Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/337

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 316 may be called a personal combat. This brief chap. combat ended, however, as did the other col- !l_. lisions, in the failure of every attempt to cut off the retreat of the English ; and, without re- ceiving much harm in the course of this singular traverse, our people got past.* 'We got by them,' writes one of our officers, — ' we got by them — ' how, I know not. It is a mystery to me. . . . 1 There is one explanation, and one only — the ' hand of God was upon us ! ' That is an explanation of the deliverance from a cavalry scrape which lies out of the reach of dispute ; but if any gross mortals, intent on mere War-Office business, were attempting to examine causation at the terrestrial end of the chain, it might be useful for them to know in what stage of each combat it was that this hesitating em- barrassment of the Russian cavalry so often evinced itself; and there is the more reason for the inquiry since the firmness of the Muscovite soldier is so well established as to exclude the explanation which might be applicable to the troops of a less valorous nation, if they were to be frequently disclosing incompetence in the critical moment of a combat. The bewilderment of the Eussian cavalry has almost always dis- closed itself at that very point where the lessons acquired in the exercise-ground, or even in mock killed by the Russian lancers without it becoming known that the deaths were so occasioned ; but my impression is that few casualties resulted from this encounter.
 * Tt is possible that men might have been unhorsed and