Give Them a Volley and Charge!

The Battle of Inkermann 1854

Patrick Mercer

• Publisher: Spellmount
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781862274242
• eBook ISBN: 9780752475288
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The day after the Battle of Balaklava, the Russians attempted an armed reconnaissance of the Allied right flank aimed at the exposed Inkermann position, but the remnants of the British 2nd Division bloodily repulsed them.

This book describes the Battle of Inkermann - an engagement which lasted for less than twelve hours, but was one of the bloodiest single engagements in Europe between 1815 and 1914.

CHAPTER VII

‘I never heard our men make such a yelling as they did this day!’

The Sandbag Battery

The opening round of the battle had been bad enough, but what now lay ahead of the British was to prove much more testing. The next hour’s fighting revolved almost entirely around that most useless of fortifications, the Sandbag Battery, the seizure of which the Russians had come to view as a talisman of victory, and the loss of which the British saw as a sure symbol of defeat. It could easily have been ignored by the British as its capture made no difference to the security of Home Ridge so long as the cordon of defences was drawn tight against the slopes of the main position. In fact, had that been the case, control of the fighting would have been easier and firepower more concentrated. As it was, a substantial portion of the meagre forces available for the defence of the position as a whole were to be frittered away whilst the maverick general, Cathcart, jeopardised all that the British had achieved so far in the name of possession of the Sandbag Battery.

The next Russian onslaught was to be commanded by General Dannenberg who had arrived on the field with Pauloff’s column and there taken command of all of the Russian troops exactly as planned. To the north of Shell Hill lay sixteen battalions which had come out of Sevastopol with Soimonoff and had remained in reserve largely unharmed whilst the various, futile assaults were made against the British in the first hour and three-quarters. Dannenberg, however, chose not to use these men for his next attack selecting instead Pauloff’s 11th Division, despite the fact that they had just arrived after a tiring march and knew nothing of the ground. Pauloff’s force was nearly 10,000 strong and was made up of troops fresh to the Crimea but experienced in fighting the Turks. Indeed, it was these very troops whom Dannenberg had sought to protect from going into action on 4 November as it was the first anniversary of their defeat at Oltenitsa. Unlike that battle, however, at Inkermann these veteran troops would be supported by a vast number of artillery pieces. Marching with Pauloff were ninety-seven guns, most of which were quickly brought up into support of those already on Shell Hill, so that by the time the assault started, Dannenberg had eighty-six guns in action which stretched from the western extreme of Shell Hill right the way along East Jut.

Thirteen battalions were now to be used primarily against the centre and right of the British position. Approaching over the western slopes of Shell Hill, all the regiments advanced in the classic formation of skirmishers in the lead followed by two lines of company columns then one line of battalion columns. At the head of the host came the Okhotsk Regiment and a battalion of sappers who marched across Quarry Ravine, over the Tusk and emerged at the very top of St Clement’s Ravine with the sappers leading, slashing their way through the thicker parts of the scrub. After them followed the four battalions of the Iakoutsk Regiment who took the same path until they reached the Quarry Ravine. Here they fanned out to the south with their right straddling the Post Road and their left brushing the right of the Okhotsk. Last came the four battalions of the Selenghinsk which passed to the rear and left of the Okhotsk thus both facing and overlapping the Sandbag Battery and stretching right down into the gorge which marked the British right. The Selenghinsk had been in the eye of the Russian public during the fighting on the Danube after a celebrated incident at the battle of Oltenitsa where much had been made of the stoical defence of the regimental colours by a badly wounded non-commissioned officer. The storm of fire which they had met almost a year ago to the day must have been very much in the forefront of everyone’s minds.

These, then, were the fresh columns which Brigadier-General Adams and his men saw emerging from the very glens down which the Taroutine and Borodino Regiments had just fled. As far as the British were concerned they could have been the same men who had simply re-grouped and come back into the attack after a brief respite. In fact, the lie of the land and the fog probably denied these fresh troops any sight of their broken, dispirited comrades despite the fact that they moved over almost the same piece of ground within minutes of each other.

To oppose this fresh attack Pennefather’s forces were less than plentiful. Guarding the left rear at the head of the Wellway and the Mikriakoff Glen were about 1,000 troops or a third of his force. Muddled around the defences on Home Ridge and to the front of the 2nd Division’s camp were several hundred soldiers of mixed regiments who had come in as picquets thrown together by the confused fighting in the early part of the battle. Many of their officers and non-commissioned officers had gone and all of them were short of ammunition, and whilst there was no absence of fighting spirit amongst them, they lacked any coherence. Colonel Percy Herbert recognised the need for these men, and tried to organise them, but met with little success. The remaining 1,400 or so consisted of the remains of Mauleverer’s wing of the 30th holding the Barrier, 700 men made up of the 41st and three companies of the 49th under Adams at the Sandbag Battery and, on Home Ridge, three companies of the 47th, a handful of the 55th and most of the 95th. To support them there were eighteen guns.

These figures would be swollen somewhat by the reinforcements that were sent from various quarters throughout the next hour, but they never exceeded 4,700. The guns were supplemented by two further batteries, one from the Light Division and one from the First Division, whilst 1,200 guardsmen were to play a crucial role and 2,000 men under Cathcart eventually arrived and were spread across the front. Finally, two battalions of French infantry, about 1,600 strong, arrived.

The first Russian onslaught was on the British right against the 700 or so men of the 41st and 49th. The mist had cleared a little and Adams realised that he was about to be attacked by vastly superior numbers. Accordingly, he sent his brigade-major, Captain Armstrong, to the rear to seek reinforcements and he came upon the Duke of Cambridge with two Guards battalions on the bend of Home and Fore Ridge. Cambridge at once assured Armstrong that he would advance to support Adams’s Brigade; so the Sandbag Battery began its career in earnest as a fatal magnet for British infantry.

Adams knew, however, that he could not wait for reinforcements and determined to attack the Okhotsk columns before they got a foothold on the lip of the Kitspur. His men had found the battery impossible to fire over as there was no fire-step and the embrasures were only wide enough for a couple of riflemen, so most of the defenders were lying down on both sides. With these men giving fire-support, Nos 3 and 4 Companies of the 41st were thrown out in front to deal with the cloud of Russian skirmishers who were leading the Okhotsk columns into the attack. The ground was steep and thick with undergrowth, but the 41st launched themselves into their enemies despite a withering fire from the Russians’ leading troops.

Three officers fell in this rush. Captain Edwin Richards plunged into a group of Russians and was quickly surrounded; they signalled to him to surrender but instead he fired his Dean and Adams revolver about him, hitting four of them and slashed two with his sword before he fell to a bayonet thrust. The artistic Lieutenant Swaby who had had several sketches published in Punch magazine also perished. The circumstances of his death were summarised in a letter to his brother:

‘His men, seeing themselves surrounded, begged of your brother to retire, but he answered "No, I shall not; I will fight to the last". He was seen to fire his revolver several times, and then to use his sword. His body was brought in three hours after the battle, pierced with nine wounds, the fatal one being a gun-shot through the abdomen. By his side was the dead body of a Russian officer with a deep sword cut through the head’.¹

Simultaneously, Lieutenant Taylor died

‘. . . like a mediaeval hero. He was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a Russian officer, when, seemingly by mutual consent, the Russian and British soldiers round about ceased fighting and formed round the contestants. Each officer ran the other through with his sword at the same moment, and as they fell the men took up the fight once more’.²

Steadily the superior Russian numbers began to tell and the two skirmishing companies were forced back upon the main body. The two leading battalions of the Okhotsk were thrown into confusion by the advanced companies of the 41st, but the two supporting battalions came on in good order with the Sapper battalion fighting particularly tenaciously. Whether these fresh troops were made of sterner stuff than those of the 10th and 17th Divisions, or whether the better visibility allowed the Russians to see the tiny numbers that opposed them, is not clear. In any event, as groups fell back under the steel or lead of Adams’s men, more replaced them. There was none of the infectious panic such as that which had seized the Borodino, and the fighting ebbed back and forth across the Kitspur’s ledge. Whether the supporting battalions of the Okhotsk began to outflank the defenders, or whether the Iakoutsk and Selenghinsk skirmishers were responsible will never be clear, but soon the little band was in severe danger of being cut off.

The tall Adams on his big, chestnut charger towered above the troops in the mist and musket smoke and appeared to bear a charmed life as the balls and splinters whined around him. He seemed unaware of the danger to his flanks, however, and roared to his men to hold their ground, while the 41st and 49th gradually lost any semblance of order and merged into a mass which was waging bitter little struggles all around itself.

The 4lst’s Regimental History recounts the story of the colour-party:

‘. . . during this fighting the Colours were with the Regiment . . . it was a mystery why the Russians did not capture them. When the colour-party and escort were a little to the left of the Sandbag Battery, very close to the Russians in the midst of fog and smoke, Lieutenant Lowry was speaking to Lieutenant Sterling when the latter fell dead, shot through the left temple. As the Regimental Colour fell to the ground Sergeant Ford, one of the escort, picked it up. As the Sergeant did so a Russian seized the end of the pole and a tug-of-war took place until Ford drove him through with his bayonet when he let go. Another Russian came up who was driven off with a blow in the face from the butt-end of the Sergeant’s rifle’.³

Neither was the commanding officer to be spared. Lieutenant-Colonel Carpenter, who had just managed to rejoin the Regiment from his duties as field officer, was knocked off his horse and fell into the hands of the advancing Russians who surrounded him and began to stab at him frenziedly, ‘. . . they bayoneted him in the stomach and clubbed him across the mouth’,⁴ but Private Thomas Beach dashed forward and beat them off with bayonet and butt, saving the Colonel and receiving a Victoria Cross for his bravery.

Seeing the danger as the British were forced backwards and into an ever narrower wedge as they sought to resist the Russians’ outflanking moves, Major Eman told his buglers to sound the Regimental call and the ‘halt’. The troops responded at once, found any cover that they could and tried to hold back the Russians with their fire. Slight though this fire was, the Russians checked and the situation might have stabilised had it not been for accurate and rapid artillery fire that was brought down on the British as the fog momentarily cleared. The situation became impossible and the defenders began to pull back towards Home Ridge carrying their casualties with them but pausing to fire as they went in order to keep the Russians at bay. In the nick of time Captain Hamley appeared with a half-battery of three guns which he sited just below Home Ridge in such a way that he was sheltered from the Russians’ artillery but could bring his fire to bear on the battalions that were now occupying the Kitspur. Soon after liaising with Captain Hamley, Brigadier-General Adams was wounded in the ankle and carried from the field. He was to die from this wound and with his disappearance his Brigade, known as ‘Adams’s Forties’ as it contained the 41st, 47th and 49th, lost a much-loved leader.

With what remained of Adams’s men relatively secure on Home Ridge, the flank protected by Hamley’s guns and the Guards not yet committed, the British were in a good position to resist the next Russian move. However, the Sandbag Battery had fallen once again into the hands of the Russians and whilst there was no tactical sense in trying to recover it, honour demanded that the British should do just that. The bloodiest episode in the whole course of the battle was about to start.

The Guards were to be the first substantial reinforcements to arrive, but a strange piece of arrogance and xenophobia had already delayed the arrival of French assistance. General Bosquet had realised at once that the steady and determined firing from the British position on his left flank indicated an attack similar to that of 26 October and for which he knew his assistance would be required. Quickly assessing the manouevrings of Gortchakoff’s forces on the Balaklava plain as a feint, he ordered two battalions to march northwards at best speed whilst he and his staff rode on ahead to link up with the British and find out where the reinforcements could best be deployed. Bosquet had seen much fighting in North Africa and was perfectly used to the confusion of battle; what he could not have anticipated was the frosty reception he was to receive from the two Napoleonic War veterans, Cathcart and Brown, whom he met on his way forward. Cathcart was on a similar mission; he had put as much of his division as he could under arms and ordered them forward, and he was in advance of them trying to find out what was going on. Bosquet’s offer of help was coolly rebuffed, however, both Britons suggesting that Bosquet would be better employed guarding the British rear and that the whole situation was in hand. Bosquet’s instincts told him otherwise, but reasoning that the British must know what was happening better than he, he ordered both battalions to return to their original positions. Only sometime later did Bosquet set off again, lured by the din of battle and his instinctive feel for an emergency which had been underscored by an urgent plea for help from Raglan.

Two battalions of the Guards had arrived on Home Ridge and stood ready for use. In front stood 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards with 1st Battalion Scots Fusilier Guards some little way to their rear. The third battalion of the Brigade, 1st Coldstream Guards, had come off picquet somewhat later than the other two and was still hurrying forward towards the sound of the guns when the Duke of Cambridge was trying to decide how best to use his troops. The Guards were to be plagued by being under dual command; Bentinck, their Brigadier, was with them but so was Cambridge, their Divisional commander who ‘. . . was not a man so constituted as to be proof against the contagion of surrounding opinion’.⁵ To him and those who were with him the Sandbag Battery seemed to be the logical point to counter-attack, particularly in light of the fact that their support had already been sought by Adams’s aide-de-camp. Before he launched his assault, however, Cambridge sent an officer to Bosquet to tell him that the attack was in earnest and that help was needed, whilst he sent two further officers to get a clear picture of what was happening on the slope below his battalions. The first officer, Colonel Hamilton, got only a short distance before his horse was felled. The second, Sir Charles Russell, met Captain Paynter who was trying to get his guns into position to reply to the increasing Russian fire and asked where the enemy were. Paynter replied, ‘They are all around us, but thickest there’,⁶ pointing towards the battery. Russell’s report decided Cambridge who moved both battalions east along the ridge into a position from which they could attack.

With the retirement of Adams’s men, the Russians had continued to fan out and thirteen battalions now sprawled around the earthwork in a huge, dense crescent of men with the Iakoutsk edging forward to the west and the Selenghinsk moving sluggishly along the British flank in the east. The force which Cambridge was to attack most immediately with his 700 or so guardsmen were the nine battalions, about 7,000 men, of the Okhotsk, Selenghinsk and single Sapper battalion. The Grenadiers led the way. Under Colonel Reynardson the battalion aligned itself, fixed bayonets and set off at a steady tramp downhill towards their enemies. A volley was ordered, but the battalion, like so many others, had not had time to draw the charges from their rifles after coming off picquet and many misfired. This seems only to have infuriated the guardsmen more – they prided themselves on their skill-at-arms every bit as much as their steadiness on parade – and now the very weapons which had stood them in such good stead at the Alma were letting them down; there was nothing for it but to pitch into the Russians with the bayonet. In a fighting frenzy they cleared the battery in a single stroke and drove the Russians off the Kitspur lip and into the thick undergrowth which clung to the steep slopes below. Just like the 41st before them, by supreme efforts the officers managed to restrain the men from chasing the Russians into the valley and a little time was bought for the soldiers to clear their rifles by firing percussion cap after percussion cap into the damp powder in an effort to dry it enough for it to fire.

There was no sense in sacrificing the advantages of height which the new holders of the battery enjoyed on the Kitspur by chasing the Russians, but the lack of pursuit did allow them to re-group and return to the assault. This was precisely what happened and there followed a series of attacks in which the Russians came pouring over the Kitspur to be met by a steadily diminishing group of Grenadiers who hurled them back with a savagery that increased as their ranks reduced. Sergeant-Major Agar was killed as he climbed over the parapet of the battery in one of the rushes, whilst Alfred Tipping, one of the Grenadiers’ officers, records:

After about three minutes to give the men breathing time we charged again but they were too many for us and would not move. Three of us got under the parapet and there they were with the muzzles of their guns close to our heads, but could not depress them sufficiently to shoot us and the moment their heads came over the top we had either a revolver or a sword to receive them with. They then hurled huge stones upon us’.⁷

Meanwhile, the Scots Fusilier Guards had been told to form on the left of the Grenadiers in order to oppose the columns coming out of St Clement’s Ravine. A gap had appeared between the two battalions as the Scots lay down and held their ground and the Grenadiers eddied back and forth around the battery. Colonel Walker, the Scots Fusilier Guards’ Commanding Officer, was cantering about the field on his charger trying to get a feel for the Russians’ intentions and still keep in touch with the Grenadiers on his right when he saw two columns pushing up the ravine to his front and emerging out of the fog. Getting his battalion to its feet he ordered it to move forward into a position from which it could make its fire tell to best effect when Cambridge’s voice boomed out, ‘Where the devil are you going to, sir? Form on the left of the Grenadiers!’⁸ Despite the urgency of the situation, Walker chose to ob...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• I: ‘The bullet is a fool, the bayonet is a hero!’
• II: ‘Never mind forming, for God’s sake, come on, come on men!’
• III: ‘Raglan and Canrobert were donkeys!’
• IV: ‘An hour of the best training that any good troops could have!’
• V: ‘. . . the exemplary chastisement inflicted upon the presumption of the Allies!’
• VI: ‘. . . forward with the bayonet!’
• VII: ‘I never heard our men make such a yelling as they did this day!’
• VIII: ‘. . . should there be confusion in the enemy’s batteries’
• IX: ‘We saw five columns of the beggars advancing upon us!’
• X: ‘. . .save your guns, all is lost!’
• XI: ‘They lay as they fell, in heaps’
• Bibliography