Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/374

 348 THE HALT OX THE CHAP. anuiiiL;- llio Fort itself which couhl ho hrought t(i _J}^1_ hear upon the approaches hy which the AUies inio-ht advance ; that the new, and as yet unarmed, work which threatened the mouth of the ])elbec was assaihible from the ships as well as hy the ,„.n-..iv,a land forces ; * and that, fhially, in the judgment LIm^ both of Lord llaglan and Sir Edmund Lyons, the Kd.nuua Fort, with all its new adjuncts, was not an ob- ^^"'" stacle which ought to bailie a victorious army of from 50,000 to 60,000 men advancing along the coast, with the active and available support of the attendant fleets.-f soumiuess Time, at last, has apparently proved that the inflrencea. inferences of Lord llaglan and Sir Edmund Lyons were sound. More than that, it has shown that, at a period when the Allies might have been marching upon the Star Fort,+ Prince Mentschi- koff had not only withdrawn to the south of Sebastopol, but had deliberately renounced the idea of venturing his army in any encounter on the north of the roadstead.§ Therefore, if Mar- shal St Arnaud had followed the counsels of Lord ♦ ' Defense tie Sebastopol,' p. 222. t Mr Locli's MS. meinoianduni, quoted ante, ]). 338. + Viz., the 22d or 2od of Septciiilicr. After the departure of Prince IMentschikoff in the night of the 24th, the Allies, though not liable to be encountered at the Star Fort by any 'army,' would still have had to deal, as we sliall afterwards sec, with Korniloff and his sailors ; but on the 22d or the 23d, or even, as I consider, on the 24th, the invaders might have niarclied upon the position of the Star Fort without being met by either the army or the .seamen. § After giving his reasons for regarding the position of the Star Fort as untenable by the Prince's army against the Allies, Geueral Todleben says : ' Having thus convinced himself thiit