Then such a fire opened from the Malakhov tower as never was seen before I am sure: sheets of flame, with their explosion, followed each other in the rapidest succession. The Russians worked the guns wonderfully well (and it is my trade, I am a judge) and fired like fiends upon the multitudes of poor little Zouaves, whose pluck had carried them to the edge of a ditch they had no means of crossing, & who stood in hesitation till they were knocked over. It was too much for them, and they wavered and retreated into the Mamelon; and even this became too hot for them, and they had to retire into their trenches again. Reinforcements came in strength. Again they dashed into the Mamelon, whose guns they had already spiked, and killed its defenders, and again, foolishly I think, went through to try the Malakhov. They failed a second time and had to retire, but this time no farther than the Mamelon, which they are holding still, having won it with admirable courage, and left between 2 and 3 thousand killed and wounded on the field.55
Meanwhile the British attacked the Quarries. The Russians had left only a small force in the Quarry Pits, relying on their ability to retake them with reinforcements from the Redan should they be stormed. The British took the Quarries easily but soon found that they had not enough men to hold them, as wave after wave of Russians attacked them from the Redan. For several hours, the two sides were engaged in fierce hand-to-hand fighting, as one side expelled the other from the rifle pits, only to be forced back yet again by reinforcements from the other side. By five o’clock in the morning, when the last Russian attack was finally repulsed, there were heaps of dead and wounded on the ground.
At midday on 9 June a white flag was raised from the Malakhov, and another appeared on the Mamelon, now in the hands of the French, signalling a truce to collect the bodies from the battlefield. The French had made enormous sacrifices to capture the crucial Mamelon and White Works, losing almost 7,500 dead and wounded men. Herbé went out into no man’s land with General Failly to agree the arrangements with the Russian General Polussky. After the exchange of a few formalities, ‘the conversation took a friendly turn – Paris, St Petersburg, the hardships of the previous winter’, Herbé noted in a letter to his family that evening, and while the dead were cleared away, ‘cigars were exchanged’ between the officers. ‘One might have thought we were friends meeting for a smoke in the middle of a hunt,’ Herbé wrote. After a while some officers appeared with a magnum of champagne, and General Failly, who had ordered them to fetch it, proposed a ‘toast to peace’ that was heartily accepted by the Russian officers. Six hours later, when several thousand bodies had been cleared away, it was time to end the truce. After each side had been given time to check that none of their own men had been left in no man’s land, the white flags were taken down and, as Polussky had suggested, a blank shot was fired from the Malakhov to signal the resumption of hostilities.56
With the capture of the Mamelon and the Quarry Pits, everything was ready for an assault on the Malakhov and the Redan. The date set for the attack was 18 June – the 40th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. It was hoped that an allied victory would heal the old divisions between the British and the French and give them something new to celebrate together on that day.
Victory was bound to cost a lot of lives. To storm the Russian forts, the attackers would have to carry ladders and run uphill across several hundred metres of open ground, traversing ditches and abbatisba under heavy fire from the Russian guns on the Malakhov and the Redan, as well as flanking fire from the Flagstaff Bastion. When they reached the forts, they would have to use their ladders to get into the ditch and climb the walls, under point-blank fire from the enemy above, before overcoming the defenders on the parapets and fighting off the Russians, amassed behind more barricades inside the forts, until reinforcements could arrive.
It was agreed by the allies that the French would attack the Malakhov first, and then, as soon as they had silenced the Russian guns, the British infantry would begin their storming of the Redan. On Pélissier’s insistence, the assault would be limited to the Malakhov and the Redan rather than a broad attack against the town. The assault on the Redan was probably superfluous because the Russians were almost certain to abandon it once the French were able to bring their artillery to bear against it from the Malakhov. But Raglan thought that it was essential for the British to storm something, even at the cost of unnecessary losses, if this battle was to achieve its symbolic aim as a joint operation on the anniversary of Waterloo. The French had been consistently critical of Britain’s failure to match their own troop commitments in the Crimea.
Heavy casualties were expected. The French were told that half the stormers would be killed before even reaching the Malakhov. Those in the first line of attack had to be offered money or promotion before they could be persuaded to take part. In the British camp, the stormers were known as the Forlorn Hope, derived from the Dutch, Verloren hoop, which actually meant ‘lost troops’, but the English mistranslation was appropriate.57
The night before the assault on the Malakhov, the French soldiers settled down in their bivouacs, each man trying to prepare himself for the events of the next day. Some tried to get some sleep, others cleaned their guns, or talked among themselves, and still others found a quiet place to say a prayer. There was a general sense of foreboding. Many soldiers wrote their name and home address on a ticket which they hung around their neck so that anyone who found them if they died would be able to inform their family. Others wrote a farewell letter to their loved ones, giving it to the army chaplain to send off in case they died. André Damas had a large postbag. The chaplain was impressed by the calmness of the men in these final moments before battle. Few, it seemed to him, were animated by a hatred of the enemy or by the desire for revenge stirred up by the rivalry between nations. One soldier wrote:
I am calm and confident – I am surprised at myself. In face of such a danger, it is only you, my brother, I dare tell this. It would be arrogant to confess it to anybody else. I have eaten to gain strength. I have drunk only water. I do not like the over-excitements of alcohol in battle: they do no good.
Another wrote:
As I write these lines to you, the call to battle can be heard. The great day has arrived. In two hours we begin our assault. I am wearing with devotion the medal of the Blessed Virgin and the scapular I was given by the nuns. I feel calm, and tell myself that God shall protect me.
A captain wrote:
I shake you by the hand, my brother, and want you to know that I love you. Now, my God, have pity on me. I commend myself to you with sincerity – let Your will be done! Long Live France! Today our eagle must soar above Sevastopol!58
Not all the allied preparations went to plan. During the evening there were desertions from the French and British camps – not only by soldiers but by officers who had no stomach for the imminent assault and crossed over to the enemy. The Russians were warned of the assault by a French corporal who had deserted from the General Staff and carried to the Russians a detailed plan of the French attack. ‘The Russians knew, in precise detail, the position and strength of all our battalions,’ wrote Herbé, who was later told this by a senior Russian officer. They had also received warnings from British deserters, including one from the 28th (North Gloucestershire) Regiment. But even without these warnings, the Russians were alerted by the noisy preparations of the British on the evening of the 17th. Lieutenant Colonel James Alexander of the 14th Regiment recalled that ‘the men, being excited, did not go to sleep but remained up till we were directed to fall in at midnight. Our camp looked like a fair, lighted up, with a buzz of voices everywhere. The Russians must have remarked on this.’59