10 miles, the whole army, English and French. In the \y afternoon'] at half-past three we heard the first shot fired, our cavalry and horse artillery having come across the Russian outposts; a few lives were lost. The next day, the 20th, the whole army continued its road, and at midday we came upon the enemy entrenched in a fearfully strong position on some heights to the south of the river Alma. I cannot describe to you how strong the enemy's position was; it ought to have been impregnable. The Russian generals whom we have taken prisoners say they expected to keep us at bay for three weeks. In three hours the enemy were in full retreat. So confident of victory were thej'' that ladies came to see the fun; a bonnet has been picked up, a feather of which I have kept to adorn your own bonnet. It was a severe action, of which the English had the brunt. Our loss is 96 officers killed and wounded, and 2000 rank and file ditto. Our own battalion had
11 officers, 11 sergeants, and 168 privates killed and wounded; our Colour-staff was smashed, the silk had 26 shot through it. Thank God I am not hit. We are within 15 miles of Sebastopol, where we expect to arrive to-morrow. — Your affectionate son,
Fredk. Stephenson.
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
To his Brother
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
My dear William, — I hope my mother received my letter dated 21st September, and that you received mine dated 22nd. I had no time to give you more than a description of the battlefield and the glorious result of the action of the 20th, but I can now give you a short account of the affair as far as we were concerned. At half-past one the enemy fired his first gun, when our Division, being in support of the Light Division, deployed into line on the plain to the north of the Alma, and advanced till we got well under fire of the heavy guns of the enemy, when we were ordered to lie down. The fire now began to be pretty heavy, for they had some 40-pounders in position. Our artillery now came into action, but could do little or nothing against the overpowering weight of metal of the enemy, and after a time were forced to retire out of action altogether, so that on our side the day was evidently to be fought by the infantry alone. Our Division now continued advancing for short distances and then lying down, all this under a very heavy fire of shot and shells, the men as cool and steady as anything you can conceive, as if they had been under fire all their lives. At length we reached a low wall parallel with the valley, about 700 or 800 yards from the enemy's position; we scrambled over this and entered some vineyards where the enemy had cut down all the trees to prevent them giving us cover, and also to break the steadiness of our advance from their forming a kind of abattis. The enemy had been previously driven out of this ground by our riflemen. The fire was now most severe, for the enemy now fired grape at us (very appropriate in a vineyard), which, with shot and shell, whistled about us and ploughed up the ground in all directions. How any of us escaped is a miracle; our line was, of course, completely broken, owing to the nature of the ground. We shortly reached the river and forded it; on the other side was a narrow
1 854] BATTLE OF THE ALMA 103