who in this quiet lap of the Wiltshire Downs are busy moulding the life of the future are reverent of the past. The old house stands stately, high-roofed, almost unaltered, its great pillared portico before it; hard by are the Druids' Mound, and Preshute Church in the lap of trees. Much water has run under the bridge that spans the Kennet since Sir George and Julia sat on the parapet and watched the Salisbury coach come in; the bridge that was of wood is of brick-but there it is, and the Kennet still flows under it, watering the lawns and flowering shrubs that Lady Hertford loved. Still can we trace in fancy the sweet-briar hedge and the border of pinks which she planted by the trim canal; and a bowshot from the great school can lose all knowledge of the present in the crowding memories which the Duelling Green and the Bowling Alley, trodden by the men and women of a past generation, awaken in the mind. THE END. What is the flag of England ? Winds of the world declare l-KIPLING. XI. IN KERMANN. NOVEMBER 5, 1854. *Scarce could they hear or see their foes, Until at weapon point they close. And such a yell was there And fiends in upper air.'--SCOTT. INKERMANN is emphatically 'a soldier's battle.' The bayonet of the private counted for everything in it; the brains of the general for almost nothing. It is simply one of the most distracted, planless, muddle-headed, yet magnificent battles in British history; and as an illustration of the chivalrous daring of the British officer, and the dogged, unconquerable fighting quality of the British private, Inkermann has scarcely a rival in the long roll of famous battles. It was on the British side, at least, in the truest sense of the word, an Homeric fight: a long succession of single combats; of desperate charges undertaken by tiny Copyright by the Rev. W. H. Fitchett. All rights reserved. VOL. V.—NO. 29, N.8. 25 а clusters of men, with leaders evolved by mere supremacy of fighting power at the moment. Generalship was non-existent; tactics were forgotten; regiments were broken up into unrelated fragments, and fought like Hal o the Wynd for their own hand. The general physiognomy of the battle may be described in a dozen sentences. The scene of the fight was a long and narrow spine, rising from steep and wooded ravines. Some 40,000 greycoated Russians, with more than 100 guns, were being thrust into the flank of the British camp. They formed a river of dingy-grey overcoats, closely cropped bullet heads, broad, high-boned, pastylooking faces. Across the ridge was drawn a knotted, irregular line of British soldiery--for the first three hours of the fight not exceeding 3,000 in number—men of all regiments, mixed together, many of them pickets who had been on duty for twenty-four hours, and without food for twelve. The ground was heavy with rain, thick with scrub, broken with rocks, a mist lay heavy on it, and the red flash of the guns had the strangest effect as it flamed and vanished through the eddying masses of vapour. The steadfast red wall, edged with fire, and fretted with the gleaming bayonets, which we expect in a British line of battle, had no existence here. But that knotted, irregular, and swaying line of British soldiery which kept back the huge Russian masses was unpierceable. To quote Hamley, it was made up of scanty numbers, but impenetrable ranks.' * Colonels of regiments,' he adds, led on small parties and fought like subalterns, captains like privates. Every man was his own general.' The scene of the fight, surveyed from the British camp, is a tiny and steep plateau, shaped like the butt-end of a musket or the letter L turned the wrong way. The post road from Sebastopol bisects the cross-ridge, which runs east and west, and at its rear was the camp of the Second Division. The crest lent itself perfectly to defensive uses. On the east it fell by a steep ravine to the Tchernaya ; on the north, the 'fore ridge,' as the upright part of the letter L was called, sank into the Quarry Ravine; to the west the gloomy depths of the Careenage Ravine protected the crest. A few entrenchments and a dozen guns in position would have made the hill impregnable. But not a battery had been erected, not a trench dug, not a square yard of scrub cleared ! Such was British generalship! On the tip of the Fore Ridge, or half-way down its slope, stood what was called the Sandbag Battery. It was without guns, and so badly constructed that the soldiers who undertook to hold it against the enemy found themselves in a death-trap. The parapet from the inside was so high that they could not see over it or shoot over it. Sandbag Battery had no relation to the defence of the ridge, and it is an illustration of the distracted quality of the battle that round this useless point the most desperate fighting of the day took place. Guards and Russians fought round it muzzle to muzzle and breast to breast till the dead lay on the blood-wet ground literally in strata. More than 1,100 dead bodies were counted after the fight round the Sandbag Battery. It was as though two football teams in a great match forgot football, umpire, and goals, and fought to the point of exhaustion over a bit of orange-peel! The Russian plan was that a column of 19,000 men and 38 guns, under General Soimonoff, should advance before daybreak, seize Shell Hill—a summit to north of the crest of Inkermann, and commanding it-plant its guns there, and crush the scanty British regiments holding the crest with its fire. Another force of 19,000 men and 96 guns, under General Pauloff, was to cross the harbour head, climb up the Quarry ravine, join hands with Soimonoff, and together break through the British defence. Prince Gortschakoff, with another force of 20,000 men and 88 guns moving from Balaclava, was to add himself to the attack, or, at all events, detain the French by feints from moving to the British help. As a further distraction a powerful sally was to be made on the French siege-works from Sebastopol itself. The British force holding Inkermann was only 3,000 strong; the Russians calculated that they would brush this force aside, roll up the British lines to the south, and with 60,000 victorious soldiers would compel the allied forces to abandon the siege, or even themselves surrender. It was able strategy; and, in its earlier stages, ably carried out. Soimonoff moved from the city in the blackness of the winter morning, while the stars yet shone keenly in the sky. His gunwheels were muffled, the sternest silence was enforced in the ranks, and, without alarming a British outpost, he climbed the West Sappers' Road, as it was called, and moved on towards Shell Hill. It was a great feat to move 20,000 infantry with guns and tumbrils through the darkness to within 1,300 yards of the British position undetected. But the silent grey line of Russian battle stole on, and no murmur of human voices, no sharp clang of steel, no a rumble of tumbril or gun, broke through the fog and the darkness to the listening—or, perhaps, the dozing—British sentries. At last a sentry of the 41st on the northern slope of Shell Hill, saw the dim outlines of a huge gliding column mounting from the ravine. He called his officer, who, satisfied as to the character of the approaching body, opened fire upon it with his tiny picket, and clung to his position with almost ludicrous obstinacy—a handful opposing an army. The sound of their muskets rang loudly across the ravines, and the British sprang everywhere to arms. But Soimonoff's men pushed forward, his guns swung round from the crest of Shell Hill, and opened their tempest of shot on the very tents of the Second Division, and many men and officers, running out at the sound, were slain before they knew that the enemy was within striking distance. The Russian generals had thus carried out part of their scheme. Almost without discovery, and with no other resistance than a few shots from an obstinate picket, they had made themselves masters of three-fourths of Inkermann, and were pouring an overwhelming fire into the very tents of the British camp. Pauloff's men, too, were by this time moving up the Quarry Ravine from the east. It was possible now to throw some 40,000 men, with over 100 guns, upon the 3,000 British soldiers who formed the Second Division. The Guards, 1,300 strong, were half a mile to the south; a brigade of the Light Division, 1,400 strong, was a mile and a half distant to the west. Now the character of the resistance offered by the British was determined partly by accident, and partly by, not so much the military skill as the fighting temper of the British general, Pennefather, who temporarily commanded the Second Division. De Lacy Evans, its general, a war-wise and experienced soldier, had his own plan for the defence of the crest. But De Lacy Evans was lying ill on board a ship in Balaclava Harbour, and Pennefather was left to take counsel of nothing but the effervescing and warlike blood in his own veins. He was a type of soldier familiar enough, and valued enough, in the British army: an Irishman, who borrowed his tactics from Donnybrook; of obstinate and combative temper, loud of speech, cheerful of face, an ideal leader for a forlorn hope. Pennefather's expletives were the jest of the camp. Years afterwards he was appointed to the command at Aldershot, and the Queen on chancing to ask, 'Has the new general taken up his command yet ?' was told, with a touch a a a |
