Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/263

 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. 237 kind of array in which the English soldiery were chap. undertaking to assail them. 'We were all as- L„. ' tonished,' says Chodasiewicz — yet he wrote of what he saw when the English line was much less close to the foe than the Guards now were — ' redoubt. This was the most extraordinary ' thing to us, as we had never before seen troops ' fight in lines of two deep, nor did we think it ' possible for men to be found with sufficient ' apparently weak formation our massive columns. XXXI. Beginning on our right hand with the Grena- dier Guards, and the few men brought up along- side them under Dalrymple, Berkeley, and Hume, and going thence leftwards across the still open ' chasm ' to the Coldstream battalion, and, lastly, going yet further leftwards to the array of the Highland Brigade, we shall now see what manner of strife it was when at length, after many a hindrance, five British battalions, each grandly formed in line, but imperilled by the yawning gap at which tacticians might shudder, marched up to the enemy's columns. Advancing upon the immediate left of the ground already won by Pennefathcr's brigade, the Grenadiers were covered on their right, but their
 * we were all astonished at the extraordinary firm-
 * ness with which the red-jackets, having crossed
 * the river, opened a heavy fire in line upon the
 * firmness of morale to be able to attack in this