2-914-024 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Siege of Sebastopol - the Rifles in the Trenches, 1854. Crimean War. 'The latest accounts from the English Camp inform us that our riflemen in the trenches continue to pick off the Russian gunners in the most astonishing manner. One rifleman is said to have killed no less than fourteen in one battery, so that we need not be surprised at their bad gunnery. Never was the superiority of skill and science in war so plainly demonstrated as it has been in the use of the Minié rifle, both by the French and English, during the campaign in the Crimea. The Emperor Nicholas, who begins to see that sheer brute force and numbers are hardly a match for such enemies as he has to encounter, has resolved to organise a regiment of sharpshooters for the spring campaign, "in full view," as he says, "of the dangers that threaten our beloved fatherland".' From "Illustrated London News", 1854.