Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/147

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 125 and quality as to be more effectual than a helmet chap. against the edge of the sword.*. In such skill as is gained by the sword exer- cise, there was not perhaps much disparity be- tween the combatants ; but the practice of our service up to that time had failed to provide the troopers with those expedients of fence which he would be needing when assailed in the direction of his bridle-arm ; and this of course was a some- what imperilling defect for a horseman who had to combat in a crowd of enemies, and was liable to be attacked on all sides. Though reckoned by thousands, and having for the moment no heavier task than that of over- whelming or shaking off somewhat less than three hundred assailants, the Eussians were pre- vented from exerting the strength of their column by the very grossness of its numbers, because they all stood so formed up on a limited space, and so wedged into one compact mass, that for the moment they had become, as it were, their own jailers. Still, no one among the ' three hun- ' dred,' whether fighting in knots with others, or fighting all alone in the crowd, could fail to be under such actual stress of simultaneous assailants as to have to confide in his single right arm for all means of defence against num- bers ; and, upon the whole, it would seem that undertook to test the strength of a Russian shako ; and the Vicomte declares that they were actually unahle to cleave it with a hatchet
 * One day the Vicomte de Noe" and an English offioeT