Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The First VCs: The Stories Behind the First Victoria Crosses in the Crimean War and the Definition of Courage
    The First VCs: The Stories Behind the First Victoria Crosses in the Crimean War and the Definition of Courage
    The First VCs: The Stories Behind the First Victoria Crosses in the Crimean War and the Definition of Courage
    Ebook496 pages7 hours

    The First VCs: The Stories Behind the First Victoria Crosses in the Crimean War and the Definition of Courage

    By John Grehan

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Officers led and men followed; all were expected to do their duty without thought of reward. Enlisted men rarely penetrated the officer ranks and promotion owed more to money than merit. Then came the Crimean War.The incompetence and ineffectiveness of the senior officers contrasted sharply with the bravery of the lower ranks. Fuelled by the reports from the first-ever war correspondents which were read by an increasingly literate public, the mumblings of discontent rapidly grew into a national outcry. Questions were asked in Parliament, answers were demanded by the press why were the heroes of the Alma, Inkerman and the Charge of the Light Brigade not being recognised? Something had be done.That something was the introduction of an award that would be of such prestige it would be sought by all men from the private to the Field Marshal. It would be the highest possible award for valour in the face of the enemy and it bore the name of the Queen for whom the men fought.This is the story of how the first Victoria Crosses were attained in the heat of the most deadly conflict of the nineteenth century. It is also an examination of how the definition of courage, as recognised by the awarding of VCs, evolved, from saving the regimental colours at the Alma to saving a comrade in the No Mans Land before Sevastopol.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 31, 2016
    ISBN9781473851726
    The First VCs: The Stories Behind the First Victoria Crosses in the Crimean War and the Definition of Courage
    Author

    John Grehan

    JOHN GREHAN has written, edited or contributed to more than 300 books and magazine articles covering a wide span of military history from the Iron Age to the recent conflict in Afghanistan. John has also appeared on local and national radio and television to advise on military history topics. He was employed as the Assistant Editor of Britain at War Magazine from its inception until 2014. John now devotes his time to writing and editing books.

    Read more from John Grehan

    Related to The First VCs

    Related ebooks

    Modern History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Letters

      Aug 31, 2023

      Reading about Roger Mortimer's 14thcentury escape from the Tower of London (The King of Folly, August) reminded me of another remarkable breakout from the fortress – with equally dramatic consequences. In April 1660, John Lambert, the Roundhead major

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Changing Faces Of Warfare

      Dec 28, 2022

      The Changing Faces Of Warfare
      5 min read

    • Article

      Farce In The Azov Sea

      Dec 27, 2018

      Farce In The Azov Sea
      2 min read

    • Article

      The King At The Walls

      Mar 2, 2023

      The battle at Northampton was the first major encounter in the conflict often described today as the ‘Second Barons’ War’, which broke out amid an extraordinary period of radicalpolitics in England. In 1258, a group of magnates, including the earls o

      6 min read

    • Article

      Arrogant Princes & Autocrats

      Apr 17, 2022

      Arrogant Princes & Autocrats
      2 min read

    • Article

      Cycling 26 November, 1941

      Mar 2, 2023

      Cycling 26 November, 1941
      2 min read

    • Article

      Cromwell, Warts And All

      Feb 20, 2022

      Cromwell, Warts And All
      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘For Valour!’

      Jan 10, 2023

      ‘For Valour!’
      11 min read

    • Article

      From Ballroom To Battlefield

      Feb 20, 2020

      From Ballroom To Battlefield
      5 min read

    • Article

      War Of The Roses

      Jun 11, 2021

      War Of The Roses
      1 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jul 9, 2020

      Grace Huxford’s How We Forgot the Korean War (July) revived memories of my father’s concern that, as a ‘Z Reservist’, he might be recalled to fight in Korea. I was 10 years old at the time, and the Korean War certainly made a lasting impression on me

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Empire’s Scarlet Heroes

      Nov 1, 2018

      The Empire’s Scarlet Heroes
      13 min read

    • Article

      The Making Of A Monarch

      Nov 24, 2022

      The Making Of A Monarch
      6 min read

    • Article

      The George Cross

      Mar 1, 2024

      On September 24 1940, during a period of WWII known as the “Blitz”, when British cities were being subjected to heavy bombing raids by the German Luftwaffe, King George VI made a radio broadcast from Buckingham Palace in London to announce the instit

      8 min read

    • Article

      Q&A

      Jan 23, 2020

      In some respects, the Barons’ Wars were conventionally fought. Commanded by noblemen with an emphasis on cavalry and support by large numbers of foot soldiers, the wars were conducted over a series of battles and sieges. Nevertheless, at their heart

      3 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Mar 18, 2021

      Anniversaries
      4 min read

    • Article

      Hurrah For The Wavy Navy

      Mar 9, 2022

      Hurrah For The Wavy Navy
      5 min read

    • Article

      Reviews Fault Lines

      Nov 5, 2019

      Reviews Fault Lines
      4 min read

    • Article

      Welcome January 2023

      Dec 28, 2022

      Welcome January 2023
      1 min read

    • Article

      Ships Library

      May 26, 2023

      John Jordan (editor) Warship 2023 is devoted to the design, development and service history of the world’s combat ships. The contributors are respected authorities, so detailed information is the bedrock of the articles, which are supported by plans,

      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jul 7, 2022

      A c1594 portrait of John Dee. The astrologer’s court role points to widespread magical belief, says reader Juliet O’Brien I enjoy reading your Letters pages, and Jill Stewart-Rattray’s contribution in June’s edition caught my particular attention. Sh

      4 min read

    • Article

      The People’s Republic Of Britain

      Mar 17, 2022

      On 5 March 1650, early in the life of the new Commonwealth of England, a state funeral was held. There was a stellar turn-out for Roland Wilson, army officer and politician. Almost the whole of the new political establishment was there: the head of t

      6 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Apr 16, 2020

      Anniversaries
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Julio-claudian Legion

      Sep 8, 2023

      By Nigel Pollard and Joanne Berry Thames & Hudson, 2012 ISBN: 978-0500251836 Parker's volume was once the go-to for an accessible history of the Roman legions. It's still a decent start, but very old. Pollard and Berry provide an up-to-date, well-ill

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Oct 29, 2020

      Letters
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The First VCs

    4/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The First VCs - John Grehan

      Also by John Grehan

      The Lines of Torres Vedras

      Churchill’s Secret Invasion

      Voices from the Past, Waterloo 1815

      With Martin Mace

      Images at War, The Crimean War

      Despatches from the Front, British Battles of the Crimean War

      The Battle of Hastings, The Uncomfortable Truth

      Unearthing Churchill’s Secret Army

      Battleground Sussex

      Slaughter on the Some, I July 1916

      The Battle of Barossa, 1811

      Bomber Harris, Sir Arthur Harris’ Despatch on War Operations

      The Western Front 1914-1916

      The Western Front 1917-1918

      The Royal Navy and the War at Sea 1914-1919

      The War in East Africa 1939-43

      Operations in North Africa and the Middle East 1939-1942

      Operations in North Africa and the Middle East 1942-44

      Battles of the Zulu War

      British Battles of the Napoleonic Wars 1793-1806

      British Battles of the Napoleonic Wars 1807-1815

      The War at Sea in the Mediterranean 1940-1944

      The Battle for Norway 1940-1942

      The BEF in France 1939-1940

      Gallipoli and the Dardanelles

      The Boer War

      Capital Ships at War 1939-1945

      Defending Britain’s Skies 1940-45

      Liberating Europe: D-Day to Victory in Europe 1944-1945

      Disaster in the Far East 1940-42

      The Fall of Burma 1941-1943

      The Battle for Burma 1943-1945

      Far East Air Operations 1942-45

      THE FIRST VCs

      The Stories Behind the First Victoria Crosses of the Crimean War and the Definition of Courage

      This edition published in 2016 by Frontline Books,

      an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

      47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS

      Copyright © John Grehan

      The right of John Grehan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      ISBN: 978-1-47385-171-9

      PDF ISBN: 978-1-47385-174-0

      EPUB ISBN: 978-1-47385-172-6

      PRC ISBN: 978-1-47385-173-3

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

      CIP data records for this title are available from the British Library

      For more information on our books, please visit

      www.frontline-books.com

      email info@frontline-books.com

      or write to us at the above address.

      Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

      Typeset in 10.5/12.5 point Palatino

      Contents

      List of Maps

      The Baltic Theatre

      The Crimea

      The Battle of Balaklava

      The Battle of Inkerman

      Sevastopol

      Introduction

      ‘The Scum of the Earth’

      ‘General Yorke Scarlett sat in front of the line of troops, and as the Royal cortege came upon the ground the whole force, with a simultaneous movement, gave the Royal salute, presenting arms and lowering colours, with most impressive effect,’ ran the report in The Times of 3 August 1858. ‘Her Majesty stood upon the dais with the Prince Consort and the Duke of Cambridge on her right, and immediately proceeded to confer the Crosses. Each recipient advanced in order, saluted Her Majesty, and then stood while the Queen with her own hands affixed the Cross to their breasts.’

      This report described the third mass distribution of the Victoria Cross to Crimean War veterans. What was significant about it was that it took place not in London, or Windsor Castle, but in Portsmouth. So revered and respected were those who had earned the Victoria Cross they did not have to go to the Queen for their medals, Victoria went to them, even though some were mere privates or seaman. So much had changed in so short a time.

      The Duke of Wellington famously described the rank and file of the British Army as being composed of men who enlisted for having sired bastard children or having committed minor offences, but mainly they enlisted for drink. The men who defeated Napoleon in 1815 were, according to the Iron Duke, the ‘scum of the earth – the mere scum of the earth’. A hundred years later, the men who fought at Ypres and the Somme were described as ‘lions led by donkeys’. In that century between Waterloo and Mons the ordinary British soldier had been transformed in the public conscience from villain to hero.

      It was the reports from the Crimea which instigated this change. The new communication medium of the telegraph enabled news from the front to be transmitted back to Britain in a matter of days, whilst the steam-driven ships could carry despatches and letters to London in less than a week. This meant that the reports of the first war correspondent, William Howard Russell of The Times, could be published and laid before the British public just days after the event.

      Amongst the earliest such reports provided by Russell was an account of an incident during the first major engagement of the war in the Crimea – the Battle of the Alma: ‘Already the wounded were passing by me. One man limped along with his foot dangling from the ankle, supporting himself on his firelock. Thank you kindly, sir, said he, as I gave him a little brandy, the only drop I had left. Glory be to God, I killed and wounded some of the Russians before they crippled me anyway. He halted off towards the rear.’

      Who was this humble, God-fearing but noble soldier who was so undemonstratively risking life, and certainly in this case limb, for Queen and country? Was this the scum of the earth?

      Also referring to the wounded from the same battle, a surgeon wrote to the Daily News: ‘The pluck of the soldier no one has yet truly described. They laugh at pain and will scarcely submit to die. It is perfectly marvellous, this triumph of mind over body.’ This was exactly the point – up to that time no-one had described the courage of the ordinary soldier.

      It was a given that the officer class, the sons of aristocrats, the gentry, were brave and brilliant leaders. This was, after all, nothing more than a reflection of the wider society in which the upper classes governed local communities and sat in the Palace of Westminster. Just how polarised the classes were is demonstrated by the words of Evelyn Wood. A later holder of the Victoria Cross, Wood was a Midshipman in the Crimea but subsequently transferred to the Army and became a Field Marshal: ‘We did not understand in those days that private soldiers were actuated by the same feelings which impels officers to do great deeds.’

      It took the reports from the likes of Russell, and letters from those such as the unnamed surgeon at the Battle of the Alma, printed in the local and national press, to make all classes of society realise that the common man was as brave, patriotic and resourceful as the officers above him. Indeed, those newspaper articles and letters painted an entirely different picture from that which would have been conjured up in the public mind when the troops first marched off to war. What was revealed was a tale of failure in high office, rescued only by the courage and determination of the lower ranks. The phrases Russell used, such as ‘no-one would take responsibility upon himself even to save the lives of hundreds’, and ‘there was no excuse for the privations to which then men were exposed’, shocked the nation.

      Increased levels of literacy also meant that more people of every class were able to read the newspapers and, significantly, many soldiers, including those in the lower ranks, were able write letters home from the Crimea. With war being played out in the newspapers for the first time, the question of how to portray events in the Crimea was a problematic one. This was a period of intense nationalistic sentiment, as witnessed by the clamour for Britain to take action against Russia which had helped propel the country into war. The public expected to hear of great victories and valiant deeds, not of bungling inefficiency causing unnecessary deaths.

      The general public’s perception of the war, and that of the common soldier, rapidly began to change as the fighting progressed. The Times put this growing appreciation of the rank and file in a powerful editorial at the beginning of October 1854: ‘Soldiers and sailors are not the savage murderous, ravaging and destroying creatures we could imagine. Till they are dying of hunger and thirst, or have seen their comrades falling around them, they are the merest sheep in the world. The wolves are those who stay at home, and blow up the angry passions of war and feed its perpetual resentments.’ The scum of the earth had become the good old, indeed loveable, British Tommy Atkins.

      All this meant, as one historian has remarked, that the very concept of heroism was being challenged, and re-evaluated, at this time: ‘Writers always struggle with the question of what makes someone a worthy hero; this struggle was particularly evident in the early 1850s in Britain. War compels a reconsideration of ideas of heroism. And during the Crimean War, these ideas were undergoing significant alterations.’

      The sudden love of the previously despised British soldier led, probably inevitably, to extreme adulation, as exemplified in this letter to The Times: ‘I would suggest that every man, of every rank, should give one day’s income, from whatever source he may derive it, to a national tribute. I am satisfied that every working man would give his one day’s pay. There is no need for sermons and speeches: the accounts we read of British cheering to the charge to face the mouth of the cannon, shot, shell and canister poured in one death-dealing stream, will do their stead. We at home cannot fight but we can show our appreciation of the courage.’

      There was never any likelihood of every working man, many desperately poor, giving up any part of his income to help the troops in the Crimea, but the nation did show its appreciation with what was to become the most prestigious award that any soldier can ever hope to attain – the Victoria Cross.

      The Victoria Cross retains its prestige through its exclusivity. Only 1,354 have been awarded and that number is unlikely to ever see any significant increase.

      The history of the Victoria Cross encompasses every branch of the British and Commonwealth armed forces and virtually every conflict in which they have been involved, and it all began in the Crimean War. Since then there have been scores of books describing the remarkable exploits, the acts of unparalleled courage, self-sacrifice and daring which resulted in the award of the highest of all gallantry medals. Yet, apart from a few slim volumes published in the later years of the nineteenth century, there has never been a thorough investigation into those first VCs when the principles and standards of the award were established.

      It has been said that over the decades those standards have been raised and that ever greater degrees of bravery are expected when the awarding committee makes its decisions. Can that be said of Private Ablett who was in the trenches in front of Sevastopol when a burning shell dropped into his trench in the middle of a stack of cases containing ammunition and gunpowder? Realising that at any moment he and his platoon would be blown to pieces, Ablett, rather than try to escape, picked up the live shell and threw it over the parapet. As soon as the shell landed it exploded. Or of the young battery commander Lieutenant William Hewett who had been left with a single gun in an advanced position. When the Russians swept forward in overwhelming numbers he was ordered to retire. ‘Retire!’ Hewett exclaimed, ‘retire be dammed!’ That single 68-pounder gun kept the enemy at bay long enough for supporting troops to be brought up and the key position was held. Or Private Samuel Evans who volunteered to leave the safety of his lines to calmly rebuild damaged embrasures in full view of the enemy gunners who poured fire upon him?

      What is possibly even more striking is that the actions of those that were eventually awarded the Victoria Cross for their courage in the Crimean War occurred before such a medal had even been introduced. It was not until after the Crimean War that the Victoria Cross became available to soldiers and sailors. Indeed, before that time, there were no medals, no awards, and no methods, by which the bravery of the noncommissioned ranks could be recognised or rewarded, until the Distinguished Conduct Medal was introduced in December 1854, long after the great battles of the Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman. The men who subsequently nominated for the Victoria Cross performed their outstanding deeds without any thought of recompense, for none existed. They did what they did because they were driven by the same sentiments as the aristocratic officers, those of honour, comradeship and patriotism.

      So outstanding, and indeed memorable, had been their deeds, they were still recalled by those around them and their names were put forward for a new medal – the award of the reigning monarch, the Victoria Cross – in 1856 when the war was already over.

      Whilst there are differences between the nature of deeds which resulted in the award of the Victoria Cross during the Crimean War, there are also many similarities. A considerable number of awards were granted to men who had left the security of the trenches in front of Sevastopol to rescue wounded comrades. Though the term ‘No Man’s Land’ had not been coined at that time, or at least was not in common usage, the ground between the British and Russian front lines in front of Sevastopol was effectively the same as that which separated the German and British lines in the First World War. In both conflicts, hundreds of artillery pieces shelled the opposing trenches and marksmen were used to deadly effect to pick off the unwary. The actions of those men, and there were many of them, who risked their lives to bring back wounded men from that No Man’s Land, were little different from those of a later generation.

      There were some deeds which were recognised by the award of the Victoria Cross which were markedly different from those of later generations. Amongst these recipients was Sergeant Luke O’Connor, who was honoured for saving the Colours at the Battle of the Alma. There were also awards granted for what in the conflicts of the twentieth century would be regarded as commando-style operations, such as amphibious assaults on enemy-held coastal installations.

      The reason why such actions were considered to be remarkable is that in the mid-nineteenth century soldiers and sailors functioned as bodies of men, not as groups of individuals. Infantry and cavalry in particular operated in battalions and squadrons, where their combined strengths were most effective. Individual actions were not encouraged as they disrupted these formations. Men were therefore trained only to fight together and were dissuaded from acting on their own initiative. Indeed, there were many senior officers in the British Army who were appalled at the idea of granting medals to the lower ranks for precisely those reasons, believing that all order and discipline would be lost if soldiers tried to act independently. Equally, senior officers were expected to follow the orders of their commanding officer and nothing more. This is exemplified by the words Wellington saved for his most trusted subordinate officer, General Sir Rowland Hill: ‘The best of Hill is that I always know where to find him.’

      The soldiers and sailors of more recent times have been loudly applauded and officially rewarded for acts of personal valour. Service men and women rightly expect recognition for outstanding bravery, though none actively seek it, being motivated by far loftier ideals. It was those same ideals, those of personal sacrifice for the greater good of the many, or of risking oneself to save the life of another, which motivated the men who fought for Queen and country more than 150 years ago; but they did so in the knowledge that their deeds would go unheralded, their names unrecorded – until the introduction of the Victoria Cross.

      Courage, then, does not change with time, it is merely the circumstances which differ, and it was a remarkable set of circumstances which brought the deeds of the individual soldiers and sailors to the attention of the public. It was the Crimean War.

      John Grehan

      Shoreham-by-Sea, 2016

      Chapter 1

      Drawing the Sword

      They lined the quayside in their thousands. They cheered and they waved as Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, on board the small steam yacht Fairy, led the fleet out of Portsmouth and into the Solent. Behind the royal party came HMS Duke of Wellington, Vice Admiral Sir Charles Napier’s flagship, followed by the great battleships, the 102-gun Royal George and the 91-guners James Watt, Princess Royal, Caesar and Nile. These were the latest of ships, powered by steam, driven by screw propellers. With them sailed, in this case quite literally, half-adozen wind-powered, traditional ships of the line.

      Accompanied by other battleships, steam frigates and paddle-sloops, Napier’s force was the largest gathering of warships assembled in Britain since the days of George III, and the most powerfully-armed fleet to have left England’s shores. The Royal Navy was going to war.

      The fleet’s destination was the Baltic. Its objectives were ill-defined, the limit on its operations severe. Napier had been told that he had the whole of the enemy’s forces in front of him stationed within the Gulf of Finland and, he was informed by the First Lord of the Admiralty, ‘the first objective is to keep them shut up there’.¹ ‘See if they are disposed to measure their strength with you.’

      Of course, the enemy, Tsar Nicholas I’s Russia, was not going to risk a fleet action against a technologically and numerically superior force. Napier would be limited to coastal operations. Raids against harbours and merchant ships at anchor, the destruction of stores, the disruption of trade, was all Napier was ever likely to achieve. The people of Britain that remembered the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar, expected more. Napier’s instructions, though, were clear, ‘because the public here may be impatient; you must not be rash because they [who are] at a distance from danger are foolhardy – you must not risk the fleet in an impossible enterprise’.²

      The despatch of the fleet to the Baltic pre-emptied the declaration of war, which occurred two weeks after Napier had sailed. Since 1815 Britain had avoided conflict in Europe. Not for her were the continuous upheavals of Spain, the struggles for identity in Italy and endless squabbles in the Balkans. For Britain had become the first industrialised country and its goods were sought the world over. Her military effort was directed at extending the Empire, with her trade irrepressibly following the flag. But there was one big threat to British expansion in the East – Russia. Tsar Nicholas I’s vast autocracy was becoming a problem.

      Russia had already occupied the Caucuses and her armies were creeping ever closer to the jewel in Britain’s colonial crown, India. Now the Tsar’s latest objective was the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and access for the Black Sea Fleet through the Dardanelles into the Eastern Mediterranean. This, Britain and France, the latter also with imperial interests in the East, simply could not allow. The time had come to put Russia firmly in her place. The renewal of hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire in their battle for dominance in Eastern Europe, and control of the Holy Places of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, provided the opportunity.

      In Tsar Nicholas’ eyes Turkey was the ‘sick man of Europe’. It was, he believed, a nation which was so weak that it could no longer keep control of its multi-national possessions and was too feeble to stand in the path of Russian ambition. Nicholas, however, had misread the symptoms. The Ottoman Empire was not as unwell as it appeared. When Russian troops marched down the Danube and into the Turkish-controlled provinces of Moldovia and Wallachia (a historical and geographical region of Romania) in the spring of 1853, the Turks, under Omar Pasha, had fought back, surprising everyone with a stunning victory at Oltenița (in present-day Romania) in October that same year.

      The great Western powers of France, Austria, Prussia and Britain had attempted to bring the two empires together to try and solve the ‘Eastern Question’. Though Britain and France soon pulled out of such efforts, deciding that their interests lay in supporting Turkey as a bulwark against Russian expansionism, Prussia and Austria continued to search for a peaceful solution and managed to negotiate a Russian withdrawal from the Danubian provinces.

      But by that time Britain and France had already sent a large combined fleet into the Dardanelles and then, in October 1853, into the Black Sea to prevent the Russian fleet from attacking Turkish coastal trade. Despite the presence of the Anglo-French fleet, the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed a force of ten Turkish sailing ships in Sinope harbour on 30 November. It was the tipping point. France and Britain now had their justification for going to war.

      Captain, later Admiral, Adolphus Slade arrived at Sinope shortly after the battle: ‘The shore of the bay was lined with wrecks and strewed with corpses. Havoc had done her worst. Not a mast was standing, not a timber was left whole. We found above a hundred wounded in various cafés, in every stage of suffering; some in agony, many of them frightfully disfigured by explosions.’³ The significance of Slade’s comment about the injuries sustained by some of the wounded is that for the first time in naval history Russian warships had used explosive shells instead of the usual solid shot. Against such weapons the wooden Turkish vessels, and their crews, had stood no chance.

      The incident made headline news around the world. Even as far away as New Zealand the Wellington Independent described the scene at Sinope after the battle as ‘horrible beyond description’. I added: ‘Mangled bodies and limbs of men floating about and lying strewed upon the shore; the dying and the dead, and the wounded mixed up with the wrecks and fragments of the wrecks … The worse feature of the whole affair is, that after all the ships had been destroyed, the Russians fired grape and canister on Turks whilst endeavouring to save themselves by swimming. They killed as many as they could, after all resistance had ceased.’⁴

      In London, The Times gave what it described as its ‘emphatic opinion’ of what the response of Britain and France should be to the incident: ‘The English people are resolved that Russia should not dictate conditions to Europe, or convert the Black Sea, with all the various interests encompassing its shores, into a Russian lake … and that a stop should be put to these aggressions. The Emperor of Russia, who began this war without a pretext, is carrying it on without disguise, and it therefore becomes the imperative duty of the Four Powers [Austria, Prussia, France, and Britain], who have recently recorded their determination to put an end to it, to take all the measures which that object may demand … the Emperor of Russia has thrown down the gauntlet to the maritime Powers.’⁵

      This challenge to the Tsar was taken up by the British provincial press. ‘We shall draw the sword, if draw it we must,’ trumpeted The Chronicle. ‘The time appears to be at hand when we must act,’ concluded the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent.⁶

      This ‘massacre’, though a perfectly legitimate act of war, roused public animosity in Britain and France towards the Russians to unprecedented heights. So, when Napier’s great armada set of for the Baltic in February, it was sent on its way by the excited and expectant crowds that lined Portsmouth Harbour.

      This was not, in fact, the first fleet to sail for Russian waters. Britain and France had already sent a combined force to help deter the Tsar from attacking Constantinople. This had reached the Dardanelles a few days before the attack upon Sinope. Following the ‘massacre’, Vice-Admiral Dundas was ordered to sail into the Black Sea with instructions to ‘require’ every Russian ship he met to put back into port.

      Not unnaturally, the Tsar saw this as an act of aggression but, still hoping to keep France and Britain out of his conflict with Turkey, Nicholas did nothing to further provoke these countries. Then, on 27 February 1854, the two Western allies demanded that Russia withdrew all its forces from the Danubian provinces. This ultimatum was ignored by the Tsar and consequently, on 28 March 1854 Britain and France formally declared war on Russia.

      In the forty years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the storming of Sevastopol, Britain had grown in power, prestige and prosperity. She was workshop of the world; the ruler of the waves. When war was declared against Russia no one doubted a glorious victory. Few, though, contemplated how it could be achieved.

      Since its most momentous day on the heights of Mont St Jean, to the south of the village of Waterloo, in the summer of 1815, for the British Army it had been a case of the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. The Army’s basic structure remained unaltered, but its functions and purpose had changed completely.

      The days of the great European wars, with vast armies thrown at each other in titanic pitched battles, seemed to be at an end. Equally, armed confrontation with France over the two nations’ overseas empires was, to a degree, a thing of the past. Though the British Empire continued to expand, it did so incrementally, as one territory after another, in Asia and Africa, was gradually absorbed. The Army was the instrument of that expansion, but it was against ill-equipped natives that it fought, and in far-away places with strange sounding names. In Britain there was no longer a sense of national danger, as when Bonaparte’s army stood at Boulogne in 1803. ‘War,’ wrote one historian, ‘had become a noise far away’.⁷

      The peacetime strength of the standing British Army did in fact rise to the unprecedented figure of more than 100,000, but up to three-quarters of the infantry were guarding and garrisoning the Empire. For the first time in its history, the British Army had become largely a colonial force, with many of its regiments being posted abroad for more than a decade at a time.

      Its wars in foreign fields, whilst small in scale, were almost continuous. Up to 1840 the British Amy had been engaged in operations in China, Ceylon, Burma, Afghanistan, Sind, Punjab, Cape Colony, New Zealand and the west coast of Africa. The more territory that was seized, the greater became the strain upon the Army at home to provide troops to defend it.

      In 1840, Thomas Macaulay, the Secretary at War, announced an increase in the strength of the British Army from 110,000 to 120,000. This was to be achieved by raising the manpower of battalions stationed at home to 900 and those in India to 1,100 each.⁸

      These measures, however, did little to change the situation. In the following year, there were seventy-eight battalions in the colonies and India, six on passage to or from the colonies, and only nineteen in the United Kingdom, of which eight had returned in the previous year in poor condition, leaving only eleven battalions fit, from a military point of view, for active service.

      In the annual debate in the House of Commons over the Army estimates, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Hardinge, who would soon take over Macaulay’s position and was in support of increasing the Army establishment against those who baulked at the expense, cited the following example: ‘The 22nd regiment was sent out to India only the other day, and this battalion had only returned from foreign service three and a half years. This was after ten years’ service in Jamaica, previously to which it had been between four or five years in England; before this it had been stationed eight years at the Mauritius, to which colony it was removed from India after several years’ service there. It was now in its regular turn of duty, on its return back to India, after having been at home only three years and a half. Thus it appeared this regiment would before it again returned home, have been fifty out of sixty years abroad, and at home not more than ten years. If this system were to be continued, a regiment of the line might be considered as almost sent to perpetual banishment.’⁹

      When Hardinge became Secretary of State for War he fought hard to increase the strength of the Army, knowing that any additional expenditure would be hotly contested. There was also a problem with recruitment, and a number of reforms, such as the introduction of good-conduct pay, schoolmistresses to educate the children of ordinary soldiers, and the establishment of regimental libraries, had been found necessary to encourage enlistment. Hardinge, therefore, increased the strength of native regiments, such as the West Indian Regiment, or raised new formations, for example, the Royal Canadian Corps. These and other measures, Hardinge hoped, would ease the pressure on the British Line regiments.

      As it transpired, in 1843 anti-taxation riots in Wales put such a severe strain upon the Army that Hardinge was obliged to introduce a bill which allowed the Government to call the ‘out-pensioners’ from Chelsea Hospital to act in aid of the civil powers if required.

      This should have been warning enough, but it was growing tension between Britain and France over the marriages of Queen Isabella II of Spain and her sister Luisa Fernanda that finally awoke the politicians at Westminster to the weakened state of the country’s defences. A call was made by Lord Palmerston, who became Foreign Secretary in 1846, to embody the Militia. Due to the cost, this measure was rejected in favour of fortifying the country’s arsenals and dockyards against a French invasion. This, though, did not address the problem as the new fortifications still needed soldiers to man them.

      The truth was that the Empire was proving too great a drain on Britain’s resources for relatively little return. This issue was raised by Sir William Molesworth in the Commons in July 1848: ‘The expenditure of Great Britain on account of the colonies amounts to nine shillings in every pound’s worth of its exports; or, in other words, for every pound’s worth of goods that our merchants send to the colonies, the nation pays nine shillings; in fact, a large portion of our colonial trade consists of goods which are sent to defray the expenses of our establishments in the colonies.’

      Molesworth went on to question the very reason for possessing such a large empire and he suggested, amongst a number of measures, giving up West Africa and the West Indies completely as well as handing the Falkland Islands to Argentina.

      Though this was rejected, it indicated just how serious the situation of home defence, and the maintenance of law and order, had become. Strangely, it was a Bonaparte who finally concentrated the political will at Westminster.

      Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew and heir of the great man, had become President of France, and was due to relinquish his position at the end of his four-year term in 1851. Instead, he staged a coup d’etat, seizing power and eventually, through the means of a referendum, was proclaimed Emperor Napoléon III. This so closely paralleled the events of 1803, when Napoleon I seized power in Revolutionary France, that the political elite in Westminster took fright. Measures were immediately put in hand to raise an additional 4,000 men for the cavalry and infantry and 1,000 for the artillery. Possibly the most important measure that was undertaken was the provision for the embodiment, at last, of an 80,000-strong national militia.

      The aging Duke of Wellington, the Army’s Commander-in-Chief, gave his penultimate speech in Parliament in June 1852. In this he supported this measure and reiterated the UK’s entirely inadequate military provision: ‘I tell you have not more men than are enough to relieve the sentries at the different stations in all parts of the world, and to relieve the different regiments in the tropics and elsewhere, after services there – of how long do you suppose? – of, in some cases, twenty-five years, in none less than ten years, and after which you give them five years at home, nominally – for it is only nominally in a great many cases. There were, for instance, the last troops who were sent out to the Cape; – instead of keeping them five years at home, after their long service abroad, I was obliged to send out a regiment after they had only been sixteen months at home. My Lords, I tell you you’ve never had a proper peace establishment all this time.’¹⁰

      What was brought home to the House of Commons by Lord John Russell, Leader of the Opposition, was that with the introduction of steam-powered ships the English Channel had become far less a barrier to invasion than when sailing ships were restricted by wind and waves.

      The result was that an increase in the Navy establishment was voted for to help form a Channel Fleet. Extra money was also raised to provide the Royal Artillery with an additional 1,000 men and 2,000 horses, as Lord Hardinge had found that there was not more than forty field-pieces or guns of position in the whole of the UK.

      Size was not the British military’s only concern. The army that had been so successful under Wellington in the Peninsular War had been crafted over six years of campaigning under Britain’s finest general. Brigade and divisional structures, with all the support services, particularly the commissariat, had evolved into a remarkably efficient fighting force. With so many regiments away from home for many years at a time, those structures had long since been broken up. Britain no longer had the systems in place to enable it to campaign against a modern European army. ‘The system by which an army should be provisioned, moved, brought to action … is non-existent,’ wrote Lord Panmure, a former Secretary at War. ‘We have no means of making general officers or of forming an efficient staff … For great operations we are inadequate.’¹¹

      Aware of this, the men at Horse Guards formed a ‘camp of exercise’ for the very first time in the summer of 1853. In June, three brigades of infantry, one brigade of cavalry, with artillery, and engineers, was assembled at Chobham, Surrey, and placed under the command of Lieutenant General, later Field Marshal, Sir John Colborne. After a month of training this force was replaced by a slightly smaller formation of two brigades of infantry and one of cavalry. These exercises came in the nick of time, for within months of the gathering at Chobham a British expeditionary force was sailing for the East.

      The infantry was also in the act of changing its principle weapon. When war broke out with Russia, smooth-bore muskets were being replaced by French-designed 1851-pattern Minié rifles. The rapid-firing Minié gave the Allies a distinct advantage over the Russians who were still largely equipped with the older smooth-bore musket. However, it was not until much later in the campaign in the Crimea that all the infantry were fully armed with the Minié and, for some months, battalions found themselves with a mixture of weapons.

      Welcome though these developments may have been, the demands of the Empire were such that the Expeditionary Force which sailed to Constantinople via Malta totalled little more than 21,000 effectives. It was a puny force with which to go to war.

      Even raising that small force had been a struggle, as the future Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley wrote: ‘Every ordnance storehouse in Great Britain was ransacked in order to collect guns and harnesses and ammunition wagons for the ten batteries of horse and field artillery sent to the East for the war. We had, however, some

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1