116 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP. VI. formation in which the 15,000 infantry under- taking this attack presented their front to the English. Besides the Catherinburg battalions which had strayed from their appointed course, the assailing troops, as we have seen, were those of the Tomsk, the Kolivansk, the Borodino, and the Taroutine regiments ; and since each of these regiments, whilst keeping back two battalions to act in support, pushed forward its two other bat- talions to lead the advance, there was formed from this source a van of eight battalions moving on next after the skirmishers. Every one of these eight battalions was in ' company columns,' * and therefore broken up into four distinct masses, each consisting of a single company, f The three fore- most of those lesser columns marched all in the same alignment, and the fourth one in rear of their centre. So, except on Soimonoff's right (where three of the Catherinburg battalions had thrust themselves on by mistake, and were operat- ing in battalion columns), the forces moving next in the wake of the skirmishers were twenty-four company columns with eight more of them com- ing on in support. But the actual state of the thirty-two sub- divided masses thus thrown forward bore scarce any outward resemblance to that disposition in columns which the theory of the method enjoined. • Not to be confounded with what we call * column of
- companies.'
+ The Russian battalion was divided into only four com- panies.
