Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/381

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 359 or otherwise governing the fragments of his first chap. line, the exigency under which a General may be __ forced to leave his supports to take care of them- selves would seem to have lost its force. After the conclusion he had come to in regard to the hopelessness of attempting to rally his first line, or taking any farther part in its combats, Lord Cardigan was so circumstanced that he had leisure to look after his supports ; and, indeed, there was no other public duty of a momentous kind that he well could attempt to discharge. Lord Cardigan, however, has reinforced this Hisstate- . ments and theory by an important assertion. He solemnly expiana- declares that when he retreated he nowhere could see his supports ; and after intimating a belief that he could not have reached them without pushing his search through bodies of Eussian cavalry, he finally submits that any endeavour on his part to get to his supports under such cir- cumstances would have been absolutely hopeless and therefore wrong. In explanation of the course that he took in His written . . T / ~ i. explanations retiring, Lord Cardigan has made written state- of the course ° ° he took in ments, of which the following are a portion : — retiring After stating that he ' gradually retreated ' until he reached the battery into which he had led the first line, he goes on to say — ' On arriving there I ' found no part of the first line remaining there ; ' those which survived the charge had passed off to 1 the left short of the Eussian limber-carriages or
 * retreated up the hill. I can upon my most solemn
 * oath swear that in that position, and looking