“Halting the 42d in the hollow, Campbell swiftly measured the strength of the approaching column, and he reckoned it so strong that he resolved to prepare for it a front of no less than five companies. He was upon the point of giving the order for effecting this bend in the line of the 42d, when looking to his left rear, he saw his centre battalion springing up to the outer crest.”[357] This was the 93d.
“Campbell’s charger, twice wounded already, but hitherto not much hurt, was now struck by a shot in the heart. Without a stumble or a plunge the horse sank down gently to the earth, and was dead. Campbell took his aide-de-camp’s charger; but he had not been long in Shadwell’s saddle when up came Sir Colin’s groom with his second horse. The man, perhaps, under some former master, had been used to be charged with the ‘second horse’ in the hunting-field. At all events, here he was; and if Sir Colin was angered by the apparition, he could not deny that it was opportune. The man touched his cap, and excused himself for being where he was. In the dry, terse way of those Englishmen who are much accustomed to horses, he explained that towards the rear the balls had been dropping about very thick, and that, fearing some harm might come to his master’s second horse, he had thought it best to bring him up to the front.
“When the 93d had recovered the perfectness of its array, it again moved forward, but at the steady pace imposed upon it by the chief. The 42d had already resumed its forward movement; it still advanced firing.
“The turning moment of a fight is a moment of trial for the soul, and not for the body; and it is, therefore, that such courage as men are able to gather from being gross in numbers, can be easily outweighed by the warlike virtue of a few. To the stately ‘Black Watch’ and the hot 93d, with Campbell leading them on, there was vouchsafed that stronger heart for which the brave pious Muscovites had prayed. Over the souls of the men in the columns there was spread, first the gloom, then the swarm of vain delusions, and at last the sheer horror which might be the work of the Angel of Darkness. The two lines marched straight on. The three columns shook. They were not yet subdued. They were stubborn; but every moment the two advancing battalions grew nearer and nearer, and although—dimly masking the scant numbers of the Highlanders—there was still the white curtain of smoke which always rolled on before them, yet, fitfully, and from moment to moment, the signs of them could be traced on the right hand and on the left in a long, shadowy line, and their coming was ceaseless.
“But moreover, the Highlanders being men of great stature, and in strange garb, their plumes being tall, and the view of them being broken and distorted by the wreaths of the smoke, and there being, too, an ominous silence in their ranks, there were men among the Russians who began to conceive a vague terror—the terror of things unearthly; and some, they say, imagined that they were charged by horsemen strange, silent, monstrous, bestriding giant chargers. Unless help should come from elsewhere, the three columns would have to give way; but help came. From the high ground on our left another heavy column—the column composed of the two right Sousdal battalions—was seen coming down. It moved straight at the flank of the 93d.”[358] This was met by the 79th.
“Without a halt, or with only the halt that was needed for dressing the ranks, it sprang at the flank of the right Sousdal column, and caught it in its sin—caught it daring to march across the front of a battalion advancing in line. Wrapped in the fire thus poured upon its flank, the hapless column could not march, could not live. It broke, and began to fall back in great confusion; and the left Sousdal column being almost at the same time overthrown by the 93d, and the two columns which had engaged the ‘Black Watch’ being now in full retreat, the spurs of the hill and the winding dale beyond became thronged with the enemy’s disordered masses.
“Then again, they say, there was heard the sorrowful wail that bursts from the heart of the brave Russian infantry when they have to suffer defeat; but this time the wail was the wail of eight battalions; and the warlike grief of the soldiery could no longer kindle the fierce intent which, only a little before, had spurred forward the Vladimir column. Hope had fled.
“After having been parted from one another by the nature of the ground, and thus thrown for some time into échelon, the battalions of Sir Colin’s brigade were now once more close abreast; and since the men looked upon ground where the grey remains of the enemy’s broken strength were mournfully rolling away, they could not but see that this, the revoir of the Highlanders, had chanced in a moment of glory. Knowing their hearts, and deeming that the time was one when the voice of his people might fitly enough be heard, the Chief touched or half lifted his hat in the way of a man assenting. Then along the Kourganè slopes, and thence west almost home to the Causeway, the hill-sides were made to resound with that joyous, assuring cry, which is the natural utterance of a northern people so long as it is warlike and free.[359]
“The three Highland regiments were now re-formed, and Sir Colin Campbell, careful in the midst of victory, looked to see whether the supports were near enough to warrant him in pressing the enemy’s retreat with his Highland Brigade. He judged that, since Cathcart was still a good way off, the Highlanders ought to be established on the ground which they had already won; and, never forgetting that, all this while, he was on the extreme left of the whole infantry array of the Allies, he made a bend in his line, which caused it to show a front towards the south-east as well as towards the south.
“This achievement of the Guards and the Highland Brigade was so rapid, and was executed with so steadfast a faith in the prowess of our soldiery and the ascendancy of Line over Column, that in vanquishing great masses of infantry 12,000 strong, and in going straight through with an onset which tore open the Russian position, the six battalions together did not lose 500 men.”[360]