Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/82

60 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, columns of attack, moved rapidly forward. En- ' countering no fire of cannon to check them, the foremost of these troops converged from their extended front upon the small object of their attack, swarmed in across the ditch, swarmed over the feeble parapet, and, standing at length within the fort, closed at once with the remnant of the single battalion there bravely awaiting the overwhelm- onslaught. The force which thus stormed the of the Rus- work, and which threw itself upon the remnant sians m point of of the one Turkish battalion, consisted, as we see, numbers. of five battalions; but on the side of Kamara, the three other Dnieper battalions were so operating that Sir Colin Campbell regarded them as actual partakers in the attack; and, moreover, Levout- sky's three Ukraine battalions, though not en- gaged in the storming, were still so placed at the time as to be aiding the assault by their presence. Upon the whole, therefore, it may be said that, after having undergone an overwhelming cross- fire from the thirty pieces of artillery, which hurled destruction upon them at close range from commanding heights, the one battalion of Turks which defended this feeble breastwork, was now pressed by a number of battalions amounting to no less than eleven, and engaged in close conflict with five, close tight- It commonly happens in modern warfare that the Turks the dominion of one body of infantry over another and the , . ■. Russians, is not found to depend, at the last, upon the physical strength of man, or the quality of his weapons, but rather upon faith, or, in other words