Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/80

 50 SEliASTorOL BEFUKK THE BATl'LE CiiAr. all, iVoni the courage wilh which Kornilofr and III. . '. . his seamen, when forced to take to the laud, stood fast to the defence of a place which Prince ]Ients- chikoff and his army had abandoned, — there is ground to infer that, whatever may still have been needed to fit the Elack Sea lleet for great encoun- ters at sea, it would not have been wanting to itself in the less complex duty of lighting to ex- tremity in the roadstead. Security Beforc tlio day of the Alma (when alarm roadstead; brouglit about the resort to a new and mournful expedient), it was believed by the Prussians that these defences alone were fully enough to make the roadstead secure against an attack from the sea; and after the sinking of the ships, if not before, the Allies reached the same conclusion, abstaining throughout the war from any attempt andits>)ear- to break in with their lleets. So it resulted ing upon the land (hat botli the north side of the place and the whole of Sebastopol itself, including the Kai'abcl suburb, were not only safe in fact from the at- tacks of the Allies in every part fronting the roadstead or the ^Man-of-war Harbour, but were also perceived to be safe by the defenders of the ])lace; and that last circumstance was of course a great boon to them, because it enabled them to concentrate their resources and their energies upon ground where the dangers were real. Nor were even these all the advantages which the defenders of Sebastopol drew from their hold of the roadstead and its creeks ; for, on its eastern side, the Karabel suburb was so boinidcd by the defence.