Читать книгу The Battles of the World or, cyclopedia of battles, sieges, and important military events онлайн

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Soon after eight o’clock, Lord Raglan and his staff turned out and cantered towards the rear of our position. The booming of the artillery, the spattering roll of musketry, were heard rising from the valley, drowning the roar of the siege guns in front before Sebastopol. As I rode in the direction of the firing, over the thistles and large stones which cover the undulating plain that stretches away towards Balaklava, on a level with the summit of the ridges above it, I observed a French light infantry regiment (the 27th, I think) advancing with admirable care and celerity from our right towards the ridge near the telegraph-house, which was already lined by companies of French infantry, while mounted officers scampered along its broken outline in every direction.

General Bosquet, a stout soldierlike-looking man, who reminds one of the old genre of French Generals as depicted at Versailles, followed, with his staff and a small escort of Hussars, at a gallop. Faint white clouds rose here and there above the hill from the cannonade below. Never did the painter’s eye rest on a more beautiful scene than I beheld from the ridge. The fleecy vapours still hung around the mountain tops, and mingled with the ascending volumes of smoke; the patch of sea sparkled freshly in the rays of the morning sun, but its light was eclipsed by the flashes which gleamed from the massess of armed men below.