Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/180

 150 PELISSIER'S CHANGE. chat, efliciency in the course of a night; and, although . — the advance of the year from April to the middle of June had abridged the length of the time dividing sunset from sunrise, there was no reason why the enemy should not meet this curtailment of the working hours by employing on the needed repairs a greater number of 'hands.' By his plan announced in the morning Pelissier had rightly provided that the batteries to be faced by his troops should first be rendered innocuous by the powers of the siege-guns. The evening project was one that condemned all the infantry columns to traverse lengthened spaces — by day- light — in the teeth of destructive batteries no longer in ruined condition but restored to their Question original power. To any question which asks why Bierthus Pedissier discarded the first, and rushed headlong into the perils of the second design, one only can answer that he had not yet come to the end of those troubled ' eight days,' during which his full power of wisely exerting the judgment under- went, as we saw, interruption, and that, when he effected his change, the mighty flood of opinion we saw exultant in camp was running its course with a strength that might carry away a chief tortured in the midst of his warlike cares by a raging strife with his sovereign. That Pedis- sier on the evening of the 17th was under some access of plainly abnormal excitement is proved, I think, by the fact that, when making up his mind to break loose from the perfect agreement attained a few hours before on his visit to the ictcd.