Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/355

 FIELD OF THE ALMA. 329 ' were sacrificed.' * lu such questioninns there is chap. danger. . That priceless coufidence which sustains the accomplished soldier, and gives him the mastery in battle, is, after all, a sentiment of a tender and delicate kind, which may be easily weakened or destroyed, if he comes to believe that his regiment has been mishandled in a bloody encounter ; and it could not but happen that regiments which had suffered great losses would be encouraged in the indulgence of a sinister criticism by keeping them long on the ground where their comrades lay maimed and slaughtered.f On the day after the battle, the hundreds ofFawofihe . ... „ wouiide'l Eussians who lay wounded on the English part oi Russians, the field had been brought to a sheltered spot of ground near the river. :j: There, they were laid down in even parallel ranks, and in such manner tliat the surface they covered with their prostrate bodies was a large symmetrical obloug. The ground where they lay was at some short distance from the Headquarters camp, and but little ex- The sentence was uttered in a group of private soldiers belong- ing to one of the regiments of the Light Division. t Many will recognise the high authority which is my war- rant for venturing this remark, and for insisting on the danger to which the morale of the Light Division was exposed by its experience on the day of the Alma. Over, and over, and over again. Lord Clyde used to say that no troops in the world could be subjected to such a trial without undergoing a minous loss of soldierly coufidence. t The number, I believe, was about 500 ; but it was estunated, and on some authority, at 750.
 * I myself, in passing, heard this the day after the battle.