17

Like most of the British high-ranking officers in the last three centuries, Lord Raglan had a certain adversity towards anything that escaped his control and his rigid, all too British concept of understanding modern warfare.

No matter that such a command had not been requested by him, nor was he interested in it; he had been named commander of the expeditionary corps out of mere political calculations, well aware that his meager service record would have been very useful in London in the event of an unpleasant conclusion to the campaign, as an excellent tool to scapegoat him.

But of course Raglan had no intention to play such a part, and from day one he had led the siege in his own way; naval blockade right at the entrance of the gulf of Sevastopol, land barriers through rentrenchements brought as close as possible to the walls, and constant hammering of the enemy position to deteriorate Russian morale.

Unfortunately his mentality clashed with those of the French and Ottoman commanders; thinking too outside the box for somebody, too old-fashioned for others, he had ended up having to keep together a coalition that, when push came to shove, existed only on paper, since in the end everyone did what he wanted.

That expedition, meant to crush the enemy's attempt to lift the siege, was to be the first serious attempt to create a living arrangement between the three allied souls inside a single army, but it could hardly be said that the attempt had started off well.

The Turk vanguards, whose lone task would have been to gain time for the main force, had ran way with their tails between their legs at the first sign of danger, deathly scared by those Cossack madmen who had thrown themselves against the redoubts like a torrent against a lumber dam.

As far as the French were concerned, cooperation had never been a particularly important matter for them, and General Canrobert had insisted on keeping well under his thumb his units deployed on the left flank.

Although he himself, like almost any other high-ranking officer, had never been shy on commenting on the historical lack of discipline and scarce capability to understand and fight a modern warfare on the Russians' part, Raglan had decided that the gloves were off, anxious to solve that headache as soon as possible and to get home and enjoy retirement; for that reason, even at the cost of losing a day's march, he had taken care to bring with him, together with the Heavy and Light Cavalry Brigades, the French and the artillery, five more infantry divisions, most of whom Highlanders and Royal Marines, with the latter two units making a seaborne movement along the coast, to make sure to protect the village of Balaclava and reinforce at the same time his right flank.

On top of all that, as an additional safety measure, before departing Raglan had recommended to the Duke of Cambridge to follow him with the 1st and 4th Infantry Divisions, if the troops still aboard the fleet watching over Sevastopol harbor had managed to disembark and relieve them from their positions in the siege works, but, whether they would have arrived or not, Raglan did not believe that their help would prove necessary to solve that battle.

Obviously, in such a huge and heterogeneous army, differences of opinion were bound to happen, and Raglan had to do his very best to keep them under control; among any others, the most vitriolic rivalry was surely that between George Bingham, Earl of Lucan, in command of the cavalry units deployed in Crimea, and James Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, commander of the Light Cavalry Brigade.

Those two, to say the least, wanted nothing more to smash their respective faces at any meeting, a somewhat unusual thing for two in-laws, since Cardigan's sister was at the same time the wife of Lucan. Although their riding ability was not to be questioned, career-wise those two were nothing more than third-rate upstarts, even without Cardigan's nauseating British vanity, of which at times he looked even proud of. He dressed and spruced up before a battle as a Lord about to dine at Windsor Palace, and even on the eve of the transfer from Southampton to Sevastopol he had made sure to travel aboard his own private steamer.

He felt important and loved to show up how much, and in that respect Lucan was hardly better than him, as he spent more time making sure his medals shined, than properly leading his men into battle.

And then, him. The most odious bother that Lord Raglan had been forced to haul with him.

William Russel was his name.

A journalist; or, as he loved to define himself, a war correspondent. A wild beard fit for a friar, lean as a stick and a well-known motor mouth. The Prime Minister himself had wanted him among the expedition to document, with his well-known style, the most important moments of the Crimean campaign, both to make the war a bit less heavy for the British public opinion, and to hopefully gain ground for his re-election.

Twice already he had almost gotten himself into trouble looking for a big scoop, and although he had been forced to bring him along, the General this time had no intention to babysit him, or have him around. Thus, he had sent him, together with two guards, on a hill where the whole battlefield could be seen, almost as if he hoped that some enemy soldier could notice him and use him as a target for his sharpshooting skills.

Just before reaching the designated location, Raglan and his staff left the rest of the army corps to get to a position on the top of the eastern hills, delegating to his officers the task of finishing the deployement of the troops according to the already prepared order of battle.

However, what the General and his adjutant saw, as soon as they reached said hills, left them perplexed and confused, to say the least.

As a start, the Russians had not fell into the trap of focusing towards the valley to the south with their troops in the hope to capture the village, thus leaving themselves wide open for a flanking maneuver.

In the northern valley stood most of the artillery, deployed at the far end of the gully, with a somewhat small infantry escort and other, minor positions on the sides of the hills, on both flanks. Such deployement, though, was in the very least bizarre; the lower line, made up of medium- and heavy-caliber guns, was crowned by the upper one, formed instead by small-caliber British guns capture from the Ottomans, placed so close together that they looked like the many barrels of a gigantic pump organ. It looked as if the enemy commander had been hell-bent on having a lone, never-ending line of guns, to the point of sacrificing the space needed by the crews to reload.

To the south instead, well in sight, the imposing Cossack cavalry of General Ryzhov could be seen, with another and smaller artillery position (armed with twenty-four pounders) behind them.

On the hill that divided the battlefield, on the top of which stood the road that led to Sevastopol, the Russian commander had opted to preserve the conquered Ottoman redoubts, now defended by small infantry detachments that could be clearly glimpsed on top of the stone and packed earth walls, as if to claim their own, ephemeral conquest.

A new council of war was needed by that point, to which almost all the officers and subordinates in command of the various units came, gathered under a white tent in the middle of the encampment.

"There are two possibilities." Cardigan commented. "Either the Russian commander went too far with his vodka, or someone there lost his mind altogether."

"One day your self-assurance will be your doom." was Lucan's acrimonious reply.

Raglan felt a phantom pain flaring up in his long-gone right arm, and surely not for the last verbal duel of those two divas. Not a good sign.

"We'll have to rethink our previous plans. Lord Lucan. You and the Heavy Brigade will face the enemy in the valley to the south. The 17th of the Line will be right behind you, ready to support; you'll also need to support the 21st, that will take advantage of the engagement to climb the hill and capture the redoubts. The 91st and the Royal Marines will hold the position on top of the hills. Lord Cardigan."

"My Lord?"

"With the Light Brigade, you will position in the northern valley, waiting for orders. When the redoubts are taken, according to the battle's development you will be given an objective."

If not for his martial behavior, Cardigan would have exploded right before the whole staff.

Since they had set foot on Crimea, his unit had not been able to distinguish itself, not even once, being employed at best to finish off an opponent already on the run or close to defeat. And now, despite the great hopes he had held for that engagement, he was staring at another second-line role for him and his brigade.

Trying not to make it too apparent for convenience's sake, he gave both Raglan and Lucan a withering glare; he couldn't say it out in the open, but in his mind he had always suspected his brother-in-law of sabotaging his career, feeding the commander at any occasion, and in his heart he prayed for nothing else but to ram down that arrogant rogue's throat all of his condescension.

"What about the French, My Lord?" Lucan asked.

"They'll deploy on their own. As usual." Raglan sniffed. "They'll move on the left flank and they'll carve a path towards the hills to the north. From there, we'll be able to make a flanking maneuver against their main battery."

"But will a single infantry unit be enough to capture those redoubts?" asked the relevant officer, Colonel Peterson.

"As far as we know, this army was mobilized in a hurry, especially the infantry units. They are no soldiers, they're greenhorns. At the first volleys, I wouldn't be surprised to see them break and run. In any case, the side of the hill will give you shelter from their guns, and we'll keep in reserve a small detachment from Lord Lucan's horsemen to support you if necessary."

The plan wasn't quite orthodox, but in any case that was required from the unusual behavior of the enemy. Besides, it was from the times of Waterloo that Raglan showed little inclination towards tactical elegance, rather choosing direct and quick approaches compared to his colleagues.

"Very well, gentlemen. You have your orders. Back to your units."

"Yes, My Lord!"

When somebody asked Russel to keep away from danger, it was like trying to give a musical education to a deaf person.

Considering that the position pointed to him was too low, compared to the surrounding hills, and too far removed, the young journalist had thus forced his small escort of three soldiers and his three helpers to follow him up a hill halfway between the hills to the west and the southern promontory that surrounded the village of Balaclava and the nearby inlet.

From there he could easily see the whole battlefield; the only place that he couldn't completely see, thanks to the central hill, was the Russian barrier to the north, only partially visible, but it was enough to have an idea on how an eventual engagement would happen.

Placing himself over a rock that further improved his visual range, Russel took from his trusty trunk (always at his side, over a small cart) one of the many contraptions borne out of his mind, designed and built to make his job easier; in this case, it was a sort of improved, vertical binocular that, while just a tad bigger than a standard one, sensibly improved his visibility, albeit at a price of an increase in weight that required a wooden tripod.

Slowly, the various units of the British army deployed to the bottom of the hills like chess pieces, but that was almost instantly ignored by Russel, who instead turned his contraption towards the already prepared Russian lines.

His gaze fell first on the impressive Cossack cavalry deployed on the opposite front of the southern valley, and with the first glance he already noticed something that left him speechless. General Ryzhov, who was on paper its commander, stood to the right of a young woman with eyes of ice and a head of dark heir, dressed like the Ukrainian Cossack warriors, and from how she and Ryzhov spoke and from the deference he was visibly showing her, it was more than apparent who was in command and who wasn't.

"What in..."

At that, the youngster had the idea of looking for the enemy encampment, spotting it with little difficulty on a promontory slightly to the right of the central hill, inside one of the conquered redoubts, but also much closer to the first line of that of Lord Raglan.

A wall of officers and soldiers almost voluntarily shielded from the enemy's sight the view of the Russian commander, and the fact that General Liprandi was among them was for Russel another reason for disbelief.

But that was nothing compared to what awaited him.

Because, as soon as the British army finished deploying on the terrain, that human barrier parted as if a curtain. Both Russel and Raglan looked in that direction then, and no words could describe what they felt when their spyglasses spotted in the headquarters not Prince Mensikov, but a girl maybe sixteen years old, dressed up like the most respectable of generals, and in whose eyes burned the flame of a lioness.

"Well, I'll be darned!" said Russel.

The General's reaction was more or less the same, but unlike the young reporter he tried not to show it, even though, in his forty-years long service, he couldn't remember a single instance who had left him any more dumbfounded.

However, he didn't miss a beat, nor did he show agitation, and at his gesture the bugler's call for beginning the battle sounded under the sky.

At that, Lord Lucan unsheathed his saber, lifting it up.

"Move out!"