Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/254

 22-4 Tin: pkkuicament incurred bv tiik allies. CHAP, pheropol, and tho interior of Piussia, would be L_ able to march to and IVo at his pleasure between Sebastopol and the great road to the north, and would have it in his power to engage the besiegers whenever he might wish to join lattle, he himself all the time — supposing him to keep to his heights — would be quite secure from attack. Cooped down in this way by the strength of the ground they had given up to the I'elieving army, the be- siegers were so painfully circumstanced that, how- ever largely they might be reinforced, they still would have to bear the torment of learning that for the purpose of operating aggressively in the open field from the base they now had on the coast, their sti'cngth could avail them nothing.* We just now perceived how it happened that the Allied armies got to be pitted — no longer against the rrince-governor jNIentschikoff, but — against the whole State of Russia; and we now come to see that (by reason of the impregnability of the roadstead, and of the heights ranging east- ward from the mouth of the Tchernaya) the line the enemy upou which tliis great empire had need to pre- (toncentrate pare for conflict, M'as the arc of only four miles TiiKjn a siliaii which compassed Sebastopol and its suburb on feToun-i. the land side. Nay, even from that narrow front a deduction would be practically warrantable, be- cause, towards its flanks botli east and west, the the efForts whioli the Allies were ready to make in the .sprinf^ of j the following year, with a view to recover their power of under- taking oflensivc operations in the field.
 * This will lie made evident enough when I come to .sjioak of