Aided by night, they emerge from the fog unexpectedly, like demons … Panting with murderous intent (for fair fighting is not their aim), blessed by inhuman Priests, promised plunder to any amount, excited by ardent liquids, encouraged by two of their Grand Dukes … drunk, maddened, every evil passion aroused, they rush wildly upon our soldiers. At Inkerman we saw the Russian soldiery bayoneting, beating out the brains, jumping like fiends upon the lacerated bodies of the wounded Allies, wherever they could find them. The atrocities committed by the Russians have covered their nation with infamy and made them an example of horror and detestation to the whole world.61
But in fact these actions had more to do with a sense of religious outrage. When Raglan and Canrobert wrote to Menshikov on 7 November to protest against the atrocities, the Russian commander-in-chief replied that the killings had been caused by the destruction of the Church of St Vladimir at Khersonesos – the church built to consecrate the spot where the Grand Prince Vladimir had been baptized, converting Kievan Rus’ to Christianity – which had been pillaged and then used by the French troops as part of their siege works. The ‘deep religious feeling of our troops’ had been wounded by the desecration of St Vladimir, argued Menshikov in a letter approved by the Tsar, adding for good measure that the Russians had themselves been ‘victims’ of a series of ‘bloody retributions’ by the English troops on the battlefield of Inkerman. Some of these facts were admitted by César de Bazancourt, the official French historian of the expedition to the Crimea, in his account of 1856:
Close upon the sea-shore, amid the irregular ground upon which stand the remnants of the Genoese Fort, and which descends towards the Quarantine Bay, rose the small chapel of St Vladimir. Some scattered soldiers, more bold than the others, would often creep through the undulations of the ground towards the Quarantine establishments which had been abandoned by the Russians, and carry off thence anything serviceable to them – either to shelter themselves or to feed the fires in front of their tents; fire-wood beginning to be scarce. To these soldiers, already culpable, succeeded those marauders who, in every army, will prowl about in contempt of all laws and all discipline, in search of pillage. They contrived to get beyond the line of outposts, and penetrated during the night into the small chapel placed under the guardianship of the protecting Saint of Russia.
But if the Russians had been driven to atrocities by deep religious feelings, it was certainly the case that they had been encouraged by their priests. The night before the battle, at services in churches in Sevastopol, the Russian troops were told that the British and the French were fighting for the Devil, and priests had called on them to kill them without mercy to avenge the destruction of St Vladimir.62
Inkerman was a pyrrhic victory for the British and the French. They had managed to resist the largest Russian effort yet to dislodge them from the heights around Sevastopol. But the casualties were very high, at a level that the public would find hard to tolerate, especially after they learned about the poor treatment of the dying and the wounded by the medical services. Serious questions would be asked about the wisdom of the whole campaign when the news reached home. With such heavy losses, it was no longer feasible for the allied armies to mount a fresh assault against Sevastopol’s defences until fresh troops arrived.
At a joint planning conference at Raglan’s headquarters on 7 November, the French took over from the British on Mount Inkerman, a tacit recognition that they had become the senior partner in the military alliance, leaving the British, now down to just 16,000 effectives, to occupy no more than a quarter of the trenches around Sevastopol. At the same meeting, Canrobert insisted on shelving any plans for an assault against Sevastopol until the following spring, when the allies would have enough reinforcements to overcome the Russian defences, which had not only withstood the first allied bombardment but had been greatly strengthened since. The French commander argued that the Russians had brought in a large number of fresh troops, increasing their numbers in Sevastopol to 100,000 men (in fact, they had barely half that number after Inkerman). He feared that they would be able to go on reinforcing their defences ‘as long as the attitude of Austria with respect to the Eastern Question allows Russia to send any number of troops she pleases from Bessarabia and Southern Russia to the Crimea’. Until the French and British had a military alliance with the Austrians and had brought in ‘very numerous reinforcements’ to the Crimea, there was no point losing more lives in the siege. Raglan and his staff agreed with Canrobert. The question now was how to make provision for the allied troops to spend the winter on the heights above Sevastopol, for all they had brought with them were lightweight tents suitable only for summer campaigning. Canrobert believed, and the British shared his view, that ‘by means of a simple stone substructure under tents, the troops might pass the winter here’. Rose agreed. ‘The climate is healthy,’ he explained to Clarendon, ‘and with the exception of cold northerly winds, the cold in winter is not vigorous.’63
The prospect of spending the winter in Russia filled many with a sense of dark foreboding: they thought about Napoleon in 1812. De Lacy Evans urged Raglan to abandon the siege of Sevastopol and evacuate the British troops. The Duke of Cambridge proposed withdrawing the troops to Balaklava, where they could be more easily supplied and sheltered from the cold than on the heights above Sevastopol. Raglan rejected their proposals, and resolved to keep the army on the heights throughout the winter months, a criminal decision prompting the resignation of Evans and Cambridge, who returned to England, sick and disillusioned, before winter came. Their departure began a steady homeward trail of British officers. In the two months after Inkerman, 225 of the 1,540 officers in the Crimea departed for warmer climes; only 60 of them would return.64
Among the rank and file, the realization that there would be no quick victory was even more demoralizing. ‘Why did we not make a bold attack after being flushed with victory at Alma?’ asked Lieutenant Colonel Mundy of the 33rd Regiment of Foot. He summed up the general mood in a letter to his mother on 7 November:
If the Russians are as strong as they say, we must quit the siege, for it is generally understood that even with our present strength we can do no good with Sevastopol. The fleet is useless and the work now so harrassing that when the cold weather comes on hundreds must fall victims to overexertion and sickness. Sometimes not one night rest do the men get in six and oftentimes are 24 hours on. It must be remembered that they have no clothing except a thin blanket, and the cold and damp are very severe at night, and the constant state of anxiety we are always in, for fear of an attack being made on our trenches, batteries or redoubts quite puts a stop to calm wholesome sleep.
Rates of desertion from the allied trenches increased sharply as the winter cold arrived in the weeks after Inkerman, with hundreds of British and French soldiers giving themselves up to the Russian side.65
For the Russians, the defeat at Inkerman was a devastating blow. Menshikov became convinced that the fall of Sevastopol was unavoidable. In a letter to the Minister of War, Prince Dolgorukov, on 9 November, he recommended its abandonment so that Russian forces could be concentrated on the defence of the rest of the Crimea. The Tsar was enraged by such defeatism from his commander-in-chief. ‘For what was the heroism of our troops, and such heavy losses, if we accept defeat?’ he wrote to Menshikov on 13 November. ‘Surely our enemies have also suffered heavily? I cannot agree with your opinion. Do not submit, I say, and do not enourage others to do so … . We have God on our side.’ Despite such words of defiance, the Tsar was thrown into a deep depression by the news of Inkerman, and his despondent mood was clear for all at court to see. In the past Nicholas had tried to hide his feelings from his courtiers, but after Inkerman there was no more concealing it. ‘The palace at Gatchina is gloomy and silent,’ Tiutcheva noted in her diary: ‘everywhere there is depression, people hardly daring to speak to each other. The sight of the sovereign is enough to break one’s heart. Recently he has become more and more morose; his face is careworn and his look is lifeless.’ Shocked by the defeat, Nicholas lost faith in the commanders who had led him to believe that the war in the Crimea could be won. He began to regret his decision to go to war against the Western powers in the first place, and turned for comfort to those advisers, such as Paskevich, who had always been against the war.66