Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/199

 THE COUNSELS OF THE ALLIES. 169 truth.* Seeino- the eiitrniicc of the roadstead chap. . .VII. blocked up, they were not without means of '...- inferring that the resources of the Black Sea fleet, botli in men and material, must become, in a measure, available for the land defences ; and they were themselves sure witnesses of the energy and haste which the garrison thought it needful to exert in tiying to strengthen their lines; for upon the s])ots where their field-gla.sses had been pointing therc were thousands of men and women at work. Of the motive, indeed, with which Prince Mentschikoff had withdrawn his army, and of the x^olicy which was guiding the labours of the garrison, the Allies, as might be expected, could only judge by inference; but upon the whole, it may be said that what they knew of the truth was enough to have served them as the basis of a riiiht conclusion ; so that, if they determined aright, it is to their own dis- cernment that the merit seems due, and if they men had been withdrawn from Sebastopol was in some measure counterbalanced by that of underrating the numbers of the sailors; so that, upon the whole, the Allies did not nnu-h ex- aggerate the number of armed men, including sailons, who were defending Sebastopol. Sir John Burgoyne did not reckon that number (which, as we saw, was 28,000) at more than from 25,000 to 30,000. — 'Military Opinions,' pp. 197, 201, 240, in which last page the estimate is only 20,000 to 25,000. The Allies, however, Avcre unacquainted with the dcnominntion of the few land-service troops they had liefore thcni in Sebastopol (5000 militiamen with some sappers, see ante p. 128), and con- sequently remained ignorant of the very significant fact that when Prince MentscliikofT marched out, he did not leave in the place so much as nxn one Line battalion.
 * The error of those who supposed that no more tlian 16,000