Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/233

 THE MAIN FIGHT. 189 fire of numberless caps: but the men in that chap. part of the battalion which lined the Sandbag ^^' Battery were cliating already at a discovery which 2d Period, before had tormented the soldiery of the 41st llegiment, and was afterwards destined to trouble successive bodies of men. The parapet of the Sandbag Battery — it stands The to this day — is a monument of heroic devotion Bauery^ and soldierly prowess, yet showing, as preachers might say, the vanity of human desires.* Sup- posed, although wrongly, to be a part of the English defences, and fought for, accordingly, with infinite passion and at a great cost of life, by numbers and numbers of valiant infantry, the work was no sooner taken than its worthlessness became evident, not, indeed, to the bulk of the soldiery, but to those particular troops which clianced to be posted within it. The new-comers quickly learnt, that by the height of a parapet rising nine or ten feet from the ground, and the absence of any banquette, they were hindered from delivering fire except through the two em- brasures or from the shoulders of the work, and that, therefore, whilst remaining within it, they would be in a state of comparative impotence, hardly tolerable to warlike men. When the discomfited Russians had re-formed combats under cover of the acclivities, they again moved b^the"^ forward to attack the Grenadiers, and again were '^^°^ '*"" driven down below the ledge in front of the conspicuous object.
 * When I visited the fiehl in 1869, the parapet was still a