Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/295

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 273 self master of all* After the Due d'Aumale him- chap. self, no one perhaps kuew better what this fa- '__ mous regiment could do than that very General General Morris Morris, the officer commanding the whole of the French Cavalry Division, and now present in per- son with his first brigade ; for he it was who with this superb ' Fourth/ and one other of the regi- ments of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, had issued at the battle of Isly from that famous amassment of troops which Bugeaud used to call his ' boar's ' head,' and carried by his onslaught sheer ruin into the army of Morocco. This was the General who had ridden down to be present in person with the troops of his first brigade, and this ' Fourth ' was one of the two regiments of the Chasseurs d'Afrique of which the brigade consisted. General d'Allonville com- manded the brigade. During the earlier moments of the fatal ad- vance down the valley, it could not but be diffi- cult to infer that the operation was to be one of an irrational kind, there being at first no clear reason for imagining that the Light Brigade would really descend betwixt the open jaws of the enemy, in- stead of proceeding, as Lord Eaglan had ordered, to recapture the lost Turkish heights ; f but when, after some time, General Morris saw that our t I have already said that at the point whence our Light Brigade advanced, the angle of difference between the right road and the wrong one was only about twenty degrees ; and it well might be some time before a spectator could convince himself that the brigade was really going down the valley. VOL. V. S
 * In May 1843.