On the 20th of December, the Russians succeeded in penetrating our lines where they were in contract with the French. In order to deceive the sentries they commanded in French, which ruse was successful; they killed and wounded sixteen men — among the latter Major Moller, of the 50th — and carried away eleven men and two officers, Captain Frampton and Lieutenant Clarke, as prisoners, bat were driven back by the 34th regiment before they could do any further mischief, not without inflicting a loss.
On the 29th December, Sir Colin Campbell made a reconnaissance with a part of his force the 79th and Rifle Brigade. Soon after
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seven o'clock the French proceeded towards the hills recently occupied by the Russians, with General Bosquet, the Rifles and Highlanders turning to the right and covering the flank of the expedition. As the force approached Komara, the Cossack vedettes came in sight, retiring slowly from the village, which has been in a ruinous state since the storm of the 14th of November. The vedettes fell back on a strong body of Lancers and Light Cavalry, which seemed disposed to await the shock of the French Chasseurs.
Cavalry skirmishers exchanged a few shots before they fell in with their respective squadrons, and when the French had arrived within about 800 yards, they broke from a trot into a gallop, and dashed right at the Russian cavalry. The latter met the shock, butmade no attempt to charge the French, who broke them in an instant, and chased them back on the infantry, who were assembled in three small bodies on the hills, close to the village of Tchorgoun. As the French approached Tchorgoun, they were received with a brisk fire of shot and shell from some field-pieces, to which their guns were unable to reply; but they pushed within range, and the Russians again retired, aud abandoned the village of Tchorgoun to our allies, as well as the line of cantonments and huts which they had constructed subsequent to Liprandi's advance in October.
The object was to beat up the Russian position and to ascertain the strength of the enemy. Our allies at once burst into the village, but the Cossacks had been there too long to leave anything to plunder, and so the French set it on fire. The whole cantonment was in a blaze, while volumes of white smoke curling up into the air, and spreading in sheets along the crests of the hills, indicated the destruction of the village, and informed the Russians that they could no longer hope for snug quarters there. The huts were very commodious and comfortable. Each was capable of containing twenty or thirty men, and held an oven for baking, which also warmed the room at the end. The object of the reconnaissance having been accomplished, the expedition was halted, and the men set to work at once to avail themselves of the abundance of wood along the hill-sides, and to make enormous fires, which almost obscured the retreat of the Russians. It was ascertained that they did not number more than 5000 or 6000 men. The French remained upon the ground till it was almost dark, and then returned to their camp. The French lost two officers, wounded (one since dead) and about twenty men put hors de combat. They took seventeen of the Russian cavalry and a few infantry prisoners.
We were cursed by a system of "requisitions," "orders," and "memos," which was enough to depress an army of scriveners, and our captains, theoretically, had almost as much work to do with pen and paper as if they had been special correspondents or bankers' clerks; that is, they ought to have had as much to do, but, thanks to the realities of war, they had no bookkeeping; their accounts being lost, and the captain who once had forty or fifty pounds' weight of books and papers to carry, had not sO much as a penny memorandum-book. This fact alone showed the absurdity of our arrangements. In peace, when these accounts were of comparatively little imp.rtance, we had plenty and too much of checks and returns, but in time of war the very first thing our army did was to leave all its stationery on board the steamer that carried it to the scene of action.
The cold was developing itself, and efforts to guard against it were attended with mischief. Captain Swinton, the Royal Artillery, was affocated by the fumes of charcoal from a stove, several officers were half-killed by carbonic acid gas.