The Russians opened fire when the allies came within 1,800 metres – a spot marked with poles to let their gunners know the advancing troops were within range – but the British and the French continued marching forward towards the river. According to the plan that the allies had agreed the day before, the two armies were to advance simultaneously on a broad front and try to turn the enemy’s flank on the left – the inland side. But at the final moment Raglan decided to delay the British advance until the French had broken through on the right; he made his troops lie on the ground, within range of the Russian guns, in a position from which they could scramble to the river when the time was right. There they lay for an hour and a half, from 1.15 to 2.45 p.m., losing men as the Russian gunners found their range. It was an astonishing example of Raglan’s indecisiveness.19
While the British were lying on the ground, Bosquet’s division arrived at the river near the sea, where the cliffs rose so steeply to the heights, almost 50 metres above the river, that Menshikov had thought it was unneccessary to defend the position with artillery. At the head of Bosquet’s division was a regiment of Zouaves, most of them North Africans, who had experience of mountain fighting in Algeria. Leaving their kitbags on the riverbank, they swam across the river and quickly climbed the cliffs under heavy cover of the trees. The Russians were amazed by the agility of the Zouaves, comparing them to monkeys in the way they used the trees to scale the cliffs. Once they had reached the plateau, the Zouaves hid behind rocks and bushes to pick off the defending forces of the Moscow Regiment one by one until reinforcements could arrive. ‘The Zouaves were so well hidden’, recalled Noir, who was among the first to reach the top, ‘that a well-trained officer arriving on the scene would hardly have been able to pick them out with his own eyes.’ Inspired by the Zouaves, more French soldiers climbed the cliffs. They hauled twelve guns up a ravine – the men hit their horses with their swords if they refused to climb the rocky path – arriving just in time to engage the extra soldiers and artillery that Menshikov had transferred from the centre in a desperate attempt to stop his left flank being turned.20
The Russian position was more or less hopeless. By the time their artillery arrived, the whole of Bosquet’s division and many of the Turks had reached the plateau. The Russians had more guns – 28 to the French 12 – but the French guns were of larger calibre and longer range, and Bosquet’s riflemen kept the Russian gunners at a distance where only the heavier French guns could take effect. Sensing their advantage, some of the Zouaves, exalted by the fighting, danced a polka on the battlefield to taunt the enemy, knowing that the Russian guns could not reach them. Meanwhile, the guns of the allied fleet were pounding the Russian positions on the cliffs, undermining the morale of many of their troops and officers. When the first Russian battery of artillery arrived, it found the remnants of the Moscow Regiment already in retreat under heavy fire from the Zouaves, whose Minié rifles had a longer range and greater accuracy than the outdated muskets of the Russian infantry. The commanding officer on the left flank, Lieutenant General V. I. Kiriakov, was one of the most incompetent in the tsarist army, and was rarely in a sober state. Holding a bottle of champagne in his hand, Kiriakov ordered the Minsk Regiment to shoot at the French but misdirected them towards the Kiev Hussars, who fell back under the fire. Lacking confidence in their drunken commander, and unnerved by the lethal accuracy of the French rifles, the Minsk Regiment also began to retreat.21
Meanwhile, in the centre of the battlefield, the two other French divisions, led by Canrobert and Prince Napoleon, were unable to cross the Alma in the face of heavy Russian fire from Telegraph Hill directly opposite. Prince Napoleon sent word to General de Lacy Evans, on his left, calling on the British to advance and take some pressure off the French. Raglan was still waiting for the French attack to succeed before committing British troops, and at first told Evans not to take orders from the French, but under pressure from Evans he finally gave way. At 2.45 p.m., he ordered the infantry of the Light, 1st and 2nd Divisions to advance – though what else they should do he did not say. The order was typical of Raglan’s thinking, which remained rooted in the bygone age of Napoleonic battles, when the infantry was used for primitive direct attacks on prepared positions.
