86 BA.TTLE OF TllK ALMA. CHAP. Division and by Colouel Dacres with a battery ^" belonging to the 1st Division. By the time that tliG infantry had got down to near the enclosures, eighteen English guns had begun to reply to the fire which the enemy was pouring upon Penne- father's brigade. TheconHict But EvQu.s's taslv was a hard one. Having on in which ,.., . ,, ,, , ■ ^ ^ • lie became his right au impassable conilagration, and being cramped towards his left by our Light Division, he was forced to move along the unsheltered line of the Great Causeway upon a narrow and crowded front, and this under a converging fire of artillery; for with the sixteen guns of the Causeway bat- teries, with the eight other guns planted near, and the heavy guns of position discharging their shot and shell flankwise from the left shoulder of the Great Eedoubt, the enemy swept the main road and the bridge, and searched the fords both above and below it. And whilst the enemy's batteries thus dealt with the more open approaches to the bridge, his infantry defended the ground which could not be searched by round-shot, for, posted in the covert on either side of the Causeway, there were the four Borodino battalions ; * and, besides, the companies of sappers, and of the 6th Eilles, Avere operating in the vineyards below, and at the bridge, whilst, moreover, there was a great portion
- There is some obscurity as to the operations of the Boro-
dino corjis. They were so placed as to become severed from the actual control of their divisional general, and they were covered, it seems, by the conflagration ; but all accounts agi'ce in stat- ing that the Borodino corps was in the Pass, and close to the great road.
