Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/222

 178 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP. VI. their elfoct. — the five foremost battalions spared some of their men for the purpose, I cannot undertake to say ; but our people from an early moment had been threatened by troops curling round their right tlank, and now Eussian skirmishers, strongly sup- ported, began to come up, moving eastward from St Clement's Gorge, if not indeed also from the Quarry Kavine. In other words, the 700 English, whilst they strove against the masses straight be- fore them, and warded off the forces on their right front, were now also challenged on their left flank, and even towards their left rear. Under these conditions the engagement by degrees resolved itself into a number of separate struggles. No sooner had one Eussian column been driven back than a fresh one appeared approaching a flank, and now it would seem, but certainly for the first time that day, the idea of the ' company column,' which Eussia had learned from the Germans, proved more or less apt for its purpose by acting as a powerful unit with the animation derived from a separate, though not discordant volition. At each extremity of their line the endeavours of our soldiery to repulse flank attacks were made of necessity by changes of front, and of course when it happened that a column was already on either the right rear or the left rear of our people, the only way to attack it, or prevent it from cutting off' the force, was by a more or less retrograde movement. Accordingly these combats on the right and on the left created at each flank a side eddy which could not but tend to draw back