The Battle of Balaklava followed on the 25th of October and that of Inkerman on the 5th of November. Inkerman was known as the soldiers' battle, because of the absence of officers of high rank. The British camp was surprised by the Russians on a dark and drizzly morning when most of the officers were absent, and the soldiers sustained a hand to hand fight against fiive times their number of Russians until 6,000 French came to their aid and completed the rout of the enemy.
Balaklava was one of the fiercest battles ever fought and will be ever remembered for the charge of the Light Brigade. No more spectacular exhibition of nerve and courage was ever witnessed, and the act was performed before an audience of 50,000 men. The charge of Pickett's division of the confederate army at the battle of Gettysburg was made by several times the number of men and was repeated again and again each time they were driven back. For desperate tenacity of purpose and heroic determination, the charge of the First Minnesota infantry at Gettysburg is more notable, but for dramatic effect nothing could exceed the charge of the 600 — or in reality 723 — English cavalrymen, who in obedience to a mistaken order, rode a mile and a half between two Russian lines, under a murderous fire of musketry to silence a battery that had been seriously harassing the British position.
The British forces suffered severely in the campaign, more than the French or the Sardinians, and almost as much as the Russians. The Turks suffered least of all, notwithstanding the fact that the war was fought in their behalf. They were an insignificant factor in the struggle.
The war was famous for two of the most notable events in military history — the siege of Sevastopol and the charge of the Light Brigade. The siege lasted thirteen months, until the Russians were absolutely starved out. They have always asserted that with food they might have resisted forever. The city was assaulted four times "with infernal fire," and an appalling sacrifice of life, without making much impression. It was not the assaults that brought Sevasto-
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Memorial Church, Sevastopol
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pol down, but the persistence of the siege. Military critics have often said that it was a war of spades and not of guns. The entrenchments of the allies were gradually advanced until the city was like a body of men wrapped in the coils of an anaconda. The situation being no longer tenable, as soldiers say, the Russians spiked their guns, blew up their magazines and fortifications, burned their storehouses, sunk every floating thing in the harbour, and evacuated, Sept. 10, 1855, having lost in the siege, according to their own accounts, 2,684 killed, 7,342 wounded, and 1,763 missing. The Russian losses in the several battles which preceded the siege were more than 30,000 killed and wounded. The French cemetery contains 28,000 graves, most of them marked.
After the Russians retired, the allies took possession of the ruins of the city and remained until peace was declared.
The English losses were placed at 30,000. The unusual severity of the winter, the lack of food, clothing, blankets, medicines, and other necessaries caused terrible hardship and suffering, and more than 18,000 British soldiers died of disease, which is ten times as many as were killed in battle during the entire campaign.
The trouble with the British army in the Crimea was the same that appeared in the South African war fifty years later; the same that prevailed on the part of the United States during our recent war with Spain, a condition that military students are always warning each other against, but seldom providing for. Although England went into the war voluntarily, intervening for the protection of Turkey in an affair which was of no direct interest to the government or the people of Great Britain, both the army and the navy, in every department, were totally unprepared. Upon the arrival of the troops at the Crimea, they were absolutely without necessary supplies of food, clothing, ammunition, and indeed practically everything else. The medical department was without drugs, instruments, litters, and all other requirements.
General Sir Evelyn Wood, in his history of the Crimean War, says:
"The neglect of all preparation for war during the forty years of peace foredoomed the gallant army which left England in 1854, and general mismanagement led it to the verge of annihilation. England's futility cost her dear in treasure, reputation, in blood; but the victims of her shortsighted parsimony sustained the honour of Englishmen, and with ragged clothes, muddy tents, and empty stomachs enriched the best traditions of the service, past and to come."