Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/162

 13G 13ATTLK OF THE ALMA. ciiA P. ing that the Division should instantly ' push on.' _ '._ H.R.H. then gave orders for the immediate ad- vance of the Division, and Clifton, I think, Nvas the aide-de-camp who carried the order to Sir Colin Campbell. Then the 1st Division moved forward. Now the enemy, Avhilst he dealt with the tumultuous onset of Codrington's brigade, had rightly enough given some of his care to the more ceremonious advance of the 1st Division ; and since the Guards confronted both the Cause- way batteries and the Great Eedoubt, they of course underwent for a time a fire of artillery, and some men were struck down.* The Grenadiers and the Scots Fusiliers suffered the most. This loss did not occur as a consequence of any mis- take : it was in the order of things that it should be. But when men are new to war, and so placed in the battle-field as to be for the moment cut off from all knowledge of what is going on elsewhere, they are prone to imagine that a force which they see undergoing slaughter, yet having no immediate means of attack or resistance, must needs be the victim of some piece of forgetfulness or error ; and when once this notion has got its lodgment in the brain of an officer, his next step probably is to try to avert what he fancies to be an im- pending disaster by venturing to disobey oi'ders, or by counselling another to do so. the Causeway batteries withdrawn, there were some guns in battery at more remote spots, which seem to have been brought to bear on tliu Guards.
 * Kvi'u wlien the Great Kedoubt had been dismantled, and