Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/277

 THE MAIN FIGHT. 233 not strongly break out; for, though certainly he chat. remarked to Hardinge that 'he had so good a — _J — ' pack he did not want to he cautioned,' his 2d Period, manner and tone at that moment were not merely good-humoured, but joyous. Whether afterwards Question as ° ' J ./ to the cause there followed an access of rage which over- which induced him powered his self - command, or whether he to disobey '^ orders : imagined some great and novel emergency, or some shining prospect of advantage which might warrant disobedience of orders — these are ques- tions which seemingly he did not leave means of determining by any words uttered at the time to those who rode at his side. What we know is that his desire to go down the hillside, and strike at the enemy's extreme left came back upon him with a force which unhappily he did not resist. He ordered General Torrens to attack. His his deter- mination : small force, when thus misdirected, lost at once that exceptional power of swaying events which Occasion — well seized by Lord Eaglan — had one of the offered it the minute before, and became a resolve. mere link added on to the chain of the soldiery which had fought all this while on the Kitspur. The column which Sir George undertook to His fatal f ji o T 1 • 1 • J. descent from assail was a part oi the belmghinsk regiment, the high ^, ^ . ' ground. then working its way up the steeps against the right front of the Guards, but still on ground so low down that the attack, if immediate, could only be made by descending. So now — in an evil moment — Sir George Cathcart, with his 400 men under Torrens, began to move down the hill-side. He little knew that he was turning his back on a