Presently, on an eminence across a wide plain, masses of the enemy’s cavalry were visible.  Five hundred of the Light Cavalry pushed on in front, and an equal number of Cossacks advanced to meet them.  Lord Cardigan was about to give the order to charge when masses of heavy cavalry made their appearance.  Suddenly one of these extended and a battery of Russian artillery opened fire upon the cavalry.  Our artillery came to the front, and after a quarter of an hour’s duel the Russians fell back; and soon after the army halted for the night, at a stream called the Boulyanak, six miles from the Alma, where the Russians, as was now known, were prepared to give battle.  The weather had now cleared again, and all ranks were in high spirits as they sat round the bivouac fires.

“How savage they will be on board ship,” Harry Archer said to Captain Lancaster, “to see us fighting a big battle without their having a hand in it.  I almost wonder that they have not landed a body of marines and blue-jackets.  The fleets could spare 4000 or 5000 men, and their help might be useful.  Do you think the Russians will fight?”

“All soldiers will fight,” Captain Lancaster said, “when they’ve got a strong position.  It needs a very different sort of courage to lie down on the crest of a hill and fire at an enemy struggling up it in full view, to that which is necessary to make the assault.  They have too all the advantage of knowing the ground, while we know absolutely nothing about it.  I don’t believe that the generals have any more idea than we have.  It seems a happy-go-lucky way of fighting altogether.  However, I have no doubt that we shall lick them somehow.  It seems, though, a pity to take troops direct at a position which the enemy have chosen and fortified, when by a flank march, which in an undulating country like this could be performed without the slightest difficulty, we could turn the position and force them to retreat, without losing a man.”

Such was the opinion of many other officers at the time.  Such has been the opinion of every military critic since.  Had the army made a flank march, the enemy must either have retired at once, or have been liable to an attack upon their right flank, when, if beaten, they would have been driven down to the sea-shore under the guns of the ships, and killed or captured, to a man.  Unfortunately, however, owing to the jealousies between the two generals, the illness of Marshal Arnaud, and the incapacity of Lord Raglan, there was neither plan nor concert.  The armies simply fought as they marched, each general of division doing his best and leading his men at that portion of the enemy’s position which happened to be opposite to him.  The sole understanding arrived at was that the armies were to march at six in the morning; that General Bosquet’s division, which was next to the sea, was, covered by guns of the ships, to first carry the enemy’s position there; and that when he had obtained a footing upon