Chapter XXV, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 8 page 2

After the fierce combat on the 23rd of March the allies busied themselves with preparations for a second bombardment of the place. Enormous masses of shot and shell and powder were brought up from Balaclava and Kamiesch, and deposited in the magazines. The forwardness of the railway had greatly diminished the labours of the British, and the French were so numerous that they found no difficulty in finding fatigue parties to carry on the works of approach, and to supply their guns with ample store of munitions. It was about this time that Lord Raglan and General Canrobert began to disagree on essential points. The French commander, naturally afraid of responsibility, was also much embarrassed by the perpetual interference of the Emperor Napoleon in the conduct of the war. That potentate, newly seated on the throne, was ambitious of commanding an army in the field. He had formed the plan of proceeding himself to the Crimea. The news thereof was bruited abroad throughout Europe, and, of course, it was known in the camp of the allies, where, creating a state of expectation, it did not tend tô impart vigour to the proceedings at the French head-quarters. General Canrobert leaned to his master's views, and was afraid of doing anything which might be disapproved of at Paris. The Emperor wanted to operate in the field, and the French general, apparently desirous of keeping the army in a high state of numerical efficiency, was indisposed to thorough measures before the place. So from day to day the opening of the bombardment was deferred; sometimes at the instance of the French, sometimes at the instance of the English general. The first would be desirous of reinforcing the army by bringing up 14,000 Turks from Eupatoria, and the second, haying acquiesced in the delay required, would begin fresh batteries, and then require further time to complete them. At length, on the 8th, Omer Pasha and his troops landed at Kamiesch, and Lord Raglan, although two of his newest and most advanced batteries were not complete, willingly gave his consent to the opening of the second bombardment on Easter Monday, the 9th of April, exactly six months from the date of the first bombardment.

There were in the trenches no fewer than 500 guns. The French had 304 on the left and 76 on the extreme right, while between the two were planted 123 pieces of British ordnance. These were very heavy cannon, those in the British batteries including twenty 13-inch mortars. It is supposed, and with good reason, that the Russians had mounted 100 more guns than the allies; for they had multiplied their batteries, not only on the huge ramparts, but within the town itself. It will be seen, from the disposition of their guns, that the French still clung to the notion that their attack on the west front was the chief attack; and not until a later period did they become fully sensible of the fact that the Malakoff was the key of the place.

During the morning of the 9th, while it was yet dark, the batteries and trenches were manned. There were in the magazines 500 rounds per gun, and 300 per mortar. The orders were to fire as soon as the enemy's works became visible. All night the rain fell heavily, and the wind rose almost to a gale. The blast from the south brought up heavy mists from the Black Sea, and the mist and the rain interposed like a curtain between the trenches and the enemy. Over the plateau, and the town and the sea, hung the rain-clouds in dark folds. By slow degrees, as the sun rose, the enemy's works loomed indistinctly through the fog. The trench guards lay close under the dripping parapets, and the artillerymen, wet to the skin, stood ready in the batteries at their loaded pieces. Then the mist rolled upwards, and through the thinner haze it left behind our artillerymen saw obscurely the outlines of the opposing lines. At half- past five the officers in command decided that the moment had come, and five minutes later the report of a solitary gun gave the signal so eagerly desired. In a moment the whole of our guns were in action; and in another the French began to fire; so that by a quarter to six on that dreary morning, the missiles of five hundred guns, showing a line of fire from the head of the Quarantine Bay to Inkermann, were pouring into the defences and the town of Sebastopol. No second elapsed without a shot or shell. The noise of this stupendous cannonade was comparatively slight in our camps, because the wind bore the volume of sound towards the place; but in Sebastopol and over the sea it must have been appalling.

For some time the enemy did not reply. He had evidently been taken by surprise. When he did begin, the fire of his batteries was neither vigorous nor sustained. To the allies, it appeared as if his batteries were undermanned, and a deserter subsequently affirmed that on this morning there were only 8,000 men in the place, the bulk of the army having been sent to the north side to resist an attack which it was rumoured in Sebastopol the allies intended to make from the side of the Tchernaya. But this is a doubtful story. It is far more likely that the batteries were undermanned at first, because the troops were still in their quarters. The heavy mist and the streaming rain prevented the allied artillerymen from seeing what mischief they were doing to the enemy's works, and the latter were in a worse position, for they laboured within a dense cloud of smoke and mist driven into their faces by the furious blast. All that could be determined for many hours was that the allies were working their pieces with unflinching vigour; and it was not until the sun going down behind Sebastopol, and sending a few weak rays of lurid light through the rifts in the clouds, that straining eyes caught a glimpse of the effects wrought upon the foe by this vast cannonade. The French had breached the loopholed wall, had greatly injured the Central Bastion and the Flagstaff Bastion, and had broken the bridge across the South Harbour. The combined fire of the British and French on the right had broken up the regularity of the outlines of the Redan, Malakoff, and Mamelon, and had reduced the fire of their guns so much, that some batteries were silent, and others only replied at intervals to the unceasing hail of shot and shell poured into them. At night the fire ceased on both sides, except that of the mortars in the allied batteries, which- threw shells all night. Nevertheless, the Russians, with admirable courage and perseverance, wrought all night, repairing damages and remounting guns. So that on the following morning, at dawn, the enemy was found to be prepared anew to sustain his part, and the scene of the 9th was repeated.

The cannonade reopened in mist and rain, but in a few hours the sun shone, greatly to the relief of the men, who had been labouring in the batteries up to their knees in water. Again the allied batteries rapidly obtained a mastery over those of the enemy. Sometimes a fierce tempest of shot and shell from the enemy's guns would burst upon the allies; but the sustained fire of the latter would soon repress this effort, and the Russian responses would again become irregular. Our artillerymen were very severely tried. Their labours were excessive. In one attack the men were ten hours on duty and six off, in the other ten hours on duty out of twenty-four. Wet through for two days, constantly on their feet, these became so swollen that they were afraid to take off their boots, lest they should not be able to put them on again. Day after day, night after night, for a whole week, the bombardment went on with a dreadful monotony; and although our fire inflicted evidently serious damage upon the enemy, he managed to repair his works and mount fresh guns at night. The Russian writers admit a loss of fourteen guns disabled every day; yet this was comparatively of little moment to him, as he had such a boundless store of artillery. Besides the guns in the arsenal, there were all the guns of the fleet, and these resources were used unsparingly. On our side, the resources of the allies in guns and ammunition were limited. The object of the bombardment was definite. It was to reduce the fire so far as to permit of an assault. Very early in the week this effect had been produced to the utmost extent possible. Still the assault was delayed. We alone had fired 47,000 projectiles into the enemy's works, and the French must have fired three times that number. Yet the enemy, though shattered and weakened, was unsubdued, and it was plain that this duel of opposing ordnance might go on till doomsday without a decisive result. Lord Raglan, from the first, had always proposed a heavy bombardment to be followed by a prompt and unflinching assault. To this the French general could not be got to agree. Admiral Bruat is said to have explained the matter thus to one of our naval captains, who asked why the place was not taken at once? "I will tell you the reason why," said the Admiral. "The English have advanced their batteries to within 600 yards of the place; and they and their general all want to go in. The French have got within sixty yards of the town, and their general don't like to and won't go in." This was the rough and ready explanation of the fighting admiral in the French fleet, but there was some truth in the sailor's compendious view of the situation. General Canrobert, however, was not his own master. He was mainly, as we shall see, a sort of executive correspondent of the French Emperor.

This terrible bombardment, which endured from the 9th to the 16th, was singularly deficient in incident. When we opened fire two of our batteries had not been armed. One of these was intended for six 32-pounders, and on the night of the 11th these guns were drawn down to the first parallel by horses, and thence by large fatigue parties towards the battery. But the ground was so muddy, and the clay so tenacious, that only one gun could be got into the work. The next night the attempt was resumed, and again only one more gun could be forced into the battery; for the Russians, hearing the noise of our men, opened a heavy fire, and not only drove off the soldiers, but destroyed one of the guns. Two more nights were spent in arming these batteries, and when they opened fire the enemy concentrated upon them so many guns that, after a prolonged and unequal contest, they were forced to succumb. Again they renewed the conflict, but again they were beaten. The right attack was the scene of a more striking incident. On the 10th, when the fury of the bombardment had subsided, a shell from a Russian gun broke into one of our magazines, and, exploding, blew up the magazine. The magazine man was shattered to pieces so completely that only one of his hands was found. There were nine men wounded, and the battery was disabled. Seeing this, the enemy rushed out on their parapets and cheered. It was the first British magazine they had blown up. One gun only in the battery was uninjured. Captain Dixon, who commanded, instantly manned this gun and opened fire, training it upon the enemy cheering from his parapets; and with this solitary gun, as long as his ammunition lasted, Captain Dixon replied to the murderous fire which the enemy hurled upon the ruined but unconquered work. For this act of valour Captain Dixon received the Victoria Cross. During this second bombardment we had twenty-six pieces of ordnance disabled, and we lost 213 officers and men killed and wounded; the killed being four officers and forty-two men. In justice to the Naval Brigade, it should be recorded that they fought their batteries with a vigour and precision so great as to draw down on them a very severe fire. Their losses alone were greater than those of the artillery and the line put together.

The French, on the western face, carried on a double operation. They kept up an incessant cannonade, and they pushed their approaches towards the place. In a great measure they were compelled to adopt this course, but in part the necessity arose from their persistence in the opinion that the town side was the vulnerable side of the defences of Sebastopol. Pursuing their plan of throwing out counter-approaches, the Russians had established themselves in small works along the whole front of the French trenches. Their riflemen, covering the faces of the Flagstaff and Central Bastions, were posted within seventy yards of the French, and, as their biting fire became intolerable, and, moreover, hindered the progress of the works of attack, it was determined to storm, and hold or destroy them. On the night of the 11th the French stormed three of these pits, or ambuscades, as they call them; and on the 12th they strove to master another series in a ravine lying between the Flagstaff and Central Bastion, but in this they failed with some loss. Seeing the persistence of the French, and being supported by a very strong post in a cemetery on his right, near the head of the Quarantine Bay, Prince Gortschakoff resolved to connect the whole of the pits, and thus form a vast outwork, which in due time might become the front line of the defences on that side, and be armed with cannon. The French would not suffer the execution of this design so fatal to their progress. The Russians had scarcely begun to labour at the new trench than out from the French lines issued two columns. One, under General Rivet, fell upon the Russian left, the other, under General Berton, assailed the Russian right. At the first onset Rivet was driven back, but, bringing up supports, he renewed the conflict, and, after a bloody hand to hand fight, succeeded in seizing the coveted ground. On the other flank, Berton had been at once victorious; and although the Russians tried to expel him, he repelled them, and enabled the sappers and working parties to make good possession, and carry their most advanced works on to this disputed soil. But these night attacks were very costly, especially in officers, seventeen of whom fell in this last combat alone. The enemy still held his strong post in the cemetery, on the left flank of the French approaches, and it was plain that he must be driven thence if these approaches were to run into the place. In the meantime the miners had been at work in front of the Flagstaff, and on the night of the 15th several mines, containing upwards of 5,000 pounds of powder, were exploded. The rock was rent and torn, large stones were hurled around, and the ground for several hundred yards trembled violently. As soon as the commotion ceased, a body of volunteers dashed out of the French trenches to make good a lodgment in the huge pits opened by the powder. They had not reached the irregular shelter, before the Russian batteries opened a terrific fire. They appear to have looked for an assaulting column, as they not only hurled shot and shell from their guns, but kept up an uninterrupted storm of musketry, and tossed grenades from their main lines towards the French. This formed a splendid spectacle, especially as the French gunners replied to the fire. All night the French soldiers laboured to carry a covered way up to the huge ditches made by their mines. But morning came, and found the work unfinished; and the labourers had to enter the trenches, leaving a forlorn hope of a hundred men to make good the new conquest against any counter attack. So rocky was the soil, that five days elapsed before the communication with this advanced parallel was complete, and the newly-conquered ground solidly bound to the main body of the approaches. The French had suffered heavily in the loss of officers. Among them was the chief engineer, General Bizot. On the 11th he was with General Niel, in the English right attack; and in passing thence to the French right attack, a Russian rifleman shot him through the head. The wound proved to be mortal. Bizot was esteemed a skilful officer, and the heads of both armies attended his funeral. He was succeeded by Niel, a more skilful officer, and a great gain to the allied armies.