Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/309

 IN THE CONFERENCE? 279 State have strength to write what he had prom- chap. Ued ? _*L The light till now thrown on my path by that Abrupt CBtisiii^ of entire series of despatches and private letters the light i • i t i -n i. , n. shed till which Lord Kaglan with unflagging constancy now by Lord ° oo o J Raglan's addressed to the Secretary of State, here, all at despatches. once, ceases to shine ; and I offer no account of the conference that passed between the two Chiefs. It was only, we know, at the head of an army The position ■■ ii • • • i l p i of England almost small in comparison with that of the mconfer- French that England in this anxious conference anxious it i .,, to kind with had met the strong-willed commander of one theciner 1 T 1 T 11 -IT of 100,000 hundred thousand men ; but — represented then men. still by Lord Eaglan — she had weight and strength of a kind that numbers will not always give. Signs visible after the conference began soon signs that to show that Lord Eaglan's ascendant, if it had waspre- not prevailed, was prevailing. The course he happened to take a few hours after the conference in sending to Pelissier (with a very cordial note from himself) a French trans- lation of the somewhat blunt English Memor- andum of the 21st of June seems not only to prove that the dangerous element of ill-humour was absent, entirely absent from the minds of both the Chiefs, and that even the explosive material of a sturdily worded Paper might safely be handled between them, but that also the nego- tiation begun in the morning was still on foot,