Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/128

 98 THE THIRD BOMBARDMENT. ('II A P. V. The fire of the English guns. Crippled tate "i the enemy's works con- cerned iu opposing the French. The less in- jured state of those op- to break away in describing it from the colder language of science, and to treat the bombard- ment as an abnormal exertion of force — as violent, terrible, murderous. More terrific, it seems, than nil else was the fire of the English.* They de- livered their artillery blows somewhat slowly, one after another, but with a dreadful exactness, entailing havoc and ruin^ 1 ) After three o'clock in the afternoon, the whole fire of the Allies — then no longer assailing the Flagstaff Bastion — was brought to bear on the Faubourg with appalling effect. By six o'clock in the evening, not only the two White Redoubts on Mount lnkernian with the battery called ' Zabalkansky' then newly thrown up in their rear, but also the Kamtchatka Lunette that crowned the Mamelon Height, and all the neighbouring works (including even the Malakoff) that might otherwise have given sup- port to the foremost line of defence, were ruined or grievously crippled. Though not for the most part dismounted, the guns in the enemy's batteries were, so to speak, 'buried alive' — covered over with heaps upon heaps of what had been merlons, or traverses, or revetments of lined embrasures.! In its bearing on all the assaults then about to be made by the French, the bombardment proved itself so effective that their onsets, however ex- posed to peril of other kinds, could hardly be defeated or checked by any artillery power. Whilst thus smoothing, so far as was possible, the rough path of conquest, the English did more
 * Todleben, vol. ii. p. 310. t Ibid,, pp. 314, 315.