Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/315

 DICTATION FROM PARIS NOW RESISTED. 283 CHAPTER XL THE EMPEROR'S DICTATION RESISTED, THE COLLAPSE OF HIS PLAN, AND THE RESIGNATION OF CANROBERT. Those telegrams which had the effect of arresting chap. XI the Kertch Expedition were messages addressed ' to the object of pressing on the execution of the andNteT Emperor's campaigning plan ; and, whatever Gen- conswera- eral Canrobert in his heart may have thought of Emperor'! the project, he was not strong enough to encounter p ^ it with even respectful evasions, still less to set it aside with a laugh, or an oath, as some other men might have done ; whilst Niel was even so circumstanced that he could scarcely help trying to defend those Imperial notions which he him- self, as we saw, had greatly helped to inspire.* Niel was not a bashful man ; and on the 4th of May — the very morrow of Canrobert's secession from the enterprise commenced against Kertch — he came to the English Headquarters full fraught with the Emperor's plan. After amply expound- ing the project, he requested that Lord Eaglan
 * See ante, chap. v.