Victoria’s Scottish Lion

by Greenwood, Adrian; Haythornthwaite, Philip;

  Notwithstanding Cardigan’s inertia, the most madcap cavalry charge of the war (so far) had, against all the odds, beaten back the vastly superior Russian squadrons. ‘There never was an action in which English cavalry distinguished themselves more’, claimed Lucan.40 Scarlett’s men could hear the Highlanders’ cheers from across the valley. Campbell rode up to the Scots Greys to congratulate them. ‘Greys! Gallant Greys! I am sixty-one years old,* and if I were young again I should be proud to be in your ranks’, he declared.41 Now that Campbell’s repulse of the Russians had been so ably followed up by Scarlett’s charge, Raglan realised that what had started as an unstoppable enemy offensive was turning to his advantage. The Russian cavalry had retreated behind the safety of their guns at the east end of the North Valley, but their artillery still commanded the Causeway Heights. Raglan wanted them back. After conferring with Campbell, Rustem Pasha tried to occupy Redoubt No. 5 with 200 Turks, but was prevented by the Russian guns on the Fedioukine Heights. Nevertheless, Cambridge’s infantry and the French 1st Division were closing in, while the Chasseurs d’Afrique, were bearing down on the Fedioukine Heights, and so Raglan sent Lucan the following order: ‘Cavalry to advance and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the Heights. They will be supported by the infantry, which have been ordered advance on two fronts.’** Lucan assumed Raglan meant he should advance once the infantry arrived to support him, but when the troops showed up they sat down and piled arms.

  Three-quarters of an hour slipped by. Raglan was sure he could make out Russian horse artillery removing British guns from the redoubts. ‘We must set the poor Turks right again, [and] get the redoubts back’, he muttered.42 He asked Airey, his quartermaster-general, to send Lucan another order: ‘Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front – follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse Artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate. Airey.’

  Few man-made disasters are the result of one action, or one individual, but rather a terrible conflagration of errors. That Airey handed this convoluted but vague order to Captain Nolan to deliver was another fateful twist. Nolan was a renowned horseman, in no one’s estimation more than his own, and he seemed the obvious ADC to hurtle down the rough slope from the Sapoune Heights to Lucan in the plain below. ‘A brave cavalry officer, doubtless,’ wrote Paget, ‘but reckless, unconciliatory, and headstrong, and one who was known through this campaign to have disparaged his own branch of the service, and therefore one ill-suited for so grave a mission.’43

  When Lucan received the scribbled note from Nolan, he was confused. From his position he could see neither enemy nor any guns being removed. As he reread the note, searching for some hidden meaning, Nolan became frustrated. He had risked his life and that of his horse in a mad dash to get the order to Lucan, and yet his Lordship was wasting valuable minutes.

  Raglan’s instructions often read like an apologetic school chaplain asking for missing kneelers, so, having grown used to a less didactic tone, Lucan bridled at an order ‘more fitting for a subaltern than for a general to receive’. He turned to Nolan and ‘urged the uselessness of such an attack’.

  ‘Lord Raglan’s orders are that the cavalry should attack immediately’, Nolan replied peremptorily.

  ‘Attack sir! Attack what and where? What guns are we to recover?’ asked Lucan.

  ‘There, my Lord!’ shouted Nolan, accompanying his words with a sweep of his hand. ‘There, my Lord, are your guns and your enemy!’***

  Without further explanation offered by Nolan, or requested by Lucan, Nolan rode off. Lucan could see the Russian cannon drawn up at the far end of the North Valley, but it was against all the principles of warfare for cavalry to charge artillery. Nevertheless, he rode over to Cardigan and gave him the new order. Cardigan asked whether Lucan was aware that his cavalry would be fired upon in front and in flank. Lucan replied he did, but Raglan was insistent. ‘Having decided, against my conviction, to make the movement, I did all in my power to render it as little perilous as possible’, Lucan later claimed, feebly.44

  From the Sapoune Heights, Raglan could see Cardigan’s Light Brigade moving into position, with the Heavy Brigade behind. All seemed well. Cardigan would advance a short way down the North Valley before wheeling to the right to stop the enemy making off with the guns from the redoubts. The Russians were of the same mind. The Odessa battalions on the Causeway Heights pulled back and formed square.

  Cardigan led the brigade, slowly at first, but gathering speed. ‘There was no one, I believe, who, when he started on this advance, was insensible to the desperate undertaking in which he was about to be engaged’, wrote Paget.45 ‘We had not advanced two hundred yards before the guns on the flanks opened fire with shell and round shot,’ remembered Lieutenant E. Phillips of the 8th Hussars, ‘and almost at the same time the guns at the bottom of the valley opened.’46 As the Russian artillery started booming, Captain Nolan, who had permission to accompany the charge, galloped forward ahead of the line, towards Cardigan, gesturing and shouting furiously, but amid the pounding crash of the guns, Cardigan could not make out what he was saying.* All of a sudden Nolan’s voice changed to a blood-curdling screech as a shell splinter struck him in the heart.

  Private Lamb of the 13th Hussars recalled:

  We still kept on down the valley at a gallop, and a cross-fire from a Russian battery on our right opened a deadly fusillade upon us with canister and grape, causing great havoc amongst our horses and men, and mowing them down in heaps. I myself was struck down and rendered insensible. When I recovered consciousness, the smoke was so thick that I was not able to see where I was, nor had I the faintest idea what had become of the Brigade.47

  ‘One was guiding one’s own horse so as to avoid trampling on the bleeding objects in one’s path,’ explained Paget, ‘sometimes a man, sometimes a horse … The smoke, the noise, the cheers, the groans, the ‘ping ping’ whizzing past one’s head; the ‘whirr’ of the fragments of shells … what a sublime confusion it was! The ‘din of battle’- how expressive the term, and how entirely insusceptible of description!48

  As the Light Brigade drew level with the Russians on the Causeway Heights, yet still showed no sign of turning right to attack, the gradual realisation of Lucan’s intentions dawned upon Raglan, and the enormity of the error. ‘We could scarcely believe the evidence of our senses!’ reported Russell. ‘Surely that handful of men are not going to charge an army in position?’49 The staff on the Sapoune Ridge watched, horrified, hoping Cardigan would turn back. Behind him, the Heavy Brigade had already suffered more casualties than in their earlier charge, so Lucan halted them and pulled back the forward regiments. The Light Brigade, meanwhile, rode on.

  Up front and unscathed, Cardigan had by now ridden nearly the length of the valley, but as his horse covered the last few yards, twelve Russian guns ahead fired one mighty, earth-shaking volley. The earl, momentarily unnerved, recovered his composure and rode on through the battery. Beyond were ranged hundreds of Cossacks, who surrounded Cardigan. They were under orders to take him alive, but fighting common soldiers was beneath Cardigan’s dignity so, without raising his sword, he forced his way through and back down the valley.**

  The rest of his brigade was not so circumspect. As the remnants of the Light Brigade reached the guns, they were seized by fury towards the men who had inflicted such a barbarous onslaught. So frenzied was the British assault, their rough sword hilts left sores on the troopers’ hands from all the hacking. Terrified Cossack artillerymen were reduced to defending themselves with whatever they could grasp, even the gun ramrods. It was anger borne of desperation. British prospects were grim: ‘We were a mile and a half from any support, our ranks broken (most, indeed, having fallen), with swarms of cavalry in front of us and round us’, explained Paget. ‘The case was now desperate. Of course, to retain the guns was out of the question.’50 In Cardigan’s absence, Paget decided that they had done all that honour required
, but by now Russian lancers had swept in behind to cut off their retreat. ‘Helter-skelter then we went at these Lancers as fast as our poor tired horses could carry us’, he wrote:

  A few of the men on the right flank of their leading squadrons, going farther than the rest of their line, came into momentary collision with the right flank of our fellows, but beyond this, strange as it may sound, they did nothing, and actually allowed us to shuffle, to edge away, by them, at a distance of hardly a horse’s length.51

  ‘From this moment the battle could be compared to a rabbit hunt’, observed General Ryzhov.’Those who managed to gallop away from the hussar sabres and slip past the lances of the Uhlans, were met with canister fire from our batteries and the bullets of our riflemen.’52 ‘I had not gone far when my mare began to flag,’ recalled Lieutenant Phillips. ‘I think she must have been hit in the leg by a second shot, as she suddenly dropped behind and fell over on her side. I extricated myself as quickly as possible and ran for my life, the firing being as hard as ever.’ ‘Sergeant Riley of the 8th was seen riding with eyes fixed and staring, his face as rigid and white as a flagstone, dead in the saddle’, wrote Phillips. ‘Sergeant Talbot of the 17th also carried on, his lance couched tightly under his arm, even though his head had been blown away.’53 ‘What a scene of havoc was this last mile,’ Paget lamented, ‘strewn with the dead and dying, and all friends! Some running, some limping, some crawling; horses in every position of agony, struggling to get up, then floundering again on their mutilated riders!’54

  Amid the carnage were vignettes of bathos. A small terrier joined the charge and, though wounded twice, survived. Lieutenant Chamberlayne, his horse shot, and knowing the value of a good saddle, ran back down the valley with it perched on his head. The Russians assumed he was a looter from their side, and let him pass. The regimental butcher of the 17th Lancers, on a charge for drunkenness, heard the commotion in the valley below and, somewhat the worse for rum, ran down and grabbed a riderless Russian horse. Still dressed in his bloody overalls from slaughtering cattle the day before, and armed only with an axe, he joined the charge, killing six Russians in the main battery. On his return he was arrested for breaking out of a guard tent when confined thereto. Lucan let him off the court martial.

  Though The Times claimed not only that ‘The blood which has been shed has not flowed in vain’, but that ‘Never was a more costly sacrifice made for a more worthy object’,55 Raglan’s nephew recognised the truth – that the Light Brigade had been ‘uselessly sacrificed’ and that ‘the results do not at all make up for our loss’.56 ‘It will be the cause of much ill-blood and accusation, I promise you’, Paget predicted. Sure enough, despite the ambiguity of his orders, Raglan blamed Lucan for not exercising his own judgement. Lucan in turn held Cardigan responsible for the same reason, while Paget was of the opinion that Nolan had been ‘the principal cause of this disaster’.57 Initially the scale of the blunder did not seem historic. ‘These sorts of things happen in war’, Airey told Lucan, ‘it is nothing to Chillianwala’. ‘I know nothing about Chillianwala’, replied Lucan, before assuring Airey, ‘I tell you that I do not intend to bear the smallest particle of responsibility.’58 Raglan made him the whipping boy anyway. ‘From some misconception of the instruction to advance, the Lieutenant-General [Lucan] considered that he was bound to attack at all hazards’, Raglan declared in his official despatch. Privately he told the Duke of Newcastle that ‘Lord Lucan had made a fatal mistake’.59 ‘Lord Lucan was to blame,’ agreed the queen, ‘but I fear he had been taunted by Captain Nolan.’60

  Russell had witnessed all three actions: the Thin Red Line, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade and the Charge of the Light Brigade. As a narrative, the futility of Cardigan’s assault needed the balance of a palpable triumph. The Heavy Brigade had performed an extraordinary feat, but it was the bluff stoicism of the Highlanders that would play best with the public, the contrast of infantry and cavalry, of raw Celts and foppish troopers. In an age of steel-engraved illustrations, it was also a good deal easier to depict a line of immoveable Highlanders than the chaos of a cavalry charge. Russell knew his readers wanted something affirming the moral superiority of the British soldier. The Thin Red Line was ideal. It chimed with the British self-image: stoic, stalwart, stiff-upper-lipped. And so, again, Campbell was selected as protagonist.

  Since he arrived in the Crimea, Campbell had shown a remarkably sophisticated understanding of the power of the press. As one officer writing in 1945 observed, ‘Sir Colin Campbell seems to have been several generations ahead of his time in his appreciation of the value of publicity as a stimulus to morale. From this point of view he might perhaps be described as the Montgomery of the Crimea.’61 Not just for morale, for personal advancement too. Campbell realised the importance of keeping correspondents like Russell on side, unlike Raglan. ‘A very small dose of civility from Lord Raglan would have tamed and made a friend of him; but they have, on the contrary, done all they could to insult him’, Sterling later wrote.62 Meanwhile, for Campbell, charming Russell now paid a bumper dividend. The rest of the press followed Russell’s lead. On 19 November, the day after Russell’s account appeared in The Times, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper dubbed Campbell ‘the real Scottish lion’. Once more he was cast as the brave clansman, dour, doughty and speaking in that ludicrous ‘Hoots, mon’ Scottish vernacular which only exists in the English imagination. Added to the reputation won at the Alma, Balaklava now elevated him to the status of national hero.

  By the close of what remains one of the most dramatic days in British military history, Campbell had more important problems than his media profile. Cathcart had taken the two most westerly redoubts (nos 5 and 6) but, together with Campbell and Canrobert, felt the British position was overextended. All three urged Raglan to pull back and reinforce the inner ring of defences around Balaklava. Raglan agreed that the redoubts must be abandoned, although with the Russians in possession of the only proper metalled road to Sebastopol, all supplies would now have to be dragged up the rough track which led north-west from Balaklava to the Sapoune Ridge.

  Campbell expected another Russian attack. ‘They may break through there this night’, he warned Sir Edward Colebrooke.63 He deployed the 93rd around No. 4 battery. The rest of his Highland Brigade, who had marched down with the Guards, stayed to strengthen Kadikoi, along with a French brigade under General Vinoy.* Those not on guard slept with loaded rifles. Campbell paced the battery until morning, impressing upon his men that, if need be, it was the duty of every soldier to die at his post. When day dawned, the Russians remained at a distance.

  The battle so shook Raglan that two days later he ordered Campbell to evacuate the batteries on the Marine Heights and ship out the guns, but after appeals from Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, Colonel Gordon of the engineers and the Commissary-General, Raglan changed his mind. Balaklava was cleared of all but critical shipping, and on 27 October HMS Sans Pareil moored in the harbour to provide extra protection. Meanwhile, at Kadikoi Campbell strengthened his position still further. Trous de loup** and abatis*** proliferated, and every tree was cut to within 3ft of the ground to deny the enemy cover. In the dip between No. 4 battery and the Marine Heights, he built a dam to create a shallow pond concealing a deep underwater ditch, invisible to the enemy. His troops’ love of the Highland Charge prevented them from wholly entering into the spirit of these elaborate defences. When Campbell complained that trenches dug by the 42nd and 79th were too shallow, one of the men replied, ‘If we make it so deep, we shall not be able to get over it to attack the Russians.’64

  Campbell’s tendency to worry increased with his grey hairs, and by now he was permanently tense. Up on the heights he demanded the Marines maintain a constant vigil through ships’ telescopes, sending regular reports by runner or semaphore. He might have been, as Colebrooke noted, ‘all life at the prospect of action’,65 but he barely slept, checking and rechecking every order, unceasingly inspecting the defences and improving them. Campbell preferred to
keep his headquarters at the crux of the line, No. 4 battery, rather than set up house in Balaklava: ‘I have sufficient anxiety in my front without wishing to add to it by seeing what I have behind me.’****66 The shortage of reliable troops was a great concern. Though he still had Rustem Pasha’s Turkish battalions, his faith in them had been shattered. ‘They take me by the shoulders and put me into Balaklava and try to defend it without any means, with a lot of Turks who run at the first shot’,67 he complained. Sterling’s view of them had changed from ‘capital fellows’ to ‘worse than useless’. ‘We have put the Turks in the rear, feeling sure that if we did not so place them, their natural modesty would soon take them there’, he noted.68 This left the perimeter woefully undermanned. Speaking of these days, Campbell later admitted that he held the lines ‘by sheer impudence’.69