Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/41

 Teissier's resolves. 11 confronted as to be unable to bring the enemy CHAf. to the ordeal of a general action, the bulk of the '. — vast Allied army should still for the time remain concentrated. Having laid it down peremptorily in his letter of the 5th of May that the field oper- ations imagined against the enemy's rear must all be put off till the fortress should be reduced to a strict defensive, the new French commander now carried his principle further, and declared that the Allies must adventure on no such enterprises until after effecting the conquest of the whole south side of Sebastopol. Though immediate resort to the field operations had been urged — was still urged — by the Em- peror, Pelissier extended no mercy to any such projects, denounced them as ' widely eccentric,' called them even in his scorn mere ' adventures,' and declared that, instead of the knowledge re- quired for the invading the mountainous region of the Tchatir Uagh with an enemy gathered behind it, there was hardly any knowledge at all, not even any trustworthy map. Pelissier laid it down that the conquest of the south side of Sebastopol must be effected by grap- pling fast with its defences, and carrying them one after the other at all costs. Exactly as Lord Eaglan had counselled, Pelissier, to begin with, insisted that all those counter-approaches in the Karabel Faubourg to which Canrobert had so long been submitting must be forcibly wrested from the enemy. In this stern design against the' Son th Side'