Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/276

 246 GENERAL PELISSIER. chap. IX. Pelissier ; liis distinct individu- ality : his great worth as a statesman upholding the great Alliance ; Without casting even one glance beyond the set bounds of this narrative, we have been able to see that the resolute Norman, Pelissier, was a man of other mould than the one in which France, since the Great Eevolution, has com- monly shaped down her people. No man even in our own rugged Isles ever held his own better against effacing tendencies than did this strong wilful Norman. His idiosyncrasy bristled with a sharpness incessantly proving that he was Pelissier, intensely Pelissier, Pelissier plainly abounding, with faults and gifts all his own. What however, we here have to mark is his wealth in those qualities — honour, wisdom, the half-divine faculty of entering into the motives of others — which make a loyal ally. As was natural, he on some questions differed from Lord Eaglan ; but except during one little interval of twelve or fourteen hours, when the torments in- flicted upon him by the electric wires had im- paired for the time his self-command and his judgment, he always, so far as I know, was doing his best to maintain the great Alliance. From the miserable state into which the Alliance had fallen before his accession, Pelissier raised it to one of real cordiality, and thus gave signal proof that he had some at least of the statesmanship which we have seen to be more or less needed for the guidance of commanders in almost all great modern wars.*
 * The Prussians in 1870 gave outward expression to this