Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/532

 •188 THE BATTLE OF IKKEKMAN. CHAP, attempting what English soldiery mean when L. they speak of a bayonet- charge.* Unread in the story of the Peninsular war, they ventured to bring their gross formations into the presence of English infantry, and incurred crushing, ruinous slaughter, under conditions which left the bulk of them powerless, except to suffer and die. Most commonly, the Eussian columns shrank from the charge of our people in time to avoid actual con- tact; and even when they stood their ground with comparative firmness, they invariably 'ac- ' cepted the files,' allowing our soldiery to thrust themselves in betwixt theirs, and then there either followed a destruction of the intruders — this happened but once if at all — or else the dis- integration and overthrow of the riven mass. Other wars had well proved the frailty of col- umns when called upon to suffer the fire, and then stand the bayonet - charge of infantry ex- tended in line; but ' Inkerman ' carried yet further the experience of what can be dared against masses by small numbers of soldiery, showing plainly enough that a column which has not been defeated in the earlier moments of its agony, may still prove helpless and weak when it has a few. assailants within it. The examples of this that were afforded by several, as for instance, by Hugh Clifford, by Burnaby, by Daubeney, have an in- without firing (a.s did a column of the Vladimir regiment at the Alma), the Russians call the movement a charge with tha bayonet.
 * If a column lieavcs its waj' slowly forward a few )paces