Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/325

 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. 299 in that desperate strife of infantry against infantry chap. which, under the description of ' the combat at the ' ' Telegraph,' has found a place in French annals.* At length the state of the smoke allowed men to see that no Russian battalion was near. Then the close of what resembled a fight was joyfully hailed as a victory. From the time when the bulk of the French Marshal advanced to the banks of the river, Marshal St Arnaud had placed himself in the midst of Prince Napoleon's battalions ; and, the Prince's Division having been kept low down in the bottom dur- ing the critical period of the battle, it must have been hard for a man who remained jammed down with those troops to obtain a fair view of what was going on ; f but the Marshal, it seems, now galloped up to the Telegraph, and sharing, no doubt, in the belief that there had been a hot fight there, and inferring also that the fight had been won by the thousands of eager Zouaves whom he saw thronging round the pillar, he turned, it is said, to these his most trusted soldiery, and said to them, ' I thank you, my Zouaves ! ' Canrobert's and Prince Napoleon's Divisions, with D'Aurelle's brigade betwixt them, were then massed about the Telegraph upon a very small space of ground. supposed fight, together with my reasons for excluding their stories from my text, will he found in the Appendix. — Note to st Edition. + See the Plan (taken from the ' Atlas Historique '), which shows the Marshal's position.
 * Tlio narratives which French historians have given of this