Frederick Engels
KINGLAKE ON THE BATTLE OF THE ALMA”

Kinglake’s book on the Crimean War has caused a great stir in
England and outside, and deservedly. It contains a great deal of
valuable, new material, and it could hardly be otherwise, since the
author was able to use the papers of the English headquarters,
many notes by senior English officers, and not a few memoirs
prepared especially for him by Russian generals.*”? Nonetheless, so
far as the military presentation is concerned, this is not a history
but a novel; its hero is Lord Raglan, the English commander-in-
chief, its ultimate aim is glorification, carried to absurdity, of the
English army.

Kinglake’s account is likely to produce a great effect in
Germany; while it reduces the share of the French in the victory
on the Alma to a minimum, it treats the Russians with ostensible
_ respectful impartiality, refers to the already known sources of all
three nations involved, and steers clear of the specifically French ©
variety of bragging that we find as offensive in Thiers and his
consorts as it is laughable. At the same time, our friends the
English can brag, too, and, although they are slightly more
accomplished in praising themselves than the French are, the
colours are laid on at least as thick. If for no other reason, this
makes it worthwhile to strip off the fictional cover from the
description of the only military event in the two volumes which
have appeared up to now, the battle of the Alma, and to separate
the real new historical material from the embellishments,
rodomontades and conjectures with which Mr. Kinglake fills out
his picture.

An additional factor is that the battle of the Alma is of very
special tactical interest, an aspect that has been inadequately
appreciated thus far. In this battle, for the first time since
Waterloo,” two different tactical formations clashed, one of them

Kinglake on the Battle of the Alma 275

practised by preference by all the armies of Europe, the other
rejected by all but one—the English. On the Alma, the English
line advanced against the Russian columns and routed them
without any particular difficulty. This is at least an indication that
the old line is not yet as obsolete as the continental textbooks on
tactics assert, and it is at least worth the trouble of looking a little
more closely into the matter.

I

Kinglake lists the forces engaged on the two sides very
carelessly. For the English he had the official data at his disposal
and from them establishes the number of combatants as 25,404
infantrymen and artillerymen, something more than 1,000 cavalry-
men and 60 guns. This may be regarded as authentic. He gives a
round number for the French, 30,000 men and 68 cannons; there
were also 7,000 Turks. In round numbers, this makes 63,500 allies
with 128 guns, which may be fairly correct by and large. But Mr.
Kinglake begins to have difficulties with the Russians. Now, we
have in Anichkov’s Feldzug in der Krim (German translation,
Berlin, Mittler, 1857, first part) an account that is obviously based
on official sources and that has never been contested until now in
any essential point, with the names and numbers of the regiments,
battalions, squadrons, and batteries. According to this account, the
Russians had 42 battalions, 16 squadrons, 11 Cossack squadrons,*
and 96 guns in ten and a half batteries on the Alma, 35,000 men
in all. But this does not satisfy Mr. Kinglake at all. He puts
together a special reckoning, constantly referring to Anichkov as
his authority, but arriving at quite different conclusions, without
however thinking it worth the trouble to cite evidence in favour of
his divergent data. In general, it is characteristic of the entire book
that it constantly cites authorities when reporting notorious facts
but carefully avoids doing so when making new and risky
assertions.

The two accounts differ little with respect to the infantry.
Anichkov gives 40 battalions of the line, 1 battalion of skirmishers
and '/, battalion of marine sharpshooters; Kinglake transforms this
last half-battalion into two battalions and, to support this, refers to
Chodasiewicz (major in the Tarutino infantry regiment), who is
said to have seen them.” The point is unimportant, since Kinglake

a Engels uses the Russian word “Sotnien” (hundreds).— Ed.
> R. Hodasevich, A Voice from within the Walls of Sebastopol, London, 1856,
pp. 59-60.— Ed.

himself concedes that the Russians themselves think very little of
these troops. He also transforms the 2 companies of engineers that
appear in Anichkov into an entire battalion and always counts
them as infantry.

In the case of the cavalry, however, Kinglake’s exaggeration 1s
more marked. Throughout the account of the battle it is
emphasised on every occasion that the Russians had “3,400
lances” in the field, and on every map there appears an enormous
column behind the Russian right wing with a note that the Russian
cavalry, 3,000 strong, was held in this region. We are reminded
continually of the remarkable inactivity of these 3,000 men and
the danger their proximity constituted for the English, who had
only just over 1,000 horsemen. Kinglake is very careful not to call
our attention to the fact that over a third of this cavalry consisted
of Cossacks, of whom everyone knows that they are incapable of
fighting in close order against regular cavalry. Given the great
ignorance of all military matters that pervades the entire book, this
gross blunder should be attributed to a lack of knowledge rather
than to malice.

Kinglake’s critical judgement fails him completely, when he comes
to the artillery. Anichkov, as has been said, gives 96 guns in all, in 10
specified light and heavy field batteries, supplemented by 4
horse-drawn naval guns. He knows exactly where each of these
batteries was located during the battle. All these batteries appear in
Kinglake (with a few minor discrepancies in the numbers), but three
additional ones are given. The 5th battery of the 17th brigade, which
Anichkov also lists, figures twice in Kinglake in the original position,
once on the left wing (p. 231%) and immediately thereafter again in
the main reserve (p. 235)! Similarly, the 3rd battery of the same 17th
brigade, which, according to Anichkov, was not there at all, appears
twice in Kinglake, once on the left wing (p. 231) and again—but asa
“fixed battery”—in the centre! The fact that, in accordance with the
well-known organisation of the Russian artillery at the time of the
Crimean War (cf. Haxthausen, Studien tiber Russland’) there was
only one heavy battery of 12 guns in every artillery brigade, and that
later, when the batteries were set up with 8 guns each, there could
therefore be a Ist and a 2nd heavy battery in a brigade but never a 3rd

4 Here and below the references are to pages in the second volume of
Kinglake’s book,— Ed.

b A. F. Haxthausen, Studien itiber die innern Zustinde, das Volksleben und

insbesondere die landlichen Einrichtungen Russlands, Dritter Theil, Berlin, 1852,
S. 255-92.— Ed.

Kinglake on the Battle of the Alma 277

heavy battery—all this does not disturb our historian. What he is
concerned with is presenting the heroic deeds of the English on the
Alma as prodigiously as possible; and for that he required as many
Russian cannons as possible. Hence, wherever he finds a battery
listed in Russian reports (all of which, with the exception of
Anichkov’s, are more or less useless in terms of such details) that
Anichkov does not mention, he assumes Anichkov forgot it and
calmly adds it to the batteries listed by Anichkov. If he finds the same
battery listed in different sources at two different points on the
battlefield, he calmly counts it twice and at best assumes that a light
battery is meant in one case and a heavy battery in the other.

All this sleight of hand notwithstanding, Kinglake can only
scrape up 13'/s batteries with 8 guns each, a total of 108 guns,
and since he fails to see that, according to Anichkov, the three
batteries of the 16th brigade were still organised on the old basis
of 12 guns (we see how superficially the man works), that still
gives, as against Anichkov, only an addition of 12 guns. Hence,
Kinglake must make an extraordinary effort in order to stud the
heights of the Alma with Russian cannons. He is helped in this
task by the fieldworks which the English bombastically call “the
great redoubt”. Of this Anichkov says simply:

“To the right of the road, Battery No. 1 of the same (16th) brigade was drawn
up in an advantageous position and protected by an epaulement.”

Kinglake describes this insignificant work quite correctly, but
cannot imagine that simple twelve-pounders would be stationed
behind it; he asserts they were heavy guns from Sevastopol.
Chodasiewicz states, to be sure, that the guns of the 2nd battery
of the 16th brigade were emplaced there (he confuses the Ist and
2nd battery), but the calibre of the cannon and howitzer, which, he
said, are still in Woolwich, proved that these guns were not part of
the regular field artillery (p. 233). Kinglake is even better informed.
He says very definitely (p. 229):

“They were 32-pounders and 24-pound howitzers.”

In 1849, during the uprising in the Palatinate,’ some officers

of the volunteers always justified the continual backwards move-
ments of their units by claiming that they had been under fire
from “red-hot 24-pound bombshot”. This writer certainly never
expected that the howitzer from which these terrible balls were shot
would be captured by Mr. Kinglake on the Alma. As for these 24-lb.
balls....*

a The next two pages of the manuscript are missing.— Ed.

..guns separated by a distance of 1,500 paces from Canrobert,
whose division was neutralised by the Russian cannons while his
own artillery tried to reach him by a circuitous route of at least
half a German mile*; finally, Prince Napoleon was held down in
the valley, 1,200 paces away from Canrobert and hesitating to
cross the river. This scattering of his troops on a front of 6,000
paces and especially Bosquet’s exposed position finally caused
Marshal Saint-Arnaud such anxiety that he resorted to the
desperate measure of sending his entire reserve forward. Lour-
mel’s brigade was sent to Bouat, while d’Aurelle’s brigade
reinforced Prince Napoleon. By sending both of his reserves
precisely into the two defiles that were already choked with troops,
Saint-Arnaud completed the scattering of his forces. If this were
not all stated in the official French report (the Atlas historique de la
guerre d’Orient), it would be hard to believe.

What was it like on the Russian side, and what saved the French
from this perilous situation?

The Russian left wing was commanded by Kiryakov. Over
against Canrobert and Prince Napoleon he had in the first line 4
reserve battalions (Brest and Bialystok regiments), indifferent
troops; in the second line the 4 battalions of the Tarutino
regiment, in reserve the 4 Moscow battalions and the 2nd battalion
of the Minsk regiment, which with 4 guns (4th battery of 17th art.
brigade) was detached to the left to observe the seacoast. The 4
Borodino battalions, which were also under his command, were
placed further east, right by the Sevastopol road, and when they

a The German mile is 7.420 km.— Ed.

Kinglake on the Battle of the Alma 279

were not engaged as skirmishers, they fought almost exclusively
against the English. All in all, the French were therefore opposed
by 13 battalions with 8 guns.

When Bosquet’s flanking column appeared on the plateau south
of the Alma, Prince Menshikov himself came to the left wing,
bringing with him from the main reserve the remaining 3
battalions of the Minsk regiment, one foot- and two _ horse-
batteries, and 6 squadrons of hussars. Up to that point the
fighting had been limited to skirmishing and cannonade; the main
bodies of Russians had pulled back somewhat, for the most part,
and the French—Napoleon and Canrobert—had not yet ap-
peared on the plateau at all or were so far off (Bosquet, Bouat,
Lourmel) that they could not for the moment enter into combat.
Now since the troops of Prince Napoleon had got stuck in the
defile so thoroughly that they had not yet debouched, the Russians
had no other point to attack than the Canrobert division covered
beyond the edge of the plateau. Against him, Menshikov now
formed a monster column of the 8 Minsk and Moscow battal-
ions—two battalions in the front and four battalions deep, all in
attack columns against the middle. Called away to his centre, he
turned this unwieldy mass over to Kiryakov with the order to
attack at once. When the column came to within gunshot range of
the French, the latter

“no longer bore up under the weight that is laid upon the heart of a
Continental soldier by the approach of a great column of infantry” (p. 400). »

They withdrew a little further down the slope. At this moment,
however, Canrobert’s two batteries, along with those of Bosquet,
came up rapidly a little further to the right through a depression
in the terrain; they positioned their cannons quickly and opened
fire against the left flank of the massive Russian force, with such
effect that the latter quickly took cover. The French infantry did
not follow them up.

Kiryakov’s four reserve battalions had “dissolved”, as
Chodasiewicz puts it, under the skirmisher and artillery fire; the
four Tarutino battalions had also suffered heavy losses; the eight
battalions of the monster column were certainly not in any shape
to renew the attack too soon. The French infantry of d’Aurelle
and Canrobert now deployed on the plateau under cover of their
artillery, and Bosquet had come close to them; Prince Napoleon’s
troops (whose 2nd Zouave regiment” had already joined
Canrobert) finally began to climb the heights. The superiority had
grown out of all proportion; the Russian battalions, concentrated

on Telegraph Hill, melted away under the crossfire of the French
artillery; finally, the Russian right wing had “entered into a very
definite movement of withdrawal’, as Kiryakov himself says. In
these circumstances, it retreated, “not pursued by the enemy”
(Kiryakov’s manuscript memoir). .

In French accounts the general forward rush of the French that
followed at this point is crowned by an alleged storming of the
telegraph tower in hand-to-hand combat, which gives the fray a
neatly melodramatic conclusion. The Russians are unaware of this
combat, and Kiryakov flatly denies that it took place. It is indeed
likely that the tower was occupied by sharpshooters and had to be
taken by storm, and there may also have been some other Russian
skirmishers in the vicinity who had to be driven off; but that did
not, of course, require the storming, or rather the race, of an
entire division, and even the account given in the Atlas historique is
grossly exaggerated anyway.

This marked the end of the battle, and Saint-Arnaud declined
to pursue when Raglan called on him to do so, on the grounds
that

“the troops had left their knapsacks on the other side of the river” (p. 492).

The heroic deeds recounted to us by Saint-Arnaud after the
battle, and by Bazancourt later,* shrink considerably according to
this description. The entire F rench army, 37,000 strong with the
Turks, and with 68 guns, had...

a The reference is to Saint-Arnaud’s reports of September 21 and 22, 1854,
published in the Moniteur.universel, Nos. 280 and 281, October 7 and 8, 1854, and
to C. L. Bazancourt’s L’expédition de Crimée jusqu’a la prise de Sébastopol.— Ed.

b The next page of the manuscript is missing.— Ed.

Ill

The English advanced on the allied left flank. Their first
battle-line consisted of the Evans division and Brown’s light
division; the second line was made up of the England and Duke of
Cambridge divisions. The Cathcart division, from which one
battalion had been detached, and the cavalry brigade followed on
the left as reserve behind the left wing which was dangling in the
air. Each division had 6 battalions in two brigades. The attack
front of the English, which linked up with Prince Napoleon’s left
wing at the village of Burliuk, was about 3,600 paces long, so that
each of the 12 battalions of a line had a front of 300 paces.

After reaching the gentle slope down to the Alma, the columns
came under the fire of the Russian batteries positioned opposite,
and, in conformity with English custom, the first line deployed at
once. However, because the width of the front had been too
narrowly reckoned, it came about that the right wing of the light
division was overlapped by the left of the Evans division; in this
way an entire battalion (7th regiment) was forced out of the line of
battle. The artillery was placed before the front. In the second
line, the Cambridge division likewise deployed, and _ since its
battalions (Guards and Highlanders) were stronger, by themselves
they formed an almost adequately extended second line; the
England division remained out of range of the artillery fire in
columns, as did the reserve. The Russians began to fire at about
half past one. Until the French attack developed, the English lay
flat on the ground to minimise losses from the fire. The
skirmishers were engaged in the thickets and vineyards in the
valley, pressing the Russians back slowly; as the Russians were

withdrawing, they set the village of Burliuk on fire, thereby
making the English attack front still narrower.

The English faced all the rest of the Russian army, i.e. 25 Ms
(Anichkov) or 27 battalions (Kinglake), and 64 guns. They
attacked with 29 battalions and 60 guns; their battalions were
stronger than the Russian ones. The Russians had, in their first
line, the Suzdal (extreme right wing) and Kazan (or Grand Duke
Mikhail Nikolayevich, right centre) regiments, to which the
Borodino regiment was added. In the second line was the
Vladimir regiment, in the special reserve the Uglich regiment; the
Volhynia regiment remained available in the main reserve; each
of these regiments had 4 battalions, besides a skirmisher battalion
and the marine skirmishers.

Towards three o’clock the French attack had developed to such
an extent that the Bosquet and Canrobert columns had come to a
halt on the plateau, and Prince Napoleon’s were halted in the
valley; the reserves, as we saw, had already been ordered forward.
Now Raglan had the English go forward. The first line stood up
and moved down into the valley in the line it had formed. The
vineyards and thickets soon disrupted the order of the troops,
even where they formed into double-file columns in squads, as is
prescribed in England for such conditions. Evans’s division sent
two battalions and a battery to the right around the burning
village, while the rest went to the left of it alongside the Sevastopol
road. Here they soon came under the fire at close range of the
two Russian batteries protecting the road; the two batteries,
although under fire from 18 English guns, brought the English
troops to a halt. The Russian infantry opposite them were the 4
Borodino battalions and the 6th skirmisher battalion; we learn
nothing of their action.

The light division advanced further to the left. Facing it were
the 4 Kazan battalions to the right and left of the Ist battery of
the 16th artillery brigade emplaced behind an epaulement; in the
second line were the 4 Vladimir -battalions, all in column
formation, and, according to Kinglake’s data, in columns of two
battalions each. The English crossed the river by the numerous
fords, as best they could, and found on the south bank a natural
ledge fifteen paces wide protected by a steep drop 8 to 10 feet
high, under whose cover they could reform. Beyond the drop, the
terrain rose gently and was open to the battery some 300 paces
away. Here they were bothered by skirmishers only at a few
points; their own thinly scattered skirmishers had gone far off to
the left and cleared the entire front. But they did not send

Kinglake on the Battle of the Alma 2983

skirmishers forward themselves nor did they reform; Brown
himself abandoned the attempt and ordered the advance, “relying
on the courage of the troops” (p. 315). While the brigadier of the
left flank kept two battalions in hand to meet any possible flank
attacks by the Russian cavalry, the other four, with a battalion of
Evans’s division that joined them (95th regiment), advanced on the
battery, half in line, half in irregular bunches.

They had hardly climbed the slope, when the two columns of
the Kazan regiment marched on them. And here our author
begins one of his most glowing dithyrambs on the inimitability of
the British troops.

‘Here it came to be seen that now, after near forty years of peace, our soldiery

were still gifted with the priceless quality which hinders them from feeling the weight
of an infantry column in the same way as foreigners ... In their English way, ... they
began half jesting, half annoyed, shooting easy shots into the big, solid mass of
infantry which was solemnly marching against them. The column was not unsteady,
but it was perhaps an over-drilled body of men, unskilfully or weakly handled. At all
events, their chiefs were unable to make its strength tell against clusters of English
lads,2 who marched on it merrily and vexed it with bullets. Soon the column came
to a halt, retreated and lapsed out of sight behind an undulation of the terrain”
(p. 325).
: We will not go any further into this bragging and boasting than
to point out that these “lads” and “young troops”, as Kinglake
likes to call them, and whom we saw often enough (the 33rd
regiment, which fought here, only a short time before it left for
the Crimea), were at that time at least 27 years old on average,
given the 12-year enlistment period in England and the frequent
reenlistments for 9 years more, and that since the Crimean War
and the East Indian mutiny,”°’ where these fine regiments were
wiped out, every English officer wishes in vain that he had such
old “lads” under his command again. Suffice it to say that this
column (the one to the east, on the Russians’ right wing) seems,
after a weak attempt at a bayonet attack, to have been forced to
give way by the fire even of the irregular line. The other column
advanced against the 7th regiment, soon was engaged in immobile
musketry combat, and persisted in that for a long time without
deploying, naturally suffering enormous losses in the process.

The three English battalions in the middle advanced on the
battery, whose fire seems to have been slow and did not hold up
the attackers. When they were close enough to rush the guns, the
battery fired a salvo, limbered up and went off. A 7-pounder
howitzer was found in the trench; a 32-pounder with only three

a4 Engels gives the English word “lads” in brackets after the corresponding
German word.— Ed.

horses harnessed to it was stopped by Captain Bell of the 23rd
regiment and brought back. The English occupied the outer breast-
work of the epaulement and remained assembled to the right and
the left. The Vladimir regiment now approached, but, instead of
driving into the confused mass with the bayonet, they let
themselves get into a firefight again and came to a halt. Under the
fire of the English, who were still extended along a much longer
front, the dense column would probably have shared the fate of
the Kazan regiment—when the signal to retreat was sounded
twice in succession among the English and repeated twice all along
the line; the troops began the retreat at some points, and then
generally, in part calmly but in part in complete disorder. The
four battalions engaged here lost 46 officers and 819 men
altogether.

The second line (Cambridge) had been slow in coming up and
during this entire action had just crossed the river and stayed
under the cover of the above-mentioned ledge. Now it went
forward for the first time. The centre battalion of the brigade on
the right, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, advanced at first, but its left
wing was overrun by the fugitives of the light division pressing
back, its right wing could not resist the fire of the Vladimir
regiment, and this battalion too, left without any timely support,
fell back in disorder. It was at about the same time that the French
attack had come to a standstill and the column of eight battalions
was forming against Canrobert.

This instant, when everything was going badly for the allies, is
just the right moment for Mr. Kinglake to treat us to a miracle
that can only find a parallel in the 1001 Nights, and lets Lord
Raglan appear in hitherto unsuspected glory. We would pass this
circumstance by if it had not in point of fact had a certain effect
on the course of the battle and if it had not been given a certain
significance by the fact that Kinglake is speaking here as an
eyewitness, though an extremely inexpert one.

As the English line started moving to cross the river, Raglan
rode across the Alma with his staff at the point where the English
and French lines met and up a hollow on the far side of the river,
without being molested by any more than a couple of sniper shots.
He soon found before him a dome-shaped hill, which he ascended
and from which he could see the entire length of the Russian
formation against the English, and could even detect their
reserves. As strange as it may seem that the general of an
attacking army should station himself, without any protection, on a
hill on the enemy’s flank, the fact is confirmed by many witnesses

Kinglake on the Battle of the Alma 985

and cannot be called into doubt. But Kinglake, not content with
stationing his hero just in front of or in the extension of the
enemy flank, transfers the hill in question behind the enemy front,
between the latter and the Russian reserves, and from that point
has Lord Raglan paralyse the entire Russian army by his mere
appearance. On this point, the text of the book is not a whit more
melodramatic than the map, on which a red star representing
Lord Raglan, 1,200 paces in front of the English right wing, in the
midst of the green Russian columns, which immediately show him
respect as “Lord Zeus of the thundercloud”, directs the battle.

This hill, whose exact location we cannot be expected to clarify
here, but which is in any case not where Kinglake puts it—this hill
did indeed provide a good position for artillery, and Raglan sent
for guns at once, as well as for infantry. Somewhat later, two guns
came up, at about the same time as the battery was captured by
the English. One of these guns is said to have dispersed the
Russians’ main reserve (which, according to Kinglake, was only
1,100 paces away!), the other attacked the flank of the battery
defending the bridge on the Sevastopol road. After a few shots
this battery, which had been under the frontal fire of superior
artillery (18 guns) for a long time, limbered up and thus the way
was opened up for Evans’s division to cross [the river]. That
division slowly pushed back the Russian infantry, which, for the
most part, fought in dispersed order here, and, followed by the
England division, whose artillery combined with Evans’s, brought
its guns into play on the first ridge of hills.

In the meantime, further to the left, the Cambridge division was
engaged in the decisive action. Of the three Guards battalions on its
right wing, the centre one, the Scots Fusiliers, had advanced too
soon and had been thrown back in disorder. Now the Grenadier
Guards on the right and the Coldstream Guards on the left went
forward in line against the epaulement, which the Vladimir
regiment had retaken; between them was the interval of the
battalion front that should have been occupied by the Scots
Fusiliers but was now only covered more or less by the remnants
of that battalion and of the light division, now reassembling to the
rear. To the left of the Coldstream, the three Highlands battalions
of Colin Campbell, also in line, advanced in perfect order in
echelons from the right wing.

Opposite the Grenadier Guards were the two left Kazan
battalions, which had already been driven back by the fire of the
7th regiment, and the two left Vladimir battalions, which now
advanced towards the gap between the Grenadiers and the

Coldstreams. The Grenadiers came to a halt, wheeled the left
flank back a little, and stopped the column immediately with their
fire. In a short time, of course, the column was so shaken by the
fire of the line that even Prince Gorchakov, who commanded the
Russian right wing, could no longer get them to attack with the
bayonet. A slight change in the front by the English Grenadiers
brought the column under the fire of their entire line; the column
wavered and fell back, as the English advanced. The two other
Vladimir battalions were exchanging fire with the Coldstreams
meanwhile, after the Scottish brigade finally drew level with them.
The four Suzdal battalions posted on the Russian extreme right
wing now came closer to the point of decisive action, the battery
breastwork, but during this flanking march suddenly came under
the fire of the Scottish lines and fell back without offering any
serious resistance. .

General Kwizinski, chief of the 16th division, was now in
command of the Russian right wing after Prince Gorchakov had
withdrawn because of a fall when his horse was shot under him.
The English line formation was so new to him that it deprived him
of all judgment as to the strength of his enemy. In his
memorandum, which Kinglake had, he says himself that he saw
the English advance in three overlapping lines (these were
evidently the three Scottish echelons) and had to give way before
such superior forces after the attacks of the four Vladimir
battalions had been repulsed. It is sufficient to say that the four
Uglich battalions only advanced as far as was necessary to gather
up the fugitives; the artillery and cavalry were not used any
further, and the Russians went into retreat unmolested by the
English, who wanted to spare their cavalry. The Cambridge
division lost some 500 men.

Here then the 6 battalions of the Cambridge division, supported
by the remnants of the light division, a total of 11 battalions, were
in action at the decisive moment (the two left-wing battalions of
the light division did not advance even later) against the twelve
Kazan, Vladimir and Suzdal battalions of the Russians; and if we
add the 4 Uglich battalions, whose actual participation in the fight
is highly problematical, they engaged 16 Russian battalions and
routed them completely after a very brief combat.

The author even asserts that the entire action of the infantry in
the ranks did not last more than 35 minutes; at any rate, the
outcome was completely decided towards four o’clock. How are we
to explain these swift successes against at least equal, perhaps
stronger masses of infantry in a strong defensive position?

Kinglake on the Battle of the Alma 287

The English were certainly not commanded in the best possible
way. Apart from the fact that Evans did not make the slightest
attempt to attack the enemy’s left flank but limited himself to a
lustreless frontal action, it must be clear to everyone that the Duke
of Cambridge did not do what he should have done as commander
of the second line. When the first line had stormed the battery
breastworks, the second was not there to back it up; it only arrived
after the first had been thrown back, and so it had to do the work
over again. But as soon as any English leader came up against the
enemy and had no definite orders to the contrary, he attacked —if
possible, in cooperation with adjacent troops—and that gave each
of the two main assaults the decisiveness that assured success.

The Russians, on the other hand, showed great uncertainty in
their leadership. It is true that Menshikov was unfortunate enough
to be far away from the crucial point during the short period of
decision; but neither Gorchakov nor Kwizinski, according to their
own accounts, took any steps whatsoever to meet the attack with
energy. The first attack was launched by the 4 Kazan battalions
against five English [battalions] and failed; the second, again by 4
battalions (Vladimir), likewise failed; we do not hear of any serious
attack by the 4 Uglich battalions, and the 4 Suzdal battalions
allowed themselves to be surprised by enemy fire during their
flanking march. The Volhynia regiment, in the main reserve, does
not seem to have been ordered forward at all. The artillery soon
fell silent, and the cavalry did nothing at all. Whether it was fear
of responsibility, or orders not to risk the army, in any event on
the English wing the Russians did not act with the energy and
vigour that alone can guarantee victory to the weaker side either.

There certainly was another cause, however, that facilitated the
English victory. The Russians fought in deep, thick columns, the
English in line. The Russians suffered enormous losses from
artillery fire, the English very little up to the grape-shot range.
When the masses of infantry came close to one another, only the
most vigorous pressing home of a bayonet attack could save the
columns from the murderous fire of the lines, but everywhere we
see the attack bog down and end as a fire-fight. What then? If one
deploys under enemy fire, no one can tell how that will turn out,
and if one remains in a column—one rifle firing against four
enemy ones—the column is certain to be routed. This was the
outcome in every single case on the Alma. More than that. The
column, once under fire, could never again be brought to the
decisive charge; the firing line could in every case. Both adver-
saries— Russians and English—were notoriously poor in open-

order fighting; accordingly, the battle was decided exclusively by
the masses; unless we wish to assume, with Kinglake, that the
English are sort of demigods, we shall have to admit that in more
or less open terrain the line has significant advantages over the
column for both attack and defence.

The entire recent military history of the English....*

Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XII, time

Part II, Moscow, 1935

a The manuscript breaks off here.— Ed.

Frederick Engels