Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/375

 THE RATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 353 could pass lightly over the conflicts which his chap. cavalry hazarded with the Highlanders and with ' Scarlett's dragoons ; could speak frankly of the wondrous pertinacity evinced by our Light Cav- alry in its road to destruction ; could state that, in the teeth of all the forces brought down by the Allies, he had persisted in holding the line of the captured redoubts ; could show that he was thus pressing close upon the English camp at Bala- clava ; and could end by producing the captured guns and the captured standard as fit tokens of what had been achieved. Despatched from the camp of a relieving army to a beleaguered town, such a narrative as this, with the many and bril- liant adornments which rumour would abundantly add, might well carry heart to the garrison ; and we now know that the tidings and the trophies of the battle brought such joy and encouragement to the people defending Sebastopol as to aggravate, and aggravate heavily, the already hard task of the besiegers. With each hour of the lapsing time from the night of the 20th of September, that store of moral power over the enemy which the Allies acquired by their victory had been almost cease- lessly dwindling ; and although it be granted that, so far as concerned all those Eussians who were assailed by our cavalry, or by D'Allonville's Chasseurs d'Afrique, the old spell was superbly renewed, it is yet, I think, true that with the rest of the enemy's forces, and especially in the lines of Sebastopol, our patience under the capture VOL. V. Z