Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/187

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 165 fight its peculiar splendour. When Scarlett rode chap. straight at the centre of a hanging thicket of sabres and lances which not only outflanked him enormously on his right hand as well as his left, but confronted him too with the blackness of squadrons upon squadrons in mass, he did not of course imagine that by any mere impact of his too scanty line he could shake the depths of a column extending far up the hillside ; but he thought he might cleave his way in, and he knew that his people would follow him. He survived the enterprise, and even proved to the world that close fighting under the conditions which he accepted might be a task less desperate than it seemed; but his hopefulness, if hopefulness he had when he drove his horse into the column, could hardly have been warranted, at the time, by the then known teachings of human experience.* By the judgment of Lord Lucan — not tested, The time however, by the hand of the watch — it has been by the fight computed that from the moment when General Scarlett commenced his charge, to the one when the Eussian mass broke, the time was about eight minutes. In order that the Allies should be able to reap from this fight of our Heavy Brigade any fruits at all proportioned to its brilliancy, it was necessary that they should have had on the ground some fresh and unbroken squadrons which would pursue the retreating mass, and convert its defeat into for the charge of Scarlett's three hundred ?
 * What is the closest historical parallel that can be found