Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/40

 CHAP 18 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. think himself planted as fast as a sentry at the ^ gate of a palace. If ordered to advance down a valley without being told where to halt, he might proudly abstain from supplying the omission, and lead his brigade to destruction. Lord Lucan was the brother-in-law of Lord Cardigan ; but so little beloved by him that in the eyes of cynical London, an arrangement for coupling the one man to the other seemed almost a fell stroke of humour. It might have been thought that, in a free country, the notion of carrying official perverseness to any such extreme length as this must have been nipped in the bud. It was not so. If England was free, she was also very patient of evil institutions, as well as of official misfeasance. She trusted too much to the fitful anger of Parliament, and the chances of remonstrance in print. Injustice to Lord Cardigan — because tending to account for, and in some measure palliate, the act which will be presently mentioned — it should be stated that, some short time before the embarka- tion, he had had to endure a bitter disappoint- ment, under which he continued to smart during the first two weeks of the invasion. Lord Lucan was to have been left in Bulgaria, and, under that arrangement, Lord Cardigan in the Crimea would have been commander of our cavalry during several momentous days, without being liable to any interference except from Lord Eaglan him- self; but Lord Lucan successfully insisted upon his claim to be present with the portion of the