Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/234

204 PELISSIER. en a i>. VII.

XVI. papier. l'elissier had not yet reached the end of that interval, eight days in length, during which he seemed not to enjoy the full command of his powers; and those who have studied his char- acter will say, unless I mistake, that, if even he judged aright (as indeed he apparently did) when determining to abandon the struggle, he never- theless in so doing was strangely unlike himself. It would he a mistake, and altogether unfair to base any estimate of i'elissiers capacity upon what he either did or omitted to do in the course of that unhappy interval. Pelissier, so far as I learn, gave no account to his Emperor or to any one else of the main, the governing facts which brought about his discom- fiture ; did not — even indirectly — confess that by breaking loose from the engagement made with Lord Raglan on the 17th, he had caused the troops, French and English, to fling their strength on a fortress at the height of its power instead of one shattered anew (after all the repairs of the night) by a wisely designed cannonade.( 3 ) P61is- sier spoke indeed of one phase — the phase next about to be mentioned — that marked the engage- ment in its latter stage, and assigned it as a reason to justify his final decision; but this phase, after all, was a simply direct result of his wayward mistakes, and not an originating cause of the step we shall now see him take.