Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/332

 302 THE DEATH OF LORD RAGLAN. OH P. quiring by any such shallow means the least sem- '_ blance of true warlike dignity. Here, however, the war and the pageant seemed linked hand in hand; for the myriads assembling to honour the memory of the English commander were not only troops under arms, but troops in mid-campaign, troops acting beneath the rapt gaze they drew from the enemy's watch-tower. The whole move- ment from east to west, though solemn and mourn- ful, was all the while nevertheless a movement slowly effected across the front of Sebastopol, and of course under such conditions, the pageant might lead to a battle. In seizing the occasion that offered for an out- burst of honourable sentiment, in giving to those martial honours which Circumstance seemed to enjoin their largely extended proportions, in bring- ing the design to completeness, and — more than all put together — in animating the outward form of the ceremony with the — partly, it may be, poetic, yet not less genuine — fervour of their many tens of thousands of troops, the French army took a main part. The Allied commanders provided that before 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the od of July, the whole road from the English Headquarters to the port of Kazatch — a distance of about seven miles — should be lined on each side by double ranks of infantry; that at intervals on both flanks there should be posted not only other troops, but bands of regiments as well as field-batteries, and that the duty of escorting the movement along its