Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/288

 266 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, hunting-men will be able to describe his predica- _ ment, and to sum up a good deal of truth in a spirit of fairness. For eight or ten minutes, Lord Cardigan had led the whole field, going always straight as an arrow : he then was 'thrown out.' Perhaps if he had followed the instincts of the sport from which the phrase has been taken, he would have been all eye, all ear, for a minute, and in the next would have found his brigade. But with him, the sounder lessons of Northamp- tonshire had been overlaid by a too lengthened experience of the soldiering that is practised in peace-time. In riding back after the troops which he saw in retreat up the valley, he did as he would have done at home after any mock charge in Hyde Park. It will always be remembered that he who re- tired from the now silenced battery was the man who, the foremost of all a few minutes before, had charged in through its then blazing front, and that that very isolation which became the imme- diate cause of his misfortune, was the isolation, after all, of a leader who had first become parted from his troops by shooting on too far ahead of them. Lord Cardigan was not amongst the last of the horsemen who came out of the fight ; and his movement in retreat was so ordered as to prevent him from sharing with his people in the combats which will next be recorded. It must therefore be acknowledged that his exit from the scene in which he had been playing so great a part was at