Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/145

 BURGOYNE. 1 1 3 bear on his objects a keen, piercing intellect, a chap. bold, hopeful spirit, vast energies always sus- !_ tained by a manful warlike zeal ; and the events of the 17th of October— the day he dealt his first blow — showed plainly enough to all that the veteran when striking struck hard. Owing mainly perhaps to the circumstance of his being styled an ' adviser ' instead of holding simple 'command,' he used often to recommend measures without having learnt antecedently the number of troops or workmen that well could be spared for the purpose, and therefore of course the foundations on which any such project rested were ' postulates ' rather than facts ;( 8 ) but, al- though for this reason his counsels furnished often much more of suggestion than of actual, present guidance, they still were always enlight- ening, and at last, as we saw, they won their own way to acceptance by Canrobert and all his generals. Lord Palmerston's newly formed Government were content with the plan of siege formed on the 1st of January at the instance of Sir John Burgoyne ; and one therefore may fairly surmise that, when determining to recall the 'adviser,' they mainly based their resolve upon a disap- proval of those 'early counsels' anterior to the siege which I have not attempted to screen from the charge of being pernicious; so that, if my conjecture be sound, the Ministers may be said to have judged him for what he had done much more than for what he was doing. In the ab- VOL. VIII. H