Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/506

 47 G ArrKNDix. applied to General de Tudlebeu's estiuiule of the strength of Sebastopol on the 29th of September. It seems to me that one who had taken such a part as General de Todle- ben did would rather have been tempted to make the most of what he had achieved in even a brief p)eriod of time, and to say, ' Sebastopol was at first defenceless : but in the ' course of the four days and nights immediately preceding ' the 29th of September, I put the defences in such a state ' that, according to my judgment, we could have then point, however, I must be suffered to intrude an opinion founded upon my estimate of General de Todleben's char- acter. Unless I strangely mistake the man, General de Todleben's mind is of so robust and sterling a quality, and he so loves the truths of his engineering science, that when undertaking to estimate the defensive strength of an en- trenched position on a given day he would hardly allow his judgment to be warped by the stress of what Sir John calls a ' purpose.' In the 13th paragrapli, Sir John Burgoyne says that ' in ' by an adversary, the safest rule for a historian is to ac- ' cept his [the adversary's] facts, and disregard his reason- ' ing, so far as it applies to the measures of an o]3ponent.' I certainly have not adopted that singular canon. I am neither prepared to accept indiscriminately all Todleben's facts, nor to discard indiscriminately all his reasoning; but, on the other hand, I have not, as Sir John Burgoyne thinks, done the exact contrary. Sir John says I disregard General de Todleben's facts, and ' accej^t all the reasoning ' without hesitation.' What are the facts, and what the reasoning, to which this sweeping comment applies? I cannot even guess the answer which Sir John Burgoyne would give to that question. So far as concerns General de Todleben's facts, I have endeavoured to sift them, anJ
 * olfered a successful resistance to any assault.' Upon this
 * dealing with the published accounts of military operations