Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/419

 PLAN OF THE FLANK MATtCII. 393 at the sier-e of BiirTOS, aud because he was at New c n A p. Orleans, and because he Avas advising in the ^ business of trying to take Sebastopol at a time when the place did not fall, therefore some, in estimating his quality as a general, might con- demn him, after the manner of the Athenians, lor not being fortunate ; and supposing it to be in- sisted upon (as it woidd be by the more accurate Moderns) that a mere charge of lucklessness is no honest answer to a question concerning the capac- ity of a general, the objector, wlien thus driven home, might venture perhaps a surmise that Sir John Burgoyne's sureness of judgment was liable to be endangered by his too indisciiminate reliance upon the processes of close reasoning; for a method like that is most apt to lead man into fallacies, whenever he applies it to questions of such a kind that they need to be solved by the instinctive, the divining power, or even by coai'se sagacity. Still, the tenor of counsels, appearing at first sight to result from a too studious method of solv- ing warlike problems, might be traceable, after all, to the nature of Sir John Burgoyne's position at the English Headquarters, rather than to the original bent of his mind; for ]ie who, without holding a command, was called upon to give advice likely to be accepted at the Frencli Head- quarters, as well as by his own chief, was obliged to make proposals of such a kind that he could it would have been matter of course for liim to decline tha command of the army, but upon that point Lord Kaglan un- deceived the Secretary of State in very decisive terms.