THE CAVALRY AFFAIR OF THE HEIGHTS OF BULGANAK.
This smart little affair, which took place the day before the Battle of the Alma, and within five days from the landing of the Allies in the Crimea, was the first encounter with the Russians, and, while it demonstrated the superiority of our Cavalry and Horse Artillery to that of the enemy, it encouraged the troops, who hailed it as an omen of that success which, in the space of one short year, has so frequently waited on, and at last so fully crowned, our arms.
The artist has chosen for his illustration the moment when the Russian guns are opening their fire on the English Cavalry, who have crossed the stream and advanced into the valley to offer battle to a large body of the enemy's Dragoons and Cossacks, posted on the opposite heights. Two or three puffs of white smoke mark the spot where the first guns of the campaign uttered their hoarse defiance to the Allies, and awoke echoes which, rolling over the well-contested fields of Alma and Inkermann, Balaklava and the Tchernaya, and swelled to a solemn and terrible diapason on the blood-stained plateau before Sebastopol, reached their latest reverberations in the sound of the Tower and Park ordnance, which, on the 11th September, announced to rejoicing England the fall of the Russian stronghold.
On the right, and in rear of the guns, are seen the masses of Russian cavalry slowly descending the hill, with a line of skirmishers thrown out in front. In the centre of the picture are the 11th Hussars and the 13 th Light Dragoons, drawn up in two lines, in front of the first of which are Lord Cardigan and his staff, while Lord Lucan with his staff are on the left in front of the second line. On the left of the foreground the 17th Lancers and a few of the 8 th Hussars are held in reserve, and on their flank two or three more Staff Officers are to be seen conversing.
The English Artillery has not yet replied to the enemy, but the rapid pace at which the two troops under Captains Maude and Brandling, on the extreme right, are coming forward to take up their position, hints unmistakably that the respite will be but a short one. In fact, so efficiently did both these distinguished officers handle their guns.
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that, within fifteen minutes of their opening fire, the Russians retired, with a loss, it is stated, of twelve killed, and twenty-three wounded, while our own amounted but to five men wounded and three horses killed. Lord Eaglan bestows the highest praise on the spirit, coolness, and steadiness, with which the Light Brigade behaved, as well as on the judicious manner in which they were handled by Lord Cardigan; and it was universally agreed that this short but brilliant encounter reflected the greatest credit on both arms of the service which were engaged in it.
Balaklava is thus described by the amusing and scientific German traveller, Koch: —
" I had certainly been told a good deal about the peculiar position of this little town, but when we descended from the plateau, and the hollow, with its dark blue waters, lay expanded before us, it surpassed all we had ever seen, all we had ever heard. The basin is about a mile in diameter, and is surrounded, with the exception of a narrow gorge, by very precipitous and only partially wood -covered rocks, which have an elevation of some hundred feet. The arm of the sea occupies nearly the whole of the hollow, and, save on the side opposite to us, where the water comes up close to the rocks, is surrounded by a green velvety lawn. Here lies, too, the little town of Balaklava, composed of a few private houses and a number of shops. The agricultural inhabitants have settled on the slope, which we descended, in order to be nearer the produce of tlieir industry.
" The inhabitants are Greeks, who quitted Turkey in the reign of the great Catherine, and, having obtained special privileges, settled on the same spot, where, more than 2000 years before, colonists from Asia Minor, Milesians, established themselves and founded the colony of Symbolon (Cembalo among the Italians of the Middle Ages)." The descendants of these Greeks were forced to quit the town rather abi'uptly, soon after its occupation by the English, in consequence of the most positive information having reached Lord Eaglan that many of them