no younger admiral, competent and more responsive to government control; but the First Lord of the Admiralty reassured them. Later, when bitter disputes separated the two men, Graham encouraged the accepted belief that he had recommended the Admiral against his better judgement, but from his surviving papers for the winter of 1853-4 it is clear that he had high hopes of Napier. Only in a tactful letter to ensure the approval of the Queen and her consort to the appointment of a seaman who ‘on shore has’, through his speeches, ‘given just cause of complaint’ is there a hint of apologetic reluctance. And, even then, Graham was also concerned with explaining the reasons why the cabinet passed over the claims of that ‘adventurous spirit’ but ‘uncontrollable’ gallant officer, Admiral Lord Dundonald, who was aged seventy-nine.[152]