Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/505

 ATPENDIX. 475 which he and tlte French advisers assitjned to the Allied Armies, the means were ' totally inadequate ; ' but they say that /or the j^urjyose of winning a battle, and proceeding at once to capture Sebastopol, the means were sufficient. The fallacy is occasioned by omitting to consider that the summary method was the one adapted to the means which the Allies really possessed ; whereas the chronic method was one for which, as Sir John Burgoyne himself says, the ' means Avere totally inadequate.' With respect to paragraphs 11 and 12, I hardly know what Sir John Burgoyne can mean by saying that I ' adopt ' in toto certain views of the campaign which have been ' put forward by the Eussians.' I have, no doubt, con- sidered that, upon the question whether Sebastopol was in a condition to resist an assault on any given day, the opinion of the great engineer who defended the place was of very high value ; but I surely have not carried to excess the confidence which General de Todleben's opinion is so well fitted to inspire. What I say in the summing up of chapter xi.* is this : 'General de Todleben is fallihle ; but ' unless he has underrated the defensive resources of Sebasto- ' 2^ol which he himself was preparing in the four last days ' of September, the determination of the Allies to give the ' garrison respite will have to be ranged as the third of the ' lost occasions which followed the battle of the Alma.' How is it possible that language thus guarded can be spoken of as an adoption ' in toto ' of the Russian views 1 Sir John Burgoyne says in paragraph 10 that General de Todleben, Avriting ' for the purpose of exalting as much ' as possible the brilliancy of the defence,' is ' under a ' strong temptation to depreciate the strength and resources ' of the defenders.' Whatever weight might attach to that observation when applied to the earlier days of the cam- paign, I cannot perceive that it would hold good when
 * End of chap. vii. of this Edition.