Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/242

 216 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. CHAP, contact Avitli the Fusilier Guards; and tliis so ' heavily, that the crowd broke through a great part of the left wing of the advancing battalion. The weight of the retreating throng at that one spot was so great and so unwieldy, that a soldier of the Scots Fusilier Guards was thrown, it is said, to the ground with such ibrce as to break his ri]>s.* The part of the Scots Fusilier Guards which had tlius been thrust out of line by physi- cal pressure was uf course in a state of confusion. The remnant of the battalion thus maimed was, at the moment, without support; for, directly in its rear, there were no formed troops coming on ; and of the two battalions on its right hand and its left, neither one nor the other had hitherto come up abreast of it. On the other hand, the force which our Fusilier Guards undertook to attack was that majestic Vladimir column ■which had just been defeating Sir George Brown. With a strength of no more than perhaps some four or five hundred men, the remnant of what had been the centre battalion of the brigade of Guards was advancing all alone, not merely against a breast- work thick lined with Eussian soldiery, but also against a hitherto victorious colunni which was nearly 3000 strong. Still, the maimed battal- ion pushed on ; but by this time it had so far lost its symmetry that it had come to be, as it were, two sides of a triangle — two sides of a triangle whereof the salient pointed straight to the front.
 * His name, 1 have heard, was Ileskelh.