Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/378

 356 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, nay, even of regiments, where claims for the least h share of glory seemed clashing at all with his own ; and finally by a process of tardy litigation explod- ing, after eight years of controversy, in one of the law courts at Westminster, he at length forced the world to distinguish between his brigade and himself. He forced men, if so one may speak, to decompose the whole story of the ' Light Cavalry • Charge ; ' and one result is, that the narrator of that part of the combat which began when the chief went about, is driven against his will to an unaccustomed division of subjects, having first to go home with the leader, and then travel back to the fight. In such conditions, it is not possible to do real justice by merely saying what happened. It would be cruel, and wrong to speak dryly of Lord Cardigan's retreat without giving his justi- fication. Accordingly, at the very moment of narrating his retreat I began to show how he defended it ; and I now think it right to impart the nature of his justification with more fulness than could well be allowed me whilst yet in the midst of the story. So long as he moved down the valley under the guidance of what he understood to be an assigned duty, no danger seemed to appal him, and of a certainty none bent him aside from his course. That which afterwards baffled him was something more perturbing than mere danger to one whose experience had been military without being warlike. What he encountered was an emergency. Acting apparently with the full per-