Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/356

 334 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. h A P. Whatever, abstractedly speaking, may be the • value of the reason thus said to have been ad- duced by Lord .Raglan, it was evidently one so far open to question as to give Lord Lucan an excellent opportunity of raisiug a controversy against his chief. Up to that moment, the pre- dicament of Lord Lucan was simply the predica- ment of 'a man who had misconceived his in- structions, and imagined that he must advance down the valley instead of trying to recover the heights; but now, all at once, if his impression of what Lord Raglan said be accurate, he found himself raised into the position of one who, being mortal, and having like other mortals committed an error, has had the good fortune to be rebuked for it in terms fairly open to question ; and he was as competent as any man living to make vigorous use of the advantage thus gained. Ac- cordingly, when opportunity offered, he argued with great cogency against the theory that he should have disobeyed an order which he could not approve, urging soundly that Lord Raglan's survey of the field from the high ground of the Chersonese was necessarily much more complete than that which could be commanded by any one in the plain below ; and that to venture to dis- obey the order under such circumstances, would have been to disobey a General who was not only armed with the superior authority of a Com- mander-in-Chief, but also with superior knovvle'dge. Thus then it resulted that, independently of the substantial merits of the question as they