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 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 227 be hardly in readiness to seize the opportunity chap. which Lord Cardigan was presenting to them; _____ and indeed for some time, the very extravagance Jj__ng of the operation masked its character from the ai_. e to the intelligence of the enemy, preventing him from ___3 nnM3 seeing at once that it must result from some stu- theta pendous mistake ; but the Eussians at length perceived that the distance between our Heavy Brigade and Lord Cardigan's squadrons was every moment increasing, and that, whatever might be the true meaning of the enterprise in which our Light Cavalry had engaged, the red squadrons now every moment left further and further in rear were not under orders to give it that kind of support which the Englishman calls ' thorough- ' going.' This once understood, the enemy had fair means of inferring that the phenomenon of ten beautiful squadrons moving down the North Valley in well-ordered lines, was not the com- mencement of anything like a general advance on the part of the Allies, and might prove, after all, to be hardly the result of design. Accordingly, with more or less readiness, the forces on the Causeway Heights, the forces on the Fedioukine Hills, and the twelve-gun battery which crossed the lower end of the valley, became all prepared to inflict upon our Light Cavalry the consequences of the fault which propelled it. It is true that the main body of the Eussian cavalry, drawn up in rear of the confronting battery, had been cowed by the result of its encounter with Scarlett's dragoons ; but, when that has been acknowledged