The interest of the Balaclava fight centres in the two historic cavalry charges. Here again, from his position on the hill above, Kinglake witnessed both; the first, clear in smokeless air, the second lost in the volleying clouds which filled the valley of death. He saw the enormous mass of Russian cavalry, 3,500 sabres, flooding like an avalanche down the hill with a momentum which Scarlett's tiny squadron could not for a moment have resisted;their unexplained halt, the three hundred seizing the opportunity to strike, digging individually into the Russian ranks, the scarlet streaks visibly cleaving the dense grey columns. Inwedged and surrounded, in their passionate blood frenzy, with ceaseless play of whirling sword, with impetus of human and equestrian weight and strength, the red atoms hewed their way to the Russian rear, turned, worked back, emerged, reformed; while the 4th and 5th Dragoons, the Royals, the 1st Inniskillings, dashed upon the amazed column right, left, front, till the close-locked mass headed slowly up the hill, ranks loosened, horsemen turned and galloped off, a beaten straggling herd. Eight minutes elapsed from the time when Scarlett gave the word to charge, until the moment when the Russians broke: we turn from the fifty describing pages, breathless as though we had ridden in the melley; if the episode has no historical parallel, the narrative is no less unique. Our greatest contemporary poet tried to celebrate it; his lines are tame and unexciting beside Kinglake's passionate pulsing rhapsody. Its effect upon the Russian mind was lasting; out of all their vast array hardly a single squadron was ever after able to keep its ground against the approach of English cavalry; while but for Cathcart's obstinacy and Lucan's temper it would have issued in the immediate recapture of the Causeway Heights.
The Charge of the Light Brigade, on the other hand, while it stirred the imagination of the poet, shocked the military conscience of the historian. He saw in it with agony, as Lord Raglan saw, as the French spectators saw, no act of heroic sacrifice, but a needless, fruitless massacre. "You have lost the Light Brigade," was his commander's salutation to Lord Lucan.
"C'EST MAGNIFIQUE, MAIS CE N'EST PAS LA GUERRE," was the oft-quoted reproof of Bosquet. The "someone's blunder," the sullen perversity in misconception which destroyed the flower of our cavalry, has faded from men's memories; the splendour of the deed remains. It is well to recover salvage from the irrevocable, to voice and to prolong the deep human interest attaching to death encountered at the call of duty; that is the poet's task, and brilliantly it has been discharged. Its other side, the paean of sorrow for a self-destructive exploit, the dirge on lives wantonly thrown away, the deep blame attaching to the untractableness which sent them to their doom, was the task of the historian, and that too has been faithfully and lastingly accomplished.
Inkerman was the most complicated of the battles; the chapters which record it are correspondingly taxing to the reader. More than once or twice they must be scanned, with close study of their lucid maps, before the intricate sequences are fairly and distinctively grasped; the sixth book of Thucydides, a standing terror to young Greek students, is light and easy reading compared with the bulky sixth volume of Kinglake. The hero of the day was Pennefather; he maintained on Mount Inkerman a combat of pickets reinforced from time to time, while around him through nine hours successive attacks of thousands were met by hundreds. The disparity of numbers was appalling. At daybreak 40,000 Russian troops advanced against 3,000 English and were repulsed. Three hours later 19,000 fresh troops came on, passed through a gap in our lines, which Cathcart's disobedience, atoned for presently by his death, had left unoccupied, and seized the heights behind us;they too were dispossessed, but our numbers were dwindling and our strength diminishing. The Home Ridge, key of our position, was next invaded by 6,000 Russians; the 7th St. Leger, linked with a few Zouaves and with 200 men of our 77th Regiment, French and English for once joyously intermingled, hurled them back. It was the crisis of the fight; Canrobert's interposition would have determined it; but he sullenly refused to move. Finally, led by two or three daring young officers, 300 of our wearied troops charged the Russian battery which had tormented us all day; their artillerymen, already flinching under the galling fire of two 18-pounders, brought up by Lord Raglan's foresight early in the morning, hastily withdrew their guns, and the battle was won. It was a day of Homeric rushes; Burnaby, with only twenty men to support him, rescuing the Grenadier Guards' colours; the onset of the 20th with their "Minden Yell"; Colonel Daubeny with two dozen followers cleaving the Russian trunk column at the barrier; Waddy's dash at the retreating artillery train, foiled only by the presence and the readiness of Todleben. One marvels in reading how the English held their own; their victory against so tremendous odds is ascribed by the historian to three conditions; the hampering of the enemy by his crowded masses; the slaughter amongst his officers early in the fight, which deprived their men of leadership; above all, the dense mist which obscured from him the fewness of his opponents. If Canrobert with his fresh troops had followed in pursuit, the Russian's retreat must have been turned into a rout and his artillery captured; if on the following day he had assaulted the Flagstaff Bastion, Sebastopol, Todleben owned, must have fallen. He would do neither; his hesitancy and apparent feebleness have already been explained; but to it, and to the sinister influence which held his hand, were due the subsequent miseries of the Crimean winter.
