Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/363

 THE BATTLE OE BALACLAVA. 341 Now, General Oanrobert, as we know, had con- chap. ceived from the first that the advance of the lius- ' sians into the plain of Balaclava was a mere snare by which they were trying to lure him down from the Chersonese ; and it must be ac- knowledged that, if looked at in a too narrow spirit, the reasons which could be adduced against any attempt to recapture the forts had a great appearance of cogency. It was said that, with their limited strength, and the great business of the siege in hand, the Allies could not afford the troops needed for occupying ground so distant as that on which stood the redoubts ; that if they were that moment in possession of the heights policy would require that they should give them up the next day ; and that, plainly, it must be unwise for belligerents, whose whole prospects depended upon the speedy capture of Sebastopol, to undertake a combat for the recovery of ground which they could not afford to occupy. In its direct bearing upon what may be called the merely material view of the question, the argument was possibly sound ; but it had the defect which the great Napoleon in the success- ful part of his career so well knew how to avoid — the. defect of leaving out from the reckoning all allowance for those moral forces which govern the actions of men. The events of the day had been such, that if they should be followed by the extrusion of the enemy from the sites of the Turkish redoubts and the recapture of the English guns, the Russians, it was plain, would have to