The Crimean War полностью

For more than an hour, the 500 Turkish troops defending the No. 1 Redoubt put up a stubborn resistance, as they had done against the Russians at Silistria, losing more than one-third of their men. But then 1,200 Russian troops stormed the redoubt at the point of the bayonet, forcing the exhausted defenders to abandon it to them, along with three of the seven British cannon which had been lent to the Turks. ‘To our disgust,’ recalled Calthorpe, who was watching from the Sapoune Heights with Raglan’s staff, ‘we saw a little stream of men issue from the rear of the redoubt and run down the hill-side towards our lines.’ Seeing their countrymen in full retreat, the Turkish garrisons in the neighbouring three redoubts (2, 3 and 4) followed their example and withdrew towards the port, many of them carrying their blankets, pots and pans and crying ‘Ship! Ship!’ as they passed the British lines. Calthorpe watched as 1,000 Turkish troops streamed down the hill pursued by large parties of Cossacks. ‘The yells of these wild horsemen could be heard from where we were as they galloped after these unhappy Muslims, numbers of whom were killed by their lances.’

As they ran through the settlement of Kadikoi, the Turkish soldiers were jeered at by a group of British army wives, including one, a massive washerwoman with brawny arms and ‘hands as hard as horn’, who seized hold of a Turk and gave him a good kicking for trampling on the washing she had laid out in the sun to dry. When she realized that the Turks had deserted her own husband’s regiment, the 93rd, she scolded them: ‘Ye cowardly misbelievers, to leave the brave Christian Highlanders to fecht when ye ran awa!’ The Turks tried to placate her, and some called her ‘Kokana’,^ah prompting her to become even more enraged. ‘Kokana, indeed! I’ll Kokana ye!’ she cried, and, brandishing a stick, chased them down the hill. Tired and downcast, the Turkish soldiers continued their retreat, until they reached the ravine leading to the port. Throwing their belongings on the ground, they lay down beside them to get some rest. Some spread out their prayer mats on the ground and said a prayer towards Mecca.²²

The British accused the Turkish troops of cowardice, but this was unfair. According to John Blunt, Lord Lucan’s Turkish interpreter, most of the troops were Tunisians without proper training or experience of war. They had only just arrived in the Crimea and were in a famished state: none of them had received any rations they could eat as Muslims since they had left Varna several days before and on their arrival they had disgraced themselves by attacking civilians. Blunt rode after the retreating troops and relayed to an officer Lucan’s command for them to regroup behind the 93rd, but he was accosted by the soldiers ‘who appeared parched with thirst and exhausted’. They asked him why no British troops had come to their support, complained that they had been left in the redoubts for several days without food or water, and declared that the ammunition they were supplied with did not fit the guns in the redoubts. One of the soldiers, his head in a bandage and smoking a long pipe, said to Blunt in Turkish: ‘What can we do sir? It is God’s will.’²³