The Tarutinsky men had not been wrong when they thought they could hear the sound of the French drums. Raglan had sent an urgent call for help to Bosquet on the Sapoune Heights at 7 a.m., after he had arrived to inspect the battle at Home Ridge (he had also sent an order for two heavy 18-pounder cannon to be brought up from the siege batteries to counter the Russian cannonade but the order had gone astray). Bosquet’s men had already sensed that the British were in danger when they heard the early firing. The Zouaves had even heard the Russians on the march the night before – their African experience having taught them how to listen to the ground – and they were ready for the order to attack before it came. Nothing suited their type of fighting better than the foggy conditions and bushy scrubland of the hills: they were used to mountain warfare from Algeria and were at their best when fighting in small groups and ambushing the enemy. The Zouaves and Chasseurs were eager to advance, but Bosquet held them back, fearful of Liprandi’s army, 22,000 soldiers and 88 field guns in the South Valley under the command of Gorchakov, which had begun a distant cannonade against the Sapoune Heights. ‘Forward! Let’s march! It’s time to finish them!’ the Zouaves cried impatiently when Bosquet appeared among their ranks. They were angry when the general walked before them. ‘A revolt was imminent,’ recalled Louis Noir, who was in the first column of Zouaves.
The deep respect and true affection which we felt for Bosquet were tested to the limit by the impetuosity of the old Algerian bands. Suddenly Bosquet turned and drew his sword, placed himself at the head of his Zouaves, his Turks and Chasseurs, undefeated troops he had known for years, and pointing his sword towards the 20,000 Russian troops amassed on the redoubts of the opposing heights, shouted in a thunderous voice: ‘En avant! A la baïonnette!’51
In fact, the size of Liprandi’s army was not as large as Bosquet had feared, since Gorchakov had foolishly decided to position half of them behind the Chernaia river in reserve, and had dispersed the rest between the lower slopes of the Sapoune Heights and the Sandbag Battery. But the Zouaves did not know this; they could not see their enemy in the thick fog, and attacked with fearsome energy to overcome what they believed to be their disadvantage in numbers. Charging forward in small groups, and using the brushwood for cover while they fired at the Russian columns, their tactic was to scare the Russians off by any means they could. They yelled and screamed and fired in the air as they ran forward. Their bugles sounded and their drummers beat as loud as they could. Jean Cler, a colonel of the 2nd Zouave Regiment, even told his men as they prepared to go into the battle: ‘Spread out your pants as wide as they will go, and make as big a show of yourselves as you can.’52
The Russians were overwhelmed by the attacking force of the Zouaves, whose Minié rifles took out hundreds of men within the first few seconds of their charge. Racing up the hill-bend round Home Ridge, the Zouaves drove the Russians from the Sandbag Battery and chased them down to the bottom of St Clement’s Ravine. Their momentum took them around the curving spur into Quarry Ravine, already heaving with the soldiers of the Tarutinsky Regiment, who began to panic in the crush and fired back at the new arrivals, killing mainly their own men, before the Zouaves backed out of the crossfire and climbed towards Home Ridge.
There they found the British in desperate battle with the forces on the right wing of Pavlov’s pincer movement: the Okhotsky, Yakutsky and Selenginsky regiments, who had joined the remnants of Soimonov’s troops and, under the command of Dannenberg, began to attack the Sandbag Battery again. The fighting was brutal, wave after wave of Russians charged with their bayonets only to be shot down by the British or tussle with them ‘hand-to-hand, foot to foot, muzzle to muzzle, butt-end to butt-end’, recalled Captain Wilson of the Coldstream Guards.53 The Guards were vastly outnumbered by the Russians, and in urgent need of reinforcements when they were at last joined by six companies of Cathcart’s 4th Division under the command of General Torrens. The new men were spoiling for a fight (they had missed out on the action at Balaklava and the Alma) and, ordered to attack the Russians on the ridge by the Sandbag Battery, they charged down the valley after them, losing all discipline and coming under heavy close-range fire by the Yakutsky and Selenginsky regiments from the heights above. Among those killed in the hail of bullets was Cathcart, the spot where he was buried becoming known as ‘Cathcart’s Hill’.
By this stage Cambridge and the Guards were down to their last 100 men in the Sandbag Battery. There were 2,000 Russians against them. They had no ammunition left. The Duke proposed to make a stand for the Sandbag Battery – an idiotic sacrifice for this relatively minor landmark on the battlefield – but his staff officers dissuaded him: it would be disastrous for the Queen’s cousin and the colours of her Guards to be brought before the Tsar. Among those officers was Higginson, who led the retreat to Home Ridge. ‘Clustered round the Colours,’ he recalled,
the men passed slowly backwards, keeping their front full towards the enemy, their bayonets ready at the ‘charge’. As a comrade fell, wounded or dead, his fellow took his place, and maintained the compactness of the gradually diminishing group, that held on with unflinching stubbornness in protecting the flags … . Happily the ground on our right was so precipitous as to deter the enemy from attempting to outflank us on that side. As from time to time some Russians soldiers, more adventurous than their fellows, sprang forwards towards our compact group, two or three of our Grenadiers would dash out with the bayonet and compel steady retreat. Nevertheless our position was critical.
It was at this moment that Bosquet’s men appeared on the ridge. Never had the sight of Frenchmen been so welcome to the English. The Guards cheered them as they arrived and cried, ‘Vivent les Français!’ and the French replied, ‘Vivent les Anglais!’54
Stunned by the arrival of the French, the Russians withdrew to Shell Hill and attempted to consolidate. But the morale of their troops had dropped, they did not fancy their chances against the British and the French, and many of them now began to run away, using the cover of the fog to escape the attentions of their officers. For a while Dannenberg believed that he could win with his artillery: he had nearly a hundred guns, including 12-pound field guns and howitzers, more than the British at Home Ridge. But at half past nine the two heavy 18-pounders ordered up by Raglan finally arrived and opened fire on Shell Hill, their monstrous charges blasting through the Russian batteries, and forcing their artillery to withdraw from the field. The Russians were not finished. They had 6,000 men still to be used on the heights, and twice that number in reserve on the other side of the river. Some of them continued to attack, but their advancing columns were ripped apart by the heavy British guns.