Our contingent consisted of twenty-six thousand foot, one thousand mounted cavalry, and sixty pieces of cannon, divided into five divisions of infantry and one of horse; an absurdly small force to attempt an invasion of Russia, even with the greater strength of the French and Turkish allies—the former being thirty thousand, and the latter seven thousand bayonets. Our first division, led by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, consisted of the Grenadier, Coldstream, and Scots Fusilier Guards, with three Highland regiments—the Black Watch, the Cameron, and 93rd Highlanders, all considering themselves the _corps d’élite_ of the army. The other divisions, under Sir George Brown, Sir De Lacy Evans, Sir Richard England, and Sir George Cathcart, were composed of our splendid infantry of the line—as I have elsewhere said—the noble and carefully developed army of forty years of peace; and the Earl of Lucan, who in his youth had served as a volunteer with the Russians against the Turks in the campaigns under Diebitch, led our mounted chivalry—the cavalry division—the flower of the British Isles—yet to be covered with glory in the disastrous Valley of Death! While the armies were advancing, with my troop I was repeatedly despatched by the Quarter-master-General, Major-General Richard Airey, to procure provisions and carriages, for that officer, beyond any other, had seen from the first the necessity of procuring supplies and means of transport. On one of these occasions, by his orders, I had the good fortune to capture twenty-five _kibitkas_, or waggons, in a village near our line of march. On the same day I think it was that his aide-de-camp, the gallant Nolan, when exploring for water, came upon a Russian government convoy of eighty waggons laden with flour, and seized them all, routing the escort. In all we obtained three hundred and fifty waggons, with their teams and Tartar drivers. The chief proprietor of the _kibitkas_ I had taken was the patriarch or leading man of the village—a Tartar of venerable aspect, wearing a pelisse or long robe of blue stuff, with a small black lambskin cap, not unlike an Egyptian tarboosh, from under which his white hair flowed upon his shoulders. Accustomed only to the lawless and brutal military tyranny of the Muscovites and Cossacks, nothing could equal the good man’s astonishment when I informed him, by means of an interpreter, that we merely required the loan of the carts, and that he would be duly paid. Allah, ho Ackbar!—think of that—actually paid, for any inconvenience or loss the villagers might suffer by their detention.