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Mud and Muddle

© John Barham

It was only 42 years since Napoleon the First's catastrophic invasion of Russia had terminated in the disaster of the Retreat from Moscow. On the morning of the 15th November in the Crimea the scene might well have been comparable. The special correspondent Mr Woods of the Morning Herald had just arrived from Turkey. 'I only saw the shore from Belbek to Balaclava, a distance of about 30 miles, but along this whole extent of coast there was hardly a spot upon the beach which was not covered with fragments of some vessel or its cargo - masts, spars, sails, pieces of boats, oars, hatches barrels of rum. cordage, bales of clothes, beds, blankets, rafts of timber, fragments of furniture, boxes and chests, trusses of hay, tents, lay floating about wasted and ruined. At Balaclava the scene was worse...the whole surface was covered with masses of wreck and hundreds of tangled bodies.'

The most spectacular loss being the Prince, it was natural that the media would make it its main news item, and the focus for finding a scapegoat. Christie found himself in this unjustified position. He had lost all his arguments with Dacres, which might indicate a lack of drive and assertiveness which would make him an easier prey than Dacres, who was hustled away 'invalided' directly after the storm - after all, any perceptive questioning by press or enquiry commissioners would have led directly to Raglan. It was also convenient to blame the Army's appalling suffering throughout the winter on the loss of the winter clothing on the Prince - this massive stigma on Christie must have contributed to the heart attack which killed him in early April before charges against him which were due to be heard on the 25th.

But back to the immediate wake of the disaster. Even prior to the storm, the Battle of Inkerman had left the British Army in deep trouble. Strategically the High Command had had to decide that the assault on Sevastopol would need to be postponed until sufficient reinforcements had arrived from France and England to make it a feasible proposition. This meant digging in and adopting a defensive posture, spending the entire winter on the heights. This had never been envisaged, and therefore neither army, let alone the Turks, was equipped to withstand the hardships of a severe Russian winter. Worst of all for the British was the distance between their camps and their base, and the condition of the single track access between them.

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