A. Corporal. B. Sergeant. C. Officers—Undress. D. Officers—Full Dress. E. Privates.
UNIFORMS OF THE ROYAL MARINES, 1837.
The French Commander-in-Chief, Saint-Arnaud, received similar injunctions from the Emperor Louis Napoleon, who was as strongly in favour of the project as Palmerston and the Duke of Newcastle; Lord Raglan, therefore, encountered no opposition from him on the score of strategy. |The Invasion of the Crimea.| After three months of inaction at Varna, during which the troops suffered severely from cholera, the invasion of the Crimea was undertaken; the Allied Forces set sail for Eupatoria, and on September 21 the Duke of Newcastle telegraphed to the Queen that 25,000 English, 25,000 French, and 8,000 Turks had safely disembarked at Kalamita Bay, near the mouth of the River Alma, about eight miles north of Sebastopol, without meeting any resistance. The advance on Sebastopol began on September 19, and on the 20th the Allies encountered the Russian army, under Prince Menschikoff, strongly entrenched on the heights south of the River Alma. Menschikoff of deliberate purpose had allowed them to disembark unmolested; he had chosen what he believed to be an impregnable position, where he intended to keep them in play till the arrival of reinforcements should enable him to leave his entrenchments and overwhelm the invaders with superior numbers; he watched them crossing the stream below his position in full confidence that they were entering the trap prepared for them. But he had underrated the individual prowess of British and French soldiers. They had discipline, individual gallantry, and physique in a high degree, but these are often only so many contributions to the aggregate of disaster unless directed by sagacious generalship, and the tactics of the Allied Forces at the Alma were of the headlong character of a schoolboy’s playground. Maréchal Saint-Arnaud was in an agony of illness of approaching death, as it turned out—and there was little cohesion or concert between the English on the left and the French on the right of the attacking line. Only one thing was plain to the men of both armies—there were the Russian batteries, on the heights beyond the river, with heavy columns of infantry hanging like a grey cloud along the crests—the one thing to do was to get at them. Saint-Arnaud, addressing his Generals of Division, Canrobert and Prince Napoleon, said: “With such men as you I have no orders to give; I have but to point to the enemy!”
R. Simkin.]
Royal Marine Artillery—
A. Company Sergeant-Major. B. Gunner. C. Officer.
Royal Marine Light Infantry—
D. Officer. E. Drummer. F. Sergeant. G. Private.
UNIFORMS OF THE ROYAL MARINES, 1897.
At two o’clock the Allies crossed the river under a plunging fire, and advanced up the opposing slopes in face of the batteries and a searching fire of musketry; the great redoubt was carried by assault; the British battalions, deployed in double rank, according to the unique practice of English field drill, poured a withering fire into the solid columns of the enemy and plied the deadly bayonet at closer quarters. |The Battle of the Alma.| About four o’clock the Russians wavered, fell back, and broke; the position was carried and the first European field since Waterloo had been won.
