With the Guards We Shall Go: A Guardsman’s Letters in the Crimea, 1854-1855

By Countess Mabell of Airlie

Originally published in 1953, With the Guards We Shall Go (1933) details the experiences of Countess of Airlie’s great-uncle, John Jocelyn, 5th Earl of Roden, throughout the Crimean War.

The book draws on numerous letters written and received by the Guardsman between 1854-1855, which the Countess began to compile in 1917.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Release date: Apr 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787204201

Countess Mabell of Airlie

Mabell Frances Elizabeth Ogilvy, Countess of Airlie, GCVO, GBE, DStJ (née Gore; 10 March 1866, Mayfair, London - 7 April 1956, Paddington, London) was a British courtier and author. She was born the eldest daughter of Arthur Gore, Viscount Sudley and his wife, Edith, daughter of Robert Jocelyn, Viscount Jocelyn. When her mother died in 1871, she and her sisters were raised by their maternal grandmother, Lady Jocelyn, educated by governesses, and made visits to the Duchess of Teck at White Lodge, where Mabell met and befriended the Duchess’s daughter, Princess May (later Queen Mary). When her grandfather, Philip Gore, 4th Earl of Arran died in 1884 and her father inherited the former’s titles, she and her sisters were entitled to the nominal prefix of Lady. In 1886 she married an army officer, David Ogilvy, 11th Earl of Airlie at St George’s, Hanover Square, becoming Countess of Airlie. They had six children. On the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, Lord Airlie accompanied his regiment, the 12th Royal Lancers, to South Africa, where he was killed in action at the Battle of Diamond Hill in 1900. Lady Airlie then began to manage Cortachy Castle in Angus on behalf of her eldest son, David, the new Earl. In 1901 she became a Lady of the Bedchamber to her old friend May, now the Princess of Wales. On the accession of King George V in 1910, Lady Airlie was retained at court as a Lady of the Bedchamber to the now-Queen Mary. When Lady Airlie’s eldest son married in 1917, she moved from Cortachy Castle to Airlie Castle, where she began to edit family letters in her possession, for publication. In 1953, the countess’s employer and lifelong friend, Queen Mary, died, and Elizabeth II appointed her a Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) for her many years of service. She later moved from Airlie Castle to Bayswater Road, London in 1955. She died there a few weeks after her ninetieth birthday in 1956.

Book preview

This edition is published by BORODINO BOOKS—www.pp-publishing.com

To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – [e-mail]

Or on Facebook

Text originally published in 1933 under the same title.

© Borodino Books 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

WITH THE GUARDS WE SHALL GO:

A GUARDSMAN’S LETTERS IN THE CRIMEA, 1854-1855

BY

MABELL, COUNTESS OF AIRLIE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 6

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 7

PROLOGUE 8

CHAPTER I 10

CHAPTER II 13

CHAPTER III 22

CHAPTER IV 31

CHAPTER V 36

CHAPTER VI 48

CHAPTER VII 54

CHAPTER VIII 64

CHAPTER IX 70

CHAPTER X 76

CHAPTER XI 81

CHAPTER XII 87

CHAPTER XIII 93

CHAPTER XIV 98

CHAPTER XV 105

CHAPTER XVI 111

CHAPTER XVII 115

CHAPTER XVIII 120

CHAPTER XIX 126

CHAPTER XX 131

CHAPTER XXI 139

CHAPTER XXII 144

CHAPTER XXIII 148

CHAPTER XXIV 154

CHAPTER XXV 161

CHAPTER XXVI 169

CHAPTER XXVII 177

CHAPTER XXVIII 183

EPILOGUE 187

BIBLIOGRAPHY 190

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 191

DEDICATION

TO

ROSEMARY BAILEY

THE

DAUGHTER AND GRANDDAUGHTER

OF

TWO GOOD SOLDIERS

I WISH to offer my sincere thanks to those who have so materially helped me in putting this record together. To my brother Lord Arran for lending me the letters from my great-uncle, Colonel Jocelyn. To Admiral Sir Aubrey Smith for his kindness in allowing the contemporary sketches by Captain H. J. Wilkinson, of the Ninth Regiment, in his possession, to adorn the book. To an unknown friend whose counsel has been most valuable; and to Mr. and Mrs. Godfray Sellick for his excellent research work and her clear transcription.

MABELL AIRLIE.

AIRLIE CASTLE.

October 1933.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE VALLEY OF DEATH

GUARDS EMBARKING AT MALTA FOR THE CRIMEA, QUARANTINE HARBOUR, 1854. SHIPS: THE GOLDEN FLEECE, H.M.S. NIGER, THE KANGAROO OR EMU

FIRST VIEW OF SEVASTOPOL

THE HARBOUR OF SEVASTOPOL

NIGHT SCENE—WINTER IN THE TRENCHES BEFORE SEVASTOPOL. (TAKEN ON THE SPOT)

THE WORONZOFF ROAD

ENTRANCE TO BALACLAVA HARBOUR

OUR CAVALRY, DECEMBER 1854

BALACLAVA HARBOUR BEFORE THE HURRICANE

BALACLAVA HARBOUR AFTER THE HURRICANE

THE RETURN OF THE WORKING PARTY, TRENCHES, DECEMBER 1854

THE TRENCHES

THE SICK CONVOY

THE GUARD PARADING FOR THE TRENCHES, 1855

THE SENTRY

THE HARBOUR, BALACLAVA, 1855

THE OVENS

SEVASTOPOL AND MALAKOFF

SIEGE OF SEVASTOPOL. BURIAL OF THE DEAD IN FRONT OF THE MALAKOFF TOWER

PROLOGUE

IN this year 1933 talk of disarmament fills the air. The wings of the Dove of Peace are seen beating rather weakly and uncertainly against a threatening and stormy sky.

It may be of interest to contemplate the results which occurred some eighty years ago from a disarmament which had been completed some thirty years before, not wisely, but too well. Human nature must disarm itself, as well as its armies and navies, before the lamb can wisely lie down with the lion.

The Crimean War offers a striking example of the tragedies that may at any period follow forgetfulness of this truth, for its history contains warnings that should never be forgotten: the long protracted menace of war, unheeded in the settling down of the years of peace after the Napoleonic era; the enforced and sudden resolve to fight, with the consequent fevered preparation, where, in ill-judged haste, unimportant and insignificant trifles were considered while the real needs were disregarded.

It is a tale, a Winter’s Tale indeed, told against a background of snow and ice, of darkling skies and sombre horizons; a desperate tale of terrible and preventable suffering. Its stark scenes stir our hearts and grip our imagination; should they not also stir our sense of duty, and inspire our resolution?

There is a glint of gold, a slender figure on a chestnut, white-stockinged charger, as Cardigan passes, as if on parade, and the thundering hooves of the charge of Balaclava rush by, while the choking cry of the doomed Nolan sounds in our ears, as he charges back through the frantic squadrons. Rising and falling, desperate but fearless, come the fog-choked voices of the leaders of the attack at Inkerman. A starving, dying grey horse in the sea of half-frozen mud called the cavalry lines, stumbles and falls through weeks of torture till it sinks forever, its misery epitomizing the whole mass of suffering by animals and men in the Crimea.

Then comes a jingle, a rustle, a stir of plumes, and Lady Erroll and Mrs. Duberly canter past, wondering perhaps how they may justify their presence.

We see the stores, the great-coats and the hay, floating in the spume and wrack of violent storm in Balaclava harbour, while starving, ragged, dying men wait eight miles off for clothing and provender which can never reach them.

We see the Lady with the Lamp, but from a different point of view, as she attends every operation, because she found her presence comforted the men. We see Sir Colin Campbell’s bare head as he stands by his Highlanders after Inkerman, asking as sole reward that he may wear the bonnet like his men.

And then there comes before our eyes a little house sheltered by trees long coveted as fuel by the freezing men. And in that house, lying on his bed, the dead face of a commander who had borne a crushing load, not silent in thankful peace as are most dead faces, but 12 bearing on it the stamp of anguished care, of anxiety, ineffaceable even in death.

Let us draw the curtain. But let us not, in this year 1933, forget the lesson. Our duty to our children demands that we should pay heed to it.

CHAPTER I

IN the year 1853 there was living in Ireland the family of Jocelyn, whose head was the Earl of Roden, a peerage granted by George III in 1771 to those of a race who had come over with William the Conqueror from Normandy, where the old Château of Jocelin still stands inhabited.

The Rodens owned a good deal of property in the north of Ireland. Tullymore Park, the family home, was situated in the County Down, close to the shores of the Irish Sea, where the beautiful blue Mourne Mountains slope down to the coast, where the high rounded top of Slieve Donard towers through the soft Irish mist, and wood and tumbling rocky river combine with deep blue skies and their piled masses of cloud to make an earthly Paradise.

The house, though of modern appearance, was once a monastery, and later housed King William III, when he came over to Ireland. Pictures of the Clanbrassils and the Careys, with whom the family had been connected, hung on the walls, and a portrait of Mary Boleyn, one of the ancestresses of the family through her marriage with a Carey, stood in the long library.

Another large property owned by Lord Roden was in Dundalk, and was composed chiefly of townland. With the absentee habit of the time, only the agent lived there, and it was only briefly visited on business or for sport by the owner and his sons. Lord Roden also owned land in Essex, on the borders of Hertfordshire. But the chief interest and influence of the family lay in Ireland. He was Lord-Lieutenant of the County Down, where his strong Orange sympathies culminated in an unfortunate affray between the Catholic population and the Orange. The Lord-Lieutenant ordered out the troops to fire on the wretched peasants collected in a field. So many were killed that it was called the Battle of Dolly’s Brae. The spot is even now shunned by passers-by as a haunted place.

This all resulted in Lord Roden’s removal from the position of Lord-Lieutenant, but he remained an ardent and active Orangeman, with more freedom to exercise his sympathies against Papists, as Roman Catholics were termed. Lord Roden had married in 1813, at the age of twenty-five, the beautiful Maria, second daughter of Lord le Despencer, and became the father of three sons and three daughters.{1}

Robert, Lord Jocelyn, the eldest son, who came next in age to his sister Fanny, was of a very different disposition. Tall, handsome, full of vigour, with flashing black eyes and black curly hair, dashing, daredevil, the hero of many escapades and affairs of the heart, he fits but strangely in the stern Evangelical family life of the Rodens. Not for nothing was he successor to the man who took part in the charge of the fox-hunters in the days of the Whiteboys, and the impetuous man who ordered the volley of Dolly’s Brae. He was a soldier at heart and to the core of his being. In 1833 he joined the Rifle Brigade and exchanged in 1839 to the 15th Hussars, then the 15th Light Dragoons, and then he fell in love with the lovely Lady Fanny Cowper, daughter of Lady Cowper, and niece of Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister to Queen Victoria. Those who knew him shook their heads when they heard that a condition of acceptance on the part of the bride and her family was that he should leave the Army on his marriage, which took place in 1841. They both lived to rue it, for of two restless natures one was not made for a life of inactivity and without adventure. Four children were born of the marriage, one the Bobby of the letters. All died of consumption before reaching their prime, in foreign lands where they were sent in search of health; and, worn out with sorrow, their mother, still beautiful, died a few weeks after laying the last to rest in a grave among the Esterel Mountains, where she, too, lies between her sons.

Some years after the eldest boy was born, Lord Jocelyn, unable to endure the dull round of life at home, enlisted for active service in China without taking his wife into his confidence. In a caricature of the day he is represented as a Roman warrior obeying reluctantly the call of Mars, the god of war, while with one hand he points back beseechingly to a group comprising his wife and other beautiful female figures, as though urging the war-god not to tempt him above his strength with such responsibilities on his shoulders.

When he returned to England he entered Parliament and sat for King’s Lynn. During the Crimean War he commanded the Essex Rifles Militia and was stationed in the Tower.

The third and youngest son, Nassau, born sixteen years after his eldest brother, was of a quieter mould—more like his youngest sister Maria. He entered the diplomatic service, married, led a quiet and uneventful life, and ended his career as chargé d’affaires at Darmstadt.

The second brother, Strange, the writer of the letters which follow, was, in character, a combination of his elder and younger brothers. With much of the wild dash of the former, he possessed a steadiness of purpose and a fund of clear common sense lacking in the elder. He became deeply religious, even in youth, and his simple piety grew and persisted in old age. He was exceedingly handsome, as handsome perhaps as his brother Jocelyn, but with a quieter, more reserved manner.

Never was there a more devoted family than the Jocelyns. Love for his brothers and sisters irradiates all Strange’s letters, but that for his eldest brother was the strongest love of all, and his feeling for his father seems to have amounted almost to adoration. Perhaps the stern old man had forgiven a good deal. Who knows? His mother, too, had been strict, and it may be wondered whether her strictness had not a sharper sting than his father’s sternness.

A story is told of Strange’s youth which makes curious reading now. His father and mother were staying in Paris in 1838 with their sons. Lady Granville wrote, She is the most beautiful creature, now at forty-five and quite charming. Granville was very smitten. But this beautiful creature had very strong ideas on the subject of parental discipline. One night, when Strange returned to their hotel after some escapade, he found the entrance closed. The only way to get in was through his bedroom window. He climbed up a water pipe and dropped over the sill into his bedroom. There, seen by the light of a candle held in her hand, tall and stately, stood his mother in her white dressing-gown, watching for the return of her prodigal son. She called his father from the next room, who came armed with a horse-whip, and then she left father and son together.

But at the period with which we are here concerned these days were over, and Strange was a lieutenant and captain in the 2nd Battalion of Her Majesty’s Scots Fusilier Guards, which he entered in 1843, having joined the Army in 1842 as an ensign in the Rifle Brigade.

He had fallen madly in love with, and married, Sophie, second daughter of John Cam Hobhouse, Lord Broughton—the my boy Hobby O of Byron’s poem. Sophie was very young, very pretty, very amusing, she was also well read, and accustomed to the society of clever men, for Lord Broughton, a widower, gathered all that was best and wittiest in London Society round him. In old age she often talked of her girlhood, and of the long days in which she and her sister—afterwards Lady Dorchester—sat reading. There was nothing else to do then, she said, and how glad I am now. But Sophie was a fine horsewoman, and rode well and hard to hounds over the green fields of Leicestershire round her home, in a day when few women, except the Foresters, were seen in the hunting-field.

A greater contrast to the women of Strange’s family cannot be imagined, and it was doubtless with meaning and purpose that he pleaded in one letter that to know her is to love her. Sophie and her sister-in-law, Fanny, wife of Lord Jocelyn, unlike in other ways, were yet alike in their deep affection for their mother-in-law, Lady Roden, who taught both to find in religion their greatest consolation. One who was then a child can remember how, on her Sunday afternoon visits to Aunt Sophy, she was found surrounded by worldly trappings of footmen, silver plate, and richly and carefully dressed, but always reading her Bible.

Such was the family of Roden, in the year 1854, leading their ordered lives, making their plans, and looking forward to their work, their sport and their pleasure, when into their midst, as in that of many others like them, fell the shattering news that the country was at war.

CHAPTER II

IN that year, 1854, the horizon in Europe was overcast, because of the state of war between Russia and Turkey, which, though hitherto bloodless, had been in existence since 23rd October, 1853.

The views held by the Tsar on the future of Turkey as a European power had been known at the Court of St. James’s since the visit of His Imperial Majesty to England in 1844. He had then expressed the conviction that while it was for the common interest of Russia and England that the Ottoman Porte should maintain itself in a condition of independence, yet they must not conceal from themselves how many elements of dissolution that Empire contains within itself: unforeseen circumstances may hasten its fall,...the danger resulting from a catastrophe in Turkey will be much diminished if Russia and England have come to an understanding as to the course to be taken by them in common.{2}

Therefore, when nine years after, on the 9th January, 1853, he unfolded to Sir Hamilton Seymour, British Ambassador to the Court of the Tsar, the famous parable of the sick man, the Government and the Court of St. James’s could hardly claim to have been unprepared for what followed.

Tenez, wrote the Tsar, nous avons sur les bras, un homme malade, un homme gravement malade. Ce sera je vous dis franchement un grand malheur si un de ces jours il devait nous échapper, surtout avant que toutes les dispositions nécessaires fussent prises.

A convenient reason for dispute, medieval as befitted the constitutions of the two countries, already existed. The Greek and Latin Churches in the Holy Land each claimed the first right of entrance daily to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the possession of the key of the Great Church of Bethlehem. The Tsar as head of the Greek Church was champion of its claim to pre-eminence.

The Emperor of the French, in pursuance of the hereditary policy of his country, as naturally demanded the pre-eminence of the Latin Church.

Pressure from both sides was brought to bear on the unhappy Sultan. A Mahomedan could have no interest in a dispute between two alien religions, so, as a matter of policy, he endeavoured to satisfy both sides, and in consequence satisfied neither, the religious question being but a cloak for the Russian designs on the life of the sick man.

The Tsar then moved two army corps up to the frontier of the Danubian principalities, and sent Prince Menschikoff as a special envoy to Constantinople. This was the next move in the game, but when the Sultan again acceded to the demands of the envoy of Russia the pretext became insufficient, so that the Tsar, to keep up the quarrel which was to end in the dismemberment of Turkey, was forced to put forward fresh claims which constituted a terrible menace to Turkish independence. These claims were refused. He then supported them by causing his troops to pass the frontier on the 2nd July and occupy the Danubian principalities.

The western powers of Europe became alarmed. They made efforts to preserve peace, and met in conference at Vienna, where they framed a note which they urged the Porte to accept. But the Porte, under no illusion as to the real aims of St. Petersburg, pointed out that the note could be so construed by an autocrat eager for war, as actually to play into the hands of the Tsar.

The English Ambassador to the Porte, Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, supported this view of the note. England, France, Austria and Prussia could therefore no longer urge its acceptance. A deadlock ensued, and the Porte took action. It demanded the evacuation of the principalities within fifteen days. This demand was disregarded. A state of war thereupon existed, as already said, on 23rd October, 1853, though the declaration of war had not actually been made.

Austria having secured the support of Prussia as well as that of England and France, summoned the Tsar to evacuate the principalities on the 3rd June, 1854. She was in a strong position for making this request as in the previous February she had moved fifty thousand men to the frontier of the territory seized by the Tsar, which with her territorial position north of the Danube would make it possible for her effectually to check an attempt on the part of Russia to invade Turkey in that direction. Austria’s warlike intentions were so manifest that the Tsar perceived he could no longer resist the pressure put upon him. August 2nd saw the complete withdrawal from the principalities of the Russian forces, and their occupation by Austria in the interests of Turkey.

The position, therefore, was that Austria and Prussia, who had formed an alliance expressly in defence of the interests of Germany, had no further reason for pursuing the quarrel.

The principalities had been abandoned, and the cause had vanished. The French and English, who had arrived in Turkish waters expecting to defend the fortresses between Shumla and Varna where they were encamped, had in consequence a very different task before them.

It is impossible not to reflect how closely the condition of Europe in 1853 resembled that in 1914. The Tsar, anxious to gain the support of England, had offered her a large share in the division of the Sick Man’s possessions after the death he was doing his best to hasten. He had promised her Egypt; he had offered her Candia. England having remained dumb as to her intentions, he persisted in his illusion that she would never go to war in support of a Continental dispute. Hamley says that he started with the belief that Turkey would remain unsupported, that England would acquiesce in her destruction. He confided in the belief that England was entirely absorbed in the pursuit of wealth through manufactures and commerce, and could no longer be induced to fight for a principle, a sentiment or an ally. How far a more determined tone on the part of Lord Aberdeen’s ministry, at an early stage of his course of aggression, would have effectually checked it, may be a matter of speculation.{3} But the Prime Minister himself was noted for his repugnance to any course of action which would lead to war. This country was thus unprepared in the spirit of its rulers, as well as in military equipment, to undertake a great war in 1853, but it only needed the commission of a great crime to rouse her from her slumber .

Two autocrats bent on war, one in 1853, the other in 1914, went to their ruin from harbouring the same delusion. The brute force against which England and France were united was displayed in 1853, as in 1914, by the commission of a great initial crime. Without a previous declaration of war, as on 2nd August, 1914, Belgium was violated, so on 30th November, 1853, the Russian Admiral Nakimoff, with ships of the line, attacked a Turkish squadron of light war vessels riding at anchor in the Black Sea, and destroyed absolutely both it and its crews to the number of 4,000 men. The act could not be ignored, but one last effort was made for peace. This final attempt at pacification was made by the French Emperor. It brought the reply from the Tsar that Russia will prove herself in 1854 what she was in 1812. No more was needed to precipitate the final catastrophe than this allusion to the ruin of the first Napoleon by Russia, made to his descendant. France in a flame, and England blazing into indignation, united, on the 27th February, 1854, in demanding the evacuation of the principalities by the 30th April; and when a contemptuous silence was the only answer, they declared war.

In 1853, as in 1914, the aggressors were governed by an autocrat who believed in a military despotism as a basis for a stable Government. The Tsar held that being the sole ruler of a boundless empire bestowed on him illimitable power over the whole of Europe. Up till the outbreak of this war the response to his tireless activity and wide ambition had crowned his wishes. His arms had been constantly successful. He had advanced his frontiers and added large provinces to his already unwieldy possessions, by the war with Persia in 1826, and with Turkey in 1828. He had strengthened his authority at home by his conflict with Poland in 1831, and had recently occupied Hungary so as to re-establish in Germany the ascendancy he had lost by the commotions of 1848. He thus believed, like the first Napoleon, that he was unconquerable, and those who were at the head of the Government of England should have realized that singular and extraordinary preparations would be required to cope with the menace of such an autocrat, capable of putting his will into prompt action reinforced by unqualified obedience at a word, instead of forgetting that after Waterloo the personnel of the British Army was cut down to 101,000 for the whole of the United Kingdom. Militia was disbanded; the volunteers ceased. In 1847, when war with France was talked of, there were only actually 30,000 in Great Britain.{4}

From the beginning of the decision to go to war, the menace of Russia became embodied in men’s minds as a monster, a Frankenstein. England could not approve the withdrawal of the allied fleets from before the fortress of Sevastopol while the wrecks of the Turkish ships still strewed the waters of the Euxine, nor leave the shores of Turkey unprotected while those dark masses of stone frowned on the other side of the water. The imagination of the French was fired by the same thought, and an attack on Sevastopol became the objective of the war, the intervening difficulties of landing great forces of men on an unknown shore in a country of whose resources both we and our allies were ignorant, a country which had already broken, by the forces of Nature alone, the might of the great Napoleon, were either forgotten or slurred over in the glamour of the objective. It was also supposed that Marshal St. Arnaud had sailed with secret orders to attack Sevastopol at all costs.

In the House of Lords in June 1854, Lord Lyndhurst spoke with no uncertain voice, declaring that Sevastopol must be the object of attack, and in July The Times added the weight of its authority to the pronouncement that it was necessary for the allies to strike at the very heart of Russian power in the East, and that heart was Sevastopol. The Emperor of the French approved the decision of the Cabinet, which, when transmitted to the Commander of the British Forces, was fortified by a private letter, and the commander of his forces, Marshal St. Arnaud, sailed with orders to attack Sevastopol at all costs among his secret instructions.

There could have been, therefore, little doubt in the minds of those who were responsible for the war, that the preparations needed for its execution must be of an extraordinary nature for a campaign in a country of such extremes of climate as Russia. Yet when the Guards embarked for the front, they did so in their scarlet and gold and their bearskins, one wag suggesting that these would be found useful as muffs; practically the only addition to their equipment being the bonnet, a sort of forage cap invented for their comfort by His Royal Highness the Prince Consort. But they carried no great-coats, no tents, no huts. There were no stores for the wounded, no ambulances or orderlies for the sick. In their place there were, it is true, a small number of old