Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/139

 FRENCH AND ENGLISH SIEGE-WORKS. 107 As though he were indeed the besieger, and chap. IV. his new trenches so many parallels, he armed. — them here and there with artillery. If he had not yet barred by an unbroken line of entrench- ments the ground lately won on Mount Inker- man, he had covered it nevertheless by the fire of his two White Eedoubts; and on the whole one may say that his new outer line of defence extended now from the foot of St George's Eavine to the course of the Woronzoff Eoad. It en- circled at all but one place the whole land-front of the Faubourg. Thus on that newest ' front for attack ' of which the Allies had made choice when devising their great change of plan, the terrible Colonel of Sap- pers was already forestalling, and baffling their studied designs ; nay was even indeed so employ- ing the spells of his art that — not the garrison merely but rather — the fortress itself might almost be said to advance against the French- men besieging it. The French did not arrest their ' approaches ' The design _... .-r-,-1 /i l 1 ■ .• l of the 1st along the Victoria Eidge (where by this time they of January now so far touched on their left a new parallel formed by frustrated . . as to be the English), and they still continued their siege- almost in works begun long ago on Mount Inkerman ; but in the absence of any resolve to counteract re- cent checks by seizing the two White Eedoubts and the now strong Lunette on the Mamelon, it Woronzoff Road was by the Russians called 'the Laboratory ' Ravine. ' Our people used to call the ravine by the name of the road passing through it.