During the summer a squadron, under the orders of Commander, now Captain, Sherard Osborne, cruised in every direction in these waters, and destroyed the new depots of corn and grain, the produce of the current year, which had been stored in spots fondly deemed even more inaccessible than those visited by the first expedition. The skill, the daring, and the judgment displayed by the ofiicers of every grade, who, throughout this double series of difficult and dangerous operations, eagerly seized and splendidly improved every occasion of individual distinction, will ever reflect the brightest lustre on the British navy: and, if their efforts were crowned with a more bloodless triumph than has attended similar services in former wars, it was not that they were inferior to their glorious predecessors in the most dashing spirit of enterprise, or the most reckless contempt of danger.
If laurels must be dipped in blood, the severe losses of the Naval Brigade on shore have only too fully answered the sad requirement: and the heroic dead, no less than the living brave, have won for the Black Sea fleet a place in the history of the war which the lapse of time and the enlightened judgment of future generations will only qualify to mark as more and more distinguished.
To return now to the more immediate operations of the siege.
At the latter end of May the whole of the Sardinian Contingent, to the number of 1 5,000 men, under the command of General della Marmora, had arrived at Balaklava; the English and the French had also received large reinforcements, summer was approaching, and the supply of water on the plateau was beginning to fall short. Under these circumstances the expansion of the position became a matter of absolute necessity, and accordingly, on the 25th of the month, a force of 50,000 men, consisting principally of French, Sardinians, and Turks, quitting their old encampments, marched towards the Tchernaya.
They started before day-break, but the sun rose before they reached the river, and his earliest beams lit up a scene of unsurpassed natural beauty, animated by one of those gorgeous spectacles of military splendour which occasionally relieve with a gleam of transient brightness the dark pictures of the horrors and desolation of war. For miles the eye rested on a very forest of glittering bayonets, and the air resounded with the thrilling notes of martial instruments, rising now loud and shrill, now thin and clear from the distance, above that confused murmur, so suggestive of numbers and power, which proceeds from an army on the march. The morning was bright and still and balmy: the dew lay heavy on the grass, and clung in glistening pearls on the bright-tinted fragrant wild-flowers with which the ground was literally carpeted. The road lay across smiling valleys, divided by low chains of hills, which melted in the distance, till they were blended and lost in the bolder and more romantic forms of the mountains of the coast range and the interior of the Crimea. In one of these valleys a large force of the Allied cavalry was held in reserve, and the gorgeous trappings and brilliant appearance of these troops, whose innumerable squadrons covered a vast space of ground, formed a tableau unrivalled for magnificence and beauty.
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As the army advanced, the Turks re-occupied the heights in front of Balaklava, from which they were driven on the 25th of October, so as to form a support to the French, who, after crossing the intervening valley, established their left on the edge of the ridge which overhangs the valley opposite the heights of Inkermann, while their right extended to a point beyond Traktir. General Canrobert, who was in command of the French divisions, pushed across the bridge at this point; and having cleared his front by driving off the enemy, who were not in great numbers, returned to his position on the left side of the river. The ground more to the right behind Tchourgoun was occupied by the Sardinians, whose extreme right outpost was thrown back nearly to Kamara: and the line of defences was completed to the sea-shore considerably to the south-east of Balaklava, by the Royal Marines, who were advanced by Sir Colin Campbell from their old eyrie, the " crow's-nest," to a point commanding the old Baidar Eoad.
Meanwhile the most active preparations had been going on for opening the third bombardment. New batteries had been erected and armed, large quantities of ammunition accumulated, and an important addition made to the number of our mortars. The English had 157 guns and mortars in position, most of them in their advanced works near the enemy; the French had nearly 300 pieces of ordnance: and of the total number of pieces thus brought to bear on the Russian defences not less than sixty were mortars.