Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/47

 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. 21 action much less than ono-tliird part of the PiUS- chap. sian force ;* whilst much more than the other , two-thirds of it was left to the care of the Eng- lish. St Arnaud, with his Frenchmen alone, was to his then confronting adversaries in a proportion not very far differing from that of three to one ; and the 7000 Turks that he also commanded in- creased yet further his great numerical preponder- ance, whilst, moreover, of guns he had sixty-eight to ten. Lord Raglan, on the other hand, was upon the whole fairly matched by his appointed antagon- ists in numbers of men and guns ; f but the dis- tinguishing characteristic of the task that awaited him was this : — he had to attack troops entrenched, and entrenched too upon very strong ground. The heights about to be invaded by the French The tasks presented grave physical obstacles to their ad- by tiie vance, but the greater part of them were unde- theEngUsh fended by troops, and had nowhere been strength- ened by field-works. The ground attacked by the English did not oppose great physical obstacles to the advance of the assailants, but it had been entrenched, and, besides, was so formed by nature as to give great destructive power, and, by con- sequence, great strength, to an enemy defending it with the resources of modern warfare.]: The .shown. t In the Ap]tendL; No. II., the proportions are shown with more particularity ; and the two la.st footnotes annexed to the Table there given show the changes that those proportions underwent in the course of the action. + In these days, mere inert physical obstacles are commonly
 * The iiroportion clianp;ed afterwards, as will be liy-and-by