Who won the Battle of Inkerman?
Britain and France won. On 5 November 1854 Russian columns attacked the British right flank above besieged Sevastopol in fog and rain. Outnumbered British infantry held the ridge until French troops under General Bosquet arrived, and the Russians withdrew with about 12,000 casualties. The siege went on, but the allied assault was put off.1
Before dawn on 5 November 1854, 24 October in the Russian calendar, Russian columns climbed out of the mist onto the ridge east of besieged Sevastopol and fell on the British Second Division. For most of the morning a few thousand British infantry, fighting in small groups because no one could see far, held off a much larger force, until French troops under General Pierre Bosquet arrived and the Russians fell back.2
The British remember Inkerman as the soldiers' battle. Russian writers, from the official history edited by Eduard Totleben to the Soviet historian Yevgeny Tarle, saw a battle their soldiers could have won and their generals lost. French accounts stress that Bosquet's division turned the day. This page follows all three armies: why the Russians attacked, why their plan fell apart, how the British held and what the battle changed. For the whole war see our guide to the Crimean War.3
Where was the Battle of Inkerman fought?
The battle was fought on the northeastern corner of the plateau south of Sevastopol harbor, where the British right flank stood. The name came not from the battlefield itself but from the ruins of Inkerman, a cave town and old fortress on the cliffs across the Chernaya River, which gave its name to the heights around it; the British called this corner of the plateau Mount Inkerman. The Second Division camped on it, between the Careenage ravine on the west and the cliffs above the Chernaya on the east.4
The ground was covered in low scrub and broken by rocks and ravines. The 1913 Russian Military Encyclopedia notes that the plateau could be reached only by a few hard roads and narrow paths up the ravines, and that the British had begun three small redoubts on this flank only in mid October, none of them finished by 5 November.5
Why did the Russians attack at Inkerman?
The Russian reasoning was sound on paper. After the defeat on the Alma on 20 September the allies had laid siege to Sevastopol, and by early November their trenches were close to the Fourth Bastion, which Totleben thought could not hold against an assault. At the same time fresh troops were arriving: the 10th and 11th Infantry Divisions of the 4th Corps, brought from Moldavia, reached the Crimea in the days before the battle. For a short time the Russians would outnumber the besiegers, before allied reinforcements came by sea.6
Tarle counts about 107,000 men under Prince Alexander Menshikov in and around Sevastopol, against roughly 71,000 allies: about 41,800 French, 24,500 British and 5,000 Turks. Hamley, following Totleben, gives 100,000 Russians besides the seamen against 65,000 allies. A victory, Totleben argued, would have forced the allies to raise the siege or at least put off the assault for a long time.7
Menshikov drew up the plan but did not lead the attack himself: command of the two attacking columns, once they had joined, went to General Petr Dannenberg, the commander of the 4th Corps. Tarle adds that the headquarters had no proper map of the ground and that the one sent from St Petersburg arrived the day after the battle; the local historian V. G. Shavshin titled his book on Inkerman The Battle without a Map.8
What was the Russian plan, and what went wrong?
The orders sent out on the evening of 4 November split the attack in two. Lieutenant General Fyodor Soimonov was to march out of Sevastopol, cross the Careenage ravine and climb onto the plateau at six in the morning. Lieutenant General Prokofy Pavlov was to repair the Inkerman bridge over the Chernaya, climb from the valley and join him, and Dannenberg would then command both. Hamley gives Soimonov 19,000 infantry and 38 guns and Pavlov 16,000 and 96 guns; the 1913 encyclopedia gives 17,500 and 13,500. Totleben counts 34,835 men in the two columns.9
Two supporting moves were meant to pin the allies down. Prince Petr Gorchakov, with about 20,000 to 22,000 men near Chorgun in the Chernaya valley, was to threaten the French corps of observation on the Sapun heights, and the Sevastopol garrison was to make a sortie against the French siege works.10
Then the orders collided. Dannenberg issued his own instructions, which kept Soimonov west of the Careenage ravine and moved his start to five o'clock, but never said plainly that they replaced Menshikov's. Soimonov kept to the plan he had already drawn up and led his column onto the eastern side, the same ground Pavlov was to attack. Tarle, following Totleben, blames the vague orders rather than Soimonov, who was killed and could not answer. Dannenberg had his reasons: his report, quoted by Totleben, argued that the Careenage ravine would otherwise keep the army from acting on both sides of it and that the narrow paths up from the river would make any retreat very difficult, and Hamley judged his two-sided plan the right one. The result, in Hamley's words, was 35,000 men with 134 guns crowded into a space insufficient for half their numbers.11
What happened at the Battle of Inkerman?
Soimonov's men left Sevastopol before dawn and climbed the sapper road with the Tomsk and Kolyvan regiments in front. It had rained for most of the night. Raglan described the morning as extremely dark, with a drizzling rain, and Russell wrote that fog and rain made it hard to see two yards. The pickets of the Second Division were driven in, fighting as they went. Their commander, Sir George de Lacy Evans, was sick aboard ship, so Major General Pennefather led the division (Raglan says Evans came up from his sickbed and advised him), and instead of waiting on the crest he sent his brigades forward to meet the Russians.12
The fog worked both ways. The Russians came close unseen, and their heavy guns on Shell Hill wrecked the Second Division's camp. But the British, fighting in companies and half battalions out of sight of one another, looked stronger than they were, and Hamley believed the Russians imagined large forces behind each thin line. Most British regiments also carried the Minié rifle, which hit at ranges the Russian smoothbore muskets could not reach; Totleben names the rifle as a main cause of the Russian losses, and Russell wrote that the Minié did the work.13
Soimonov was killed early in the fighting, and his battalions, stripped of many officers, fell back. Pavlov's leading regiments, the Borodino and Tarutino, attacked the British right and were also driven down the slopes. By half past seven, Hamley writes, about 15,000 Russians had been thrown back by less than a quarter of their number.14
What was the Sandbag Battery at Inkerman?
Dannenberg now took over and sent Pavlov's fresh regiments, the Okhotsk, Yakutsk and Selenginsk, against the British right. Their target was a small earthwork on a spur above the Chernaya, built for two guns that had since been withdrawn: the Sandbag Battery. Raglan called it a small redoubt constructed for two guns but not armed. It was useless for defense, Hamley wrote, yet both sides treated it as the prize of the day.15
The Guards Brigade under the Duke of Cambridge took the battery, lost it and took it again. Russell, who walked the ground the next day, says the Guards lost fourteen officers and ran out of ammunition before another Russian column appeared behind them. Totleben claimed that a Russian regiment took nine guns there; Hamley dismissed that claim, although Raglan admitted the Russians briefly held four British guns on the other flank.16
Lieutenant General Sir George Cathcart, arriving with part of the Fourth Division, saw a chance to strike the Russian flank and led a few companies down the slope. Russians on the heights behind cut him off. Cathcart was shot dead, and his aide Colonel Seymour died beside him.17
How did the French save the British at Inkerman?
Bosquet heard the firing from his camp on the Sapun heights and rode toward Inkerman with two or two and a half battalions and horse artillery. Near a windmill he met Generals Sir George Brown and Cathcart, who thanked him and said their reserves were enough. He sent the battalions to cover the British right and rode back to watch Gorchakov. Bazancourt, the French chronicler of the campaign, and Kinglake both tell the story, and Kinglake adds that the British fought for two to three hours from the start of the battle without French help.18
Gorchakov's demonstration in the valley turned into a long-range cannonade. Totleben admits it caused almost no losses and soon convinced Bosquet it was a feint; the whole Chorgun detachment lost 15 men that day. Bosquet then sent his troops up to the plateau. General Bourbaki's two battalions, of the 7th Light and the 6th of the Line, charged first, followed by Zouaves, Algerian tirailleurs and chasseurs with General d'Autemarre's brigade. Bazancourt puts Bourbaki's arrival near eight; Russell saw the French stream over the brow after nine.19
At about half past nine the garrison of Sevastopol made its sortie. Major General Timofeev, with the Minsk regiment and four guns, about 3,000 men, broke into two French batteries; Totleben says they spiked 15 guns before falling back. General Lourmel, chasing him too close to the city walls, was mortally wounded. Raglan reported that the enemy got into two French batteries and was driven out with considerable loss.20
On the British side the artillery duel turned when two heavy 18-pounder guns from the siege train, ordered up by Raglan and dragged to the ridge by the gunners themselves, opened on the Russian batteries on Shell Hill. Kinglake, Russell and the journal of Charles Usherwood of the 19th Foot all saw them as a turning point.21
Why did the Russians retreat from Inkerman?
By about eleven the balance had shifted. Fresh French brigades struck the Russian left, and the Okhotsk, Yakutsk and Selenginsk regiments, already worn down, could not hold. Dannenberg ordered a general retreat. Tarle quotes a letter from Grand Duke Nicholas, the tsar's son, who watched with Menshikov: Dannenberg met the prince halfway and announced that he had already ordered the troops back because enemy fire was destroying his gun crews.22
Russian critics have argued over that order ever since. Tarle blames three men: Dannenberg, who kept about 12,000 men idle in reserve; Gorchakov, who stood near Chorgun with over 20,000; and Menshikov, who said nothing to either. Hamley thought a real attack by Gorchakov would have pinned Bosquet in place and let Dannenberg break through, although he cites Kinglake's finding that Gorchakov's actual orders were only to menace Bosquet by feints. Totleben stressed the cramped ground, which forced the Russians to feed in their regiments piecemeal, and the allied rifles.23
The retreat was slow and costly but orderly. The columns had to bring their guns down the steep sapper road and across the Inkerman bridge under fire, while the steamers Vladimir and Khersones in the harbor shelled the French guns that tried to follow. Totleben himself, who happened to be nearby, organized a covering force from the Butyrsk regiment, and the last Russian batteries passed the city's defense line only at eight or half past eight in the evening.24
Canrobert did not press a pursuit. Hamley thinks he was watching Gorchakov's troops still drawn up in the valley; Tarle credits Timofeev's sortie for alarming the French command.25
How many died at the Battle of Inkerman?
Totleben's official figures count 6 generals, 256 officers and 10,467 men killed, wounded or missing among the 34,835 who fought on the plateau, and 11,959 for the whole day once the sortie and the garrison are added. The 1913 encyclopedia and the National Army Museum give about 12,000. Raglan, writing three days after the battle, estimated not less than 15,000.26
The official British return published with Raglan's dispatch counted 2,612 killed, wounded and missing: 462, 1,952 and 198. Three generals died: Cathcart, Brigadier General Strangways of the artillery and Brigadier General Goldie.27
French figures depend on what is counted. Hamley gives 143 killed and 786 wounded on the plateau; Tarle gives 798 for the battle and 954 more in the fight with Timofeev's sortie, about 1,750 in all.28
The field shocked those who saw it. Raglan wrote that he had never before witnessed such a spectacle and estimated nearly five thousand Russian dead left on the ground. Bosquet told his mother he had killed and wounded more than six thousand Russians.29
Who won the Battle of Inkerman, and what did it change?
The allies won: the Russian attack failed, the British kept the heights and the siege went on. But it was a defensive victory. Russell wrote that the enemy had been beaten but the army was not one step nearer Sevastopol, and the National Army Museum notes that the siege simply went on into a terrible winter.30
For the Russians the result was mixed. Totleben argued that the battle was not fruitless: it shook the allies, who even thought for a moment of raising the siege, the assault planned against the Fourth Bastion was put off, and from then on allied operations became more defensive. The Sevastopol branch library of Moscow State University makes the same point: the allies had to postpone the general assault planned for the next day. The 1913 encyclopedia calls Inkerman tactically lost but notes that the storming of Sevastopol was delayed.31
Both armies paid again in the weeks that followed. On 14 November a hurricane tore down the allied camps and wrecked supply ships, and the British army spent the winter in misery. On the Russian side Tarle traces a collapse of trust: he quotes an eyewitness who wrote that on the Inkerman heights the troops lost their trust in those who led them, and adds that after Inkerman the officers stopped believing in Menshikov altogether.32
How is the Battle of Inkerman remembered?
In Britain Inkerman became the soldiers' battle because, as the Queen's Royal Hussars Museum puts it, the troops fought mostly on their own initiative in the fog. Charles Usherwood wrote the same in his journal at the time: each corps and detachment fought as if independently. Raglan stressed that little more than 8,000 British troops had been engaged, with 6,000 of Bosquet's men.33
French writers gave the credit to Bosquet. Bazancourt describes the British cheering as Bourbaki's battalions charged, and Bosquet wrote to his mother two days later that the Duke of Cambridge had come to thank him for saving what was left of the Guards. Raglan's dispatch itself paid tribute to the distinguished conduct of General Bosquet.34
Russian historians praised the soldiers and blamed the generals. Totleben wrote that if self-sacrifice and courage alone decided battles, the Russians would have won, and Tarle quotes the French chief of staff, General de Martimprey, telling a Russian colonel in 1856 that the British army had been hanging by a thread. For the rest of the campaign see our pages on Balaclava, the siege of Sevastopol and Eupatoria.35
