Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/424

 398 COUNSELS ENDING IN THE LH AP. lion of the wounded, and, in that way, prolonging ^- the halt. And now, in the evening of the 24th of Sep- tember, whilst the troops were establishing their quarters among the gardens and the villas on the Belbec, the Allies took their final resolve. LoniR.i-- Lord Eaglan, with some of his Staff, went to ference with the Camp of the French Headquarters. The St Aniaud iutcrvicw was not a long one. Lord Piaglan, in evening of few words, and for the last time, submitted that the Allies should go on with their original plan of campaign, and assault the works on the north of Sebastopol. Marshal St Arnaud once more declined to agree to this. He said that the de- fences of the Star Fort had revetments in masonry, and that he would not undertake to attack such a work without laying formal siege to it.* This answer was treated as negativing all further idea of attacking Sebastopol from the north. f As regards the course which, in these circumstances, was to be resorted to. Lord Raglan, as we saw, had himself proposed the alternative plan ; and ^farshal St Ai'naud, it seems, though not with- the Duke of Newcastle, written just after tliis confeience, and dated, 'On the Belbec, 24th Sojit., night,' Lord Eaglan says : ' We crossed to the Belbec this afternoon, and moved to the ' lieiglits above it. I was anxious to have gone farther, but the ' French thought otherwise.' + The mouth of the Belbec being commanded by the new battery thrown up near the Star Fort, it was conceived that no base of operations could be constituted in that region without first carrying the Star Fort, and that, consequently, any attacks on the Fort must be of a siimmarv kind.
 * Iiiforiiiatioii from an ofTifcr present. In a private letter to