Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/456

 430 APPENDIX. been kept logftlior, and moved a good way in the right rear of the Telegrapli, without ever engaging in a)iy kind of struggU". with infantry. Now, except the troops composing that coluinn, the only battalions of Russian infantry which were at any time in this part of the field were the Taroutine and the 'JNIilitia' battalions; and accordingly, these are the troops which the French official ' Atlas ' places in array at the Telegraph. Now the ' Militia' battalions, we saw, were inferior troops, and had ilissolved. There remained the Taroutine battalions : and if any stand had been really made at the Telegraph, these must liave been the troops which made it. It happens, however, that an intelligent and highly-instructed field-officer of that corps has written an apparently complete account of every part of the battle of which he was competent to speak ; and if any of Kiria- koff's forces, but still more if any of the Taroutine battal- ions, had made the stand alleged, it is quite incredible either that Major Chodasiewicz, who was present with the Taroutine corps, should have remained ignorant of the fact, or that, knowing it, he should have omitted to state the truth. If any of the Taroutine battalions had been engaged in a fight of this sort, it would have been for them the grand, the all-absorbing event of the day ; for it certainly was not their fate to be brought into conflict with French infiintry in any other part of the field, and they would not have failed to remember an obstinate and bloody fight of the kind described by the French. But Chodasiewicz, though he minutely describes the way in which the Tarou- tine battalions were galled in their retreat by the fire of artillery, does not say a word of any kind of fight at the Telegraph between French and Russian infantry. Yet his was the very regiment which, if the French story were true, must have borne the brunt of the alleged fight. Upon the whole, I have conceived that these authentic and trustworthy narratives of General Kiriakoff and Major