uld have rested with the defenders.

The British loss consisted of 26 officers killed and 73 wounded, 327
men killed and 1557 wounded. The French had only 3 officers killed and
54 wounded, 253 men killed and 1033 wounded. The Turks were not
engaged. The Russians lost 45 officers killed and 101 wounded, 1762
men killed and 2720 wounded. The Allied Army had 126 guns against 96
of the Russians; but the former, owing to the nature of the ground,
played but a small part in the fight.

The whole of the loss fell upon a comparatively small number of the
English regiments, and as the French had 9000 men in reserve who had
not fired a shot, there was no season why the greater portion of the
army, with all the cavalry, should not at once have followed on the
track of the beaten Russians. Had they done so, the war in the Crimea
would have been over in three days. That time, however, elapsed before
a move was made. The reason assigned was the necessity of caring for
the wounded and burying the dead. But this might have been committed
to the hands of sailors and marines, of whom 5000 might have been
landed at night; in which case the whole Allied Army could have
marched at day break.

It was a sad sight when the four regiments of the Light Division
mustered after their work was done. Hitherto in the confusion and
fierce excitement of the fight, men marked not who stood and who fell.
But now as the diminished regiments paraded, mere skeletons of the
fine corps which had marched gayly from their camping-ground of the
night before, the terrible extent of their losses was manifest. Tears
rolled down the cheeks of strong men who had never flinched in the
storm of fire, as they saw how many of their comrades were absent, and
the glory of the victory was dimmed indeed by the sorrow for the dead.

"I wanted to see a battle," Harry Archer said to Captain Lancaster,
who, like him, had gone through the fight without a scratch, "but this
is more than I bargained for. To think of half one's friends and
comrades gone, and all in about two hours' fighting. It has been a
deadly affair, indeed."

"Yes, as far as we are concerned, Archer. But not for the whole army.
I heard Doctor Alexander say just now that the casualties were about
1500, and that out of 27,000 men is a mere nothing to the proportion
in many battles. The French have, I hear, lost rather less."

"I thought in a battle," Harry said, "one would see something of the
general affai