Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/153

BATTLH OF THE ALMA. 127 this one liill-side sixteen unbroken battalions of chap. infantry supported by a powerful artillery as well '. as by the cavalry arm, he nevertheless for the moment hung back, as though minded to acqui- esce in his loss. Our soldiery, on the other hand, were well inclined to rest and make themselves at home ; and General Codrington, alighting from his horse, began to sliow the men how best to estab- lish themselves on the ground they had won by lying down outside the parapet, and resting their rifles upon its top. Thus the assaulting force had carried the great field-work which guarded the key of the enemy's position on the Alma ; and if at this time the supporting Division had been half-way up the hill, or even if it had been beginning to crown the banks of the river on the Eussian side, the toils and perils of the day would perhaps have been over. But our men were only a crowd ; and they, all of them, wise and simple, now began to learn in the great school of action that the most brilliant achievement by a disordered mass of soldiery requires the speedy support of formed troops. Then — and then, as is said, for the first time — the men cast back a look towards the quarter from which they might hope to see supports advancing ; no sun-orts but when they carried their eyes down the slopes up from'tiTe strewn thick with the wounded and the dead, they rivers kiuk. saw that, from the ground where they stood down home to the top of the river's bank, there were no succours cominii.