Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/88

 66 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, in the interval, they saw the Turkish soldiery be- ' ginning to stream down from the gorge of the work. Then almost immediately they saw the red fezzes pouring out from the other redoubts, so that what they observed on the whole was a general flight of the Turks. They saw nothing of the fierce though short strife which ended in the slaughter of 170 out of the 500 or 600 men on Canrobert's Hill ; and I believe it may be said that the loss sustained by the devoted garrison of this little field-work long remained unknown to the English. Considering that the Turkish sol- diery died fighting in defence of the English lines, this may seem very strange and unnatural ; but the truth is, that between the soldiers of the Prophet and the men of our Army List there was so great a gulf that it proved much more than broad enough to obstruct the transmission of military statistics. The man temporal who would ask for a ' Morning State,' with its column after column of figures is baffled, of course, by the man spiritual, who replies, that by the blessing of the Almighty his servants are as the leaves of the forest ; and soon ceases to apply for a list of 1 casualties ' if he only elicits an answer asserting the goodness of God and an indefinite accession of believers to the promised gardens of Para- dise.* Certainly, Lord Kaglan remained long un- lish Headquarters some trace of an attempt on the part of one of the hapless Turkish commanders to have justice done to hJR people; hut probably the remonstrant did not know how to
 * I find in the correspondence between the French and Eng-