Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/104

 82 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap. Thus was easily brought to an end the advance '__ of those horsemen who had found themselves, during a moment, in the front of a Highland bat- Feebieness talion. Springing out of no foregone design undertaken against Campbell's infantry, the attack fell so Russian short that it scarcely gave any example of what squadrons. . might be attempted by horsemen against a body of foot drawn up in line, and two deep. The Queen's troops arrayed on the hillock were able, indeed, to prove their mettle ; but the occasion they found was not such a one as is given to infantry by a resolute onslaught of horse. The Real nature trial they had to pass through on this morning of the trial J r -& & sustained by of the 25th of October was not one directly re- our troops ^ <>n the hii- suiting from any kind of sharp combat, but still it was a trial imposed upon them by the hitherto adverse tenor of the engagement, and, in that sense, by stress of battle. Without being at all formidable in itself, the advance of the Russian squadrons marked what might well seem at the moment to be an ugly, if not desperate crisis in the defence of the English seaport. Few or none, at the time, could have had safe grounds for be- lieving that, before the arrival of succours sent down from the upland, Liprandi would be all at once stayed in his career of victory; and in the judgment of those, if any there were, who suffered themselves to grow thoughtful, the whole power of our people in the plain and the port of Bala- clava must have seemed to be in jeopardy ; for not only had the enemy overmastered the outer line of defence, and triumphantly broken in