The Crimean War: A Hisory

by Orlando Figes

Herbé went out into no man’s land with General Failly to agree the arrangements with the Russian General Polussky. After the exchange of a few formalities, ‘the conversation took a friendly turn – Paris, St Petersburg, the hardships of the previous winter’, Herbé noted in a letter to his family that evening, and while the dead were cleared away, ‘cigars were exchanged’ between the officers. ‘One might have thought we were friends meeting for a smoke in the middle of a hunt,’ Herbé wrote. After a while some officers appeared with a magnum of champagne, and General Failly, who had ordered them to fetch it, proposed a ‘toast to peace’ that was heartily accepted by the Russian officers. Six hours later, when several thousand bodies had been cleared away, it was time to end the truce. After each side had been given time to check that none of their own men had been left in no man’s land, the white flags were taken down and, as Polussky had suggested, a blank shot was fired from the Malakhov to signal the resumption of hostilities.56