Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar to Queen Victoria

BATTLE OF INKERMAN

Camp before Sebastopol, 28th November 1854.

Madam,—Your Majesty's very kind letter reached me by the last mail. I avail myself of your permission to write to you again, although there is not much to say since I last wrote to Prince Albert on the 7th or 8th of this month. I wrote to him soon after the battle of Inkerman, when I was still under the excitement of that fearful scene, and I am afraid that I made use of expressions that I was afterwards sorry that I had done. I believe I made some reflections on our Commanders, which are at all times wrong. By this time your Majesty will, of course, be in possession of all the details of that fearful day, on which our loss was so very great. I made a mistake in stating the number of dead in the Grenadiers; it was much larger than I stated. I think we must have suffered more than any other Corps, for, on the following day, when the roll was called, two hundred and twenty-five men were absent; of these one hundred and one were killed, and the rest wounded. There cannot be any doubt that we allowed ourselves to be surprised, for the first notice we had of the Russians was receiving their heavy shot in the camp of the 2nd Division. Nearly all their tents were torn by round shot. It is even said that a shell lodged in an officer's portmanteau, burst, and, of course, scattered all his goods to the winds. Experience has made us wise, or rather Lord Raglan wise, for since that day the French and ourselves have been busy in entrenching our right; it is now so strong that no enemy can attack us there with the slightest chance of success; it is only a pity it was not done before. The Turks were chiefly employed making these redoubts, which is in fact the only thing they have done except burying the dead Russians. Never shall I forget the sight of the dead and dying Russians on the field. Some of these poor wretches had to lie on the field for at least sixty hours before they were removed to the hospital tents; the majority of course died. I am afraid this is one of the necessities of war, for we had to remove our own people first. I went round the hospitals next morning. It was a horrid sight to see the bodies of the men who had died during the night stretched before the tents, and to see the heaps of arms and legs, with the trousers and boots still on, that had been cut off by the surgeons.

The Russians were so near that most of the officers had to use their swords and revolvers. Many single acts of daring took place; among others, Colonel Percy, of our Regiment, dashed in front of his Company, sword in hand, into a dense body of Russians who were in a battery. I was not in the thick of it, but was engaged with an outlying picquet on the left of the attack. George was in the very thick of it, and, not seeing me, kept asking some of our men where I was. They did not know. He tells me that he thought for a long time I was killed, and even fancied that he had seen me lying on the ground; it turned out later to have been poor Colonel Dawson's body which he mistook for me.

On the 14th we had a terrible storm, such a one as, fortunately for mankind, does not happen but very rarely. All our tents of course were blown down, and we passed the day very uncomfortably; but at sea it was terrible. At Balaklava alone more than two hundred and sixty souls perished, and eleven ships went down. George will have been able to give you a perfect account of it, for, for many hours, the Retribution was in imminent danger. I went a few days after the storm to see him on board. ... He had a little fever or ague on him, but was otherwise well. He has now gone to Constantinople....

May I beg of your Majesty to remember me kindly to Prince Albert and the Duchess of Kent. I have the honour, etc.

Edward of Saxe-Weimar.

Son of Duke Charles Bernard and Duchess Ida, the latter being a Princess of Saxe-Meiningen and sister to Queen Adelaide. The Prince was at this time Lieut.-Colonel and A.D.C. to Lord Raglan. He was afterwards A.D.C. to the Queen and ultimately Commander of the Forces in Ireland. He died in 1902.

See ante, p. 53, note 60.

Footnote 66: Colonel Henry Hugh Manvers Percy, 1817-1877, whose father afterwards became the fifth Duke of Northumberland. The Legion of Honour, the Medjidie, and the V.C. were all subsequently conferred on him.

Footnote 67: Hon. Thomas Vesey Dawson, brother of the third Lord Cremorne (created Earl of Dartrey).

Footnote 68: In this terrible hurricane the Prince, a new and magnificent steamer, with a cargo of the value of £500,000, including powder, shot and shell, beds, blankets, warm clothing for the troops, and medical stores for the hospitals, was lost; six men only of a crew of one hundred and fifty were saved; but the soldiers of the Forty-sixth, whom she was conveying to Balaklava, had happily been landed. Thirty of our transports, as well as the French warship Henri IV., were wrecked. A thousand men were lost, and many more escaped drowning, only to fall into the hands of the Cossacks and be carried to Sebastopol. One solitary source of consolation could be found in the circumstance that the tempest did not occur at an earlier period, when six hundred vessels, heavily laden and dangerously crowded together, were making their way from Varna to Old Fort.