Kinglake on the Battle of the Alma

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This work was intended for the Darmstadt weekly Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung, to which Engels contributed from August 1860 to July 1864. His articles for the weekly written between 1860 and 1862 (they were signed F. E.) dealt with the Volunteer movement in Britain. In the present edition they are in Volume 18, as are his articles written for the Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire. Of Engels's articles for the AMZ written in 1863 and 1864, only one, "England's Fighting Forces as against Germany", was published in the weekly (see this volume). Three more articles remained in manuscript. The present one deals with A. W. Kinglake's book The Invasion of the Crimea, published in the first half of 1863. As can be seen from Engels's letters to Marx of June 11 and 24 (present edition, Vol. 41), Engels was very critical of the book, especially of Kinglake's description of the battle of the Alma. It was probably then that he decided to write a critical review of the book. Apparently, he worked on the article "Kinglake on the Battle of the Alma" until the end of the month. It exists in the form of a rough draft, which has reached us incomplete. The end of section I and the beginning and end of section II (pages 5, 6 and 9 of the manuscript) are missing. The manuscript breaks off on page 17. Page 1 bears the initials "F. E.". The article was not finished and not sent to the AMZ, presumably because Engels discovered in the weekly's literary supplement (Nos. 15, 23 and 24, April 11, and June 6 and 13) a critical review of Kinglake's book by another writer, marked "5 " (its conclusion appeared in Nos. 30 and 31, on July 25 and August 1, 1863). The battle of the Alma took place on September 20, 1854. The Russian forces were commanded by A. S. Menshikov, and the numerically superior forces of the French, British and Turks by Saint-Arnaud and Raglan. It was the first battle after the Allies' landing in the Crimea (at Eupatoria) on September 14. The defeat and withdrawal of the Russian troops opened up the way to Sevastopol for the Allies. Engels described the battle in his article "Alma" written for the New American Cyclopaedia (see present edition, Vol. 18). p. 274

Kinglake’s book on the Crimean War has caused a great stir in England and outside, and deservedly. It contains a great deal of valuable, new material, and it could hardly be otherwise, since the author was able to use the papers of the English headquarters, many notes by senior English officers, and not a few memoirs prepared especially for him by Russian generals. Nonetheless, so far as the military presentation is concerned, this is not a history but a novel; its hero is Lord Raglan, the English commander-inchief, its ultimate aim is glorification, carried to absurdity, of the English army.

Kinglake’s account is likely to produce a great effect in Germany; while it reduces the share of the French in the victory on the Alma to a minimum, it treats the Russians with ostensible respectful impartiality, refers to the already known sources of all three nations involved, and steers clear of the specifically French variety of bragging that we find as offensive in Thiers and his consorts as it is laughable. At the same time, our friends the English can brag, too, and, although they are slightly more accomplished in praising themselves than the French are, the colours are laid on at least as thick. If for no other reason, this makes it worthwhile to strip off the fictional cover from the description of the only military event in the two volumes which have appeared up to now, the battle of the Alma, and to separate the real new historical material from the embellishments, rodomontades and conjectures with which Mr. Kinglake fills out his picture.

An additional factor is that the battle of the Alma is of very special tactical interest, an aspect that has been inadequately appreciated thus far. In this battle, for the first time since Waterloo, two different tactical formations clashed, one of them practised by preference by all the armies of Europe, the other rejected by all but one—the English. On the Alma, the English line advanced against the Russian columns and routed them without any particular difficulty. This is at least an indication that the old line is not yet as obsolete as the continental textbooks on tactics assert, and it is at least worth the trouble of looking a little more closely into the matter.

I

Kinglake lists the forces engaged on the two sides very carelessly. For the English he had the official data at his disposal and from them establishes the number of combatants as 25,404 infantrymen and artillerymen, something more than 1,000 cavalrymen and 60 guns. This may be regarded as authentic. He gives a round number for the French, 30,000 men and 68 cannons; there were also 7,000 Turks. In round numbers, this makes 63,500 allies with 128 guns, which may be fairly correct by and large. But Mr. Kinglake begins to have difficulties with the Russians. Now, we have in Anichkov’s Feldzug in der Krim (German translation, Berlin, Mittler, 1857, first part) an account that is obviously based on official sources and that has never been contested until now in any essential point, with the names and numbers of the regiments, battalions, squadrons, and batteries. According to this account, the Russians had 42 battalions, 16 squadrons, 11 Cossack squadrons, and 96 guns in ten and a half batteries on the Alma, 35,000 men in all. But this does not satisfy Mr. Kinglake at all. He puts together a special reckoning, constantly referring to Anichkov as his authority, but arriving at quite different conclusions, without however thinking it worth the trouble to cite evidence in favour of his divergent data. In general, it is characteristic of the entire book that it constantly cites authorities when reporting notorious facts but carefully avoids doing so when making new and risky assertions.

The two accounts differ little with respect to the infantry. Anichkov gives 40 battalions of the line, 1 battalion of skirmishers and 1/2 battalion of marine sharpshooters; Kinglake transforms this last half-battalion into two battalions and, to support this, refers to Chodasiewicz (major in the Tarutino infantry regiment), who is said to have seen them. The point is unimportant, since Kinglake himself concedes that the Russians themselves think very little of these troops. He also transforms the 2 companies of engineers that appear in Anichkov into an entire battalion and always counts them as infantry.

In the case of the cavalry, however, Kinglake’s exaggeration is more marked. Throughout the account of the battle it is emphasised on every occasion that the Russians had “3,400 lances” in the field, and on every map there appears an enormous column behind the Russian right wing with a note that the Russian cavalry, 3,000 strong, was held in this region. We are reminded continually of the remarkable inactivity of these 3,000 men and the danger their proximity constituted for the English, who had only just over 1,000 horsemen. Kinglake is very careful not to call our attention to the fact that over a third of this cavalry consisted of Cossacks, of whom everyone knows that they are incapable of fighting in close order against regular cavalry. Given the great ignorance of all military matters that pervades the entire book, this gross blunder should be attributed to a lack of knowledge rather than to malice.

Kinglake’s critical judgement fails him completely, when he comes to the artillery. Anichkov, as has been said, gives 96 guns in all, in 10 specified light and heavy field batteries, supplemented by 4 horse-drawn naval guns. He knows exactly where each of these batteries was located during the battle. All these batteries appear in Kinglake (with a few minor discrepancies in the numbers), but three additional ones are given. The 5th battery of the 17th brigade, which Anichkov also lists, figures twice in Kinglake in the original position, once on the left wing (p. 231) and immediately thereafter again in the main reserve (p. 235)! Similarly, the 3rd battery of the same 17th brigade, which, according to Anichkov, was not there at all, appears twice in Kinglake, once on the left wing (p. 231) and again—but as a “fixed battery”—in the centre! The fact that, in accordance with the well-known organisation of the Russian artillery at the time of the Crimean War (cf. Haxthausen, Studien über Russland ) there was only one heavy battery of 12 guns in every artillery brigade, and that later, when the batteries were set up with 8 guns each, there could therefore be a 1st and a 2nd heavy battery in a brigade but never a 3rd heavy battery—all this does not disturb our historian. What he is concerned with is presenting the heroic deeds of the English on the Alma as prodigiously as possible; and for that he required as many Russian cannons as possible. Hence, wherever he finds a battery listed in Russian reports (all of which, with the exception of Anichkov’s, are more or less useless in terms of such details) that Anichkov does not mention, he assumes Anichkov forgot it and calmly adds it to the batteries listed by Anichkov. If he finds the same battery listed in different sources at two different points on the battlefield, he calmly counts it twice and at best assumes that a light battery is meant in one case and a heavy battery in the other. All this sleight of hand notwithstanding, Kinglake can only scrape up 13 V2 batteries with 8 guns each, a total of 108 guns, and since he fails to see that, according to Anichkov, the three batteries of the 16th brigade were still organised on the old basis of 12 guns (we see how superficially the man works), that still gives, as against Anichkov, only an addition of 12 guns. Hence, Kinglake must make an extraordinary effort in order to stud the heights of the Alma with Russian cannons. He is helped in this task by the fieldworks which the English bombastically call “the great redoubt”. Of this Anichkov says simply:

“To the right of the road, Battery No. 1 of the same (16th) brigade was drawn up in an advantageous position and protected by an epaulement.”

Kinglake describes this insignificant work quite correctly, but cannot imagine that simple twelve-pounders would be stationed behind it; he asserts they were heavy guns from Sevastopol. Chodasiewicz states, to be sure, that the guns of the 2nd battery of the 16th brigade were emplaced there (he confuses the 1st and 2nd battery), but the calibre of the cannon and howitzer, which, he said, are still in Woolwich, proved that these guns were hot part of the regular field artillery (p. 233). Kinglake is even better informed.

He says very definitely (p. 229):

“They were 32-pounders and 24-pound howitzers.”

In 1849, during the uprising in the Palatinate, some officers of the volunteers always justified the continual backwards movements of their units by claiming that they had been under fire from “red-hot 24-pound bombshot”. This writer certainly never expected that the howitzer from which these terrible balls were shot would be captured by Mr. Kinglake on the Alma. As for these 24-lb.

balls....

The next two pages of the manuscript are missing.— Ed.

20—1134

II

...guns separated by a distance of 1,500 paces from Canrobert, whose division was neutralised by the Russian cannons while his own artillery tried to reach him by a circuitous route of at least half a German mile ; finally, Prince Napoleon was held down in the valley, 1,200 paces away from Canrobert and hesitating to cross the river. This scattering of his troops on a front of 6,000 paces and especially Bosquet’s exposed position finally caused Marshal Saint-Arnaud such anxiety that he resorted to the desperate measure of sending his entire reserve forward. Lourmel’s brigade was sent to Bouat, while d’Aurelle’s brigade reinforced Prince Napoleon. By sending both of his reserves precisely into the two defiles that were already choked with troops, Saint-Arnaud completed the scattering of his forces. If this were not all stated in the official French report (the Atlas historique de la guerre d’Orient), it would be hard to believe.

What was it like on the Russian side, and what saved the French from this perilous situation?

The Russian left wing was commanded by Kiryakov. Over against Canrobert and Prince Napoleon he had in the first line 4 reserve battalions (Brest and Bialystok regiments), indifferent troops; in the second line the 4 battalions of the Tarutino regiment, in reserve the 4 Moscow battalions and the 2nd battalion of the Minsk regiment, which with 4 guns (4th battery of 17th art. brigade) was detached to the left to observe the seacoast. The 4 Borodino battalions, which were also under his command, were placed further east, right by the Sevastopol road, and when they were not engaged as skirmishers, they fought almost exclusively against the English. All in all, the French were therefore opposed by 13 battalions with 8 guns.

When Bosquet’s flanking column appeared on the plateau south of the Alma, Prince Menshikov himself came to the left wing, bringing with him from the main reserve the remaining 3 battalions of the Minsk regiment, one foot- and two horsebatteries, and 6 squadrons of hussars. Up to that point the fighting had been limited to skirmishing and cannonade; the main bodies of Russians had pulled back somewhat, for the most part, and the French—Napoleon and Canrobert—had not yet appeared on the plateau at all or were so far off (Bosquet, Bouat, Lourmel) that they could not for the moment enter into combat. Now since the troops of Prince Napoleon had got stuck in the defile so thoroughly that they had not yet debouched, the Russians had no other point to attack than the Canrobert division covered beyond the edge of the plateau. Against him, Menshikov now formed a monster column of the 8 Minsk and Moscow battalions— two battalions in the front and four battalions deep, all in attack columns against the middle. Called away to his centre, he turned this unwieldy mass over to Kiryakov with the order to attack at once. When the column came to within gunshot range of the French, the latter

“no longer bore up under the weight that is laid upon the heart of a Continental soldier by the approach of a great column of infantry” (p. 400).

They withdrew a little further down the slope. At this moment, however, Canrobert’s two batteries, along with those of Bosquet, came up rapidly a little further to the right through a depression in the terrain; they positioned their cannons quickly and opened fire against the left flank of the massive Russian force, with such effect that the latter quickly took cover. The French infantry did not follow them up.

Kiryakov’s four reserve battalions had “dissolved”, as Chodasiewicz puts it, under the skirmisher and artillery fire; the four Tarutino battalions had also suffered heavy losses; the eight battalions of the monster column were certainly not in any shape to renew the attack too soon. The French infantry of d’Aurelle and Canrobert now deployed on the plateau under cover of their artillery, and Bosquet had come close to them; Prince Napoleon’s troops (whose 2nd Zouave regiment had already joined Canrobert) finally began to climb the heights. The superiority had grown out of all proportion; the Russian battalions, concentrated on Telegraph Hill, melted away under the crossfire of the French artillery; finally, the Russian right wing had “entered into a very definite movement of withdrawal”, as Kiryakov himself says. In these circumstances, it retreated, “not pursued by the enemy” (Kiryakov’s manuscript memoir).

In French accounts the general forward rush of the French that followed at this point is crowned by an alleged storming of the telegraph tower in hand-to-hand combat, which gives the fray a neatly melodramatic conclusion. The Russians are unaware of this combat, and Kiryakov flatly denies that it took place. It is indeed likely that the tower was occupied by sharpshooters and had to be taken by storm, and there may also have been some other Russian skirmishers in the vicinity who had to be driven off; but that did not, of course, require the storming, or rather the race, of an entire division, and even the account given in the Atlas historique is grossly exaggerated anyway.

This marked the end of the battle, and Saint-Arnaud declined to pursue when Raglan called on him to do so, on the grounds that

“the troops had left their knapsacks on the other side of the river” (p. 492).

The heroic deeds recounted to us by Saint-Arnaud after the battle, and by Bazancourt later, shrink considerably according to this description. The entire French army, 37,000 strong with the Turks, and with 68 guns, had....

III

The English advanced on the allied left flank. Their first battle-line consisted of the Evans division and Brown’s light division; the second line was made up of the England and Duke of Cambridge divisions. The Cathcart division, from which one battalion had been detached, and the cavalry brigade followed on the left as reserve behind the left wing which was dangling in the air. Each division had 6 battalions in two brigades. The attack front of the English, which linked up with Prince Napoleon’s left wing at the village of Burliuk, was about 3,600 paces long, so that each of the 12 battalions of a line had a front of 300 paces.

After reaching the gentle slope down to the Alma, the columns came under the fire of the Russian batteries positioned opposite, and, in conformity with English custom, the first line deployed at once. However, because the width of the front had been too narrowly reckoned, it came about that the right wing of the light division was overlapped by the left of the Evans division; in this way an entire battalion (7th regiment) was forced out of the line of battle.

The artillery was placed before the front. In the second line, the Cambridge division likewise deployed, and since its battalions (Guards and Highlanders) were stronger, by themselves they formed an almost adequately extended second line; the England division remained out of range of the artillery fire in columns, as did the reserve. The Russians began to fire at about half past one. Until the French attack developed, the English lay flat on the ground to minimise losses from the fire. The skirmishers were engaged in the thickets and vineyards in the valley, pressing the Russians back slowly; as the Russians were withdrawing, they set the village of Burliuk on fire, thereby making the English attack front still narrower.

The English faced all the rest of the Russian army, i.e. 25 1/2 (Anichkov) or 27 battalions (Kinglake), and 64 guns. They attacked with 29 battalions and 60 guns; their battalions were stronger than the Russian ones. The Russians had, in their first line, the Suzdal (extreme right wing) and Kazan (or Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, right centre) regiments, to which the Borodino regiment was added. In the second line was the Vladimir regiment, in the special reserve the Uglich regiment; the Volhynia regiment remained available in the main reserve; each of these regiments had 4 battalions, besides a skirmisher battalion and the marine skirmishers.

Towards three o’clock the French attack had developed to such an extent that the Bosquet and Canrobert columns had come to a halt on the plateau, and Prince Napoleon’s were halted in the valley; the reserves, as we saw, had already been ordered forward. Now Raglan had the English go forward. The first line stood up and moved down into the valley in the line it had formed. The vineyards and thickets soon disrupted the order of the troops, even where they formed into double-file columns in squads, as is prescribed in England for such conditions. Evans’s division sent two battalions and a battery to the right around the burning village, while the rest went to the left of it alongside the Sevastopol road. Here they soon came under the fire at close range of the two Russian batteries protecting the road; the two batteries, although under fire from 18 English guns, brought the English troops to a halt. The Russian infantry opposite them were the 4 Borodino battalions and the 6th skirmisher battalion; we learn nothing of their action.

The light division advanced further to the left. Facing it were the 4 Kazan battalions to the right and left of the 1st battery of the 16th artillery brigade emplaced behind an epaulement; in the second line were the 4 Vladimir battalions, all in column formation, and, according to Kinglake’s data, in columns of two battalions each. The English crossed the river by the numerous fords, as best they could, and found on the south bank a natural ledge fifteen paces wide protected by a steep drop 8 to 10 feet high, under whose cover they could reform. Beyond the drop, the terrain rose gently and was open to the battery some 300 paces away. Here they were bothered by skirmishers only at a few points; their own thinly scattered skirmishers had gone far off to the left and cleared the entire front. But they did not send skirmishers forward themselves nor did they reform; Brown himself abandoned the attempt and ordered the advance, “relying on the courage of the troops” (p. 315). While the brigadier of the left flank kept two battalions in hand to meet any possible flank attacks by the Russian cavalry, the other four, with a battalion of Evans’s division that joined them (95th regiment), advanced on the battery, half in line, half in irregular bunches.

They had hardly climbed the slope, when the two columns of the Kazan regiment marched on them. And here our author begins one of his most glowing dithyrambs on the inimitability of the British troops.

“Here it came to be seen that now, after near forty years of peace, our soldiery were still gifted with the priceless quality which hinders them from feeling the weight of an infantry column in the same way as foreigners ... In their English way, ... they begaij half jesting, half annoyed, shooting easy shots into the big, solid mass of infantry which was solemnly marching against them. The column was not unsteady, but it was perhaps an over-drilled body of men, unskilfully or weakly handled. At all events, their chiefs were unable to make its strength tell against clusters of English lads, who marched on it merrily and vexed it with bullets. Soon the column came to a halt, retreated and lapsed out of sight behind an undulation of the terrain” (P325).

We will not go any further into this bragging and boasting than to point out that these “lads” and “young troops”, as Kinglake likes to call them, and whom we saw often enough (the 33rd regiment, which fought here, only a short time before it left for the Crimea), were at that time at least 27 years old on average, given the 12-year enlistment period in England and the frequent reenlistments for 9 years more, and that since the Crimean War and the East Indian mutiny, where these fine regiments were wiped out, every English officer wishes in vain that he had such old “lads” under his command again. Suffice it to say that this column (the one to the east, on the Russians’ right wing) seems, after a weak attempt at a bayonet attack, to have been forced to give way by the fire even of the irregular line. The other column advanced against the 7th regiment, soon was engaged in immobile musketry combat, and persisted in that for a long time without deploying, naturally suffering enormous losses in the process. The three English battalions in the middle advanced on the battery, whose fire seems to have been slow and did not hold up the attackers. When they were close enough to rush the guns, the battery fired a salvo, limbered up and went off. A 7-pounder howitzer was found in the trench; a 32-pounder with only three horses harnessed to it was stopped by Captain Bell of the 23rd regiment and brought back. The English occupied the outer breastwork of the epaulement and remained assembled to the right and the left. The Vladimir regiment now approached, but, instead of driving into the confused mass with the bayonet, they let themselves get into a firefight again and came to a halt. Under the fire of the English, who were still extended along a much longer front, the dense column would probably have shared the fate of the Kazan regiment—when the signal to retreat was sounded twice in succession among the English and repeated twice all along the line; the troops began the retreat at some points, and then generally, in part calmly but in part in complete disorder. The four battalions engaged here lost 46 officers and 819 men altogether.

The second line (Cambridge) had been slow in coming up and during this entire action had just crossed the river and stayed under the cover of the above-mentioned ledge. Now it went forward for the first time. The centre battalion of the brigade on the right, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, advanced at first, but its left wing was overrun by the fugitives of the light division pressing back, its right wing could not resist the fire of the Vladimir regiment, and this battalion too, left without any timely support, fell back in disorder. It was at about the same time that the French attack had come to a standstill and the column of eight battalions was forming against Canrobert.

This instant, when everything was going badly for the allies, is just the right moment for Mr. Kinglake to treat us to a miracle that can only find a parallel in the 1001 Nights, and lets Lord Raglan appear in hitherto unsuspected glory. We would pass this circumstance by if it had not in point of fact had a certain effect on the course of the battle and if it had not been given a certain significance by the fact that Kinglake is speaking here as an eyewitness, though an extremely inexpert one.

As the English line started moving to cross the river, Raglan rode across the Alma with his staff at the point where the English and French lines met and up a hollow on the far side of the river, without being molested by any more than a couple of sniper shots. He soon found before him a dome-shaped hill, which he ascended and from which he could see the entire length of the Russian formation against the English, and could even detect their reserves. As strange as it may seem that the general of an attacking army should station himself, without any protection, on a hill on the enemy’s flank, the fact is confirmed by many witnesses and cannot be called into doubt. But Kinglake, not content with stationing his hero just in front of or in the extension of the enemy flank, transfers the hill in question behind the enemy front, between the latter and the Russian reserves, and from that point has Lord Raglan paralyse the entire Russian army by his mere appearance. On this point, the text of the book is not a whit more melodramatic than the map, on which a red star representing Lord Raglan, 1,200 paces in front of the English right wing, in the midst of the green Russian columns, which immediately show him respect as “Lord Zeus of the thundercloud”, directs the battle.

This hill, whose exact location we cannot be expected to clarify here, but which is in any case not where Kinglake puts it—this hill did indeed provide a good position for artillery, and Raglan sent for guns at once, as well as for infantry. Somewhat later, two guns came up, at about the same time as the battery was captured by the English. One of these guns is said to have dispersed the Russians’ main reserve (which, according to Kinglake, was only 1,100 paces away!), the other attacked the flank of the battery defending the bridge on the Sevastopol road. After a few shots this battery, which had been under the frontal fire of superior artillery (18 guns) for a long time, limbered up and thus the way was opened up for Evans’s division to cross [the river]. That division slowly pushed back the Russian infantry, which, for the most part, fought in dispersed order here, and, followed by the England division, whose artillery combined with Evans’s, brought its guns into play on the first ridge of hills.

In the meantime, further to the left, the Cambridge division was engaged in the decisive action. Of the three Guards battalions on its right wing, the centre one, the Scots Fusiliers, had advanced too soon and had been thrown back in disorder. Now the Grenadier Guards on the right and the Coldstream Guards on the left went forward in line against the epaulement, which the Vladimir regiment had retaken; between them was the interval of the battalion front that should have been occupied by the Scots Fusiliers but was now only covered more or less by the remnants of that battalion and of the light division, now reassembling to the rear. To the left of the Coldstream, the three Highlands battalions of Colin Campbell, also in line, advanced in perfect order in echelons from the right wing.

Opposite the Grenadier Guards were the two left Kazan battalions, which had already been driven back by the fire of the 7th regiment, and the two left Vladimir battalions, which now advanced towards the gap between the Grenadiers and the Coldstreams. The Grenadiers came to a halt, wheeled the left flank back a little, and stopped the column immediately with their fire. In a short time, of course, the column was so shaken by the fire of the line that even Prince Gorchakov, who commanded the Russian right wing, could no longer get them to attack with the bayonet. A slight change in the front by the English Grenadiers brought the column under the fire of their entire line; the column wavered and fell back, as the English advanced. The two other Vladimir battalions were exchanging fire with the Coldstreams meanwhile, after the Scottish brigade finally drew level with them. The four Suzdal battalions posted on the Russian extreme right wing now came closer to the point of decisive action, the battery breastwork, but during this flanking march suddenly came under the fire of the Scottish lines and fell back without offering any serious resistance.

General Kwizinski, chief of the 16th division, was now in command of the Russian right wing after Prince Gorchakov had withdrawn because of a fall when his horse was shot under him. The English line formation was so new to him that it deprived him of all judgment as to the strength of his enemy. In his memorandum, which Kinglake had, he says himself that he saw the English advance in three overlapping lines (these were evidently the three Scottish echelons) and had to give way before such superior forces after the attacks of the four Vladimir battalions had been repulsed. It is sufficient to say that the four Uglich battalions only advanced as far as was necessary to gather up the fugitives; the artillery and cavalry were not used any further, and the Russians went into retreat unmolested by the English, who wanted to spare their cavalry. The Cambridge division lost some 500 men.

Here then the 6 battalions of the Cambridge division, supported by the remnants of the light division, a total of 11 battalions, were in action at the decisive moment (the two left-wing battalions of the light division did not advance even later) against the twelve Kazan, Vladimir and Suzdal battalions of the Russians; and if we add the 4 Uglich battalions, whose actual participation in the fight is highly problematical, they engaged 16 Russian battalions and routed them completely after a very brief combat.

The author even asserts that the entire action of the infantry in the ranks did not last more than 35 minutes; at any rate, the outcome was completely decided towards four o’clock. How are we to explain these swift successes against at least equal, perhaps stronger masses of infantry in a strong defensive position?

The English were certainly not commanded in the best possible way. Apart from the fact that Evans did not make the slightest attempt to attack the enemy’s left flank but limited himself to a lustreless frontal action, it must be clear to everyone that the Duke of Cambridge did not do what he should have done as commander of the second line. When the first line had stormed the battery breastworks, the second was not there to back it up; it only arrived after the first had been thrown back, and so it had to do the work over again. But as soon as any English leader came up against the enemy and had no definite orders to the contrary, he attacked—if possible, in cooperation with adjacent troops—and that gave each of the two main assaults the decisiveness that assured success.

The Russians, on the other hand, showed great uncertainty in their leadership. It is true that Menshikov was unfortunate enough to be far away from the crucial point during the short period of decision; but neither Gorchakov nor Kwizinski, according to their own accounts, took any steps whatsoever to meet the attack with energy. The first attack was launched by the 4 Kazan battalions against five English [battalions] and failed; the second, again by 4 battalions (Vladimir), likewise failed; we do not hear of any serious attack by the 4 Uglich battalions, and the 4 Suzdal battalions allowed themselves to be surprised by enemy fire during their flanking march. The Volhynia regiment, in the main reserve, does not seem to have been ordered forward at all. The artillery soon fell silent, and the cavalry did nothing at all. Whether it was fear of responsibility, or orders not to risk the army, in any event on the English wing the Russians did not act with the energy and vigour that alone can guarantee victory to the weaker side either.

There certainly was another cause, however, that facilitated the English victory. The Russians fought in deep, thick columns, the English in line. The Russians suffered enormous losses from artillery fire, the English very little up to the grape-shot range. When the masses of infantry came close to one another, only the most vigorous pressing home of a bayonet attack could save the columns from the murderous fire of the lines, but everywhere we see the attack bog down and end as a fire-fight. What then? If one deploys under enemy fire, no one can tell how that will turn out, and if one remains in a column—one rifle firing against four enemy ones—the column is certain to be routed. This was the outcome in every single case on the Alma. More than that. The column, once under fire, could never again be brought to the decisive charge; the firing line could in every case. Both adversaries— Russians and English — were notoriously poor in open-order fighting; accordingly, the battle was decided exclusively by the masses; unless we wish to assume, with Kinglake, that the English are sort of demigods, we shall have to admit that in more or less open terrain the line has significant advantages over the column for both attack and defence.

The entire recent military history of the English....