The French batteries opened on the 1st of November. For an hour they fired with vivacity and effect; one battery which enfiladed them on the right was plied with energy, but the remainder, with the exception of the Flagstaff redoubt, were silent. The Russians had about 240 guns in their new works, reckoning those which had been subject to our fire. The French had 64 guns in position, most of them brass twenty-fours, the others thirty-twos and forty-eights, some ship's eighty-fours not mounted. The French might be seen like patches of moss on the rocks, and the incessant puffs of smoke with constant "pop!" rose along our front from morning to night.{166}
The earthworks around the town of Balaklava began to assume a formidable aspect. Trenches ran across the plains and joined the mounds to each other, so as to afford lines of defence. On the right of the approach the Highlanders, in three camps, were placed close to the town, with a sailors' battery of two heavy guns above. Higher up, on a very elevated hill-side, the Marines and Riflemen were encamped. There were four batteries bearing on this approach. The battery on the extreme right, on the road leading over the hills from Yalta, contained two 32-pounder howitzers; the second battery on the right, facing the valley, contained five guns; and the fourth battery, nearest Balaklava, contained eight brass howitzers, four 12, two 32, and two 24-pounders. The left approach was commanded by the heights held by the French infantry over the valley, and by the Turkish works in front. A formidable redoubt, under the command of Captain Powell, R.N., overlooked the approaches, armed with heavy ship's guns.
The Turks had cut up the ground so that it almost resembled a chess-board when viewed from one of the hills. They constructed ditches over valleys which led nowhere, and fortified passes conducting to abstruse little culs-de-sac in the hill sides.
From the road to Balaklava on the 3rd, we could see the Russians engaged in "hutting" themselves for the winter, and on the 3rd of November I made a little reconnaissance of my own in their direction. Their advanced posts were just lighting bivouac fires for the night. A solitary English dragoon, with the last rays of the setting sun glittering on his helmet, was perched on the only redoubt in our possession, watching the motions of the enemy. Two Cossacks on similar duty on the second redoubt were leaning on their lances, while their horses browsed the scanty herbage at the distance of about 500 yards from our dragoon sentry. Two hundred yards in their rear were two Cossack pickets of twenty or thirty men each. A stronger body was stationed in loose order some four or five hundred yards further back. Six pelotons of cavalry came next, with field batteries in the intervals. Behind each peloton were six strong columns of cavalry in reserve, and behind the intervals six battalions of grey-coated Russian infantry lay on their arms. They maintained this attitude day and night, it was said, and occasionally gave us an alert by pushing up the valley. On looking more closely into their position through the glass, it could be seen that they had fortified the high table-land on their right with an earthwork of quadrilateral form, in which I counted sixteen embrasures.
In their rear was the gorge of the Black River, closed up by towering rocks and mountain precipices. On their left a succession of slabs (so to speak) of table-land, each higher than the other, and attaining an elevation of 1,200 feet. The little village of Kamara, perched on the side of one of these slabs, commanded a view of our position, and was no doubt the head-quarters of the army in the valley. The Russians were stationed along these heights, and had pushed their lines to the sea on the high-peaked mountain chain to the south-east of our Marines. As the valley was connected with{167} Sebastopol by the Inkerman road, they had thus drawn a cordon militaire around our position on the land side, and we were besieged in our camp, having, however, our excellent friend, the sea, open on the west.
On the 4th November the fire on the place and the return continued. The Russians fired about sixty guns per hour, and we replied. The French burrowed and turned up the earth vigorously. A quantity of 10-inch shot were landed, but, unfortunately, we had no 10-inch guns for them. Two guns were added to the batteries of the right attack, which now contained twenty-three pieces of artillery. Whenever I looked at the enemy's earthworks I thought of the Woolwich butt. What good had we done by all this expenditure of shot, and shell, and powder? a few guns, when we first came, might have saved incredible toil and labour because they would have rendered it all but impossible for the Russians to cast up entrenchments and works before the open entrance to Sebastopol.