Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/212

 168 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. C H A P. VI. 2d Period. Tlio two other third jiarts of the Knglish infantry. The ' spent ' forces.' their firelocks — the thousand men watching our left must all be regarded as neutralised. If one third part of the infantry which the English had brought into action was thus sub- stantially neutralised, the two remaining third parts of it had suffered in the course of the fight- ing a material diminution of their power. Gen- eral Pennefather, it is true, had not yet sustained crushing losses in killed and wounded ; but sev- eral hundreds of his picket-men and picket-sup- ports, after long and obstinate skirmishing in copse wood overlain with thick mist, had become disengaged more or less from the guidance of their chiefs, and were merely now so many units without any aggregate strength.* Many, it is believed, including a large proportion of oflBcers, long remained in advanced positions ; whilst again, as we saw, there were numbers of the men with dumb rifles who had come back loosed from command, and savage for want of cartridges; but, although the formation of the ground made it certain that the soldiery thus driven in must draw closer and closer together when approaching the Isthmus, they were a medley from various regiments, neither linked by a common authority nor working any longer as skirmishers. Percy Herbert strove hard to give them coherence, for he judged that the moment might be near when every bayonet would be wanted for the defence of Home Kidge, and the reserve ammunition, it number of the pickets and their skirmi.sliing supports.
 * Sec in Appendix, Note VI T., a computation showing the