Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/271

 THE OPENING OF THE SIEGE. 241 though it were a grim, sullen lion obeying the CHAT, voice of his keepers. ^- This process of landing battering - trains and bringing them up to the front proved too difficult to be got through in the short space of time that Avas probably reckoned sufficing at the period when the Allies were resolving to enter upon a siege ; and before they had yet got in readiness to open their first trench, the enemy's field army began to show signs of intending to change the attitude to M'hich its chief had condemned it since the day of the Alma. Prince Mentschikoff must 7th oct. have been told by his own officers, so early as the chlngein L'Sth or the 29th of September, that the Mac- ofMentschi. kenzie Height was clear of the invaders, but his arwy; mind, it would seem, had been so put awry by disasters, as to become almost inaccessible to good tidings;* and until several more days were past, he had confined the movements of his field army to those peaceful regions on the Belbec, in which it M'as impossible for his troopers to find a single battalion or squadron, either French or English. Nay, unless General de Todleben errs, Prince Mentschikoff's determination to move his army to the north of Sebastopol was actually a conse- quence of his learning that the Allies had marched off to the south.f But, by the 7th of October, • On the 28th of September Prince MentschikofT sent two squadrons of regular cavalry and two of Cossacks to the Mac- kenzie Heights. — Todleben, p. 267. t ' The information which they [the cavalry patrols] gathered ' in their march proved it certain that the enemy had defini- ' tively passed to the south side. In consequence of this report, VOL. IV. Q