Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/322

 296 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. CHAP, cannonade which thus greeted them, and over- ' whelming the helpless riflemen — not without a free use of the bayonet — the French masses con- tinued tlieir onset; and three agile soldiers run- ning forward in advance of their comrades, reared the colours of their three several regiments on the stump of the unfinished pillar, or the scaffolding M'hich surrounded its sides. Whilst in the very- act of thus planting the standard of his regiment, Lieutenant Poitevin of the 39th Eegiment was struck dead by a cannon-ball, and a grape-shot killed Serjeant Fleury of the 1st Eegiment of Zouaves, the flag-staff supporting its colours being also at the same time broken by a fragment of shell.* Nature of So, the substaucc of what here occurred was at"t.he TciL the Converging onset of thousands of high-mettled ^^^ '" soldiery springing forward to reach the goal with- out suffering themselves to be daunted by a pelt- ing fire of artillery ; and their merit, one need hardly say, was neither augmented nor lessened by the recollection of a conversation on this subject ■with General do Todleben, I am led to conjectiire that the Riflemen found at the Telegraph belonged all to the ' Minsk ' regiment, which, out of its four battalions, might have furnished as many as ninety-six Riflemen. above-mentioned missiles, 'round-shot,' 'grape,' and 'fragment ' of shell,' were of the kind discharged only by artUlery, and will see how far that circumstance goes towards negativing the supposition that the Russians were intentionally making a stand with infantry on the summit of the Tek'gra])h Height. The hapless riflemen, plainly left by mistake at the Telegraph, must have suffiTcd under the artillery fire directed upon that part of the ground by their own fcllow-countrym'Bn.
 * The military reader will not fail to observe that all the