Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/402

 370 APPENDIX. minuteness, or even any aim at strict accuracy, into the painful reckoning of his killed and wounded, Captain Oldershaw (in a letter written on the day of the fight) said only that 'half his men were hora de combat, and Sir Gerald Graham, as we saw, accepted the same rough estimate. It is to the kindness of Mr De Vine (whose bravery, as we saw, was so conspicuous on the day of the fight) that I not only owe the far more complete state- ment contained in the text, but also other careful details which give it additional weight. In considering Mr De Vine's statement, it should be remem- bered that reinforcements had come down, and that therefore, when showing the unstricken remnant of the original combatants present in the battery to have been reduced at the last to three, he did not thereby represent the battery to have been at any time manned by a force so diminutive. Mr De Vine is now one of our public servants, holding respon- sible office in India. Note 10. — Any less formal document. — Without using the language of positive assertion about matters of official business occurring in times now long past, 1 may say what I understand to have been the mischances from which there resulted this chasm in the Headquarter records. Lord Raglan, it seems, had de- termined that reports on the subject of these fights in the bat- teries should be made to him — not by any artillery officer, but — by a field officer of the Royal Engineers, and this special duty- was judged to be one of so much importance that no less a man than Major Gordon, R.E. (the commander of the Right Attack) was charged with the task. He, however, whilst repelling the sortie of the 22d of March, was wounded in the right arm, and for that reason, though not quite at first, it was ultimately found accessary to relieve him from the duty and to appoint a successor. His successor was Major Bent, R.E. (one of the heroes of the battle of Giurgevo), who. entering upon his new duty on the 14th of April, made that Report of the fights of that day in the No. VII. and the No. VII I. batteries, which, as is shown in the text, was warmly approved by Lord Raglan. But between the time when the slate of Major Gordon's wound prevented his performing the task, and the time when his successor (Major Bent) entered upon his new function, there was an interval, which included the 13th of April — the day of Oldershaw's fight; and thus it resulted that Major Gordon's wound was the first of the mischances which led to there being this chasm in the Headquarter records. With his admirable clearness and mastery of military busi- ness, reinforced by the knowledge he had in a general way of the fights maintained in the English batteries, Lord Raglan, in all