The front of our “three hundred” was composed of the Scots Greys and Enniskillens, regiments long associated with each other in battle, and old comrades in arms. Side by side they dashed up the gently-sloping ground, and “the Greys with a low eager moan of outbursting desire, the Enniskillens with a cheer,” met the enemy with a terrific shock. Well was it for the gallant General Scarlett that he had ridden several paces in advance of his men, and, hacking and hewing his way single-handed, had cut deeply into the mass of Russian horsemen. For their very numbers became a source of safety instead of danger to him, so that he was enabled completely to escape the shock of the charge of his own devoted troops, which completely crushed the first few ranks of the Russians. After the first fierce shock, the fighting became individual. Here a single scarlet horseman engaged with three or four of the enemy, preserving his life solely by the strength of his sword-arm. There a little knot of three or four cut a pathway through overwhelming odds. “I never felt less fear in my life,” wrote one of the Scots Greys after the fight; “I felt more like a devil than a man. I escaped without a scratch, though I was covered with blood.” General Scarlett himself received five wounds, none of which was he conscious of at the time, while Lieutenant Elliot, his aide-de-camp, had no fewer than fourteen sabre cuts, through which he not only lived, but lived to be returned as “slightly wounded”! The Russians suffered heavily, as our frenzied men cut their way through and through their overwhelming mass. Spectators have described the awe with which they watched this devoted body of scarlet-clad men merge themselves into the sea of Russian grey, and many thought they must be lost indeed. But the keen and practised eye of the commander-in-chief saw that, far from being overwhelmed, our men, though scattered, were more than holding their own. It was indeed the first step to victory if it could be pushed home without delay. The joy with which the order to support “the three hundred” was received may be well judged from the spirit of Lord Cardigan, who, with the soon to be famous Light Brigade, was halted watching the combat, and eagerly awaiting the order to “go in.” “Damn those Heavies!” cried the Earl many times, as in sheer rage at the enforced inaction, he cantered furiously up and down the lines of his squadron; “Damn those Heavies; they’ll have the laugh of us this day!” A spirit shared, it may be stated, by every British trooper on the scene. But it was not to the Light Brigade that Lord Raglan sent the order “to support,” but to the comrades of the three hundred--the Heavy Dragoons and Royals.