Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/87

 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA, 65 our army (including Lord Raglan himself) had chap regarded the work on Canrobert's Hill as a fast- 1_ ness susceptible of a protracted defence; and — strange as the statement may seem — were, for a long time, unacquainted with the nature of the conflict there sustained by the brave Turkish soldiery. Several causes contributed to obscure the truth. In the first place, the defence of the work, though carried to extremity, was still of necessity brief ; for when once the men, numbered by thousands, had swarmed in over a feeble para- pet on the top of an isolated hillock which was held by only some 500 or 600 men, the end, of course, could not be distant ; and although there were numbers of our cavalry men who had been so posted as to be able to see that the Turks stood their ground with desperation, and were in close bodily strife with the enemy before they gave way under his overwhelming numbers, yet to the great bulk of the spectators, whether Eng- lish or French, who gazed from the steeps of the Chersonese, no such spectacle was presented. They looked from the west ; and, the attack being made upon the north-eastern acclivity of Can- robert's Hill, they saw nothing of the actual clash that occurred between the brave few and the resolute many. They descried the enemy on the heights of Kamara and on the line of the Woron- zoff road, but lost sight of him when from that last position he had descended into the hollow to make his final assault ; and soon afterwards, with- out having been able to make out what had passed vol. v. K