II. FIELD OF THI-: ALMA. 3o3 gcou and his attendant whilst left alone with their chap. charge, the best fate they conld hope for was that of being prisoners of war ; bnt unless their idea of the modern ' Cossacks ' was other than that which commonly obtained in the Allied armies, they must have believed themselves to be in more or less danger of barbarous treatment. * The arrangement imposing such a service must have been made in the full assurance that there would be no cruel delay in the arrival of succour fi-om the fleet ; but (from causes to me unknown) it did actually happen that, between the time when the army marched off, and the time when succour came, there was an interval of three days and three nights. f Of the five hundred ghastly and prostrate forms which were left to this one surgeon and his one attendant for their only com- panions, all were so stricken as to be unable to help to lift a body; A'ery many were shattered in limb ; very many, still tortured by strong remains of life, were lying on their faces, with their vitals ploughed open by round-shot; but some were dying more quickly, and others already lay dead, j From time to time during those
- It was observed, I think, in a former volnrne, that the
mndern Cossacks were obedient regiments of regular cavalry, with nothing of the wild, lawless character which belonged to the Cossacks of 1812 ; bit the fact that this change had oc- cTured was not general!}- known in the Allied armies. t From the morning of the 23d to the morning of the 26tl-.. Lushington reached the anchorage late at night on the 25th, and the next morning early went np to the gi'ound where the wounded Eussians were lying. — Lushington to Dundas, 27th September 1851. " + H'id.
