2nd soldier: ‘You are always grumbling, just like a Pole; you are enough to anger Providence, whom we ought to thank for our lives.’
1st soldier: ‘It’s all the same to you, provided you are not flogged.’
Chodasiewicz spoke of chaos and confusion, of barely sober officers, ‘of the ten minutes of fear and trembling on the second line of heights, when we saw the enemy’s cavalry coming forward to cut down the retreating stragglers, for the most part wounded men’.25
In the end the Russians were defeated, not just by the superior firepower of the Minie rifle, but by a loss of nerve among their men. For Ardant du Picq, who would develop his military theories from questionnaires he sent to the Frenchmen who had fought at the Alma, this moral factor was the decisive element in modern war. Large groups of men rarely engaged physically, he maintained, because at the final moment before the point of contact one side nearly always lost its nerve and ran away. The key thing on the battlefield was military discipline – the ability of officers to hold their men together and stop them fleeing out of fear – because it was when they turned their backs to the enemy that soldiers were most likely to be killed. The suppression of fear was thus the main task of the officer, something he could achieve only through his own authority and the unity he instilled in his men.
What makes the soldier capable of obedience and direction in action is the sense of discipline. This includes: respect for and confidence in his chiefs; confidence in his comrades and fear of their reproaches and retaliation if he abandons them in danger; his desire to go where others do without trembling more than they; in a word, the whole of
These ideas, which were to become central to the military theories of the twentieth century, first became apparent to du Picq in a letter written to him in 1869 by a veteran of the Alma. The soldier had recalled the crucial intervention of his company commander, who had halted the panic of his men after a senior commander had mistakenly assumed that the Russian cavalry was about to charge and had ordered the bugler to signal a retreat:
Happily, a level-headed officer, Captain Daguerre, seeing the gross mistake, commanded ‘Forward’ in a stentorian tone. This halted the retreat and caused us again to take up the attack. The attack made us masters of the telegraph-line, and the battle was won. At this second charge the Russians gave, turned, and hardly any of them were wounded with the bayonet. So then a Major commanding a battalion, without orders, sounds a bugle call and endangers success. A simple Captain commands ‘Forward’, and decides the victory.26
By half past four the battle was over. Most of the Russians had retreated towards the River Kacha in small groups, without leaders or any clear idea of what to do or where to go. Many men would not be reunited with their regiments for several days. At the top of Telegraph Hill the French captured the abandoned carriage of Prince Menshikov, which was being driven off by some Cossacks. In the carriage they found a field kitchen, letters from the Tsar, 50,000 francs, pornographic French novels, the general’s boots, and some ladies’ underwear. On the hill were abandoned picnics, parasols and field glasses left behind by parties of spectators from Sevastopol.27
On the battlefield itself the ground was covered with the wounded and the dead – 2,000 British, 1,600 French and perhaps 5,000 Russians, though the exact numbers are impossible to calculate, since so many of them were abandoned there. It took the British two full days to clear the battlefield of the wounded. They had neglected to bring any medical supplies on the ships from Varna – the ambulance corps with its carts and wagons and stretchers was still in Bulgaria – so doctors had to plead with the commissariat for military carts to remove the wounded from the battlefield. Storekeeper John Rowe of the commissariat emptied his cart of its saddles to help with the wounded, and on his way back to collect his cargo came across a group of wounded officers, among them Hugh Annesley:
An officer of the 30th with a damaged arm was partly supporting an officer of the Scots Fusilier Guards. This officer was leaning forward and dripping blood from his mouth. He could not speak but wrote with a pencil in a small book that he was the Hon[oura]ble Annesley and that a ball was lodged in his throat after having knocked away some of his teeth and part of his tongue. He wanted to know what part of the field (if I may so call it) the Fusilier Doctor had his stand and whether I could convey him there. I could not tell him anything of the Doctor … I also told him I had no discretion as to the use of the mule cart but to fulfil the duty I was there upon.
Hugh Annesley after his return from the Crimea, the black patch covering his wound
Annesley was left to find a doctor on his own. What treatment he received remains unknown, but it would not have involved more than cutting out the ball, probably without the use of proper dressings or any chloroform to dull the shock and pain. Treatments on the battle-field were rudimentary. The staff surgeon of the Light Division, George Lawson, carried out his operations on the ground, until an old door was discovered which he made into an improvised operating table.28
Early the next morning, Somerset Calthorpe, a nephew of Lord Raglan and one of his aides-de-camp, filled his flask with brandy and ‘sallied out to walk over the field of battle’.
The poor wounded were far more quiet than the previous evening; many doubtless had died during the night, and many were too weak and exhausted to do more than moan. I found all glad of something to drink … It was a horrible scene – death in every shape and form. I particularly observed that those shot through the heart or forehead appeared all to have died with a smile on their faces, generally speaking lying flat on their backs, with the arms spread out and the legs rather apart … Those who appeared to have died in the greatest pain were those shot through the stomach; these had always their legs and arms bent, and with all expression of agony on their faces.29
The Russians were unable to collect their wounded from the battle-field. z Those who could walk were left to look for treatment on their own, many of them staggering to the dressing stations set up on the River Kacha, 15 kilometres south of the Alma, or limping back to Sevastopol over the next days. A Russian orderly recalled the scene on the first evening, as he set off with his vehicles for the Kacha:
Hundreds of wounded had been deserted by their regiments, and these, with heart-rending cries and moans and pleading gestures, begged to be lifted into the carts and carriages. But what could I do for them? We were already packed to overloading. I tried to console them by telling them that their regimental wagons were coming back for them, although of course they did not. One man could hardly drag himself along – he was without arms and his belly was shot through; another had his leg blown off and his jaw smashed, with his tongue torn out and his body covered with wounds – only the expression on his face pleaded for a mouthful of water. But where to get even that?
Those who could not walk, about 1,600 wounded Russian soldiers, were abandoned on the battlefield, where they lay for several days, until the British and the French, having cleared their own, took care of them, burying the dead and carting off the wounded to their hospitals in Scutari on the outskirts of Constantinople.30
Three days after the battle, William Russell described the Russians ‘groaning and palpitating as they lay around’.
Some were placed together in heaps, that they might be more readily removed. Others glared upon you from the bushes with the ferocity of wild beasts, as they hugged their wounds. Some implored, in an unknown tongue, but in accents not to be mistaken, water, or succour; holding out their mutilated and shattered limbs, or pointing to the track of the lacerating ball. The sullen, angry scowl of some of these men was fearful. Fanaticism and immortal hate spoke through their angry eyeballs, and he who gazed on them with pity and compassion could at last (unwillingly) understand how these men could in their savage passion kill the wounded, and fire on the conqueror who, in his generous humanity, had aided them as he passed.31
There had been incidents of wounded Russians shooting at the British and French soldiers who had given them water. There were also some reported cases of the Russians killing wounded soldiers on the battle-field. Fear and hatred of the enemy were behind these incidents. French interrogations of the Russian soldiers captured at the Alma revealed that the Russians had been ‘told the most fantastic stories by their priests – that we were monsters capable of the most ferocious savagery and even cannibals’. Reports of these ‘dishonourable’ killings outraged British soldiers and public opinion, reinforcing their belief that the Russians were ‘no better than savages’. But such outrage was hypocritical. There were many
