Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/97

 OPERATIONS IN THE SKA OF AZOF. 67 quired for enabling them to compass their object. Judged, I have said, from its language ; but, These ...... p compared none must therefore imagine that the acts or with the acts of the these men in authority corresponded with their authorities professing words of defiance. Because valiantly sounding, defiance, those words were perhaps for the moment de- lightful to the ear of the much-deceived Czar, but we shall see that they were not followed up by the manful resistance they promised. Of all the three local commanders who successively hurled defiance one certainly attempted resist- ance, but only of the most feeble kind, which did not cause a loss to the Allies of so much as even one life ; and the other two, when danger came, simply marched off their troops, without fighting, to distant places of safety. Genitchi was a town on the straits called after operations i-i i n pii>-ii a * Genitchi its name which connect the bea of Azof with the 29th May. inner waters of the Sivache. Apprehending that, if the Allies should prove able to enter those waters, they might operate against his communi- cations by the north of the Crimea, Prince Gort- chakoff but a few days before had not only rein- forced the garrison of Genitchi, but had also sent into the place a new governor, Colonel Prince Lobanoff-Rostoffsky, with instructions to organise the defence of the Straits. When the new gov- ernor found himself summoned to abstain from all defence of the vessels and Government pro- perty at Genitchi, he rejected the demand in high-spirited language, which, supposing it about