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
