Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/178

 152 r.ATTLE OF TMK ALMA. CHAT. Ouv men, obeying the voice thns enforced Ly • the appeal of the bugle, Avithheld their fire and remained still. The belief that the column must be French was confirmed, if not caused, by ob- serving that it delivered no fire ; and although Kvetzinski has said that the front-rank men had brought down their muskets as though for a charge with the bayonet,* still the slow, formal movement of the approaching mass was so little like what the English regard as a 'charge,' that our people, so far as I know, never thought of accounting for the silence of the enemy's firelocks by suggesting that his movement was intended to be an attack with the l)ayonet. The Vladimir mass now halted,-|- as if from a suspicion of some snare, or perhaps from a dread of the unknown ; and this indeed was natural enough, for although but imperfectly seeing our recumbent soldiers, the front-rank men of the column could by this time discern many forage-caps and a crowd of English faces of a fresh-coloured hue very strange to their eyes, and besides, the muzzles of rifies levelled thickly across the parapet. From mistake on one is, 'I'arme an bras, prete a la haionette.' + The Russian accounts do not speak of this lialt. They re- present the whole advance of the cohiiiin as a bayonet-charge, and it seems quite true that the cohimn really withliekl its fire ; but it would be a mistake to suppose that the forward move- ment of this body was marked with any of the swiftness or vio- lence commonly associated with the idea of a ' charge.' To Eng- lish eyes and English ears the slow, cumbrous advance of the Vla- dimir column was as different from a ' bayonet charge ' as a fune- ral is from a horse-race, or a short, swift 'bur'^it' with the houndi
 * His expression, as rendered from the Eussian into French,