Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/188

 1G2 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. CHAP, sent no good tidings, and apparently had de- ' spatched no orders or directions of any kind.* With every moment the just grounds for alarm were increasing ; and when the foremost divisions of the British army sprang to their feet and rapidly advanced along their whole line, the Rus- sian generals and commanders of batteries had to cast in their minds and see how far their desire to hold fast a position very precious to the army and to the honour of the empire could be made to consist with the absolute safety of a few pieces of ordnance. They were about to be assailed by the English army. But this was not all they had to look for. The continued detention of Prince Ment- schikoff in that part of the position which con- fronted the French, gave ground for the fear that an evil crisis must there be passing. The feai would be that Bosquet's turning movement against the Russian left was producing its full effect, and that the tide of war, rolling up along the line of the Russian position, had set in from west to east. If men were filled with this dread — a dread well justified by inference fairly drawn at the time, though not by actual facts — it would be to the Teh^graph Height that they would bend their inquiring eyes, and there they would gaze with minds prepared to learn that the French, march- 'apparently,' for although the narratives of Gortschakoff and Kvetzinski do not in terms declare that they received no orders, the tenor of their statements is all but equivalent to actual assertion.
 * I think I might have almost ventured to leave out the