Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/345

 APPEND] X. 315 ' enemy's columns then threw themselves on the Gervais Battery, ' entered it, &c. ' * The beginning of the new sentence above quoted shows that the narrator, in making his earlier statements, was not referring at all to the affair near the Gervais Battery ; and this being so, I can state without any qualification at all that the above passages distinguished by italics are not only fiction, but fiction unmingled with any grain of truth. This fabrication is rendered beautifully consistent with itself by deliberately pointing out General Khrouleff as the officer ' to ' whom the chief honour of the day is due as commanding the ' whole of the line attacked,' by withholding all mention of the Engineers (including even Todleben !), and by blending the day's losses with those sustained the day before under the fourth bombardment. Prince Michael Gortchakoff had the misfortune to become — at least formally — responsible for this fabulous statement; but I have always believed him to be a man of honour, and have taken refuge in the faith that he must have been imposed upon. His headquarters, it must be remembered, were not at Sebastopol, but at some miles' distance from the town on the ' Old City Heights ' ; and this circumstance naturally may have made it the easier to dupe him. It will be observed that I see grounds for tracing the origin of the fabrication to the panic which seized upon the garrison when our siege-guns reopened, see chap. viii. p. 219. NOTE TO CHAPTER VIII. Note 1. — By their sacred costumes. — This is or was distinctly the case in Russia. There the sacredness of a priest used to begin when he put on canonicals, and to end when he took them off. NOTE TO CHAPTER X. Note 1. — Harmonious concert. — A difference of opinion on one Home question — that of merging the Ordnance Office in the War Department — did not at all affect the spirit in which the Minister and the General co-operated in the business of the war.
 * Ann. Reg. 1855, p. 242.