THE MAIN FIGHT. 117 The ranks were so broken whilst making their chap. way through the brushwood that a battalion split '__ up into four was far from disclosing to English ^ ^*^"^* observers the law of its intended formation, and seemed to be either one mass undivided, though loosened in structure, or else a huge number of skirmishers unaccountably thronging together. Substantially, such a battalion was a dense swarm of soldiery unmarshalled, but still coherent ; and, since the positions of men under such conditions could be swayed more or less by their personal inclinations, it resulted that the natural gregari- ousness of the Muscovite race tended always to contract these assemblages, thus causing them in general to occupy a good deal less ground than if they had been formed in the barrack-yard. In immediate support to the eleven battalions General thus constituting the front of the attacking force, the attack '^ . now pro- the nine remaining battalions advanced in a line ceeding. of columns. But whilst the enemy with these twenty bat- talions advanced from both the right and the left, he persistently held back his centre. There, his front of artillery, with some 10,000 men behind it in immediate support or reserve, formed the head and the trunk of an army which, although thrust- ing forward abundance of infantry like a claw from each flank, still did not itself come bodily down to advance along the Saddle-top Reach. This peculiar disposition of force was not one pre- pared by design. It resulted, apparently, from the impelling presence of General Soimonoff on
