Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/465

 THK 17TII OF OCTOBER. -i;]') I do not, however, represent that if the two chap Commanders had been communicating with one '_ another at the critical moment, they would have changed their design. During the whole of the day, and notwithstanding that their cannonade had succeeded at one point whilst failing at the other, they, each of them, apparently continued to treat it as settled that, by way of preliminary to the operation of assaulting, the fire of both the Works which were to be stormed must first be got down. If the whole Allied army had been one people obeying one chief, the Commander, when survey- ing the state to which the conflict had been brought after four o'clock by the destruction of the Eedan, might not have been so ill content with the general result of the cannonade as to reject a large gift which the fortune of war had just brought him, for no better reason than that the gift was but a half of the entire result which he had sought to attain by artillery. Judging that the failure of the cannonade on his left was, upon the whole, well compensated by the success at- tained on his right, a general so circumstanced might have proceeded at once to assault. But v/ith the Allies, that force on the left which had sustained the check was an indepen- dent army, was the offspring of an independent nation, was commanded by an independent gene- ral ; and there needed an almost romantic affection for the common cause to make the French act in ilie way that woukl have been only natural to them if the force on the riiiht which then chanced