For ten days the bombing never stopped. At the end of the bombardment the Russians counted 160,000 shells and mortars that hit Sevastopol, destroying hundreds of buildings, and wounding or killing 4,712 soldiers and civilians. The allies did not have it all their own way. The Russians counter-attacked with 409 guns and 57 mortars, firing 88,751 cannonballs and shells during the ten days. But it soon became apparent that the Russians lacked the ammunition to maintain their resistance. Orders had been given to the battery commanders to fire once for every two shots fired by the enemy. Captain Edward Gage of the Royal Artillery wrote home on the evening of 13 Apriclass="underline"
The Defence, as regards long Balls, is as obstinate as the impetuosity of the attack, and every thing that genius & bravery can accomplish is conspicuous in the Russians. However, it cannot but be perceived that their fire is comparatively weak tho’ the effects is very distressing to our Gunners. We have had more casualties than during the last siege, but we have had more men & Batteries engaged … . I do not suppose the fire will last much more than a day longer, for the men are completely beat, having been in the trenches every 12 hours since the fire opened and human flesh & blood cannot stand this much longer.51
The reduction of the Russian fire handed the initiative to the allies, whose barrage steadily increased. The Mamelon and the Fifth Bastion were almost entirely destroyed. Expecting an assault, the Russians frantically reinforced their garrisons, and put most of their defenders into the bunkers underground, ready to ambush the storming parties. But the assault never came. Perhaps the allied commanders were put off by the stubborn and courageous resistance of the Russians, who rebuilt their battered bastions under heavy bombardment. But the allies were also divided among themselves. It was during this period that Canrobert began openly to express his frustrations. He supported the new allied strategy, which entailed running down the bombardment of Sevastopol to concentrate on the conquest of the Crimea as a whole, and was reluctant to commit his troops to an assault which he understood would cost a lot of lives when they might be better used for this new plan. He was further discouraged from an attack by his chief engineer, General Adolphe Niel, who had received secret instructions from Paris to delay a move against Sevastopol until the Emperor Napoleon – then still considering a journey to the Crimea – arrived to take command of the assault himself.
Unwilling to act alone, the British confined themselves to a sortie on the night of 19 April against the Russians’ rifle pits on the eastern edge of the Vorontsov Ravine which prevented them from developing their works towards the Redan. The pits were captured by the 77th Regiment after heavy fighting with the Russians, but the victory came at a price, in the loss of its commander, Colonel Thomas Egerton, a giant of a man at over 2 metres, and his second-in-command, the 23-year-old Captain Audley Lemprière, who stood less than 1.5 metres tall, as Nathaniel Steevens, a witness to the fighting, described in a letter to his family on 23 Apriclass="underline"
Our loss was severe, 60 men killed & wounded, and seven Officers, of whom Col. Egerton (a tall powerful man) & Capt. Lemprière of the 77th were killed; the latter was very young, had just got his company and was about the smallest officer in the Army, a great pet of the Colonel’s and called by him his child; he was killed, poor fellow at the first attack in the rifle pit; the Colonel, tho’ wounded, snatched him up in his arms & carried him off declaring ‘they shall never take my child’; the Colonel then returned and in the second attack was killed.52
For the moment, without the French, this was as much as the British could achieve. On 24 April Raglan wrote to Lord Panmure: ‘We must prevail upon Gen. Canrobert to take the Mamelon, otherwise we cannot move forward with any prospect of success or safety.’ It was vital for the French to clear the Russians out of the Mamelon before they could mount an assault on the Malakhov, just as it was crucial for the British to occupy the Quarry Pits before they could attack the Redan. Under Canrobert the action was delayed. But once he handed over his command to Pélissier on 16 May, who was as determined as Raglan to take Sevastopol by an assault, the French committed to a combined attack on the Mamelon and the Quarries.
The operation began on 6 June with a bombardment of the outworks which lasted until six o’clock the following evening, when the allied assault was scheduled to begin. The signal for the start of the attack was to be given by Raglan and Pélissier, who were to meet on the field of action. But at the agreed hour the French commander was fast asleep, having thought to take a nap before the beginning of the fighting, and no one dared to wake the fiery general. Pélissier arrived an hour late for his rendezvous with Raglan, by which time the battle had begun – the French troops rushing forward first, followed by the British, who had heard their cheers.az The order for attack had been given by General Bosquet, in whose entourage was Fanny Duberly:
General Bosquet addressed them in companies; and as he finished each speech, he was responded to by cheers, shouts, and bursts of song. The men had more the air and animation of a party invited to a marriage than a party going to fight for life or death. To me how sad a sight it seemed! The divisions begin to move and to file down the ravine, past the French battery, opposite the Mamelon. General Bosquet turns to me, his eyes full of tears – my own I cannot restrain, as he says, ‘Madame, à Paris, on a toujours l’Exposition, les bals, les fêtes; et – dans une heure et demie la moitié de ces braves seront morts!’53
Led by the Zouaves, the French rushed forward, without any order, towards the Mamelon, from which a tremendous volley of artillery fire forced them back. Many of the troops began to scatter in panic and had to be regrouped by their officers before they were ready to attack again. This time the attackers, running through a storm of musket fire, reached the ditch at the bottom of the Mamelon’s defensive walls, which they climbed, while the Russians fired down on them or (without time to reload their muskets) threw down the stones of the parapet. ‘The wall was four metres high,’ recalled Octave Cullet, who was in the first line of attack; ‘it was difficult to climb, and we had no ladders, but our spirit was irrepressible’:
Hoisting one another up, we scaled the walls, and overcoming the resistance of the enemy on the parapet, launched a furious avalanche of fire into the crowd defending the redoubt … . What happened next I cannot describe. It was a scene of carnage. Fighting like madmen, our soldiers spiked their guns, and the few Russians who were brave enough to fight us were all slaughtered.54
The Zouaves did not stop in the Mamelon but continued to rush on towards the Malakhov – a spontaneous action by soldiers caught up in the fury of the fight – only to be mowed down in their hundreds by the Russian guns. Lieutenant Colonel St George of the Royal Artillery, who watched the dreadful scene, described it in a letter on 9 June: