Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/302

 2f)8 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP, liini, dispersed in the brushwood, some men ^^' who, though busied like the rest of the troops 2d Period. i,i pursuit, could still be reached by his orders. mMin^™ They were only some fifty in number, but they belonged to the 'Twentieth,' a regiment of his- toric renown, which is famous for imparting its aggregate quality to the individual soldier ; * and the chief, besides, had around him the de- voted officers of his Staff, Colonel Windham, Colonel Charles Seymour, Major Maitlaud, Cap- tain Hugh Smith, and Captain Greville, and his nephew, young Augustus Cathcart. The attack After Ordering Windham to ride down and fifty men of try to ' get back ' the troops on the hillside be- the'SOth." J )r> r low, Cathcart gathered together the fifty men of the 20th, and with these — formed rudely in line — undertook to move up against the over- hanging body of some seven or eight hundred men which stood on the crest above him.f In ascending to make their attack, these few ' Twentieth ' men were obstructed, and, besides, more or less thrown asunder by the varying abruptness of the acclivity ; but, if aggregate strength was thus neutralised, the individual soldier toiled forward with a determination all his own, and the twenty or thirty men who formed the right of the line — Maitland forced chanced to be near Cathcart are shown ante, pp. 214, 236. t The lakoutsk battalion had no doubt sustained some casu- alties ; but the regiment went into action with a strength of 8223, which gives an average of rather more than 8i>5 to each of its four battalions.
 * The circumstances under which these men of the 20th