Read Ebook: How Jack Mackenzie won his epaulettes by Stables Gordon Pearse Alfred Illustrator

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Ebook has 199 lines and 12166 words, and 4 pages

"This is Sister Mary," said Maggie, introducing a tall, dark lady, who was sitting in a corner busily mending a pair of soldier's stockings.

Mary bowed and smiled, and would have left the room had Maggie permitted her, which she would not.

Then what a long, delightful talk they all had about home and old times! And what a number of questions had to be asked and answered, only those who have been in a somewhat similar position could believe or understand.

Dr. Reikie got up at last.

"No, Jack," he said; "don't you leave for a short time. I'm going on duty, and to have a look round the wards. I'll call for you shortly. What I shall see, Jack, would not interest although it might horrify you."

Jack Mackenzie gladly stayed behind with his sister, who was at that time off duty.

"Wards" Dr. Reikie had called the chambers where lay the sick and wounded. This was for courtesy's sake, perhaps, for they really were long halls or corridors. The doctor had seen many a hospital, he had done duty at Malta and in Haslar at home, but never had he seen anything approaching to the horrors he now witnessed in those abodes of misery, pain, gloom, despair, and death.

Those poor soldiers lay in two long rows almost side by side, the feet of one row to the feet of the other, with a passage for doctor and nurse between.

Cap in hand, and accompanied by an army surgeon, he walked silently along corridor after corridor.

Oh the horror and the sorrow of it! Oh the agony and the anguish displayed on nearly every second face, when it could be seen! for some were so swathed in bandages and plasters that nothing was visible save the mouth and the sunken eyes. Here and there were patients who groaned--at times some of these started in shrieking terror and delirium; but, for the most part, they lay still and silent, and grateful for the slightest comfort or sympathizing word.

Many of them had been stricken down with dysentery; others were plague-stricken, with pinched, blue, contracted features, and cold, thin hands, like claws of birds--moribund; and others, again, were dead and stiff.

If anything could add to the horror of this terrible scene, it was the sickening odour that permeated every nook and corner of the hospital. Dr. Reikie, although he stopped here and there to inquire kindly how some of his own patients felt, and to give them a few words of hope and consolation, was himself glad when he stood once more in the open air; his heart was sore and sad to think that many of the poor fellows, now so low and sick unto death, had been among the bravest of the brave in action and the merriest of the merry around the camp-fire.

Yet every day the two friends found time to visit the hospital; and when at last the time of final departure came round, poor Maggie treated herself once more to a hearty cry as she bade her brother adieu.

Neither he nor honest Reikie went away empty-handed; for Maggie and Sister Mary had managed to knit three pairs of warm stockings for them, although to do so they had to work even at the bedsides of the patients.

I have said nothing at all about one other part of this great barrack-hospital into which it had been Dr. Reikie's privilege to have a peep. This was the ward or wards set apart for the wives of soldiers who had been permitted to come to the Black Sea with their husbands. The wretchedness, suffering, and misery of these poor women could never be graphically told. They are dead and gone long ago, so what need is there to resuscitate even the memory of the agonies they endured?

The ship was detained for some time by contrary winds, Captain Gillespie being desirous of saving his precious coals; for the winter was severe enough on the Upland, and fuel so scarce that well did coals merit the name of black diamonds.

But though the sea was rough and the breezes keen and cold, every hour on the ocean seemed to strengthen both Jack and Dr. Reikie; and when they once more landed at Balaklava, they felt men again in every sense of the word.

In hardship and in suffering, then, did the weary winter of 1854-55 drag on. But meanwhile, both by the besieged and the besiegers, the great game of war was being steadily and steadfastly played; and our poor men, now reduced in numbers by cold, by famine, wounds, and pestilence, to little over 11,000, were never out of danger from bullet-shot and shell.

The war was even carried on underground, and mines were met by counter-mines; by sorties of the enemy too, which, however, were repulsed with great slaughter. The Russians, moreover, succeeded in pushing out their works beyond their trenches, and the allied armies extended their lines, till they almost met.

The war, indeed, seemed to wax more determined and bitter as the time flew by.

PELISSIER TO THE FRONT--DEATH OF LORD RAGLAN.

"The king is dead! Long live the king!"

The emperor probably died half heart-broken: the victories not only of our troops and those of the French in the Crimea, but of the Turks, who in February drove the Russians from the gates of Eupatoria, had told upon his health; even the winter, with its hardships, its diseases, its death, had not annihilated our armies, and hope itself seemed to desert the heart of the great Czar. Heigh-ho! death is no respecter of persons; but even in the last moments of his life, Nicholas found strength to send a message to his troops. He was passing away into life eternal, but even from on high he would bend down to bless his warriors for their unequalled constancy and valour!

If any one expected that the war would now cease, he was much mistaken; for Alexander was as determined as his father had been.

But a few months more and summer would be in its prime and glory, the roads would no longer be sealed against the influx of troops, and the allied armies would be crushed out of existence and driven into the sea by sheer force of numbers, Sebastopol relieved, and victory won.

Well, this would certainly have been for us a national disaster of the gravest kind, and for the French also; but would it have put an end to the war? Would we, because the Crimea was lost, have stood quietly by and seen the northern Bear establish himself at Constantinople, complacently licking his paws as he saw his ships of war pass majestically to or from the Mediterranean? Undoubtedly not. The relief of Sebastopol by the Russians, and our destruction on the Upland, would have been but the commencement of a greater war that might have raged for years, despite the fact that it would have anastomosed with the terrible rebellion in India.

Gortschakoff was now general over the Russian army in the Crimea instead of Menschikoff. That was the second change.

Many changes were taking place at home that affected the carrying on of the war considerably--splits in the cabinet, the resignation of a cabinet, councils of war, and indignation meetings.

New men came to the front in the French army, and new theories were advanced.

The Emperor of the French himself, who probably had a hankering after military glory, had a theory. Everybody had a theory; though, as Jack told his friend Dr. Reikie, speaking perhaps from his early experience in Malony's shop, theory never bent a red-hot horse-shoe. There is no good standing and looking at it till it begins to get cold; the plan is to go at it hammer and tongs.

Canrobert, indeed, was far from very resolute, and therefore might do more harm than good. Good he might have done had he taken the bull by the horns, and resolved on a grand assault after the terrible bombardment. This assault was to have taken place on the 28th of April; but on the 25th, orders had been given to the French admiral to get ready all his ships at once to embark the army of reserves at Constantinople. So this news determined Canrobert not to make the attack. He thought it safer and wiser to wait for these reinforcements, and Lord Raglan had to give an unwilling assent.

An expedition had been despatched to attack Kertch, for through this place the Russians were receiving all their supplies. It had sailed on May 3; but Canrobert recalled the French portion of it by a fast steamer, on receiving a telegram from the Emperor of the French to the effect that an expedition must be made at once against the Russian army. In the middle of May, the emperor's plans in detail were laid before Canrobert by an officer direct from France. He, Canrobert, was to command the field army, General Pelissier to take sole charge of the siege-works with a force of Turks and French, and the British to take to the field.

To this plan there were insuperable objections, though it might have looked very pretty on paper to the eyes of the French emperor, who, by the way, was never a Buonaparte.

So it fell through. Canrobert resigned, and General Pelissier was made commander-in-chief of the French army.

Pelissier was a bold and a daring man, and a most persistent. He had his own ideas about carrying on war, and didn't care even for offending his emperor. I suppose he thought that after all there was nothing so successful as success.

Pelissier determined to do two things--to capture an important new outwork of Todleben's, and to send an expedition to Kertch to crush the Russians there, and stop Gortschakoff's supplies. He was successful in both.

The Kertch expedition was a very pretty little affair.

On the map you will notice the position of Kertch on the straits of that name. These straits, you will note, are narrow, and connect the Black Sea with the Sea of Azof. Into this latter the Don pours its floods, and bears on its bosom the products of immense villages if not towns that line its banks. The largest town is Taganrog, near the entrance of the Don to this inland ocean.

The Straits of Kertch were well lined with batteries, and General Wrangel, who commanded them, had it in his power to make a splendid demonstration against our forces. But if he was Wrangel by name, he certainly was not wrangle by nature; and so he not only cut and run, but destroyed his batteries and burned his ships of war.

But, alas! there was to be no such thing. It was not to be in this way that Jack should win honour and glory and those epaulettes--or the halo.

No doubt Sturdy was disappointed also. However, the whole business was a walk-over. A very sad one, however, for the Russ. For the whole of the stores intended for Gortschakoff, as well as the vessels supplying them, were captured and destroyed. It was only the smaller vessels that could get through the straits, but they did execution enough. Even at Taganrog they destroyed the stores and depots on the beach, and they also bombarded and took the fortress of Arabat.

The larger ships outside the straits made for the coast of Circassia, and without a struggle destroyed the fortified places at Anapa and Soujouk-kale.

The stage was now being rapidly cleared for the last and final act in this drama of war. Already Canrobert had driven the enemy from Tchorgoum, and utterly demolished their camp.

It is somewhat galling to learn from Todleben that the Flagstaff Bastion and other works in front of the town had several times been so reduced by our fire that had they been assaulted our success or that of the French would have been certain, and that Sebastopol must then have fallen.

Pelissier, and with him Raglan, persisted in his one and main object, and that was the capture of the Mamelon, the White Works, and the Quarries, and these fortifications must be carried by storm. The emperor himself stormed in another fashion. He stormed by telegraph. Pelissier tore the telegrams up and let them blow, while he coolly acted according to his own judgment and that of Lord Raglan.

On the sixth of June a cannonade of tremendous proportions was turned upon the Russian works, and carried on till darkness, doing terrible damage. It was resumed on the 7th. About six the same evening the French and Turks carried the Mamelon by storm; and after desperate fighting, which lasted, on and off, throughout the night, the British Light Division and Second Division captured and held the Quarries.

The enemy was thus once more driven back to the rear of his former lines.

How fierce the fighting had been may be judged from the fact that the French had lost 5,440 men, the British 693, and the Russians over 5,000.

On the 18th, Pelissier and our own forces made a terrible assault upon the Malakoff and Redan. It is not, dear reader, because we were defeated in this attempt that I do not here give any detailed account of the fighting and the slaughter--for one should never be ashamed to own one's faults and defeats--but because the facts are all too well known to the veriest school-boy.

I may add, however, that after these failures I should not have cared to stand in Pelissier's shoes, seeing that he was acting entirely contrary to his emperor's plans.

But Pelissier persisted--he could not very well withdraw now--and so the siege went on, but more methodically and prudently.

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