General Pelissier — whose African i-eputation, as well as his signally dashing conduct in many of the night skirmishes so frequent during the whole siege between the French and Eussians, had no doubt led to his selection as the successor of Canrobert — determined to inaugurate his command in a manner which would make an indelible impression alike on friends and foes. General Canrobert, in his despatch of the 17th April, states that all the ambuscades of the Cemetery were occupied and destroyed on the night of the 13th by the French attacking force; but it would appear that the new parallel which he there states to have been constructed in consequence of this success did not embrace the ground thus temporarily acquired, since on the 22nd May, the date of the operation which we are now to chronicle, the Russians were still in possession of the Cemetery. This Cemetery and the pits connected with it formed a chain of ambuscades, extending from the Central to the Quarantine Bastions. "This cemetery," says Major Hamley, "was surrounded by a wall, and was about seventy yards square; the further wall was less than 100 yards from the wall of the town, which was of masonry, upright (those of fortified places are in general strengthened with sloping buttresses, termed revetments), and having no ditch. Between the wall of the Cemetery and that of the town was a line of rifle-screens, strongly constructed of earth and gabions, and capable of holding each at least a dozen marksmen."
These rifle-pits, connected with each other and with the two bastions, thus formed a vast j)lace d'armes, from whence the enemy might impede the advance of the French works, make powerful sorties, and even take in flank the French left attack. Their possession became therefore absolutely essential to our Allies, and Pelissier determined to capture them at whatever cost. On the night of the 22nd May accordingly he collected in the trenches on the left a force amounting to 1,200 men: and at nine o'clock terrible and sustained artillery fire, mixed with incessant volleys of musketry, announced that the struggle had commenced. The Russians, who were quite prepared, had assembled an imposing force to resist the attack, and through the long hours of all that night, and by the uncertain light of a moon paled by the continuous and vivid fire from rifle and from cannon, the doubtful contest ebbed and flowed in waves of human blood. Five times were the ambuscades carried and retaken; but when the first gray of dawn shed its spectral light u < fw _1 u z
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on the horrors of the scene, the Cemetery, filled with the bodies of those who had fallen on either side, and two of the rifle-pits beyond it, were in the hands of the French. During the day the Eussians hoisted a flag of truce, with a view to the burial of the dead, but as a fresh attack was in contemplation for that evening the French refused to respond to it.
An enormous force, stated to have amounted to the almost incredible number of 30,000 men, was concentrated at dusk in the French trenches for the renewal of the attack, and four field-pieces, 12-pounders, were got into a position which commanded the spot on which the enemy's reserves were ascertained to have been posted the night before.
The French again advanced at the same hour as on the preceding evening, but the resistance of the enemy, though obstinate, was not protracted; overawed by the determination of their assailants, borne down by superior numbers, and their heavy columns torn and shattered by the plunging fire of the four field-pieces, the Eussians after an hour's fighting retired, abandoning the Cemetery and the rifle-pits, which were immediately connected with the French approaches, and occupied as an advanced line. On the 24th there was a burial truce for six hours. In these two affairs the loss of the French amounted to 1,600 killed and wounded, and that of the Eussians to the appalling number of 6,000.
The interval which now elapsed before the opening of the third bombardment has been devoted by the greater number of the writers on the war to recording the results of the expedition which on the 22nd May sailed for the Sea of Azoft", with a like object, but a far different event, to that which so ingloriously returned on the 8th.