Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/234

 202 A PARALLEL OPENED BY MINING. CHAP. VII. And suc- ceeded after an interval by Niel. ' States,' he — a man noble -hearted and just — would never have harboured the thought which inspired his ungenerous words. It was on the 15th of April that General Bizot died. Lord Eaglan in person, together with those of his Staff who could be spared from their im- perative duties, showed the feeling with which they regarded the memory of the brave Engineer by following his remains to the grave. In command of the French Engineers General Bizot was succeeded provisionally by General Dalesme, and definitively — after an interval which lasted until the 5th of May — by General Niel, who proposed himself for the place. This last appointment, however, was not of a nature to clash with the secret, the personal services which Niel had engaged to perform. The French opening ground by mines in front of the Fhigstaff Basticn ; General Bizot had scarce breathed his last, when the French carried into effect a design he had long entertained, and had long been seeking to execute.* At the close of that series of min- ing operations which he had devised for the pur- pose, they at length on the evening of Sunday the 15th brought about some convulsing explo- sions which opened up from below a line of vol- cano-like craters at a distance of less than a hundred yards from the counterscarp of the Flag- staff Bastion, and thus formed in front of the Work a long, deep cavity, interrupted, it is true, direction.
 * See ante, p. 36, an account of his earlier effort in the same