154 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. ciiAi'. now seen to be marching upon the left flank of _*_; the English soldiery who lay clustered along the parapet of the redoubt ; * and it seems there are grounds for believing that the left of our line was the spot where a conviction of the necessity of retiring was first acted upon. According to testi- mony which seems to be trustworthy, a mounted officer f rode up to a bugler of the 19th Regiment, A imgier aud Ordered him to sound the ' retire.' The man
- raire.' '^ obeyed ; and buglers along the whole line, from
left to right, took up and repeated the signal, noui.ie But the instinct of self-preservation, no less than r"m;iinin1[ tlic natural courage and tenacity of the suldier, we're. "^ uiadc almost every man of the force very unwill- ing to abandon the ground ; for it happened that at this time a brisk sliower of missiles was passing over the heads of our men without doing them harm ; and hearing how thickly the balls were raining into the ground behind them, they knew tliat a retreat would not only be an abandonment of ground dearly won, but also would bring them at once under a heavy fire. So strong M'as their conviction of the expediency of iiolding fast to the
- The Russian accounts do not confirm this belief.
t Afterwards the bugler described the officer in a way which might have enabled a court of inquiry to identify him. I may say that he was not an officer of the regiment to which the bugler belonged, that he was not a general officer, and that he did not deliver the ordjr as coming from any one other than himself. The incident goes far to justify the opinion of officers who think that (unless it is strictly confined to the business of guiding skirmishers) the use of a bugle during an action is dangerous. See in the Appendix a Note respecting the often- repeated 'apparition of the unknown mounted officer.'
