Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/260

 216 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP, filiating its isolated character, and combiniug it ^^- with other operations conducive in some way to UPenod. good. The despatch of a body of troops to attack the lakoutsk battalions at the head of the Quarr}' Ravine might perhaps have supplied both these wants, but neither the one nor the other could be anyhow met by simply reinforcing the combat- ants on the ground where they stood. The suc- cours spared for this purpose — and remember they were troops called away at great hazard from tasks of far more vital moment — might pro- long the defence of the Kitspur ; but our people there planted were struggling under such con- ditions that no real advantage could be gained by merely bringing up other soldiery to fight along- side them, and stand in the same predicament. Aid in that shape was less fitted to retrieve the mischief than to swell its proportions. The task of repulsing attacks was one which, many times over, the Grenadiers and the Scots Fusiliers, with some intermixed troops of the line, had superbly performed for themselves ; and if, in spite of the adage, this often repeated success had hitherto proved unsuccessful, the accession of reinforce- ments to the actual scene of the conflict was not a help of such kind as to make the anomaly cease. Whether with or without such aid, our people engaged on the Kitspur were still, as before, an isolated, unsupported force, still liable every in- stant to be turned in flank and cut off, and mean- while so circumstanced that, although defeating their enemy with all his masses again, and again,