XXVII.
This was the condition of things when Lord Raglan's sudden, vehement
longing for a couple 'of guns' received its happy fulfilment. Captain Adye,
upon hearing the commander's words, had galloped down to the river, and there
had found Turner's battery making its way across the ford. Adye's manner and
words carried with them, if so one may speak, the exceeding eagerness of Lord
Raglan; and, the commander of the battery (Captain Turner) being a determined
and most able officer, two of his guns were dragged up to the top of the knoll
with extraordinary despatch. Captain Turner came up in person with the part of
his battery thus hurried forward. The two pieces, when once on the top, were
soon unlimbered; and one of them -for the artillerymen had not all been able to
keep pace -was worked by Colonel Dickson with his own hands. The guns were
pointed upon the flank of the Causeway batteries. Every one watched keenly for
the result of the first shot. The first shot failed. Some one said, 'Allow a
little more for the wind;' and the words were not spoken as though they were a
quotation from 'Ivanhoe,' but rather in a way showing that the speaker knew
something of artillery practice.* The next shot, or the next shot but one, took
effect upon the Causeway batteries. It struck -so men said -a tumbril drawn up
close in rear of the guns.
* I might well say the words sounded as though coming from one who 'knew
something of artillery practice,' for, as I now know, the speaker was Captain,
now Colonel, Turner himself, the officer commanding the battery.
It presently became a joyful certainty that the Causeway batteries, exposing
their flank to this fire from the knoll, could not hold their ground; and in a
few moments a keen-eyed officer, who was one of the group around Lord Raglan,
cried-out with great joy, 'He is carrying off his guns!' And this was true. The
field-pieces which formed the Causeway batteries were rapidly limbered up and
dragged to another ground far up in the rear.*
*Kiriakoff says that these guns were dragged off by the men of the Borodino
corps. I do not think that there were any observers on 'Lord Raglan's knoll'
who saw guns dragged from the field by infantry but there were features in the
ground which prevented their seeing into the line of retreat as effectually as
they had seen into the batteries.
With the two great columns of infantry which constituted the enemy's reserves
it fared no better. After not more than two failures, the gunner got their
range, and our nine-pounders ploughed through the serried masses of the two
Russian columns, cutting lanes through and through them. Yet for some minutes
the masses stood firm; and even when the still increasing havoc at length
overruled the punctilio of those brave men, it seemed to be in obedience to
orders, and not under the stress of any confusing terror, that the two great
colmuns gave way. They retreated in good order.
Our gunners then tried their pieces upon the Vladimir battalions, and although
the range was too great to allow of their striking the column, they impressed
Kvetzinski with a contrary belief. He was sure that these troops were reached
by the guns on the knoll; and it will be seen by-and-by that the belief he thus
harboured was destined to be one of the causes contributing to govern his
movements.
This was the time when the great column of the Ouglitz corps, being fired, as
it seemed, with a vehement spirit, was still marching down from the higher
slopes of the Kourgane Hill with a mind to support the Vladimir battalions, and
enable them to press the retreat of our soldiery then coming down in clusters
from the Great Redoubt; but the disasters which Lord Raglan had that moment
inflicted upon the enemy by the aid of the two guns on the knoll, made it
natural for the Russian Generals, who saw what was done, to stop short in any
forward movement. The Ouglitz column, as we before saw, was stopped in the
midst of its eager advance; and for want of the support which these troops had
been going to lend, the triumphant Vladimir column was brought to a halt on the
site of the Great Redoubt.
So here was the spell which now for several minutes had been governing the
battle. The apparition of a score of plumed horsemen on this knoll may have had
more or less to do with the resolve which led Kvetzinski to dismantle the Great
Redoubt: but, at all events, this apparition, and the fire of Lord Raglan's two
guns, had enforced the withdrawal of the Causeway batteries; had laid open the
entrance of the Pass; had shattered the enemy's reserves; had stopped the
onward march of the Ouglitz battalions; and had chained up the high-mettled
Vladimir in the midst of its triumphant advance.
Go to maps. Go to illustrations.
XXVIII.
On and near the great road leading down to the bridge, Evans had been
continuing his difficult struggle. He still shared with the flames the
possession of the village - still held the vineyards below it; and a part of
his small force had succeeded, as already shown, in crossing the river, and
establishing itself under the bank on the Russian side; but beyond the ground
thus gained, Evans had not yet been able to push; for the Causeway batteries
were so well placed, and so diligently served, that they closed the mouth of
the Pass.
The force around Evans was scant, but in other times he had commanded an army;
and whilst he watched the efforts of the only three battalions remaining near
him, he was alive to the progress of the action in other parts of the field.*
* The three battalions near him were the 47th (Adams's brigade), and the 30th
and the 55th, both belonging to General Penenfather's. The 95th, as we saw, was
carried forward in the rush of Codrington's brigade, and (with the exception of
the 47th Regiment) Evans's second brigade (the one commanded by General Adams)
was in another part of the field.
He had just witnessed the onset of Codrington's brigade; and he was sitting in
his saddle tormented with the grief of observing that, for want of supports,
the storming of the Great Redoubt was likely to be all in vain, when suddenly
he heard the report of a nine-pounder gun sounding from a very new quarter
-sounding from somewhere among the knolls and broken ground on his right front,
and in the heart of the Russian position. The fire was repeated. Evans keenly
watched the Causeway batteries in his front. And not in vain, for again the
nine-pounder was heard, and there followed that sort of change in the Russian
batteries which seemed to show that they were under fire -under fire coming
flankwise from the west. Again and again the fire of the nine-pounder was
repeated. The sound came from a quarter to which it was to be expected that the
French might have reached; but some, they say, fancied and said, 'That is an
English gun!' Whoever so spake had an ear for the music of battle, the
nine-pounder thus heard being one of the two that Lord Raglan had brought up to
the knoll, a busy change began to stir in the Russian batteries. Presently,
though the smoke of the burning village lay heavy in this part of the field,
our people could make out what the change was. It was one of great moment to
the Allies; for the enemy was limbering up, and beginning to carry off the
sixteen guns which up to this minute had barred the mouth of the Pass. The
great road lay open.
Evans understood the battle. He acted instantly. He saw that though he was
weak, yet the moment had come for the advance of his three battalions.
The 47th Regiment under Colonel Haly had to ford the river below the bridge,*
and at a part where the water was deep. It encountered a good deal of
difficulty in crossing. Some men were drowned, but the rest gained the bank on
the Russian side of the stream and moved forward. Evans rode across the stream
at a point between the 47th and the two battalions of Pennefather's brigade.
With these two battalions (the 30th and the 55th regiments) General Pennefather
was present in person. Colonel Hoey, commanding the 30th, needed no order to
advance. Understanding the business of war, he had already gained a lodgment
for his battalion under the farther bank of the river, and was plying the
Russian artillery-men with rifle fire when he observed that the enemy's
batteries suddenly slackened their fire. He inferred the change that was
coming; and at once caused his men to spring up the bank, formed them carefully
on the top, and then, having his battalion in a beautiful line, marched
straight up towards the site of the Causeway batteries.
* The enemy seems to have imagined that his sappers and miners (who had been
posted near for the purpose) had effectu1y destroyed the bridge; but this was
an error. When our people obtained the dominion of it, they found the parapet
wanting, bu the bridge itself sound.
When the 55th was approaching the Alma, General Pennefather had desired that
the battalion should advance in line; but after forming two or three groups
which were immediately struck down the enemy's shot, he allowed its commander
(Colonel Warren) to follow a more summary method. Colonel Warren instantly
crossed the river, and formed the battalion in line under cover of a spur or
rising-ground at the base of the hills. When the line had been formed, it moved
forward, General Pennefather leading in front At that time the line of the 55th
was parallel with the river.
* General Kiriakoff says, as we have already mentioned, that the Borodino
battalions dragged away the guns of the Causeway batteries, but I cannot find
any other distinct statement of things done by the regiment in the course of
the battle.
** Skirmishers drawn partly from the four Borodino battalions, and partly also
from the No. 6 Rifle battalion.
From first to last the enemy, so far as I know, had done but little with the
formed battalions of his Borodino regiment disposed in this part of the field;*
and he now began to draw in the multitude of skirmishers which had hitherto
swarmed in the valley. He did not engage his infantry in further endeavours to
bar the mouth of the Pass, nor even show one of his battalions in this part of
the great road; but upon the hillocks, a good way in rear of the ground just
abandoned by the Causeway batteries, he again established his guns; and from
this new position, though not with great effect, he opened fire upon our
advancing troops.
To this fire General Evans was presently able to reply with a strong force of
artillery; for Sir Richard England rode up, proposed to accompany him in the
advance, and offered to place both his batteries at Evans's disposal. So the
two divisional generals now rode forward together, having with them in all
thirty guns.*
Moreover, the infantry of Sir Richard England's Division was following him into
the Pass, and would soon bring a welcome support to Evans's three battalions.**
* i.e., the three batteries belonging respectively to the 1st, the 2d, and the
Light Divisions, and two belonging to the 3d, Sir Richard England's Division.
** Apparently Sir Richard England did not know of what had befallen the Scots
Fusilier Guards in time to be able to adapt his measures to that event. Of
course, if he had known it in time, he would have been anxious to put a literal
interpretation upon the order 'to support the Guards;' and would have moved a
part of his force towards the chasm which had been wrought in the centre of the
brigade of Guards. I took pains to make out the exact movements of the 3d
Division, but in vain; for those who would be the most likely to know differ
broadly the one from the other. By further trouble I might have dispelled this
obscurity; but the Division was not engaged to an extent greater than might be
inferred from its losses (one killed and seventeen wounded), and therefore I
have desisted from further endeavours. It may be safely said, however, that
after receiving the order to support the Guards, Sir Richard England held his
Division in hand, sending portions of it to give support where he deemed it to
be needed; and that when Pennefather's brigade crossed the river it was
followed by the whole or by the bulk of the 3d Division.
But some minutes elapsed before these supports could come up; and, by reason of
what had befallen our soldiery on the Kourgane Hill, the three battalions which
Evans had with him were for some time almost alone upon the enemy's ground. Yet
not utterly; for, on the western slope of the Kourgane Hill, one English
battalion -Lacy Yea, with his Royal Fusiliers -was still holding its ground,
still engaged with a mass of the enemy's infantry. That stand that Lacy Yea had
been making was a hinge on which a good deal might turn. If he should hold his
ground a few minutes more, he would cover from the enemy's masses the left
flank and left front of Evans's three battalions, and at the end of that time
the supports would be up. Evans was an old commander, who knew how to read the
signs of a battle, and he was able to see and understand that the enemy, almost
in the very moment of his success at the Great Redoubt, was palsied by the guns
still sounding from the knoll, and was losing his freedom of action. He
resolved to stand firm in the Pass; and he established his thirty guns near the
site of the batteries which had just been withdrawn by the Russians. For some
minutes, his position was rather critical; and he had to trust much to the hope
that Lacy Yea and his Fusiliers would be able to hold their ground.
XXIX.
It was between the Great Causeway and the slopes of the Kourgane Hill that
Lacy Yea, with his Royal Fusiliers, had long been maintaining an obstinate
conflict. Long ago, as we saw, he had crossed the river, had brought his men to
the top of the bank, and was trying to form them, when there came down marching
upon him a strong Russian column - a column of two battalions, and numbering
some 1500 men. These battalions belonged to the Kazan Regiment - a corps which
loyal Russians had patience to call 'the Regiment of the Grand Duke Michael.'
After having marched down some way, the column came to a halt.
It was then that, for the first time in that war, the soldiery of the Western
Powers were brought so near to a body of Russian troops as to be able to
scrutinise its material. The men of the column were of high stature and
strictly upright, with broad, plain, whitish faces, all seemingly cast in a
common mould, and very similar the one to the other. The long grey overcoat,
worn alike by all the officers and men of the Russian forces, and reaching down
to the ankles, gave no clue to distinguish this mass from any other of the
Czar's battalions; but spiked helmets, glittering with burnished plates of
brass, led some of the English to imagine that the column formed part of the
Emperor's guard.*
The body was formed with great precision in close column, with a front of only
one company; but a chain of skirmishers thrown out on either flank in
prolongation of the front rank, sought to combine with the solid formation of
the column some of the advantages of an array in line.**
* The notion was altogether ill-founded, there being none of Imperial Guard in
the Crimea.
** The advantages of this hybrid formation were strongly urged about the middle
of the last century by General Lloyd, an Englishman. General Lloyd was an
officer in the service of Russia, and it seems probable that the formation, of
which he was a vehement advocate, may have been adopted in the Russian service
in consequence of his advice.
The steady men were in the front and on the flanks of the column; and the
constant firing in the air which went on in the interior of the mass showed
that that was the place assigned to the young soldiers, The column stood halted
at a distance of, perhaps, some fifty yards from the knotted chain of soldiery
which represented the Royal Fusiliers.
Lacy Yea was so rough an enforcer of discipline that he had never been much
liked in peacetime by those who had to obey him; but when once the Fusiliers
were in campaign, and still more when they came to be engaged with the enemy,
they found that their chief was a man who could and would seize for his
regiment all such chances of welfare and glory as might come with the fortune
of war. They were destined to learn before many months should pass over that,
although other regiments might be dying of want, yet, by force of their
Colonel's strong will, there was food and warmth to be got for the Royal
Fusiliers; and already they well understood that the fiery nature of their
chief was a quality good in battle. The martinet of the barrack-yard was in
wartime a trusted ruler-a king beloved by his people.
Lacy Yea had not time to put his Fusiliers in their wonted array, for the
enemy's column was so near that, forthwith and at the instant, it was necessary
to ply it with fire; but what man could do, he did. His very shoulders so
laboured and strove with the might of his desire to form line, that the curt
red shell- jacket he wore was as though it were a world too scant for the
strength of the man and the passion that raged within him; but when he turned,
his dark eyes yielded fire, and all the while from his deep-chiselled,
merciless lips, there pealed the thunder of imprecation and command. Wherever
the men had got clustered together, there, fiercely coming, he wedged his cob
into the thick of the crowd-the 'rooge' he would call it, in his old Eton idiom
of speech -and by dint of will tore it asunder. Though he could not form an
even array, yet he disentangled the thickest clusters of the soldiery, and
forced the men to open out into a lengthened chain, approaching to line
formation. Numbers of the Fusiliers were wanting, and, on the other hand, there
were mingled with the battalion many of the soldiery of other regiments. With a
force in this state, Yea was not in a condition to attempt a charge or any
other combined movement. All he could hope to be able to do was to keep his
people firm on their ground, to hinder them from contracting their front or
gathering into heavy clusters, and then leave every man to make the best use he
could of his rifle.
Continental generals would not easily believe that, upon fair, open ground,
there could be a doubtful conflict between, on the one side, a body of fifteen
hundred brave, steady, disciplined soldiers, superbly massed in close column,
and on the other a loose knotted chain of six or seven hundred light- infantry
men without formation. Yet the fight was not so unequal as it seemed.
A close column of infantry has only small means of offence, and is itself a
thing so easy to hurt that every volley it receives from steady troops must
load it with corpses and wounded men. Tested strictly in that way-tested
strictly by its small means of hurting people, and the ease with which it can
be hurt the close column is a weak thing to fight with; and yet it has power
over the troops of most nations, because its grandeur well fits it for weighing
upon the imaginations of men.
But Lacy Yea and his islanders were not so fashioned by nature, nor so tamed
down by much learning, as to be liable to be easily coerced in any subtle,
metaphysical way; and although the shots of individual soldiers and small knots
of men had not, of course, the crushing power which would have been exerted by
the fire of the Royal Fusiliers when formed and drawn up in line, still, the
well-handled rifles of our men soon began to carry havoc into the dark-grey
oblong mass of living beings which served them for their easy target. And
though, seemingly, the front rank of the compact mass yearned to move forward,
there was always occurring in the interior some sudden death or some trouble
with a wounded man, which seemed not only to breed difficulty in the way of an
advance, but also to make the column here and there begin to look spotted and
faulty. The distance was such as to allow of a good deal of shooting at
particular men. Once Yea himself found that he was singled out to be killed,
and was covered by a musket or rifle; but the marksman was so fastidious about
his aim -that, before he touched the trigger, a quick-eyed English corporal
found time to intervene and save his colonel's life, by shooting the careful
Russian in the midst of his studies. 'Thank you, my 'man,' said Lacy Yea; 'if I
live through this you shall be a sergeant to-night.'
Whilst this long fight went on, it sometimes happened that the fire and
impatience of one or other of the Fusiliers would carry a man into closer
quarters with the column. Of those who were spurred by sudden impulses of this
kind, Monck was one. He sprang forward, they say, from his place on the left of
the Fusiliers, and saying, 'Come on, 8th company!' rushed up to the enemy's
massed battalions, ran his sword through a man in the front rank, and struck
another with his fist. He was then shot dead by a musket fired from the second
rank of the column. Personal enterprises of this kind were incidents varying
the tenor of the fight; but it was by musket or rifle ball at the distance of
some fifty yards that the real strife between the two corps was waged.
It was not always against the enemy that Lacy Yea was labouring. He came to
know or imagine that some of his Fusiliers had remained behind in the valley
finding base shelter. That this should be, and that even for a few minutes this
should pass, was to him not tolerable; and in the fiercest heat of his strife
with the column, one of his best officers was sent back that he might turn the
drove out of their sheds, and force them to come instantly into the presence of
the enemy, -into the presence, more terrible still, of their raging colonel.
The fight lasted. When Codrington's people were scarce beginning their rush
towards the face of the Great Redoubt, the Royal Fusiliers -rudely and hastily
gathered, but contriving to hold together -were beginning this battle of their
own. When the storming battalions came down, the regiment was fighting still.
When the despondency of the French army was at its worst-when the head of
Canrobert's Division was pushed back down the hill by the 'column of the eight
battalions' -when, along the whole line of the Allies, there was no other
regiment fighting -Lacy Yea and his people were still at their work. When
Evans, having crossed the river, was leading his three battalions to the site
of the Causeway batteries, it was the battalion of the Royal Fusiliers that
stood fighting alone on his left; and nearly at the very time when disaster
befell the centre of the brigade of Guards, Lacy Yea and his Fusiliers were
gathering at last the reward of their soldierly virtue.
For by this time death and wounds, making cavities and compelling small changes
in the great living mass, had injured the symmetry of the spruce Russian
column. As a piece of mechanism, it was no longer what it had been when the
fight began, but the spirit of the brave and obedient men who composed it was
still high. The cohesion of the mass was not yet destroyed; but it was
endangered, and had come to depend very much upon the personal exertions of
officers.
Lacy Yea observed that every now and then, when a part of the column was
becoming faulty, a certain man, always on foot, but of vast towering stature,
would stride quickly to the defective spot, and exert so great an ascendancy,
that steadiness and order seemed always to be restored by his presence. The
grey over-coat common to all shrouded the rank of every Russian officer; and
since this man was not on horseback, there was nothing to disclose his station
in the corps except the power he seemed to wield. What its colonel was to the
Royal Fusiliers, that the big man seemed to be to the Russian column; and it
was not, I think, without a kind of sympathy with him -it was not, one would
believe, without a manly reluctance -that Yea ordered his people to shoot the
tall man. He did, however, so order; and he was quickly obeyed. The tall man
dropped dead, and when he had fallen there was no one who seemed to be the like
of him in power.
The issue of this long fight of the Fusiliers was growing to be a thing of so
great moment, or else the sight of it was become so heating, that Prince
Gortschakoff now resolved to take part in it bodily. So, deputing Colonel
Issakoff; then acting as his Chief of the Staff; to represent him in his
absence, hje rode down to the column and strove to lead it on to a charge with
the bayonet.* But he could do nothing; for, because of the disorder already
beginning, and the loss of great numbers of its officers, the heart was nearly
out of the column.** So, giving orders for the battalions to keep up their
fire, be rode away to his right and left the column still engaged with Yea and
his Fusiliers.
* This statement is founded, as will be seen below, 'upon a narrative written
by Prince Gortschakoff himself; but it interested me to hear, as I lately did
from an officer in the Royal Fusiliers, a statement coinciding exactly (so far
as it goes) with the Prince's narrative. Sir Thomas Troubridge, who was the
Major commanding the right wing of the Fusiliers, told me he remembered that
after the fight between the column and the Fusiliers had been going on a long
time, he saw a horse-man with some mounted followers -evidently, as he
conceived, a General and his staff -ride down and join the column. -Note to 4th
Edition.
** What Prince Gortschakoff says is this: 'I first rode towards the
chasseurs' (meaning the Kazan troops), 'who were standing firm under a
very heavy fire, although losing a large amount of men. I first tried to lead
them on (a, la baionette), but finding that they could not reform
immediately for a charge, and had lost nearly all their officers, I left them
with orders to continue their feu de bataillons.' - Note to 1st
Edition.
When Prince Gortschakoff had ridden off, the column was assailed by fresh
adversaries. After crossing the river, Colonel Warren, we saw, pressed on with
the 55th regiment extended in line, and his men in that order were advancing up
the Pass when he saw on his left front the column engaged with Lacy Yea's
Fusiliers. Colonel Warren instantly caused his regiment to bring forward their
right shoulders, and in fact to wheel upon their centre, very much as a company
wheels. This manoeuvre was performed under fire from the column, and the change
of front was carried to the length of bringing the battalion into a line almost
perpendicular to the line of its former front, and almost parallel with the
flanks of the Russian column. When the manoeuvre was complete, the 55th opened
fire upon the flank of the Russian column.
Portions of the column-mainly those in the centre and in the rear-became
discomposed and unsettled. Numbers of men moved a little one way or another,
and of these some looked as though they stepped a pace backwards; but no man as
yet turned round to face the rear. How-ever, though the movement of each
soldier taken singly was trifling and insignificant, yet even that little
displacement of many men at the same time was shaking the structure. Plainly,
the men must be ceasing to feel that the column they stood in was solid. The
ranks which had been straight as arrows became bent and wavy.
The Russian officers well understood these signs. With drawn swords, moving
hither and thither as actively as they could in their long, grey, melancholy
coats, they seemed to become loud and vehement with their orders, their
entreaties, their threats. Presently their gestures grew violent, and more than
one officer was seen to go and seize a wavering soldier by the throat. But in
vain; for seemingly by some law of its own nature, rather than underany new
stress of external force, the column began to dissolve; the hard mass became
fluid. It still cohered; but what had been, as it were, the outlines of a wall,
were becoming like the outlines of a cloud.
The 55th was about to deliver a fire which seemed likely to prove cruelly
destructive when it received an order which is believed to have come from
General Pennefather personally an order to 'cease firing and charge.' Thereupon
the officers went out in front and busied themselves in the ordained task of
stopping the fire; but already their adversaries were giving way. First a few,
then more, then all, turned round. Moving slowly at first and as though
discontent with its fate, the column began to fall back. It retreated after
some moments with a much increased speed, and is believed on the whole to have
escaped great part of the slaughter that might have been inflicted upon it, if
the fire of the 55th had not been stayed by the order to charge.
The Royal Fusiliers bought this triumph with blood. In killed and wounded the
battalion lost twelve officers and more than two hundred men. Monck, we before
saw, was killed; and Hare,* (*Hare died of his wounds a few hours after the
battle.) Watson, Fitzgerald, Hibbert, Hobson (the Adjutaut), Persse, Appleyard,
Coney, Crofton, Carpenter, and Jones, were wounded. For some time one of the
colours of the regiment was missing, but it did not at any time fall into the
hands of the enemy, and remained safe in charge of some soldiers belonging to
the Royal Welsh.*
A regimental officer engaged in a general action cannot often at the time
compute the relative importance of the duty which he is performing; but on the
morrow of the battle, or even perhaps much later, he may learn that the fortune
of the day was hinging upon the conduct of his single regiment. Lacy Yea was a
simple-hearted, straight-going man, with a wholesome ardour for fighting, and a
great care for the honour of his regiment, but not looking far beyond it.
Around idm the battle had been flowing and ebbing. With the watching of those
changes he did not much vex his mind -he hardly, perhaps, remarked them. He was
too busy with the fight to be able to contemplate the battle. Except when he
yearned to unearth the people whom he believed to be skulking, and to have them
dragged before him, he thought of nothing but that the corps he commanded
should stand fighting and fighting till it got the victory. He went through
with his resolve, and hardly knew at the time the full worth; of his constancy.
He hardly knew that, whilst he fought, the whole of the English front line
-first on his left hand and then on his right -had been getting the support it
grievously needed from the tenacity of his 7th -the Royal Fusiliers.**
* The colour, I believe, was found lying upon the ground, but how that
came to happen I do not know, and I have not thouaght it necessary to find out,
because the colour was never for a moment 'lost.'
** See plan, When Codrington's people were storming the redoubt, they were
covered on their right by the fight which Yea was there maintaining; when they
had to fall back, it was still that stand of the Fusiliers which covered their
flank. When Evans advanced with his three battalions, there was, nothing but
the Royal Fusiliers to cover his left. For some of the proofs by which I
support my statements respecting the fight maintained by the Royal Fusiliers,
see Appendix, III.
It was plainly right that the defeated column should be pressed in its retreat
by troops in a state of formation; and Yea, looking back, perceived that the
Guards were now at hand. Troubridge went to the Grenadiers -saw one of its
officers -told him of the defeat of the Russian column, and of the condition of
the Royal Fusiliers -and asked whether it would not be well that the Grenadiers
should come up and clinch the defeat of the retiring column. Colonel Hood was
referred to, and he at once consented to do as was proposed.
Sir George Brown -his grey so wounded that men saw the blood from afar -now
chanced to ride to the part of the hillside where Troubridge was passing. After
telling him of the defeat of the Russian column, and of the state of the Royal
Fusiliers, Troubridge asked him whether the Fusiliers should go on, or allow
the Guards to pass them.*
* At this time, and whilst he was still speaking with Sir George Brown,
Troubridge observed the sight which will be referred to in a future page, as
fixing the order in which event' followed one another in different parts of the
field.
Sir George said, 'Let the Guards go on. Collect your men, and afterwards resume
the advance.'
Go to maps. Go to illustrations.
Go to part 8.