The present writer does not doubt that Dannenberg's plan of attacking by both sides of the Careenage ravine was the right one. It is true that to have attacking troops divided by an obstacle is a great disadvantage. It is also true, as Kinglake says, that "the camps of the Allies were so placed on the Chersonese that, to meet perils threatening from the western side of the Careenage ravine, they could effect a rapid concentration." But they could only effect it by robbing the eastern side of what was indispensable for its defence. If, instead of one part of the enemy's army attacking while the other was coming up in its rear, and therefore exercising no effect upon the battle, both had attacked simultaneously, it is hardly credible that one (and if one, both) would not have broken through. And if it is a disadvantage that the front of attack should be divided by an obstacle, it is
The Attack s^t^t ably met. 159
a still greater evil to restrict the attack, especially against very inferior numbers, to too confined a space. By crowding on to the eastern slope only, in numbers amply sufficient to have attacked both, the Russians were choosing the ground which best suited our numbers and our circumstances, and which least suited their own.
It has been already remarked that as the mode of fighting the action by us differed radically from that of the 26th of October, so did the circumstances on the two days. On the 26th we had a great superiority in artillery, and plenty of room on the crest for the eighteen guns and the small force of infantry. On the 5th November nearly half of our narrow position was occupied by the line of batteries. Where, then, were the infantry to be posted ? Were they to be close in rear of the batteries ? Then the tremendous fire of the enemy would have swept the crest with double effect, ravaging both guns and infantry. If posted in front of the guns, the result would be the same, with the additional disadvantage that our guns would be firing over the heads of our infantry. By pushing the troops down the slope, they met the enemy before their columns could issue from the ravines and deploy ; and even on the extreme right we are by no means certain that to encounter them on the ledge near the Sandbag Battery (a mode of action which Mr Kinglake laments as false policy) was not the best way of dealing with the ground, for if we had withdrawn our line there to the main crest, and left the space between the cliff and the Fore Ridge un-
1 60 The Sandbag Battery.
occupied, the Russians, after ascending to the ledge, would have been able to take breath beneath its shelter before gaining the plateau, and when there they would have had the opportunity of solving what was one of their great difficulties throughout the day, namely, finding open space to deploy on at a certain distance from our front. As it was, they came up rugged steeps, in disorder and under fire, to close with us still uphill, while yet breathless with the ascent, and here consequently occurred their severest losses. On the whole, therefore, the manner in which our troops fought the battle may be thought to have been very fortunately adapted to the topography of the field, and to the proportions of the contending forces.
It is natural that a Russian chronicler should seek to extenuate this defeat, and we will not greatly blame Todleben for increasing the strength of the English, in the first phase of the combat, to 11,585 (more than trebling their actual force), for laying great stress on the "fieldworks" which strengthened the position, and for claiming successes which, in some mysterious way that he does not elucidate, were turned into disasters. In his visit to the field, in 1869, Mr Kinglake found the Sandbag Battery still there — very likely it is there now — and his detailed account of it is sufficiently exact. But he and other chroniclers advert to it, when describing the combats of which the area around it was the scene, in terms which would convey to those who have never seen it an altogether exaggerated idea of its importance, and even
Russian Exaggerations. 161