Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/212

 190 THE RATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap. It was supposed that Lieutenant Calthorpe (an ' officer of the cavalry, and one of Lord Raglan's aides-de-camp), who chanced to stand ready and expectant, would be charged with the mission ; but Lord Eaglan called for Captain Nolan (the aide-de- camp of the Quartermaster-General), and specially desired that the order should be entrusted to him. captain Nolan was no common man. Surrounded as he was at Headquarters by men of the world whose pleasant society must have been appar- ently well calculated to moderate a too wild devotion to one idea, he yet was an enthusiast — an enthusiast unchilled and unshaken. His faith was that miracles of war could be wrought by squadrons of horse, that the limits of what could fairly be asked of the cavalry had been wrongly assigned, and that — if only it could be properly constituted and properly led — the cav- alry, after all, was the arm which should govern the issue of battles. Then adding to this creed an unbounded trust in the warlike quality of our troopers, he went on to conclude that the domin- ion of England in the world could be best assured by the sabre. He knew that where the question of cavalry excellence could be narrowed to a ques- tion of cavalry fighting, the English horsemen had been used to maintain their ascendant. The great day of Blenheim, he knew, was won in the main by our cavalry. With a single brigade of our cav- alry at Salamanca, Le Marchant had cut through a French army. Nolan imagined that nothing but perverse mismanagement and evil choice of