Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/261

 TROUBLED COUNSELS. 229 course of the following day a great weight of chat. opinion pronounced that the enemy's shattered !_ defences were meet to be carried by storm. Whether hurried along by this feeling, or — for Can ro i»ert i ■ • A i r eitli. r shar- the moment — advisedly sharing it, General Can- i«a tiie ivei J. ing or liur- robert took strides on the road which seemed <i<<i along by it. leading to resolute action. But Niel ? Euled alike by the exigencies of Niei. his 'Mission,' and by the strength of his con- victions, he could hardly have relaxed his desire that the prudently guided Allies should adven- ture no assault of Sebastopol without first in- vesting the place ; and, if he did not stamp out the notion of prompt appeals to the bayonet by a peremptory use of his delegate power, nay even appeared for some hours to approve a resort to such measures, he has left behind him a clue from which one perhaps may infer that without foregoing his object he only changed his means of obtaining it. He believed that, though de- termined beforehand to assault the Eedan, Lord Eaglan, when it came to the point, would never send forward his columns of infantry across the breadth of interposed ground — which divided the goal set before them from their most advanced parallel;* and accordingly, he was free to im- agine that his long- pursued task of preventing assaults might be, this time, performed by the English. Let the French with apparent decisive- ness propose a general assault. The English, thus Emperor.
 * See ante, p. 227. Niel's Letter of the 17th of April to the