Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/399

 APPENDIX. 367 forced Niel and Canrobert to cover the state of abeyance in which they were keeping the siege by seeming to do something great. Considering the unmeasured pretension of superiority that is made by belligerents who go and lay siege to a fortress, it was all but impossible for the French, under the eyes of deriding Europe and angry France, to go on presenting the spectacle of continued impotence without at least trying to mask it by some- thing like a semblance of action ; so that even if Lord Melbourne himself had been associated with Niel in his ' mission,' he could hardly have made good his stand against the remonstrant declar- ing that 'something ought to be done.' The necessity of veiling a plot which enjoined long delays must of course have been seen from the first ; and, unless I mis- take, the expedient of using bombardments as sedatives to allay the very natural impatience of angry observers was in the mind of General Niel on even that early day when he wrote to the Em- peror his letter of the 14th of February.* Note 2. — See Appendix, Note ( 2 ). — The battery was one pierced for six guns, and six guns accordingly — each a 32- pounder — had been placed in readiness to be taken down ; but during the delays above spoken of, one of the guns was removed from its fellows, and planted in another battery ; so that the number destined to be actually taken down was Jive. — Journal Royal Engineers, vol. ii. p. 129. Note 3. — Enthusiasm. — Shortly before the first bombardment — the one of the 17th of October '54 — I was (with two or three others) on the heights overlooking Sebastopol, when we saw a small trading-vessel approach from the north and draw nearer and nearer to the batteries of the Severnaya. These at length opened upon her, but — under very light breezes — she steadily pursued her course, drawing gradually nearer and nearer to the mighty sea-forts. Those of the Severnaya soon opened upon the little vessel with a vast prodigality of power, and we saw the shots dropping around her, but all apparently failing to strike her, for there was no sign of displacement in the rigging or other- wise. She seemed to have a charmed life. Her course had brought her very near to the batteries of the Severnaya, but was bringing her very much nearer to the even more powerful sea-forts on the south side ; and the incident then became highly exciting to the people of Sebastopol. We saw them assemble in numbers on the top of one of the forts with the evident intention to give themselves the amusement of seeing the p. 120.
 * Printed in Niel's Siege de Sebastopol, p. 478 et seq.; a ad see ante,