Here the Prince hoped to stop the march of the Allies, with the troops he had, until the divisions from the army of the Danube came up and drove them to their ships. To occupy the position he had 42 battalions, 16 squadrons of cavalry, 11 sotnias of Cossacks (1,100 lances), and 96 guns; that is, about 38,000 men of all arms. His infantry was 31,500, and his cavalry 3,400 strong, including the Cossacks. The remainder were artillerymen and sappers. In disposing of his forces, Prince Menschikoff placed the bulk on the right and centre. To strengthen the position the Prince had devised two fieldworks of the humblest kind. On the extreme right, just below the brow of the great hill there, he had thrown up an entrenchment, in the form of a flattened arrow-head; and on the lower slope of the same hill, nearer to the centre, he had constructed another fieldwork, the embrasures of which were formed by throwing up the earth on each hand. This he armed with the twelve (some say fourteen) heavy guns brought from Sebastopol. These two works were improperly called redoubts. The regiments were formed in column, chequer-wise, on each flank of the fieldworks, and were not all visible to the approaching army. The right of the Russian line was commanded by General Kvetzinsky, the centre by Prince Gortschakoff, the left by General Kiriakoff. It will be seen that the bulk of the troops and artillery were in position to the east of Telegraph Hill, that is, on the Russian right of the great road, while only one-third of the troops and one-fifth of the guns were on or in front of the Telegraph Hill, and towards the sea. Against this force and this position marched, in round numbers, about 63,000 men and 128 guns.
The allied army now came slowly nearer to the Alma, visible in its whole extent to the Russians. The fleet of war-steamers, eight French and one British, went on ahead towards Cape Lookout and the mouth of the Alma. The direction taken by the French brought General Bosquet opposite the village of Almatamak, towards which one of his brigades wended its way, covered by skirmishers in thick rows, while the other, with the Turks, under General Bouat, made for the mouth of the Alma. Next on the left came the divisions of Canrobert and Prince Napoleon, the latter almost in contact with the right of our 2nd Division, and a little to the west of Bourliouk. In rear, as a support, was General Forey. These three divisions of the French army halted, while Bosquet continued to move on. Lord Raglan had had a final conference with Marshal St. Arnaud. They had seen the enemy and the enemy's position. The great accumulation of Russian troops on their right and centre was manifest. It was plain that the French force was not adequate to show a front to the whole Russian line, while the British turned the right, and when the question was pointedly put to him, would he turn the right or attack in front, Lord Raglan declined to undertake the flank movement. It was arranged that the French should turn the Russian left, covered by the fire of the ships, and that when this movement had shaken the Russian line, the British should assail the right and centre. The two commanders parted, and the whole line from right to left drew nearer to the Alma. The steamers opened fire between twelve and one.
While Bosquet's first brigade was ousting the Russian skirmishers from the river and the clefts in the hills leading upwards, the whole army moved still nearer to the foe, and halted in readiness to close. The French divisions remained in columns. They were not to advance until Bosquet's diversion had made itself felt. The British divisions had deployed into line, and had moved on until warned, about half-past one, that they had come within range, when the men were ordered to lie down. It was about half-past one. The 1st French division was crossing the river and swarming up the steeps, when the Cossacks simultaneously fired the corn stacks about Bourliouk. Instantly the waving sheets of flame leaped up, and a stifling smoke rising on a lazy wind spread over the meadows. For a time the centre of the Russian position was hidden from view, and the smoke long continued to curl over the ground. This fiery village and dense cloud of smoke proved a great inconvenience to Evans's division, in whose front it was; for, pressed on one side by Prince Napoleon's division, on the other by the Light, and deprived of a large space in front by the conflagration, Sir De Lacy Evans was compelled to divide his brigades, and encroach on the ground occupied by Sir George Brown, so that when they were deployed, the left front of the 2nd overlapped the right of the Light Division. This was a great fault. While the regiments lay prone under a severe fire, the French were executing their share of the plan on the right.
According to the plan agreed upon, the British were not to attack until the French columns were firmly established on the heights. Bosquet's 1st brigade, under D'Autemarre, had easily swept before them the handful of light troops which alone were placed on the extreme flank of the Russian line. Having gained the plateau with his infantry, he next brought in succession two batteries of artillery, and posted them in front of the brigade which had deployed, resting its left on the verge of the cliff. Bouat and the Turks were so distant that they could lend no aid, and the brigade and its guns were thus practically alone. At the same time the Russian batteries, towards the centre of their position, cannonaded the bulk of Prince Napoleon's division, which still lingered in the valley on the left bank, unable to get on. For the want of guns seemed to paralyse the advance of General Canrobert, and D'Aurelles' brigade of Forey's division had passed round the right of Prince Napoleon, and had jammed itself into a steep and narrow track on the left of Canrobert; so that while Bosquet, although alone on the heights, made play with his batteries and steadily gained ground, Canrobert and D'Aurelles, and the bulk of Prince Napoleon's troops, were lying inactive, unable to strike for want of artillery. For the rest, the Russian guns on the right and centre continued to pour an incessant storm of shot and shell upon the British soldiers lying exposed in line upon their faces, and our gunners, it is said, did not fire because their shot, they found, fell short.
THE HIGHLANDERS AT THE ALMA. (See p. [49].)
At this time Lord Raglan, himself riding up and down near the British right, and watching the progress of the French, seems to have grown impatient. We have no very clear account of his views and frame of mind; but Mr. Kinglake's version, if it be true, leads to the direct inference that Lord Raglan, who, it seems, had been frequently appealed to by the French, could no longer bear to see his soldiers prostrate and inactive, especially as there was an appearance of tardiness and inability to push forward on the part of his ally. He therefore gave the order to assault the front of the position; and Captain Nolan, a genuine soldier, swiftly bore it to the combatants. First the 2nd Division and then the Light started to their feet, and in a moment the red line, extending far to the east, was gliding across the meadows which intervened between them and the stream. As they descended the slope towards its banks, the guns followed, and, drawing up on both sides of the great road, began to reply to the fire of the enemy. All the time they moved under a heavy fire from the Russian batteries, and the Russians were amazed that the islanders should approach their dark columns and destructive artillery in a two-deep line. The passage of some vineyards and enclosures disordered the troops, and the beautiful symmetry of the first advance was soon broken far more by these inert obstacles than by the bounding shot and bursting shells. In spite of their disorder they reached the river, and plunging into its shot-torn waters, scrambled through and gained the shelter of the opposite bank. Here they halted and hung in clusters, no longer presenting the fine parade spectacle visible to admiring eyes a short time before. The bank was eight or nine feet high; and while it afforded shelter from the artillery, it did not prevent daring Russian skirmishers from approaching the edge, and firing down into the groups below. Here, under such fiery leaders as were with them, the British troops could not long remain.
The parts of the Russian position they fronted were these. Evans's division extended across the entrance to the ravine up which ran the great road. This road passing the river by a wooden bridge, partially destroyed by the enemy, climbed a low ridge between two higher ridges, and on these higher ridges were two Russian batteries supported by six battalions. It was not only their fire, but that of the left shoulder of the field work on the slope of the Kourgané Hill, to which they were exposed; for while the guns on each side of the road swept the front, the heavier metal searched the left flank. The Light Division fronted the steep sides of the Kourgané Hill itself, and had to bear the fire of the big guns and of two batteries—that is, sixteen pieces posted on both sides of the entrenchment,—to meet the musketry and bayonets of sixteen battalions, and to stand prepared for the dense columns of cavalry which showed themselves on their left. Before Evans was rough and broken ground; before Sir George Brown, a bare hill-side. The troops were not allowed to cling long to the protection of the bank. On the right Evans's colonels got their men up to the mouths of the ravine; but there were only three battalions to contend with six; and although they were aided somewhat by the fire of the artillery massed on the east of Bourliouk, it required all the fortitude of officers and men to stand fast. For the battalions had been rent by the heavy artillery fire, and Evans himself had been wounded; yet he kept his place in the midst, and held his men together as became a veteran who had ridden in the thick of great battles thirty years before; and now his weak force was opposed to heavy odds, and had to endure, without flinching, shot, shell, and musketry.
On their left the four regiments of the Light Division, and the 95th, were about to perform a most daring exploit. Nearly at the same moment Sir George Brown, Brigadier Codrington, and Colonel Yea forced their horses up the bank, and found themselves almost in the midst of the Russian skirmishers. Their men, unformed as they were, crowded up, and presented to the view of the Russian gunners an extended line, indeed, but in so much disorder that the Russian generals, in their reports, described them as a cloud of skirmishers. Once at the foot of the slope, they were face to face, not only with the battery, but with two heavy columns, one on the right, the other on the left of the rude fieldwork, whose weighty guns had done so much mischief. There was no manœuvring, no order, no neat soldiership. The advance of the Light Division was the steady rush of a fierce crowd into and through the jaws of death; for though hundreds strewed the hill-side, the survivors were not to be dismayed, but were resolute to win. Such a sight, except at a deadly breach, in some bloody siege, had rarely been seen in war. The line wavered and surged to and fro, but it gained ground. And now it reaped the fruits of its daring. The great battery fired one tremendous volley, and when the smoke grew thin, it was seen that the enemy were carrying off the guns! The four regiments had carried the battery, and forced the enemy to hurry away his guns by sheer hardihood and will; and now came the question—could they keep their prize, or would the Guards and Highlanders come up in time to relieve or sustain them?