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viously occupied, Lord Raglan determined to contract his line of defence to the immediate vicinity of Balaklava and the steeps in the right rear of the British army.

Next day the enemy sallied forth from Sebastopol, 7000 or 8000 strong, and attacked the right flank of the British army; but, steadily met by the second division under Sir De Lacy Evans, supported by the brigade of Guards, a regiment of Rifles, two guns from the light division, and two French battalions, the Russians were gallantly repelled, and then chased down to the slope, with a loss of some 600 killed and wounded, and 80 prisoners.

THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN (NOVEMBER 5TH, 1854)

Another fierce engagement, the most important of all in which the belligerents have yet been engaged, took place on the 5th of November. For some days previously, the Russians, who already possessed a large force in the prolonged fortifications, and others to the rear of the allies in the neighbourhood of Balaklava, had been observed to receive large reinforcements, which, added to Liprandi's corps on the Russian left, of 30,000 or more, and the garrison, would probably justify Lord Raglan's estimate of 60,000 men arrayed against the allies on the memorable 5th of November. To augment the weight of the force brought down to crush the besiegers, the now useless army of the Danube had been withdrawn from Moldavia, leaving Bessarabia still defended by its special army, but not, it is supposed, entirely exhausting the reinforcements to be brought from the interior. The effort of Menshikov to throw his strength into a succession of powerful and, if possible, decisive blows, is shown by the advance of Dannenberg's army in the very lightest order, augmenting the numbers about Sebastopol without much regard either to their equipment or provision. The aim was to bear down by accumulated pressure; and it was with such a view that the batteries resumed the bombardment of the allies in their besieged camp, a strong force from the garrison moved out to act with Dannenberg's army, and Liprandi made a feint, that might have been, had it succeeded, a penetrating attack towards the rear; and as it was, it did busy a portion of the British and French forces. Thus the allies were to be occupied all round, while the weak, unintrenched, and unfortified point in their position towards the valley of the Inkerman was to be penetrated by a force of great weight and momentum.d

The English encampments were established between Karabelnaia and the valley of the Tchernaía, on a plateau called Inkerman, which two ravines narrowed at the south in a way which made it a kind of isthmus. Two strong Russian columns, consisting together of thirty-six thousand men, converged in this direction. The first came out from Karabelnaia; the second descended from the heights on the opposite bank of the Tchernaia and crossed that river near its mouth in the bay.

They had to join in order to turn the English camp and take it from the back. Their movements were badly planned; each acted on its own initiative instead of joining. However, the English were in extreme danger. The Karabelnaia column surprised one of their divisions and nearly overwhelmed it by force of numbers. With a small reinforcement the English disputed every inch of ground with desperation and the struggle was prolonged through rain and fog, till the Russian general Soimonov was mortally wounded; fear struck his battalions: they ceased to advance, then retreated, not receiving any orders, and did not return to the combat.

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The column which came from the opposite side of the Tchernaia, and which General Pavlov commanded, had in the meantime commenced its attack on the other part of the English camp. Here were furious shocks and long alternations of success and defeat. Although the English right had been joined by their left, having got rid of the Karabelnaia column, the inequality of numbers was still great. The English had driven back the advance guard of Pavlov's column to the valley of the Tchernaia; but the greater part of this column, supported by an immense artillery (nearly one hundred guns) pushed forward its closely serried battalions with such violence that in the end they were masters of an earthwork, which protected the right side of the English camp (a battery of sand bags).

Had the Russians remained in this position, the allies would have lost the day. Till then the English had made it their pride to keep up the struggle without the help of the French. There was not a moment to lose; two of their generals were killed, several no longer able to fight; the soldiers were exhausted. Lord Raglan called the French, who were awaiting the signal.

General Bosquet, who commanded the corps nearest the English, sent out the first two battalions he had at hand. It would have been too late if the enemy had passed the fortification they had seized and had extended beyond the isthmus. The Russians had been less active than brave. The French foot soldiers renewed the marvellous charge of the English cavalry at Balaklava. In their vehemence, they drove the greater number of the Russians far behind the battery of sand bags; they were repulsed in their turn by the mass of the enemy; but the movement of the latter had nevertheless been checked. The Russian leaders were not able to manœuvre promptly enough to place themselves, as they might have done, between the English and the new reinforcements of French.

The French battalions arrived in double quick time with that agility already shown at Alma by the soldier trained in African wars. The Russians repulsed a second attack; they succumbed under a third made with more reinforcements. One of their regiments was precipitated by the French zouaves and turcos from the summit of the rocks into a deep ravine where it was shattered. The rest of the Russian troops made a slow and painful retreat under the terrible fire of the French artillery.

This sanguinary day cost the Russians twelve thousand men, killed, wounded, or missing. The English lost about twenty-six hundred men, the French seventeen to eighteen hundred. Beside their decisive intervention on the plateau of Inkerman, the French troops had repulsed a sortie of the garrison at Sebastopol.

According to military historians, the check of the Russians was due, to a great extent, to their want of mobility and their incapacity for manoeuvring; the pedantic and circumstantial tactics imposed on them by Nicholas only served to hinder them in presence of the enemy.

The allies, victorious, but suffering after such a victory, suspended the assault and decided to keep on the defensive until the arrival of new forces. They completed the circumvallation which protected the plateau of Chersonesus, from Inkerman to Balaklava; the Russians had retired completely; the French protected themselves on the town side by a line of contravallation.

While the allies were occupied in digging trenches, laying mines, and increasing the number of their batteries, the Russians, directed by the able Todtleben, strengthened those defences of the city that were already in existence and under the fire of the enemy erected new ones. The allies, in spite of the sufferings incident to a severe winter, established themselves more and

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more securely, and on a strip of sandy coast prepared to defy all the forces of the empire of the czar.

On the 26th of December, 1825, Nicholas had been consecrated by the blood of conspirators as the armed apostle of the principle of authority, the destroying angel of counter-revolution. This was a part that he played not without glory for thirty years, having put down the Polish, Hungarian, and Rumanian revolutions and prevented Prussia from yielding to the seductions of the German revolution. He had obstructed if not destroyed the French Revolution in all its legal manifestations, the monarchy of July, the republic, and the empire. He had saved the Austrian Empire and prevented the creation of a democratic German empire. Like Don Quixote he was chivalrous, generous, disinterested, but represented a superannuated principle that was out of place in the modern world. Day by day his character as chief of a chimerical alliance became more of an anachronism; particularly since 1848 aspirations of the people had been in direct contradiction to his theories of patriarchal despotism. In Europe this contradiction had diminished the glory of the czar, but in Russia his authority remained unimpaired owing to his successes in Turkey, Persia, Caucasus, Poland, and Hungary. All complaints against the police were forgotten as well as the restrictions laid on the press, and all efforts to control the government in matters of diplomacy, wars, and administration were reliquished; it was believed that the laborious monarch would foresee everything and bring all affairs of state to a fortunate conclusion. Indeed the success of this policy was sufficient to silence the opposition offered by a few timid souls, and to furnish justification for blind confidence in the existing government.

The disasters in the East were a terrible awakening; invincible as the Russian fleet had hitherto been considered, it was obliged to take refuge in its own ports or to be sunk in the harbour of Sebastopol. The army had been conquered at Alma by the allies and at Silistria by the despised Turks; a body of western troops fifty thousand strong was insolently established before Sebastopol, and of the two former allies Prussia was neutral and Austria had turned traitor. The enforced silence of the press for the last thirty years had favoured the committal of dishonest acts by employes, the organisation of the army had been destroyed by administrative corruption. Everything had been expected of the government, and now the Crimean War intervened and threatened complete bankruptcy to autocracy; absolute patriarchal monarchy was obliged to retreat before the Anglo-French invasion. The higher the hopes entertained for the conquest of Constantinople, the deliverance of Jerusalem and the extension of the Slavonic empire, the more cruel the disappointment. At this moment a prodigious activity manifested itself throughout Russia, tongues were unloosed, and a great manuscript literature was passed secretly from hand to hand, bringing audacious accusations against the government and all the hierarchy of officials:

"Awake, O Russia!" exhorted one of these anonymous pamphlets; "awake from your deep sleep of ignorance and apathy. Long enough we have been in bondage to the successors of the Tatar khans; rise to your full height before the throne of the despot and demand of him a reckoning for the national disaster. Tell him plainly that his throne is not God's altar and that God has not condemned our race to eternal slavery. Russia, O czar, had given into your hands the supreme power, and how have you exerted it? Blinded by ignorance and passion, you have sought power for its own sake and have forgotten the interests of the country. You have consumed your life in reviewing troops, in altering uniforms, and in signing your name to the legislative

[1855 A.D.] projects of ignorant charlatans. You have created the detestable institution of press-censorship that you might enjoy peace and remain in ignorance of the needs and complaints of your people. You have buried Truth and rolled a great stone to the door of her sepulchre, and in the vanity of your heart you have exclaimed, 'For her there shall be no resurrection!" Notwithstanding, Truth rose on the third day and left the ranks of the dead. Czar, appear before the tribunal of history and of God! You have trodden truth under foot, and refused to others liberty while you were yourself a slave to passion. By your obstinacy and pride you have exhausted Russia and armed the rest of the world against her. Bow your haughty head to the dust and implore forgiveness, ask advice. Throw yourself upon the mercy of your people; with them lies your only hope of safety!"/

DEATH OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I

The chivalrous soul of the Emperor Nicholas could not reconcile itself to the complete wreck of all its political and spiritual ideals. Nicholas fell a sacrifice to his persistent pursuit of traditions bequeathed to him by the Alexandrine policy of the last decade.

On the 2nd of March, 1855, Russia, and all European nations, were dismayed by the unexpected news of the sudden death of the emperor Nicholas.b Serve Russia!" were his last words to his son and heir. "I wished to overcome all national afflictions, to leave you a peaceful, well-organized and happy empire. Providence has ordained otherwise!"i

ESTIMATES OF NICHOLAS

Skrine, reviewing the life of Nicholas in the light of the evolutionary philosophy of our own time, declares that the autocrat failed because in a progressive century he had become an anachronism. He believes, however, that Nicholas I died as grandly as he had lived, in the firm assurance that he had done his duty. While he ruled his subjects with a rod of iron, he was ever ready to serve them with an unselfishness which has no parallel in history.

Sweeping assertions such as these are usually to be taken with some measure of allowance. In the present case we may quote, by way of antidote, the estimate of Nicholas that appeared in the London Times of March 3rd, 1855: "In the long array of history, and among those figures dimly seen along the ages of the past which bear imperishable traces of their guilt and their doom, none stands a more visible mark of retributive justice than he who has abruptly passed from the scene of human affairs. Nicholas ascended the throne in the prime of life, and he won his crown by his own daring composure in the face of great dangers. The conduct of the Emperor Nicholas during those eventful and perilous years, from 1848 to 1851, raised him higher than he had ever stood before; he was regarded as one of the wisest, as well as one of the most powerful, sovereigns of Europe, and those even who detested his despotic government could not deny that he had shown moderation, temper, and a strong desire for peace. No sovereign ever succeeded in inspiring his own subjects of the Muscovite race with a more fanatical attachment to his person, and it is perfectly true that wherever the lofty stature and imperial port of the czar was seen throughout his dominions, he was hailed as a demigod rather than as a man. His pride rose with his station and his power, and at times he seemed possessed with

[1855 A.D.] hallucinations acting upon a mystical and excitable nature, as if he indeed transcended the appointed limits of all human greatness.

"By what marvellous fatality, by what infatuation could it then happen that a ruler of men already past the illusions of youth, versed in the affairs of Europe, and professedly solicitous to maintain the constituted order of things, suddenly descended from his exalted position, committed acts of astonishing imprudence and injustice, destroyed his own influence throughout the world, and died at last without a friend? He was warned early, frequently, and emphatically, that if he failed to control that indomitable pride which gave a pernicious import to his smallest actions, he would fall under the ban of Europe; and it is impossible to doubt that the agonising sense of humiliation and remorse at the loss of all he had reason to prize has terminated his life. It is one of the most solemn and forcible examples of the tie which links human greatness to human frailty; and throughout all future time the reign of Nicholas of Russia will be remembered as an instance of the miserable ending of a career which has been sacrificed to bad and destructive passions, when it might have been prolonged in peace, good fame, and honour."

H. W.-VOL. XVII. SP