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 

20* 

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