Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/405

 APPENDIX. 373 ' alone enabled them to keep up the fire, and to maintain them- • selves in it.'* Note 14. — The fire of the two 'advanced batteries.' — The after- noon reliefs passed through these ordeals with the same valor- ous persistency as the detachments which they had replaced ; and this was well manifested by the continuance — until after dark — of the fire maintained by our people ; but, so far as I know, the particulars of those struggles were not recorded ; and I must own myself to be as yet unacquainted with even the names of the officers who (along with the men they had under them) proved able to keep the advanced batteries unsilenced from half-past one until nightfall. Note 15. — Defence of Sebastopol. — That General Todleben was likely to be free from all bias tending to warp his judgment in the direction it took may, I think, be inferred from the cir- cumstances under which he had acted. By the almost sudden creation of stupendous batteries the great Engineer had under- taken to do battle with the siege-guns of the Western Powers ; and it would obviously have been delightful to him to be able to say that he had succeeded. Accordingly, where he could with truth say so, he did, and with evident joy. Thus in his par- donable exultation at the ascendant which his great Redan had obtained over our English batteries, he used even the largish word 'victory.' What obliged him to say — to confess — that he had failed to prevent the French from opening a fit path for assault of the Flagstaff Bastion was plainly his knowledge of the truth. NOTES TO CHAPTER VII. Note 1. — Might not after all be unwise. — Niel, p. 239. ' Le ' front Malakoif etant devenu le veritable point d'attaque,' p. 213 ; and elsewhere, p. 239, he speaks of the siege against the Town front as if it were ' secondaire.' With our knowledge oi the ' motive ' there was for keeping French enterprise down in a state of abeyance (see ante, chap, v.), we of course must natu- rally yield less attention than might be otherwise right to any • reason ' assigned for taking the preordained course. Niel (who does not always so frame his language as to make it clear whether to the combats of the 14th, the words I have placed within brackets should have been altered by making them plural. Captain Henry and Captain Walcott did not tight together in any ' one ' battery.
 * Upon the supposition that Lord Raglan must have been adverting