Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/531

 SEQUEL TO INKEKMAN NARRATIVE. 487 advantageous ignorance of the general state of the chap. action ; nay, even very often in ignorance of the !_ fact that any great conflict was raging ; and the notion of the officer commanding in this narrow sphere was always that he must fight out his quarrel with what troops he had, or at most ask for small reinforcements scarce sufficient to fur- nish one company for a German or Eussian bat- talion. It was by uncombined, though nearly simultaneous fights of this kind, that some 3600 of our infantry in the First Period of the action made good their resistance to 25,000, and even expunged from the battle-field no less than twenty battalions with a strength of 15,000 men. 3. The Russian soldiery being men endowed The enemy's •^ '-' gross way oi with great bravery, and a more than common fighting. share of physical strength, might possibly be brought to execute what the English call a charge with the bayonet, and indeed they have a tradition that for such enterprises they have proved them- selves peculiarly apt. This notion, however well founded in the days of Suwaroff, rests now on mere legend ; for, since the time when the Rus- sians iu the early part of this century began to copy Napoleon, they have so massed their troops as to refuse themselves almost all opportunity of justifying their national boast ; and certainly at Tnkerman, where they collected their strength into throngs and close columns, and iu front of these loaded the ground with swarms of skir- mishers, they debarred themselves from even