HEIGHTS BEFORE SEBASTOPOL, OCTOBER 25 -- If the exhibition of the most brilliant
valor, of the excess of courage, and of a daring which would have reflected
luster on the best days of chivalry can afford full consolation for the disaster
of today, we can have no reason to regret the melancholy loss which we sustained
in a contest with a savage and barbarian enemy.
I shall proceed to describe, to the best of my power, what occurred under my
own eyes, and to state the facts which I have heard from men whose veracity
is unimpeachible, reserving to myself the right of private judgement in making
public and in surpressing the details of what occurred on this memorable day...
[After losing ground to a British force half its size, the Russians retreated
to the heights above Sebastopol, a port town on the Black sea] .
At 11:00 our Light Cavalry Brigade rushed to the front... The Russians opened
on them with guns from the redoubts on the right, with volleys of musketry and
rifles.
They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and
splendor of war. We could hardly believe the evidence of our senses. Surely
that handful of men were not going to charge an army in position? Alas! It was
but too true -- their desperate valor knew no bounds, and far indeed was it
removed from it so-called better part -- discretion. They advanced in two lines,
quickening the pace as they closed towards the enemy. A more fearful spectacle
was never witnessed than by those who, without the power to aid, beheld their
heroic countrymen rushing to the arms of sudden death. At the distance of 1200
yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a
flood of smoke and flame through which hissed the deadly balls. Their flight
was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, the dead men and horses, by steeds
flying wounded or riderless across the plain. The firsst likne was broken --
it was joined by the second, they never halted or checked their speed an instant.
With diminished ranks, thinned by those thirty guns, which the Russians had
laid with the most deadly accuracy, with a halo of flashing steel above their
heads, and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow's death cry, they flew
into the smoke of the batteries; bgut ere they were lost from view, the plain
was strewed with their bodies and with the carcasses of horses. They were exposed
to an oblique fire from the batteries on the hills on both sides, as well as
to a direct fire of musketry.
Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabers flashing as they rode
up to the guns and dashed between them, cutting down the gunners as they stood.
The blaze of their steel, like an officer standing near me said, "was like
the turn of a shaol of mackerel." We saw them riding through the guns,
as I have said; to our delight, we saw them returning, after breaking through
a column of Russian infantry and scattering them like chaff, when the flank
fire of the battery on the hill swept them down, scattered and broken as they
were. Wounded men and dismounted troopers flying towards us told the sad tale
-- demigods could not have done what they had failed to do.
At the very moment when they were about to retreat, a regiment of lancers was
hurled upon their flank. Colonel Shewell, of the 8th Hussars, saw the danger
and rode his men straight at them, cutting his way through with fearful loss.
The other regiments turned and engaged in a desperate encounter. With courage
too great almost for credence, they were breaking their way through the columns
which enveloped themn, whern there took place an act of atrocity without parallel
in modern warfare of civilized nationw. The Russian gunners, when the storm
of cavalry passed, returned to their guns. They saw their own cavalry mingled
with the troopers who had just ridden over them, and to the eternal disgrace
of the Russian name, the miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape and canister
on the mass of struggling men and horses, mingling friend and foe in one common
ruin. It was as much as our Heavy Cavalry Brigade could do to cover the retreat
of the miserable remnants of that band of heroes as they returned to the place
they had so lately quitted in all the pride of life.
At 11:35 not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in from
of those bloody Muscovite guns...
