Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/451

THE MAIN FIGHT. 407 liauiit the old ground where men of the Guards chap had been dying — the Bearskin all at once re- ^^' appeared. It was from the wooded steeps of s^^*'^'- 1 1 -n • 1 1 r Rcappcar- tne hillsides that the spectre uprose. Since anceofsoina . Coldstream the time when last we observed it during men under " Towiisliend the Second Period of the action, the small band wiison. of Coldstream men collected by Townshend Wilson had been toiling in the brushwood below, and watching for some such occasion as the one that now happily offered. Amid a roar of joy and welcome — for the Zouaves and the Guards were close friends — these Coldstream men joined the advance, aligning on the right of the French. Having first fronted round to the east, the two assailing battalions — each gathered in column — moved forward abreast of one another, the Alge- rines on the right, and the Zouaves, with their little adjunct of Guardsmen, on the left. With this fragment of the Guards alongside it, the Zouave battalion marched straight at the Sand- bag Battery, or rather at the body of Eussian troops which stood thronging the gorge of the work with their backs to its parapet. It was scarce to be imagined that Kussian in- Defeat of fantry so unhappily posted would prove able to iiinsk iia'ti make a good stand against the coming assault ; but, having the constitutional bravery of their nation, they were slow to acknowledge the neces- sity of retreat, and stocjd facing the onset so long, that, although at the last they sought to take llight, the Zouave battalion was on them l)efore