As the English grew stronger on the field, General Cathcart with the fourth division made a needless attempt to push forward along the slope overhanging the Tchernaya, in which he was killed, and his men suffered heavily. From the nature of the case, there was nothing to be done except to hold the ground, and let the Russians exhaust themselves, as they gradually did. During the latter part of the battle French troops came up. General Bosquet had naturally been distracted between his primary duty of watching the Russians below him in the Tchernaya valley, and the duty of reinforcing his allies. Soon after the action began he sent a couple of regiments towards Mount Inkerman, but an English general, totally misinformed as to the strength of the Russian attack, stopped them as not being needed. Later Bosquet learned the true state of the case, and also saw that the movements in the Tchernaya valley meant nothing, and he therefore despatched heavy and welcome reinforcements to Mount Inkerman, the foremost of which took an important share in the fighting. It is obvious that if the large Russian force available for the purpose had attacked Bosquet in earnest, he could not have spared a man to support the English, who would have been very hardly pressed. When the Russians finally abandoned the action despairing of success, though they had lost fully 12,000 men, they had still 9000 in reserve, besides their broken front lines, while the English had on the field less than 5000 unwounded men. But for the relief given by the French, who had been fighting beside them for the last hour or two, and had borne the weight of the action to an extent represented by a loss on their part of 900 men, the English would manifestly have been fewer still. They had lost over 2300 men, or about a third of those actually engaged; they were in no position to turn the tables on their opponents, even if prudence had not dictated, as the French undoubtedly thought, the choice so difficult in battle of leaving well alone.
Inkerman was not unappropriately christened "the soldiers' battle." Under the conditions of weather no general could have efficiently directed any elaborate scheme, and fortunately none was needed. The shape of the ground and the relative numbers would have compelled resort to the simple tactics which in fact were adopted, even if the air had been perfectly clear. They were in accordance with the habitual practice of the British soldier to form line, and in that formation sustain the attack of columns, and drive them back in rout when their front has been crushed by the wider fire of the line. Thus regimental officers without superior command, even the men uncommanded when their officers were struck down, were ready to sustain the fight in the best way. "No other European troops," says Sir Edward Hamley, "would at that time have formed in a front of such extent without very substantial forces behind them." With an enormous weight of artillery against them until near the close of the action, with odds of infantry against them which began at three to one, and which must have been heavier still for a while when General Pauloff came on the field, they held their ground with an audacious obstinacy which it would be difficult to parallel in European warfare.