Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/349

 THE 17th of OCTOBER. 319 wounded is confined by French records to fifty ; chap. xni but for those who had to witness the scene of the '_ havoc, whilst yet the disaster was new, it may well have been appalling to see half a hundred of human beings, who had. all been alive and busy the instant before, now changed by one blast of fire into mere blackened corpses or maimed and helpless sufferers. Therefore mere horror may its effect have partly conduced to what followed ; and the spirit of ... theFienol: sensitive, anxious, humane disposition of General troops. Canrobert laid him painfully open to the impres- sions which such a calamity was but too well fitted to create ; but French troops know so much about war, and are so prone to the use of the intellect as a means of divining results, that, in general, their feelings, whether of ardour or of despondency, are more or less founded upon reasoning, if not upon reason. Even if the French gunners had not dis- covered the error before, they would have been swift to infer the faultiness of General Bizot's dis- positions when they saw that their batteries could be raked ; and upon learning from this signal misfortune that a great magazine of gunpowder had been ineffectually sheltered from the enemy's fire, they would be likely to carry yet further their distrust of the men in authority. But whatever was the immediate cause of the feeling, it is certain that the moral prostration occasioned by the blowing up of the magazine was out of all proportion to the mere physical harm which it had wrought. The service of the battery in which the disaster had occurred was at