54 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. CHAP, sliarpshooters ; but then, and with a suddenness ^' so strange as to suggest the idea of some pyro- TiicviUase techuic contrivance, the whole village of Bour- M'ton'fireby liouk, exccpt the straggling houses which skirted it towards the east, became wrapped in tall flames.* No man could live in that confla- gration ; and the result was, that in one minute a third of the ground on which the English army had meant to operate was, as it were, blotted out of the field. If this firing of the village took place under the orders of the Paissian commander it was the most sagacious of all the steps he took that day ; for his gravest source of care was the want of troops sufficing for the whole extent of the position at which he grasped, and therefore an operation which took away a large part of the battlefield was of great advantage to him. The effect Our infantry were immediately thrown into mcasme'iLi trouble. The Light Division, as we saw, did the English not take ground enough on the left, and the fir- ing of the village now cut short our front on the right. Sir De Lacy Evans, thus robbed of space, was obliged to keep his second brigade in rear of the first, and even then he continued to overlap the right of the Light Division. The smoke from the burning village was de- pressed and gently turned towards the bridge by
- General de Todleben says that the materials for burning
the village had been previously collected ; and besides the great number of haystacks, and the peculiar nature of the hay, were causes accounting for the extreme swiftness of the confla- gration. The hay of that country is full of stiff prickly stems, which resist compression, and so leave ample room for air.
