The Sebastopol Sketches Page 3

  Like the engineers, the Russian artillery was an elite force. Because of the ineffectiveness of the infantry, who were armed with old-fashioned percussion muskets and made their principal contribution in massed, sustained bayonet charges, the Russian army “relied heavily on the fire of the artillery to disorganize the foe and prepare the way for the charge of the infantry.”[13] The shells fired by the artillery were essentially identical with the eighteenth-century “bomb” (the Russian name for them is bomba, which Tolstoy uses to refer to any explosive artillery charge, whether fired from a mortar, a howitzer or a cannon): this was a spherical cast-iron casing containing explosive; there was an aperture in the casing into which a fuse was inserted. The fuse was ignited by the gunpowder in firing, and the shell would explode when it burnt down into the casing. It was possible to time the explosion to coincide with impact, but in general the shells either burst in the air or lay on the ground for some time before going off. The “splinters,” or fragments, of the shell proved as deadly as any sophisticated small-arms fire, and the Russians discharged very large quantities of these projectiles, as did the enemy forces. During the nightly bombardments, the sky would be criss-crossed by the trails of the burning fuses. The Russian earthworks provided effective protection against the enemy shells and round shot, while the sheer volume of the Russian salvoes caused acute problems to the allied forces, who relied mainly on the protection afforded by trenches.

  As an artillery officer at Sebastopol, Tolstoy was well placed to observe all sections of Russian army life. He was shocked by some of what he saw. Under Nicholas, the army had grown in size, and in some respects conditions had improved since the reign of Alexander I. The term of service to the colours had been reduced to fifteen years for men with excellent conduct records; the conditions of life in the military colonies had been made at least tolerable; the army’s new accounting system had reduced, though by no means eliminated, the corruption that was such an encumbrance upon the enlisted men; the feeding of the soldiers had improved in quality, and medical and hospital provisions had been made more widely available.[14] Much, however, was still badly wrong with the Russian military machine. The system of serfdom made necessary the retention of a long period of service for a limited number of serfs, making impossible the formation of a citizen army which would provide much-needed reserves of trained men. The average Russian soldier was a peasant automaton, wholly at the mercy of the landowning nobility. He was poorly armed and poorly equipped, and was trained to march in dense formations in which musketry was a non-essential adjunct to prowess with the bayonet. (“The bullet is a fool, the bayonet is a hero” was one of General Suvorov’s maxims, coined during the reign of Catherine II and still current in 1885.) Unthinking obedience was the order of the day. The soldiers still lived under the shadow of the widespread graft that extended throughout the officer class. There were numerous cases of company commanders starving their men by expropriating the money that was allocated for food. Curtiss describes a large number of “rackets” common in the service. Some of these involved the private’s kit:

  At times the wearing-out of the soldier’s equipment was a result of the dishonesty of his commander. Instead of insisting on the issue of first-grade materials by the Commissariat, the dishonest colonel could readily obtain second- or third-rate materials, for which he would receive rebates from the Commissariat, as he would sign a statement that he had received goods of the best quality. The Commissariat officials, who had bought the inferior goods from conniving contractors, had collected the full price for first-grade goods from the government, and thus both colonel and Commissariat officers would profit by the acceptance of poor-grade goods. The troop units were by no means innocent in this peculation.[15]

  Another form of corruption (referred to at some length by Tolstoy in the third Sebastopol sketch) involved the provisioning of the horses:

  While the Provision Department might have supplied the regiments with forage, it rarely did so, as the buying and moving of quantities of oats, hay, and straw would have been complicated and difficult. Hence the regiments themselves handled this matter. Twice a year the regimental commanders through the divisional commanders presented the corps commanders with the prices at which they would agree to feed their horses. The corps commander, armed with a price list from the Provision Department, then established the prices for forage. In theory, he could reduce the prices suggested by the colonels to reasonable levels, but in actuality this was rarely done. If the colonels refused to feed their animals at the lowered prices, the task of supplying forage would then fall to the Provision Department, which was extremely reluctant to do this. Hence the corps commander usually accepted the prices suggested by the colonels and merely demanded that they feed their horses well.

  The colonels usually set their prices for forage well over the market price—sometimes double the current rate. While they explained that they could not foresee accurately the future price developments and had to protect themselves against sudden price increases, the real reason probably was to obtain extra income. The Provision Department had no reason to object to this system, for it everywhere retained two per cent or more of the sums that it dispensed, and thus it stood to benefit by the high prices approved for the cavalry regiments. The colonels also were satisfied with the amounts they had received. They did not retain all the profits, however, as they had to turn the actual purchase of the forage over to the squadron commanders. The latter demanded as large a share of the gains as possible, while the colonels sought to keep as much as they could. After much bargaining, a satisfactory bargain was struck. The captains, who were usually in grave financial straits, looked on their squadrons as valuable income-properties and sought to recoup their debts and save a nest-egg for old age. The other officers of the regiment, both the majors and the junior officers, had no share in these transactions and remained in financial straits and often had little to do with the affairs of the regiment. The colonels were the chief beneficiaries of this arrangement.

  The results of this were unfortunate for the cavalry. The colonels enriched themselves and spent money on the outward aspects of their regiments. At reviews the horses were sleek and fat, the uniforms clean and new, and the regimental band made a good show. The enlisted men replied to questions with loud shouts of satisfaction with their condition. Hence the inspector would thank the colonel for having done well with his regiment. The divisional and corps commanders would sign the books every month, attesting to the fine condition of the regiments, although those who were intelligent must have realized that the situation was not good, for the generals themselves were products of the same system and in their hearts knew that it was a false one.[16]

  All this prompted Tolstoy to write a personal appeal, entitled “A Note on the Negative Aspects of the Russian Soldier and Officer,” to one of the Grand Dukes (the sons of Nicholas I), in which he bitterly attacked the poor conditions of service, the mismanagement and graft he had observed. An army in which a common soldier was flogged for smoking a long-stemmed pipe or daring to protest when his commander was found guilty of stealing from him could hardly be thought to have a sound moral core, and could not be expected to fight effectively, he argued. In particular, he criticized the low calibre of the average Russian officer:

  The majority of Russian officers are men who are unfit for any type of profession apart from the military one. While they are in the service their main aim is the acquisition of money. The means they employ towards its realization are extortion and oppression. The Russian officer is uneducated, either because he has received no education, or because he has lost it in a sphere where it is useless and even a liability, or because he despises it as of no use in his struggle for success in the service . . . he despises the rank of officer because it exposes him to the influence of people who are coarse and immoral, and involves him in useless and degrading occupations. The nobleman despises army service on the front. In army society the spirit of love for the fatherland, for
chivalrous daring, for military honour provokes ridicule; oppression, debauchery and extortion are what command respect.

  The “Note” was never delivered. It seems to typify the strongly negative strand in Tolstoy’s ambivalent attitude towards his Sebastopol experience, one which is countered by an equally strong positive strand. The first words of the “Note,” deleted from the final drafts, were significant: “The Russian armed forces are enormous, and they would be glorious, would be invincible . . . ” Notwithstanding all the evidence of weak leadership, poor military and strategic technique, brutality and extortion, Tolstoy was filled with a profound admiration for the heroism of the defenders of Sebastopol. “The spirit of the troops passes all description,” he wrote to his brother Sergei on 20 November:

  Not even in the time of ancient Greece was there such heroism. As he inspected his troops, Kornilov would say to them, not “Good health, men,” but “If you are called on to die, men, will you die?” And the soldiers would cry back: “We will die, your excellency. Hurrah!” And they shouted this not for the sake of effect, for on every face you could see that they uttered these words not in jest but in earnest, and indeed 22,000 men have already fulfilled this promise.

  A wounded soldier almost on the point of death told me how on the 24th [the date of the battle of Inkerman] they had taken a French battery but had been given no reinforcements. He was sobbing out loud. A company of sailors nearly mutinied on being told that they were to be relieved from the battery on which they had held out for thirty days under fire. Soldiers tear the fuses out of shells with their bare hands. Women take water to the men on the bastions. Many of them have been killed or wounded. Priests enter the bastions bearing crosses and recite prayers under fire. On the 24th, in one brigade there were 160 wounded men who refused to leave the battlefront. Extraordinary days!

  On 5 December 1854, Tolstoy visited Sebastopol in order to obtain guns for his battery, and this time he was favourably impressed by much of what he saw. “The presence of Saken[17] is visible in everything . . . Saken has introduced arrangements for the transportation of the wounded and has had dressing stations put up on all the bastions. It was Saken who made the order concerning the playing of military music.” On the second trip to Sebastopol in January 1855, Tolstoy visited the 4th bastion. As Elphinstone makes clear in the account already quoted, this was a vital point in the defences, a place under constant fire, where many Russian soldiers had lost their lives. In the middle of January he received another transfer to a new battery on the River Belbek, some seven miles from the town. It was here that he began work on a literary description of military life, one which represented a major advance on the efforts he had so far made in connection with the ill-fated gazette and the undelivered “Note.” The project began when Tolstoy wrote to the editor of the Contemporary on 11 January 1855, offering to send articles and stories on military themes, based on his own war experiences. He proposed to supply Nekrasov with sufficient material for between two and five printed sheets every month and, if the editor agreed, to send first of all an article entitled “A Letter about the Sisters of Mercy,” and then “Memories of the Siege of Silistria,” and “Letter from a Soldier in Sebastopol.” While he waited for a reply, Tolstoy resumed work on Youth. On 18 February, Nicholas I died, and for a short time there was some doubt as to whether his successor, Alexander II, would continue the war. He decided to do so, however, and Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “Great changes await Russia. One must labour and have courage in order to participate in these momentous hours of Russia’s life.”

  On 20 March, Nekrasov’s reply arrived. “He asks me to send military articles,” Tolstoy noted. “I shall have to write them all myself. I shall describe Sebastopol during various phases of the siege, and the idyll of the officers’ life.”

  During the winter of 1854-5, the Russian army had opened no major offensive, but had concentrated instead on a series of counter-mining operations directed by Totleben, which resulted in the wrecking of the French mine corridors. After the French had blown up their own mine system and withdrawn to their trenches some distance to the rear, Totleben supervised the seizure of the craters, which were connected into a formidable trench system that held the enemy at bay for many months. During this period, the Russians launched frequent night sorties, usually in detachments of two or three hundred men, although sometimes in much larger numbers. They are described by Curtiss:

  The attacking parties usually had little difficulty in penetrating the enemy trenches, seizing prisoners and driving back working groups. At such times they often levelled the trenches, spiked captured cannon, and sometimes carried off small mortars. These exploits delighted many young daredevils, who rejoiced in the exciting adventures and on occasion made sorties without orders, although this was generally forbidden. Some of these hardy spirits became adepts at taking prisoners, using short pikes, with the points bent into hooks, to catch unwary sentries. Much annoyed at this, the French Gen. Canrobert sent a note of protest to Gen. Adj. Osten-Saken, commander of the Russian garrison, saying that the Russians were using hooks and ropes to capture men and “que ce ne sont point là des armes courtoises.”[18]

  Early in 1855 the French command, acting under the advice of General Adolphe Niel, a skilled engineer, transferred the centre of their attack to the Russian left, in particular to the Kornilov bastion on the Malakhov Kurgan (Malakhov Hill—“Malakoff” is the French spelling of this name) and the Green Hill, or Mamelon Vert, replacing the British in this sector. On 9 February Totleben had laid out a redoubt (the Selenginsk) on the extreme left, near the River Tchernaya; the French had soon realized that this would outflank their approaches to the Malakhov and tried to capture it, but were repelled by the Russians and sustained considerable losses. The establishment of the Volhynia redoubt 400 paces ahead enfiladed the French batteries and trenches, and thus halted the French advance towards the Malakhov. By the construction, during the night of 28 February, of the Kamchatka lunette, the defenders turned the tables on the allied forces, who now had to build trenches and batteries against the new defences before they could attack the Malakhov.

  On 28 March the French and the British began a heavy bombardment of the lunette and the two redoubts. This lasted until 10 April. The Russian command expected an assault, and Tolstoy’s battery, like many others, was ordered to Sebastopol. Here he began work on his new war story: “Our battery arrived yesterday,” he wrote on 2 April. “I am living in Sebastopol. We have already suffered up to 5,000 losses, but not merely are we holding our own, we are doing so well that this defence ought to clearly demonstrate to the enemy [the impossibility] of his ever taking Sebastopol. In the evening I wrote two pages of ‘Sebastopol’.” On 3 April Tolstoy was sent to the 4th bastion, where he was placed in charge of a battery of guns. There he had to serve a schedule of four days on duty and eight days off, until 15 May. But he relished his time on the bastion. In its casemate, and later in his town billet, he continued to work on Youth, and on his war story, as a recreation during lulls in the fighting.

  On 19 April the “lodgments,” as the Russians termed the weak entrenchments which had been dug in front of the 5th bastion and the Schwartz redoubt on the Russian right, were stormed by the French. This action entailed heavy casualties on both sides. Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “Our spirits are falling daily, and the notion that Sebastopol may after all be taken is beginning to manifest itself in much that is happening.” In response to the storming, Totleben insisted that a system of trenches should be constructed on Cemetery Hill, on the far right, from which he eventually planned to attack the entire allied flank. On 9 May Khrulev led a large force to build lodgments on the hill, and on the night of 10 May the French launched a massive assault of sixteen battalions, which took the Russian trenches, but were eventually repelled by Khrulev’s counter-attack. It is this assault which forms the backdrop to “Sebastopol in May,” the second sketch in this volume. The lodgments were held, but Prince Gorchakov instructed Khrulev
to withdraw his men if the French attacked again in force, since the position would be too costly to defend. When the French did attack, the Russians retreated. In two nights they lost 3,400 men, for no appreciable purpose. The French put their own losses at 2,303, which Napoleon III described as a greater loss than that sustained by the French at Austerlitz.

  During May the French reinforced the gains they had made on the Russian right, causing further heavy Russian casualties. At the same time Major-General Pélissier, who had taken over the French command from General Canrobert, pushed the attack on the Russian left, finally opening a two-day cannonade on the Kamchatka lunette and the Selenginsk and Volhynia redoubts at the end of the month. Although the French succeeded in storming the Kamchatka lunette they were beaten back from the Malakhov itself, and the Russian guns inflicted heavy losses on them. The Russians re-took the lunette, but were again driven out by the French reserves. In their fighting, the Russians reported their losses as 2,500, the French estimated theirs at nearly 3,000, and the British lost 500.

  On 19 May Tolstoy was transferred—possibly, some have speculated, as a result of official intervention—to another battery on the River Belbek. Saddened and disturbed by the evidence of Russian mismanagement he had observed towards the end of his period of service on the 4th bastion, he began to return once more to his broodings on the poor moral fibre of the Russian soldiers and officers; while they might be capable of acts of great courage and heroism, the troops were inwardly vitiated by a spiritual malaise that seemed to lie at the heart of Russian life, and were certainly inferior to the British and French whom he encountered from time to time during the odd ceasefire. Applying to the Russian army the same somewhat morbid procedures of analysis he was accustomed to bring to bear upon himself, he began to conceive his mission as a military Gogol, exposing poshlost and evil wherever they raised their heads. On completing The Woodfelling, he began work on a second Sebastopol sketch, entitled “A Spring Night in Sebastopol,” in which he depicted the life of Russian officers, and also gave a picture of the besieged town by night. This he had attempted to do in early drafts of the first sketch, but had been unsuccessful; the final draft retained only the “day” episode.