Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/173

THE BATTLP] OF BALACLAVA. 151 forward. It Lad to pass over ground much ob- chap. structed by remnants of the Light Brigade camp ; ' Captain Campbell's charger, for instance, was overthrown by a picket-rope which crossed his line of advance ; and I believe that, though Neville owed his mortal wound to the lance of a Cossack, he had first been brought to the ground by one of these camp obstructions. At this time, the inner, and still unbroken part of the enemy's right wing had already wheeled in over an arc represented by an angle of nearly sixty degrees ; and, strange as the statement may seem, there still is sound proof of the fact that the obedient Muscovite troopers continued thus to wheel inwards till they had come to be obliquely in front of the column, and with their backs to- wards our 5th Dragoon Guards. It is true that amongst these wondrously submissive horsemen there were some who so far fronted as to find means of hastily using their carbines against our people ; but it seems to be established that a portion, at least, of the in-wheeling line did really suffer itself to be charged in rear by the 5th Dragoon Guards. It could not but be that many of the Eussians would be cut down or unhorsed when the English regiment charged in, as it did, amongst troopers thus rendered defenceless by the nature of their own manoeuvre ; but, on the other hand, very many were protected from the edge of the sword — nay even, indeed, from its point — by the thickness of their long, ample coats ; and, upon the whole, there were numbers of horsemen.