Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/83

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 61 upon sense of power. In this instance, however, CHAP. the assailants and the assailed were both so re- solute that, for once, the actual clash of arms was not to be averted by opinion. The many flooded in upon the few, overwhelming, surrounding, de- stroying, yet still confronted with heroic desper- ation, and owing all the way they could make to the sheer fighting of the men, who thus closed with their Mussulman foe, and to the weight of the numbers behind them. With much slaughter The fort i • n i, at length of the devoted Turks — who lost, m killed only, carried. no less than 170 out of perhaps about five or six hundred men — the work was carried at half-past seven o'clock, with its standard and its guns ; but it seems that, before moving out, the English artilleryman who had been placed in the redoubt to assist the Turks took care to spike the guns which had armed it. The colours of the Azoff regiment now floated from the summit of Can- robert's Hill. When the Turks in the three next redoubts Abandon- saw how it had fared with their brethren on Can- the Turks of the robert's Hill, and perceived that, under the eyes three next - 1 redoubts. of some 1500 English horse, the work was left to fall into the enemy's hands without a squadron being launched to support it by any attack on the foe, they had what to them would seem reason for thinking ill things of the Christians, and were not without warrant for judging that the English would fail to support them in any endeavour they might make to defend the remaining forts. But whether these Osmanlis reasoned, or whether they