the words of one commander by those which he may know, or must necessarily infer, were employed by the other. When St. Arnaud wrote home to the French Minister of War in the first person, and said 'I see difficulties,' or 'I have determined,' or 'I shall move the army,' M. de Bazancourt might have been sure that a despatch something similar, although probably less egotistical, was sent by Lord Raglan to the Duke of Newcastle. The historian should therefore speak as if all the operations decided on were as much due to one commander as the other, unless he is prepared to show that this was not the case. But M. de Bazancourt had no despatches but those of St. Arnaud, and he was personally a great admirer of that general; and he therefore uses St. Arnaud's expressions without any qualification. It is mere trifling to say that this is all he pretends to do; he pretends to write the history of the war. What would a French

say

critic if he were to read that Lord Raglan gave orders for the Crimean expedition, Lord Raglan explained his views to the French, which they acted on immediately, or that Lord Raglan provided for every emergency that the allied force would be likely to encounter? In M. de Bazancourt's narrative Lord Raglan is thrown completely into the shade, partly because he did not bluster and fume, and talk about himself, and partly because M. de Bazancourt had no access to Lord Raglan's papers. Why should we suppose that Lord Raglan ever held an inferior position to St. Arnaud? He was the older general, as much beloved by his army as the French commander could have been by the French army, in command of a force slightly superior to St. Arnaud's, and having the control over a much larger number of transports. As a matter of fact, we know, first, that it was Lord Raglan who throughout advocated, and even insisted, on the Crimean expedition, while St.Arnaud was long doubtful; and, secondly, that the point of debarcation in the Crimea was settled in accordance with Lord Raglan's, not St. Arnaud's, opinion. This does not look as if, when important questions had to be decided, Lord Raglan was a cipher.

We will give one or two specimens of the manner in which prominence is given unwarrantably to St. Arnaud. To their great surprise the allied generals learnt that the Russians had raised the siege of Silistria, and had recrossed the Danube. Lord Raglan learnt this as well as St. Arnaud, and had probably some feelings on the subject; was disappointed, perhaps, and anxious as to the future not only of his own army, but of the whole allied force. But he is not even alluded to; and from the language of M. de Bazancourt a reader would hardly suppose that the English were at Varna. His remarks are as follows:

The Marshal was greatly depressed. He foresaw the lethargy which inaction would soon impose upon the troops at Varna. The value of a first battle, of a first victory, would be inestimable; and an opportunity of encountering the Russians under such favourable circumstances could not again present itself for a long time. The more he regarded the position in which he was placed by this unexpected turn of events, the greater his uneasiness. His health, which was sustained only by a perpetual fever of activity, was visibly and painfully affected.

'I cannot recover from the blow given me by this shameful retreat of the Russians,' writes he. 'I had them within reach; I should infallibly have beaten them;-driven them into the Danube. Now, we are plunged again into uncertainty. I am, as yet, ignorant where they are, what they are doing, or what they intend to do.'

After the long and unavoidable delay which kept the allies at Varna so much beyond their original intention, everything was at last prepared for the expedition, and M. de Bazancourt thus opens the chapter in which this new phase of his subject is to be described. The extract may serve to illustrate the way which England is generally mentioned by M. de Bazancourt, the exclusive attention given to St. Arnaud, and the author's inflated and pretentious style:

in

All indecision is overcome, all obstacles surmounted; the day of departure is fixed, and France and England are about to confide their destinies to the waves of the sea.

The health of the Marshal, visibly affected by his incessant struggles

French generals at his tent, and explained the plan of the coming battle, informing them that the right wing of the whole line, under General Bosquet, was to set out at halfpast five the following morning; the left wing formed by the English, who were to execute a flank movement at six, and the centre at seven. In the evening, Colonel Trochu was sent to Lord Raglan, who agreed expressly to the hour of departure. At half-past five on the 20th, Bosquet's division moved as had been arranged, but even at half-past six no movement was made on the side of the English army. General Canrobert, astonished at this, hastened to Prince Napoleon, and both proceeded towards the division of Sir de Lacy Evans. We are told that

They found the English General in his tent. When Prince Napoleon and General Canrobert explained to him their astonishment at a delay which might gravely compromise the success of the day ;

'I have received no orders,' replied Sir De Lacy Evans.

There was, evidently, a misunderstanding. Before obtaining the key to this enigma, it was most urgent to arrest the march of Bosquet's division, which, performing its movement alone, might be crushed.

General Canrobert proceeded, without losing an instant, to the Marshal. The latter was already on horseback, and had quitted his bivouac, placed behind the lines. Directly he was informed of what was passing, he sent an officer of the Staff, the Commandant Renson, to tell General Bosquet to halt, and to wait for the English troops, who were retarded.

During this time, Colonel Trochu started, at the utmost speed of his horse, for the English Head-Quarters. It was then seven o'clock.

But go

rapidly as he might, the Colonel having nearly two leagues to traverse, over uneven ground, occupied by the bivouacs of the troops, his ride occupied half an hour. The English troops, through whose lines the Aide-de-Camp of the Marshal passed, were still in their tents, and in no respect prepared for the march agreed upon.

Lord Raglan, however, was on horseback when Colonel Trochu reached the Head-Quarters.

'My Lord,' said the latter, 'the Marshal thought, after what you did me the honour of saying, last night, that your troops, forming the left wing of

the line of battle, were to have marched forward at six o'clock.'

'I am now giving my orders,' replied Lord Raglan. We are preparing, and are about to march; a part of my troops did not reach the camp until very late in the night.'

'For Heaven's sake, my Lord,' added the Colonel, 'be speedy; every minute of delay takes from us a chance of

success.

'Go and say to the Marshal,' answered Lord Raglan, 'that at this moment orders are despatched along the whole line.'

And then comes the statement of the consequences of the delay; a statement, we think, founded altogether on a misconception. M. de Bazancourt says that all these unexpected delays, and the indecision in the movements which would necessarily be their result, no longer permitted the execution of the plan of battle, as it had been originally conceived. The Russian army, instead of being surprised by a rapid manœuvre, as should have been the case, had time to make its dispositions, while watching from the summits of the heights the movements of our army, which advanced in the midst of an immense plain. He then goes on to say that the enemy were thus able to see that the attack of Bosquet was only a secondary one, and that the real struggle would be on the Russian centre and right, and that the Russian forces were moved accordingly.

There are many errors in this account. In the first place the English were not delayed by carrying too much baggage. They did not even take their knapsacks, but only a few of the most necessary articles selected from the knapsack, a great coat and blanket. That the English were not ready to march so soon as the French is true, but the cause assigned by M. de Bazancourt was not the real cause. They took the least possible amount of baggage. Secondly, M. de Bazancourt omits to notice that, after dusk on the 19th, the English left was threatened, and that wing had to fall back so as to rest on the Bulganak. This may have been a cause why on the next morning the English left was not so forward as was expected. Thirdly, the fact of the delay on the 20th is questionable. The next

1856.]

morning,' says Colonel Hamley, 'we were under arms early, but did not move for some time: a report went about that a general action was to be fought that day between nine and ten we advanced.' Mr. Woods says, 'Before daybreak on the morning of the 20th, the troops turned out silently. The French were in motion long before the English; but, instead of advancing, they merely closed up so as to join our right wing. Both armies were formed up in marching order at about six o'clock.' But whether there was a delay or not was wholly immaterial. The notion that the Russians could be taken by surprise, or that any important manœuvre unseen by them could possibly be effected, is refuted in a moment by the configuration of the battle-field. The very strength of the Russian position consisted in this, that the allies, come when they might, must carry it in the teeth of a formidable artillery, posted so that there could be no escape from it. If the armies had looked each other in the face for a week, the difficulties of the attack would have been just the same, no greater and no less. There was only one way to win the battle, and that was by sheer hard, downright fighting, and in this way it was that the battle was won. That under any circumstances the Russians would have thought that General Bosquet's division was to make the principal attack, climbing, as it had to do, up a steep side of a cliff, and little supported by artillery, is a very strange supposition for a military historian.

Even on M. de Bazancourt's own showing, the effect of the blunder of the English was very seriously to increase the severity of the task that lay before them, and we might therefore have expected that the prominent part in the description of the fight itself would have been given to the English. On the contrary they are scarcely mentioned at all, while the fortunes of the different French regiments engaged are minutely chronicled. The lateral movement of the right wing of our army had,' we are told, an immense influence upon the result of the day it is therefore important to follow it in all its details.'

105

We have accordingly a long account of all the adventures which Bosquet and his division encountered. It is a tale that is well worth telling, and we can never tire of hearing how ardently and how successfully the French worked, how nimbly they scaled the heights, and by what prodigious efforts of daring and strength they mounted twelve pieces of artillery on the height that commanded the Russian left. But, as M. de Bazancourt observes, this was only one phase of the great drama: he is pleased therefore to give us another phase also, but it is the phase of Canrobert's division. If it were not for his melo-dramatic style, which renders it uncertain whether he is ever speaking exactly the truth, this record of the achievements of the French army would in itself be highly interesting. But, unfortunately, the English phases are omitted, and we cannot pardon an official history of the Alma which overlooks the doings of the English. It is even insinuated that the French saved the English from a defeat, and we have a romantic scene in which St. Arnaud cries, Allons aux Anglais,' and spurs his horse wildly to the spot where the English are suffering.

M. de Bazancourt takes a sort of general survey of what the English did in the action, and is not at all sparing of the praise which he thinks their due. He speaks of their firmness, their coolness, their unbroken resolution; but he always speaks as if a Frenchman, being so much superior, could afford to be patronizing. He thus, for instance, contrasts the behaviour of the two armies at the Alma :

The distinctive genius of the French and English nations, and the individual character of each people, were strikingly manifested on this occasion. While our soldiers and our artillery dashed forward, borne on by an irresistible impulse, surmounting all obstacles, and climbing with desperate activity the steepest precipices, our allies, in admirable line of battle, marched with their usual step, extinguishing the fire of the formidable positions which they had to carry, without slackening or accelerating their march, and facing every difficulty in front, rather than seeking to attack it in flank. An heroic error, which inscribes glorious names upon the page

of history, but inscribes them upon the records of the dead.

Now, what is meant by talking of an heroic error? M. de Bazancourt himself states, that the nature of the ground was such that no flank operation could be attempted on the left of the allied army: there was nothing to do but to go straight forward. The Alma had to be crossed, and the Russian guns were planted so as to command certain spots at which an enemy who wished to cross the river must expose himself. After the river was crossed, the English had no option but to attempt to take the great battery in front of them, and they carried it at the point of the bayonet. The English artillery, and particularly Turner's battery, did take the Russian centre and guns in reverse. It was not a battle that the greatest of generals could have won by his generalship. It was a trial of pluck, of moral and physical strength, and the English were probably the only troops in Europe that could or would have gone up the hill-side of the Alma. The French did a great many things during the war that we did not do, and which we may much admire them for doing, but the English bore the brunt of the first battle, of the battle that permitted the allies to occupy the Crimea; and we cannot allow a foreign historian, writing apparently under the sanction of his government, to slur over the achievements of our troops, and prattle about our immobility and our heroic errors.

The battle of the Alma was quickly followed by the death of St. Arnaud. He had long been dying, but energy and the love of duty kept him alive. He struggled with great endurance and great courage. At times, as M. de Bazancourt rhetorically expresses it, the malady, like a conscious being, seemed to retire before so much courage and so much resistance.' He lived long enough to agree with Lord Raglan on the march to the southern side of Sebastopol; a strategic movement,' we are informed, which was not without danger; but sudden decision and audacious resolution were the instincts of the Marshal.' Lord Raglan is not mentioned as having contributed in the slightest degree

to the decision. We have a very detailed account of St. Arnaud's death, and also of the voyage made by his widow, of the mourning at Constantinople, of the shirts worn by the oarsmen of the caïque appropriated to the Maréchale, of how the declining sun, as the vessel carrying the body passed the Imperial Palace on the Bosphorus,

shed over this immense panorama its empurpled rays, and gave to this last adieuthis last souvenir — a tinge of pure and admirable poetry;" we have a description of the funeral at Paris, and the condolences addressed to the widow by the Emperor; all which matters are probably of very great interest to the friends and relations of St. Arnaud, but scarcely belong to a history of the Crimean expedition.

The French Minister of War, who was asked to aid in giving M. de Bazancourt facilities for writing his history, pronounced his anticipation that the work would be toute nationale. He made a very good guess: nothing could be more national, if it is national to forget everything but your own nation. When the Baron has brought us to Sebastopol, and introduced us to the siege operations, he has a burst of fine writing appropriate to the occasion, in which this kind of national feeling is highly conspicuous. Is it not curious,' he writes, to follow this siege day by day: to witness its birth, its growth; to see it develop itself amid the roar of the cannon and the rattle of the musketry, and progress to the day when our triumphant eagles made their swoop upon Sebastopol, and planted upon the ruins of the conquered town the flag of France ?'

In the account of the ineffectual cannonade of the 17th October, M. de Bazancourt writes as if the French and English batteries were equally successful or unsuccessful; the fact being, that the French batteries were silenced long before the English ceased to fire, and that afterwards the efforts of the latter were sustained, not so much with a hope of seriously injuring the works of the enemy, as from a wish to lighten the force directed against the French. On the narrative of the famous Balaklava charge of the Light Cavalry,