Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/210

 184 BATTLE OF THE ALMA. CHAP, masses. For, if one might recur to the image I o O ' already used, one would say that the spear-head had flown off, and that what remained in the hands of Prince Napoleon was only the wooden shaft. Justice in this regard is the more needful, since it would plainly be unfitting and impolitic for Prince Napoleon to say in his defence, that with 7000 Prench troops around him he was still reduced to helplessness by the want of his Zouave Eegiment. Aisost There is another consideration which alone wasriiiiug would sccm to frco Prince Napoleon from almost with this Division, all the blame founded upon the backwardness of and lie therefore his Divisiou. In the midst of that very Division, was answer- '' ' able for its Marshal St Arnaud was all this time riding ; and jilace in the ... ''«w- it is obvious that by being thus present with a force which was hanging back out of its place, the officer who commanded the whole Prench army brought full upon his own shoulders the weight of the blame which might otherwise be thrown upon the divisional general. irAnniiu's But the eloping of his Zouave liegiment was thrusts not the only mishai) which befell Prince Na- itself for- •' '■ ward in polcou. Ve saw that D'Aurelle's brigade — a a<lvanee ^ of Prince brigade forming part of the 4th or Pieserve Divi- Napoleon ; ox sion — had been ordered to support Canrobert. Of the motives which governed the leader of this brigade I know nothing, Perhaps, whilst he was low down in the bottom of the valley, he lost his conception of the distance (the lateral distance from east to west) which separated him from the Division he was ordered to support. At all