opposed, as being almost impregnable. Sir G. Brown
declared that in the Peninsular struggle the English
had encountered no such position.

Prince Menschikoff's confident opinion of it is known
from his intercepted despatches, in which he promises
to hold it against 100,000 until the cold weather set in,
when he would assume the offensive and drive us into
the sea.

Prince Menschikoff's carriage and coachman were
taken, and have been sent to Constantinople. In the
carriage were found the full particulars of the English
army, their strength, &c., showing how well the spies
in the English camp must have done their treacherous
work.

A Russian general was captured after the battle under
rather singular circumstances. He had heard the firing,
and, perfectly confident that the action must have
resulted in our repulse, came with a single attendant to
the heights to congratulate, as he believed, Prince
Menschikoff upon his victory. To his intense surprise
he was made prisoner, and brought in by Sergeant
Trotter, of the Coldstream Guards, who was on duty at
one of the outposts.

Another general officer was captured in the redoubt.
He was stretched on the ground beside his fallen horse,
apparently dead. An artilleryman, who had taken a
violent fancy to his coat, was about to divest the
supposed corpse of it, when the body began to move and
nearly frightened the man off. It was soon discovered
that no harm had come to the general, and on his coat
being opened, two stars announced his rank. The
general's object was evidently to lie quietly until night,
and then make off.

The Fourth Division was not engaged; the roar of
cannon was first heard when it was at some twelve miles
distance from the scene of action. Double quick march
was instantly commanded and when at length it became
necessary to take a moment's repose, the sick and
exhausted were ordered to step out of the ranks. Although
the whole division might have been comprised under
the latter category, but one man presented himself, and, a
drop of brandy having refreshed him, he retook his place.

Frightful accounts are given of the spectacle presented
by the field after the battle. A naval medical officer,
writing at sea, on the 25th, says—"For the past two days
I have been literally in a sea of blood, as I have been
employed attending on the wounded Russians on the
battle-field of the Alma. No description I could give
would realise the horrors of war,—the dead, the dying,
horses, guns, carriages, péle-méle, headless trunks,
bodies minus arms or legs, mutilation of every sort and
kind,—my blood almost freezes at the recollection.
Every available hut was improvised into an operating
theatre, and under every disadvantage we performed
the most formidable surgical operations. You may
judge how expeditiously we had to get through things
when I mention that I extracted twenty-three balls
in less than three hours. Dressings were out of the
question. Our surgical bivouacs were readily known by
the number of legs and arms strewn around the scene
of our labours. Indeed, I cannot liken the field of
battle for the two days after the fight to anything
better than an abattoir. My assistant for compressing
arteries was the first passer-by; and when his nerve
failed him I had to wait until some one else came up.
I will not say much for the result of my amputations;
as, directly one was concluded, I laid him on a bed
of hay or straw, and left him to the vis medicatrix
Naturæ. In the redoubts the Russian dead lay literally
heaped on each other. Nearly all the balls I extracted
were Minié ones."

"The attitudes of some of the dead," says another
writer, were awful. "One man might be seen resting
on one knee, with the arms extended in the form
of taking aim, the brow compressed, the lips clinched—
the very expression of firing at an enemy stamped on
the face and fixed there by death: a ball had struck
this man in the neck. Another was lying on his back
with the same expression, and his arms raised in a
similar attitude; the Minié musket, still grasped in his
hands undischarged. Another lay in a perfect arch, his
head resting on one part of the ground and his feet on
the other, but the back raised high above it. Many
men without legs or arms were trying to crawl down to
the water-side. Some of the dead lay with a calm
placid smile on the face, as though they were in some
delicious dream. Of the Russians one thing was
remarkable. The prisoners are generally coarse, sullen,
and unintelligent-looking men; death had ennobled
those who fell, for the expression of their faces was
altogether different. The wounded might have envied
those who seemed to have passed away so peacefully.
The surgeons remarked that their tenacity of life was
very remarkable. Many of them lived with wounds
calculated to destroy two or three ordinary men."

The Russian dead and wounded far outnumbered
ours, but no difference was made between friends and
enemies by those who had the disagreeable duty of
burying the dead and removing the wounded. Men
who went through the Peninsular campaign say that
they never saw more dead in so small a space except on
the night after Talavera. Our men behaved with great
humanity to the Russian wounded, furnishing them
with water from their own canteens. This conduct met
with the basest ingratitude. One man deliberately
fired at and wounded an Artilleryman, who had just
given him some water to quench his burning thirst.
An indignant Guardsman instantly clubbed the scoundrel.
An eyewitness mentions an instance of a Russian
officer who was being assisted from the field, where he
had lain for two days severely wounded, by two
Marines. He solicited some water to drink, and after
he had been lifted down and had drunk enough, as one
of the Marines was in the act of turning round to pick
him up again, the ungrateful villain shot him dead.
His comrade amply resented the cowardly act; for,
seizing a small spar that the cot was strung to, he beat
out the Russian's brains. Several of the wounded
Russians fired at our wounded who were lying disabled
near them. In consequence of acts of this sort, all the
muskets of the prisoners and wounded were broken off
at the stock, and their cartridges taken from them.
The Russians who crowded the field in all the contortions
of the last agony were principally soldiers of the
16th and 32nd Regiments. One officer, says an eye-
witness, lay dead, with a little dog sitting between his
legs, a position from which no persuasion could move
him. He had been mortally wounded, and had given
his gold watch to a soldier who kindly gave him a
draught of water. Another, quite a boy, lay with his
hands clasped in the attitude of prayer. Beyond the
battery was a scene of utter Muscovite rout, very few
English having fallen after its destruction; the
ground was covered with dead, dying, and wounded:
arms and knapsacks lying about in the wildest confusion.
The Russians were buried outside the mounds;
the English and French inside. There was great spoil
on the field—coats, dresses, swords, guns, rifles, &c.,
and in some instances large sums of money.

On the night of the 20th, the troops slept on the
heights, and remained there during the 21st and 22nd,
still engaged in the sad work of burying the dead and
succouring the wounded. On the 23d, the Generals again
put their men in motion; crossed the Katcha, and
encamped for the night on the left bank—on a spot whence
the first view of the defences of Sebastopol was obtained.
In this bivouac it was ascertained that the Russians had
constructed strong works bearing on the mouth of the
Belbek, and sufficiently commanding to forbid any
attempt to land siege guns there. It was therefore
determined by Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud
to cross the Belbek higher up, and by a flank march to
gain Balaklava. On the 24th they set out, the British
leading the way, as the flank brigades now became the
advance. The country, although rugged and wooded, was
covered with pleasant mansions, and with gardens full
of delicious fruits, which the troops plucked as they went
along. Crossing the Belbek by the bridge of Oturkoi,
the armies passed the night on the heights. Next day
the advance was renewed. The route lay through a
wood, so thick and entangled that the infantry were
ordered to march by compass, while the cavalry and
artillery took the only practicable narrow road through
the jungle. Near a place on the road from Sebastopol
to Baktchi-serai, known as Khutor Mekenzia or