Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/256

 226 His DEFENCE OF SEVASTOPOL CB P. ing armies which had 'the jewel' in charge' and . moreover that, call him a Sapper, or call him a warlike dictator, or whatever men choose, he was the real commander for Russia on the one con- fined seat of conflict where all the long-plotted hostilities of both the opposing forces had drawn at last to a head. To appreciate the power he wielded, and distin- guish him from an officer defending an invested fortress, one. again must recur to the peculiar nature of the strife on which France and Eng- land had entered. Though maintained in great part with the kind of appliances that are com- monly used by the assailants and defenders of fortresses, the conflict was so strongly marked in its character by the absence of complete invest- ment as to be rather a continuous battle between two entrenched armies than what men in gen- eral mean when they casually speak of a ' siege.' Each force, if thus lastingly engaged, was like- wise all the while drawing an equally lasting support, the one from all Eussia exerting the strength of the Empire in her own dominions, the other from what was not less than a great European Alliance with full command of the sea. The commander of a fortress besieged in the normal way, cut off from the outer world, must commonly dread more or less the exhaustion of his means of defence ; but no cares of that exact kind cast their weight on the mind of the chief engaged in defending Sebastopol ; for being left