'Rustic band of Bulgarian Musicians, who played us thro their village on our ride to Schumla. July 1854 Capt F. Lieut M- & myself & Armenian Servant Mattrons'

Watercolour by 2nd Lieutenant William Thomas Markham (1830-1886), 2nd Battalion, Rifle Brigade, 1854 (c).

Three Rifle Brigade soldiers on horseback following a group of musicians who are wearing turbans and playing flutes, violins and drums. A figure in a red and blue striped jacket and red fez follows the soldiers on horseback, with a white building and birds in the background.

Shumla, now Shumen in Bulgaria, was a strategically important fortified town in the Balkans used as a headquarters by Ottoman Turkish forces during the Crimean War (1854-1856).

From an album of watercolour paintings and sketches by Colonel William Markham, 1820 (c) and Second Lieutenant William Thomas Markham (1830-1886), 2nd Battalion, Rifle Brigade, relating to the Crimean War (1854-1856), 1854 (c).

Purchased with the assistance of the Society of Friends of the National Army Museum.