Читать книгу The Battles of the World or, cyclopedia of battles, sieges, and important military events онлайн

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In my last I mentioned that several battalions of Russian infantry had crossed the Tchernaya, and that they threatened the rear of our position and our communication with Balaklava. Their bands could be heard playing at night by the travellers along the Balaklava road to the camp, but they “showed” but little during the day, and kept up among the gorges and mountain passes through which the roads to Inkermann, Simpheropol, and the south-east, of the Crimea wind towards the interior. The position we occupied, in reference to Balaklava was supposed by most people to be very strong—even impregnable. Our lines were formed by natural mountain slopes in the rear, along which the French had made very formidable entrenchments. Below those entrenchments, and very nearly in a right line across the valley beneath, are four conical hillocks, one rising above the other as they recede from our lines; the furthest, which joins the chain of mountains opposite to our ridges being named Canrobert’s Hill, from the meeting there of that General with Lord Raglan after the march to Balaklava. On the top of each of these hills the Turks had thrown up earthen redoubts, defended by 250 men each, and armed with two or three guns—some heavy ship guns—lent by us to them, with one artilleryman in each redoubt to look after them. These hills cross the valley of Balaklava at the distance of about two and a half miles from the town. Supposing the spectator, then, to take his stand on one of the heights forming the rear of our camp before Sebastopol, he would see the town of Balaklava, with its scanty shipping, its narrow strip of water, and its old forts on his right hand; immediately below he would behold the valley and plain of coarse meadow land, occupied by our cavalry tents, and stretching from the base of the ridge on which he stood to the foot of the formidable heights at the other side; he would see the French trenches lined with Zouaves a few feet beneath, and distant from him, on the slope of the hill; a Turkish redoubt lower down, then another in the valley, then, in a line with it, some angular earthworks, then, in succession, the other two redoubts up to Canrobert’s Hill. At the distance of two or two and a half miles across the valley there is an abrupt rocky mountain range of most irregular and picturesque formation, covered with scanty brushwood here and there, or rising into barren pinnacles and plateaux of rock. In outline and appearance this portion of the landscape is wonderfully like the Trosachs. A patch of blue sea is caught in between the overhanging cliff’s of Balaklava as they close in the entrance to the harbour on the right. The camp of the Marines, pitched on the hill sides more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea, is opposite to you as your back is turned to Sebastopol and your right side towards Balaklava. On the road leading up the valley, close to the entrance of the town, and beneath these hills, is the encampment of the 93rd Highlanders.