As at the Alma, there were claims that the Russians had engaged in atrocities against the British and the French. It was said that they had robbed and killed the wounded on the ground,al sometimes even mutilating their bodies. British and French soldiers put these actions down to the ‘savagery’ of the Russian troops, who they said had been well primed with vodka. ‘They give no quarter,’ wrote Hugh Drummond of the Scots Guards to his father on 8 November, ‘and this should be represented, as it is a scandal to the world that Russia, professing to be a civilized power, should disgrace herself by
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