Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/52

 20 PRINCE NAPOLEON. CHAP. I. The enemy encounter- ing our guards of the trenches; without discover ing their extreme numerical weakness. Departure of Prince Napoleon. sound, but still, the default was grave. There prevailed indeed so great a laxity that men were not seldom found to be cooking their food in the trenches ; and indeed our engineers became sure that their siege -work appliances proved only too often the store from which a half- famished soldier with a piece of raw meat in his sack took what he wanted for fuel.* But happily, there was one priceless truth which the enemy always failed to discover. When making these sorties against the English lie might well enough see or infer that the guards of our trenches were few as compared to those of the French ; but he did not unmask that extremity of numerical weakness which really existed, and perhaps at the time, there was no sort of testimony that well could have made him believe in the statement I am going to present. I base it on the authority of our Eoyal Engineers. They assure us that, instead of the thousands whom the routine of siege- business would assign for the task, our cover- ing party on duty along the entire right attack (upwards of a mile in extent) was at this period only 350 in number, and that on the night of the 21st of January it mustered only 290 men ! ( 6 ) Whilst the garrison was plying its foes with all these hostile expedients, the French army saw a step taken which apparently was not one well fitted to cheer a soldiery tried by hardships
 * Journal of the Royal Engineers, Part II., p. 2.