Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/271

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 249 whatever might be the madness (in general) of chap. charging a battery in front, there, by this time, ! — was no choice of measures. By far the greater part of the harm which the guns could inflict had already been suffered ; and I believe that the idea of stopping short on the verge of the battery did not even present itself for a moment to the mind of the leader. Lord Cardigan moved down at a pace which he Lord car- . digan's has estimated at seventeen miles an hour, and charge into the battery already he had come to within some two or three at the head J of his first horses' lengths of the mouth of one of the guns — Une - a gun believed to have been a twelve-pounder — but then, the piece was discharged ; and its torrent of flame seemed to gush in the direction of his chestnut's off fore-arm. The horse was so governed by the impetus he had gathered, and by the hand and the heel of his rider, as to be able to shy only a little at the blaze and the roar of the gun ; but Lord Cardigan being presently en- wrapped in the new column of smoke now all at once piled up around him, some imagined him slain. He had not been struck. In the next moment, and being still some two horses' lengths in advance of his squadrons, he attained to the long-sought battery, and shot in between two of its guns. There was a portion of the 17th Lancers on our extreme left which outflanked the line of the guns, but with this exception the whole of Lord Cardi- gan's first line descended on the front of the bat- iery ; and as their leader had just done before