THE MAIN FIGHT. 187 Aud the advance of the Guards was thus left un- CHAP, molested by any force showing itself on their left ' flank. Deceived, as was natural, by this im- 2d Period, inunity, the Duke of Cambridge seems to have understood that the ground between the Barrier and the head of St Clement's Gorge was held by Pennefather's troops.* At all events, he con- tinued his march against the Sandbag Battery, and thus entered the concave of the arc which Dannenberg had spread out before him. The Guards moved under a fire of artillery from the first, and of musketry afterwards. Whilst they marched, they saw nothing of the columns in the Quarry Ravine, nor of those in St Clement's Gorge ; but they soon beheld, straight before them, the Sandbag Battery and the forces gathered about it, some covering the approach to its gorge, some ranged at its flanks. A few of the soldiery were standing on the top of the parapet. The Duke of Cambridge was, in one sense, strength oi , — T 1 T !• ^ T • ^'"^ forces opposing his 700 men to the whole oi the thirteen directly T 1 • i-f-iTi •• opposing battalions directed against the EnGjlish position :t the Duke's • T 1 1-11 1 700 men. but the troops he more immediately challenged were the nine battalions of the Sappers, the Okliotsk and the Selinghinsk regiments — troops brought into action with a strength of some 7000 men. j
- Tliis I think is to be inferred from an expression contained
in H.R.H.'s letter to Lord Rar^lan of the 20th December 1854. t When we show the part taken against the Guards by one of the lakoutsk battalions, the accuracy of the above statement will be apparent. t With the Sappers — estimated at 750 — 7129.
