At the Alma, Prince Menshikov, commander-in-chief of Russian forces in the Crimea, decided to make his stand on the high ground south of the river. Although the Russian Army was numerically inferior to the combined Franco-British force (35,000 Russian troops as opposed to 60,000 Anglo-French-Egyptian troops), the heights they occupied were a natural defensive position, indeed, the last natural barrier to the allied armies on their approach to Sevastopol. Furthermore, the Russians had more than one hundred field guns on the heights they could employ with devastating effect from the elevated position; however, none were on the cliffs facing the sea, which were considered too steep for the enemy to climb.