Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/427

 PLAN OF THE FLANK MAKCIL 401 Lyons that he could not understand the jNIarshal's cii AP. recusancy. But time has since thrown some light : on what was then obscure ; and to me it seems that the theory which best explains the counsels of the French Headquarters at this time is the ob- vious, the simple, the shallow one — the one which traces them to the bodily condition of Marshal St Arnaud.* Without any accurate knowledge of the successive maladies from which the Marshal was suffering, or of their singular intermissions, it is easy to see that, in the interval between the battle of the Alma and his final determination to consent to the flank march, he was grievously ill iiisbodiiy in health, and was, from time to time, prostrated by his sufferings. But just as, in his African campaigns, he had more than once bravely re- solved to drag his suffering body out of hospital that he might be acting with his regiment in some approaching engagement, so now, exerting himself to hold on in spite of his bodily state, he persisted in keeping his command. In the con- dition in which he was it was physically impos- sible for him to perform the laborious duties of a general who has to provide for the attack of such a place as the Star Fort. If it be said that he might have resigned his command, the answer is, that that was exactly the end he was striving adopted ; but he also intimated that, at the time of the Mar- shal's refusal to go on against the North Forts, the state of his bodily health was not so far known to him (Sir Edmund) or to Lord Raglan as to enable them to see that that was the cause of the evil. VOL. in. 2 C
 * This was the solution which Sir Edmund Lyons afterwards