Battle of The Alma 1854
30th & 47th Regiments – 20th September 1854
Article by John Downham
A Lancashire Infantry Museum Narrative History
​
The Crimean War was fought between the leading military powers of the day, and was essentially a multinational response to Russian imperial ambitions.
​
From Central Asia to the Danube Tsar Nicholas I’s attempts at southward expansion and his increasingly bellicose search for warm water ports and access to the Mediterranean brought him into conflict with his neighbours. This had already led to a war by proxy in Afghanistan in 1839-1842, when the 40th Foot won great distinction, but in 1853 the Russians invaded the Danubian provinces of the ailing Ottoman Empire.
​
The Governments of Britain and France could not contemplate Russian domination of the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean, and so, when the Tsar ignored an Anglo-French ultimatum demanding withdrawal from the Danubian provinces, the Allies resolved to settle the ‘Eastern Question’ by force of arms and despatched an expeditionary force to the Black Sea.
​
When, on 28th March 1854, Britain declared war on Russia, the 30th and 47th were in Mediterranean garrisons, at Gibraltar and Malta respectively, and they were at once selected for active service. Both regiments were to be in Lieutenant-General Sir George De Lacy Evans’ 2nd Division, the 30th being in Pennefather’s 1st Brigade, together with the 55th and 95th, and the 47th in Adams’ 2nd Brigade with the 41st and 49th. [1]
​
The British expeditionary army was commanded by Lord Raglan, who as Lord FitzRoy Somerset had been at Wellington’s side as Military Secretary in Spain and at Waterloo, where he had lost an arm. Now, nearly forty years later, he was a quiet-spoken, gallant and respected elderly gentleman, but his war service had been entirely on the staff and he had never commanded so much as a battalion in action. Sir George De Lacy Evans, commanding the 2nd Division, was even older but considerably more experienced as a general. He had fought with distinction in the Peninsula, India and America, and at Waterloo, and then in 1835-37 commanded the British Legion during the Carlist civil war in Spain.
​
The 2nd Division assembled at Scutari on the Bosphorus, opposite Constantinople. The 47th landed there on 19th April, followed by the 30th on 12th May. Both regiments were quartered in the huge Turkish barracks above the town, later famous as the British base hospital in which Florence Nightingale effected her nursing reforms. At Scutari there was a significant increase in combat effectiveness when the regiments handed in their old smooth-bore muskets and were issued with the rifled Minié, a weapon which was accurate to 300 yards and effective for volley fire up to 1,000 yards. The tactical implications of this superior weapon were not at first generally realised, and there was some surprise at the Alma as the British troops recognised their advantage. Subsequently, skirmishing tactics were used more often instead of the traditional line.
​
In mid-June the 2nd Division sailed to Varna in Bulgaria, from where on 31st August its regiments embarked for the Crimea. It had been decided that British, French and Turkish forces should land on the Crimean peninsula and capture the fortress-town and harbour of Sevastopol, home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and a potent symbol of Tsarist aggression.
The British Army is ferried ashore in Kalamita Bay to begin the invasion of the Crimea
On 14th September 1854 some 30,000 French, 27,000 British and 7,000 Turks made an unopposed landing at Kalamita Bay, some 35 miles to the north of Sevastopol, and on the 19th the Allied army commenced its advance along the coastal Post Road. The French moved on the right, nearest to the shore. The 2nd Division marching next to them, with the 30th, as senior regiment, at the head of the column.
​
The Russians, under Prince Menshikov, moved to meet the Allies and resolved to give battle on the heights beyond the Alma River, some fourteen miles north of Sevastopol.
​
The Alma was a natural defensive position. On the Allied right, facing the French, cliffs rose 350 feet from the sea and ran inland along the south bank of the river for two miles. It was a difficult approach, but by no means inaccessible, for a number of tracks led up to the heights. Further east, where the British advanced astride the Post Road, or ‘Causeway’, to Sevastopol, the terrain was markedly different. Here there was a gentle descent over an open plain to the green valley bottom where the white houses of the straggling riverside village of Bourliouk stood amid vineyards, gardens and stone-walled enclosures to the right of the road. Beyond the village, the steep-banked Alma flowed with many windings and deep pools. The river was 40 to 50 yards wide and its sheer bank on the far side was between 6 and 15 feet high. The Alma was fordable, but was nevertheless a significant obstacle. On the far side of the Alma the ground rose more abruptly to a plateau, broken by ravines, rocky knolls and mounds. The thin white Post Road crossed the river by a wooden bridge before climbing a re-entrant, misleadingly termed ‘the Pass’ in contemporary accounts, to the heights, and there was a ford downstream from Bourliouk. The slopes beyond the river were generally open and barren, rising to between 300 and 500 feet, with two principal features. In the left centre of the Russian position, and to the west of the Post Road, the Telegraph Height crowned the ascent to the plateau, while on the eastern (inland) flank, Kourgane Hill dominated approaches from the river line and up the Pass.
​
Menshikov had some 35,000 infantry, 3,600 cavalry and 116 well-served guns at his disposal to dispute the passage of the Alma, and to the natural strength of the position he had added defensive works. Kourgane Hill, which offered excellent fields of fire, had been fortified with two large artillery redoubts; on the forward slope, the 12 heavy guns of the ‘Great Redoubt’ covered the smooth 300 yard slope down to the river and could bring a flanking fire to bear on the Post Road, while the ‘Lesser Redoubt’ protected the Russian right flank. Further batteries were sited in depth on either side of the Post Road, between 500 and 700 yards from the bridge. Menshikov trusted in his efficient and well-sited artillery to win the battle, and his gunners had carefully set out posts to mark the ranges. His infantry regiments were massed in column to protect and support the guns, and to counter-attack once the artillery had shattered the Allied assault, with a heavy line of skirmishers on the river-line. His left he considered relatively inaccessible, and he consequently placed only 13,000 men and 36 guns between the Telegraph Height and the sea.
​
It was undoubtedly a very strong position, and Prince Menshikov had complacently invited a party of ladies out from Sevastopol to picnic on the heights, sipping champagne while they watched the inevitable destruction of the Allied armies.
​
It was around noon on the 20th September when the Allies, advancing on a five-mile front, came within sight of the Russian position and halted. It was a hot late summer’s day, and a strange silence fell over the expectant troops while Lord Raglan and the French commander, Marshal St Arnaud, conferred. Their discussions were somewhat less than conclusive, but eventually it was understood that the French would climb the cliffs to turn Menshikov’s weaker left flank while the British made a frontal attack on the main Russian force on Kourgane Hill and around the Pass. The British assault was to be delayed until the French had obtained a purchase on the heights.
​
The 2nd Division deployed in line facing the village of Bourliouk and the Pass, with the French to their right. To their left, beyond the Post Road, the Light Division formed opposite the frowning redoubts of Kourgane Hill. The 3rd and 1st Divisions lined up behind the 2nd and Light Divisions respectively, while the 4th Division was held in reserve and the Light Cavalry Brigade watched the army’s open left flank. Unaccountably, the leading British divisions put all their regiments in one line, with no supports or reserves, and the resulting congestion along the front was compounded for the 2nd Division by being squeezed between the French and the Light Division, the latter having taken ground too far to its right. In consequence the two leading British divisions overlapped, and they remained partially entangled for the rest of the day. Raglan, who saw the problem, did not wish to embarrass the irascible commander of the Light Division by sorting it out. Consequently, of the 2nd Division only Pennefather’s Brigade could at first be brought into line. The 30th were on the extreme right of the British line, with the 55th and 95th to their left, while Adams’ Brigade (41st, 47th and 49th) was at first held back for lack of space to deploy.
​
At about 1 p.m. the 2nd and Light Divisions advanced slowly into the valley until they came under Russian artillery fire, when they were halted to await the result of the French attack. The troops lay down on the open slope, and remained there, passively enduring the bombardment for the next hour and a half. Kinglake, the historian of the Crimea, was with Raglan’s staff close behind the 30th Regiment and watched the old ‘Three Tens’ under fire:
​
‘They had to lie down with no duty to perform except the duty of being motionless; and they made it their pastime to watch the play of the engines worked for their destruction – to watch the jet of smoke – the flash – the short, momentous interval – and then, happily and most often, the twang through the air above, and the welcome sound of the shot at length embedded in the earth. But sometimes, without knowing whence it came, a man would suddenly know the feel of a rushing blast and a mighty shock, and would find himself bespattered with the brains of the comrade who had just been speaking to him. When this happened, two of the comrades of the man killed would get up and gently lift the quivering body, carry it a few paces in rear of the line, then quietly return to their ranks and again lie down.
​
‘This sort of trial is well borne by our troops. They are so framed by nature that, if only they know clearly what they have to do, or to leave undone, they are pleased and animated, nay, even soothed, by a little danger. For, besides that they love strife, they love the arbitrament of chance; and a game where death is the forfeit has a strange, gloomy charm for them . . . They did not perhaps like the duty so much as a charge with the bayonet; but if they were to be judged from their demeanour, they preferred it to a church parade. They were in their most gracious temper. Often, when an officer rode past them, they would give him the fruit of their steady and protracted view, and advise him to move a little on one side or the other to avoid a coming shot.’
​
Suddenly, directly in front of the 2nd Division, the village of Bourliouk burst into flames; it had been filled with combustibles and fired by the Russian engineers. Burning fiercely amid thick clouds of smoke, the village was now an effective and mostly impassable obstacle across the greater part of the divisional front.
​
Over on the right, the French attack started with great elan and their infantry were soon established on the edge of the plateau, but then the advance lost impetus. After an hour and a half they had failed to take Telegraph Heights, being unable to haul sufficient field guns onto the high ground to support their further progress. Aware that the Allied attack was grinding to a halt, and sensitive to the losses his men were suffering in their exposed position, at 3 p.m. Raglan ordered a resumption of the British advance.
​
‘The line will advance!’ The welcome order rippled across the two-mile British frontage, and the red-coated regiments sprang to their feet. Markers were sent out, the ranks were dressed, and the foremost divisions marched grandly down the slope towards the river, bands playing and Colours flying in the bright sunshine. Russian officers, accustomed to manoeuvring in massive columns, gazed in astonishment as the British infantry came on in a thin red line, only two men deep. The French General Canrobert was also impressed at the steady advance, exclaiming: ‘They go forward as though they were in Hyde Park.’ It was indeed a gallant sight, but no artillery concentration had been arranged and there was to be no fire and manoeuvre to support the frontal assault. The British were playing right into Menshikov’s hands and allowing the Russians to make maximum use of the arm in which they were most expert, their artillery.
​
The open slope was in full view of the enemy guns. ‘The moment we came within range,’ wrote Major Richard Farren of the 47th, ‘he fired away round shot, grape and shells, which rattled like a storm of hail stones.’
​
The firing of Bourliouk in the path of the 2nd Division considerably disrupted and delayed its advance. ‘We took ground to the right and then to the left’, wrote Lieutenant and Adjutant Mark Walker of the 30th, ‘all the time under fire; but in the end, after some fruitless moving, we were ordered to lie down until the smoke cleared away. As we lay we had a few men wounded, [but] most of the shot passed over us.’ The way ahead was masked by dense smoke clouds, but De Lacy Evans decided to pass his division round both sides of the burning village. He detached Adams with the 41st and 49th Regiments and a field battery to try for a ford to the right, below the village, and brought the 47th up to join with Pennefather’s Brigade in a move round the left side of Bourliouk. Evans now had four battalions with him: the 47th on the right, then the 30th, 55th and 95th in succession, with a battery of field guns in direct support.
​
‘Evans’s task was a hard one’, recalled Kinglake. ‘Having on his right an impassable conflagration, and being cramped towards his left by our Light Division, he was forced to move along the unsheltered line of the Great Causeway upon a narrow and crowded front, and this under a converging fire of artillery; for with the sixteen guns of the Causeway batteries, with the eight other guns planted near, and the heavy guns of position discharging their shot and shell flankwise from the left shoulder of the Great Redoubt, the enemy swept the main road and the bridge, and searched the fords both above and below it. And whilst the enemy’s batteries thus dealt with the more open approaches to the bridge, his infantry defended the ground which could not be searched by round-shot.’
The Battle of the Alma, by the French artist Horace Vernet. The 30th and the 47th were both in the thick of the fight, battling their way into the re-entrant beyond the trees in the centre.
In the coverts and vineyards about and beyond the river-line was a heavy Russian skirmishing line comprising two battalions of the Borodino Light Infantry, a battalion of the 6th Rifles and some companies of sappers, while a few hundred yards behind them, supporting the Causeway batteries, stood the other two Borodino battalions. Further back, astride the Post Road, was the Russian Grand Reserve.
​
De Lacy Evans moved his men to their left in fours, around the flank of Bourliouk until the leading regiment, the 55th, had crossed the Post Road. The four battalions then turned again towards the river, straight into Menshikov’s chosen killing ground. Their frontage at this congested choke point was extremely narrow, probably no more than three to four hundred yards in all, and even so the left of the 2nd Division overlapped the front of the Light Division. Consequently the 95th Regiment became entangled with its right-hand battalion, the 7th Fusiliers, and was swept on with them into the attack on the Great Redoubt. For the remainder of the battle they shared the varied fortunes of the Light Division.
​
Once past the village, the remaining three battalions of the 2nd Division had a little more room to deploy and De Lacy Evans inclined to his right so as to reoccupy his intended place in the line of battle. This movement brought him to the river with the 47th, 30th and 55th, in line to the right of the Post Road, having marched right round the burning village. There was a good deal of confusion in this close country, but in Kinglake’s words, ‘Whenever any number of men got together upon ground which enabled them to extend, they quickly fell into line, and this they did notwithstanding that the groups thus instinctively hastening into their English formation were sometimes men of different regiments.’ Progress was slow as the troops advanced by rushes, from one enclosure to another. Casualties mounted, and several times the men were ordered to lie down to avoid the concentrated hail of grape, canister and musket balls. The 55th suffered particularly heavy losses around the bridge, and Pennefather’s brigade lost in killed and wounded nearly one quarter of its strength.
​
Colonel O’Grady Haly led his 47th Regiment over to its right, between Bourliouk and the river, where they forded the stream some 400 yards below the bridge. The river flowed in several channels at this point, and Major Farren remarked on the difficulty of crossing under fire:
​
‘The banks were precipitous and slippery with mud, and, at the place where we crossed, had to be passed in three places. The heavy guns of the enemy were placed on the high ground beyond the river, and they completely enfiladed the ground through which the river flowed.’
​
The 47th was better protected from the fire of the Causeway batteries than the regiments of Pennefather’s brigade, but took some casualties while passing over the ground beyond the village. A plunging shot struck the Colour party, holing the Queen’s Colour and killing Sergeant Lomax and Corporal Crone of the escort, while the Commanding Officer had his horse shot from under him.
The 47th Regiment carried these Colours for 26 years, from 1832 to 1858. They were holed at the Alma by plunging shot which killed two of the Colour Party
Next in line, Colonel Hoey of the 30th persistently worked his men forward through the gardens and stone-walled enclosures till at length he was able to cross the river just below the road bridge. Mark Walker recalled in his journal this scrambling advance through the village outskirts to the river:
​
‘After a while we advanced to the village where the fire was tremendous; the men were ordered to shelter behind a wall; we, the mounted officers, sat on our horses in rear, and every moment I expected one of us would be knocked over, but we mercifully escaped. The artillery came up behind and opened – they suffered considerably. We (here my shako was knocked off by the wind of a round shot) were then ordered to move across a small green field; in going over it many were knocked over, including [Captain Thomas] Packenham severely wounded and [Lieutenant Frederick] Luxmore killed (his servant fell with him). We then got into a vineyard on the banks of the river, which was deep and its sides steep. Here we were ordered to shelter. Many were wounded and many killed, and some were drowned. Here [Captain Graham] Dickson was wounded and my horse hit severely.’
​
The Light Companies had been thrown out as a skirmishing line to cover Evans’ move round Bourliouk, and we have some account of their subsequent activities from Lieutenant John Ross-Lewin of the 30th:
​
‘Our Light Company was thrown forward about 100 yards in skirmishing order, and I had the honour of being sent to command the left sub-division. I and my party lay about 60 yards in front of the line for about an hour and a half under a tremendous fire. I had a narrow escape from a shell which burst quite close to me, and two round shot went too near for comfort, one taking away the heads of two Light Company men. Soon after [this] the skirmishers went on to an old house and wall; we ran forward at a good pace, and soon commenced plying the Minié rifles, which told tremendously on their gunners and Imperial Guard.[2]’
​
During the advance the light companies had been ordered to join their respective battalions, but on attempting to do so the Light Company of the 30th, under Captain Arthur Wellesley Connolly, found itself not in its proper place on the left of its own regiment, but on the left of the 55th and touching their light company. Throughout the campaign there was a close friendship between these two regiments. Major Rose, commanding the Light Company 55th, had just been mortally wounded, and Lieutenant Hume had assumed command, but when Captain Connolly asked that he might be allowed to fight with the 55th, Lieutenant Hume most chivalrously told his men to take their orders from Connolly and the two companies advanced as one to the river.
​
De Lacy Evans and his divisional staff, riding forward between the 30th and the 47th, attracted serious attention from the enemy. Evans himself received a severe contusion and almost all his staff were struck down. Among them was the AQMG, Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Herbert, who many years later on his death-bed recalled the gallantry of two men of the 47th Regiment. While lying wounded on the ground, unable to move, he saw a number of men going to the rear and feared that they were falling back without orders. He called on them to stop, at which two of those who had passed him turned back and, despite the heavy fire, came over to where he lay, showing him that they were not running away but were badly wounded, one being shot through the jaw and the other having a severe shell wound in the chest. Both these men belonged to the 47th Regiment, and their disciplined act in turning back amid such fire had so impressed Herbert that he wished a fact so honourable to their regiment to be placed on record.
​
Having crossed the Alma, the 30th, 47th and 55th lined the bank and opened a steady and destructive fire on the massed Russian infantry and batteries to their front, but as Kinglake explains, further advance in that quarter was for the present impracticable:
​
‘So long as the Causeway batteries swept the mouth of the pass, Evans, with his three shattered battalions could do no more than maintain an obstinate and bloody combat in this part of the field . . . He was not yet able to push forward beyond the left bank of the river and assail the enemy in the heart of his position across the great road.’
​
This impasse was shortly broken by a most extraordinary, indeed quite unique, event. Lord Raglan, apparently seeking a good viewpoint from which to control the battle, had followed Adam’s brigade round to the right of Bourliouk and dashed briskly through the river with his staff. Passing through astonished lines of French and Russian skirmishers, and seemingly oblivious to the possibility of death or capture, the British Commander-in-Chief and his small band of plumed followers rode up the forward slope of the Telegraph Height to a high commanding knoll well within the centre of the Russian position. Standing unmolested at a mercifully undefended point in the heart of his enemy’s army, Raglan found himself looking down on the left and rear of the guns and troops defending the Post Road and, less than a mile away, the Great Redoubt. One glance sufficed to see the possibilities of his position, and Raglan sent at once for Adams’ brigade and some field guns. He also appreciated that his very appearance in their midst would have a profoundly unsettling and disruptive influence on the Russians, remarking insouciantly to his staff, ‘Our presence here will have the best effect’. After all, would any general in his right mind show himself well behind enemy lines without ten thousand men at his heels? While waiting for the arrival of his guns, the coat-trailing Commander-in-Chief could only watch with impotent anguish as his left crossed the river and assaulted the Great Redoubt on Kourgane Hill.
​
The Light Division advanced very gallantly, but became disordered on crossing the river and, without forming, impetuously converged on the Great Redoubt, which was stormed and captured.[3] The Division suffered severely in this attack, and its shattered, disorganised and intermingled regiments were in turn driven out of the redoubt by the lumbering counter-attack of a four-battalion column of the Vladimir Regiment before the 1st Division belatedly came up to support them. In falling back, elements of the Light Division ran into the Guards Brigade of the 1st Division and carried away its centre regiment, the Scots Fusilier Guards. Only on the right of the Light Division did a knot of men based on the 7th Fusiliers and the 95th stand firm, tenaciously holding their ground against the 1,500-strong Kazan Regiment.
​
The battle was hanging in the balance when suddenly, at about 3.40 p.m., the sound of British 9-pounders was heard from deep within the Russian centre. Two field guns had reached Raglan’s commanding knoll and were engaging the Causeway batteries. Kinglake described the immediate consequence of this sudden, unexpected and ultimately decisive turn of events:
​
‘A busy change began to stir in the Russian batteries. Presently, though the smoke of the burning village lay heavy in this part of the field, our people could make out what the change was. It was one of great moment to the Allies; for the enemy was limbering up, and beginning to carry off the sixteen guns which up to this minute had barred the mouth of the Pass. The great road lay open. Evans understood the battle. He acted instantly. He saw that though he was weak, yet the moment had come for the advance of his three battalions.’
​
Colonel Hoey, commanding the 30th, had also been reading the battle and needed no order to advance. Observing the enemy’s batteries suddenly slacken their fire, he at once called for the mounted officers, the Colours and covering sergeants (markers) to mount the riverbank. The men sprang up and formed upon them, and Major James Mauleverer dressed the line carefully by the centre. His friend Major James Patullo marked the left, and as they unhurriedly resumed their places in rear Mauleverer was heard to ask Patullo for a light for his cigar, lamenting at the same time the loss of his Irish pipe. Then the 30th advanced in a line that was admired by all, marching straight and steadily towards the site of the Causeway batteries.
​
‘During this advance’, wrote Mark Walker, the Adjutant, ‘a sharp fire opened upon us, and I was struck by a spent grape-shot in the chest which nearly knocked me over, but happily I was not disabled.’
​
On their right, the 47th were formed in column by Captain Rooke as the Colonel and the other mounted officers had been obliged to make a detour to mount the river bank; then they too moved forward, protecting Evans’ right flank. The 55th also advanced and, wheeling to their left, they came to the assistance of the 7th Fusiliers, who were still engaged in their heroic struggle with the Kazan Regiment. As we have seen, the Light Company 30th Regiment was fighting alongside the 55th, and it was at this time that they fired with great effect into the mass of the supposed ‘Imperial Guard’, which wavered and retreated leaving many casualties on the ground.
​
For some minutes Evans’ three battalions, together with the 7th Fusiliers, were the only British troops in action across the river, but then the Guards Brigade came up, with the Highland Brigade to their left, while the 3rd Division moved forward in support of Evans and his embattled battalions in the Pass, and the red coats of the 41st and 49th appeared on Raglan’s knoll. The French also advanced again. There was still some hard fighting, particularly on Kourgane Hill, but the issue was not now in doubt. De Lacy Evans advanced straight up the Pass and established his three battalions, now supported by thirty guns of the 2nd and 3rd Divisions, on the ground recently vacated by the Causeway batteries. The Russian riflemen and the Borodino Regiment, skirmishers and formed battalions alike, fell back before this determined advance, and neither they nor the massed Russian infantry reserves waited for the British lines to come to close quarters.
​
‘It was evident that the day was ours’, wrote Mark Walker, ‘The Guards had done good work on our left, and the artillery, coming up, threw shell and grape among some columns on the hill until they turned and disappeared. We then advanced in column to the top of the hill and, when Lord Raglan came up, one loud cheer proclaimed that Alma was won.’
​
British losses in the battle totalled 2,002, including 362 killed, while the French lost under 560 and the Russians admitted to 5,709 killed and wounded, leaving 1,810 dead on the battlefield. The 30th Regiment lost Lieutenant Luxmore and 12 rank and file killed, and six officers, two sergeants and 58 rank and file wounded. In the 47the Regiment, Sergeant Lomax and three rank and file were killed, Lieutenant Woolocombe of the Grenadiers died of wounds, while three officers, the sergeant-major, three sergeants, one drummer and 56 rank and file were wounded.
​
Writing home to his mother two days after the battle, Major James Patullo of the 30th was critical of the tactical leadership that had flung the flower of the British Army into a poorly supported frontal assault on what subsequent examination confirmed to be a very strong defensive position:
​
‘We . . . think that there was a great want of generalship and much loss of life in consequence . . . The simple fact was we deployed from the right of the whole English force and as each regiment deployed we advanced straight on the enemy’s batteries, and during the day received no more instructions. A river, a burning village and a walled vineyard afforded us some shelter, and the greater loss of other regiments must be attributed to their being badly handled, I think, and brought up to the batteries in masses. Our men behaved most gallantly and advanced in perfect parade order to the last moment. Whether they will give us the credit of leading the advance, or reserve it for some favourite regiment, I cannot say.’
[1] The post-1881 and present successors to these Regiments of Foot are:
30th – 1st Bn The East Lancashire Regiment, now The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment.
55th – 2nd Bn The Border Regiment, now The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment.
95th – 2nd Bn The Sherwood Foresters, now The Mercian Regiment.
41st – 1st Bn The Welch Regiment, now The Royal Welsh.
47th – 1st Bn The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, now The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment.
49th – 1st Bn The Royal Berkshire Regiment, now The Rifles.
[2] Ross-Lewin was mistaken in believing this body, wearing spiked helmets with burnished brass plates was Russian Imperial Guard. It was in fact a two-battalion column of the Kazan Regiment.
[3] The assault on the Great Redoubt was made by four battalions, the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers and 33rd (Duke of Wellington’s) Regiment of Codrington’s brigade, and the 19th (1st Yorkshire, North Riding) and 95th (Derbyshire) Regiments from Buller’s and Pennefather’s flanking brigades, while Codrington’s third battalion, the 7th (Royal) Fusiliers, engaged the Kazan Regiment to the west of the redoubt.
