Note 274 — Chapter IX · THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN.

According to the theory of Mr. Kinglake (whose excellent work on the Crimean War has been largely drawn upon, in preparing this part of the present volume), the 15,000 men who attacked in the early morning in two columns, one 9000 strong on our left and the other 6000 on our right, were so completely shattered by their first encounter with the detachments of the Second Division, that they all fled away, and not a man of them took any further part in the battle. Also that, of the 20,000 infantry remaining to the Russians, practically only 10,000 were engaged, the reserve of 10,000 being most of it kept back. Thus, while 15,000 were dispersed into space with the utmost ease, in an hour, by very few opponents, almost as if by magic, the 10,000 made so good a resistance that they were with difficulty vanquished, in three hours and a half, by the 4700 Englishmen who were on the scene at this moment, aided by 1600 French, who appeared soon after, and by the Algerines, Zouaves, and other troops of the same nation, 4000 strong, who reached the ground between ten and eleven o’clock. Nor is it alleged that the early attacks of the enemy were delivered by worse troops than those who came into action at 7.30 a.m. This theory was evidently not believed by some who fought at Inkerman, and Colonel Tower is of opinion that when the Guards first entered into the struggle, they met the Tarutin and Borodino regiments; that is, the eight Russian battalions which formed the main portion of the first attack made by the enemy with 6000 men on the Kitspur, and which, by Kinglake’s account, were not only repulsed, but clean driven from the field never to appear there again, by the bold onset of 700 to 800 Englishmen.

The losses during the day of the two Russian columns, that took part in the first attack, before 7.30, amounted to some 5000 men; and this fact seems to show conclusively that the 15,000 men continued the fight, as stated in the text, long after the hour when Mr. Kinglake says they disappeared from the battle-field. The casualties of the 10,000 men under Pavloff, who came into action at 7.30, were somewhat greater, proportionately, than those of the first two columns. The losses of the reserve (10,000 men), which to a great extent was kept back out of the struggle, were proportionately much less. (P. Alabine, Notes of the Expedition in 1853-5 , published in the Russian language, at Viatka, 1861, gives the losses by Russian regiments.)