Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/454

 410 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP. VI. 5th Period Operations of the 7th L6ger and 6th of the Line. The Barrier still held fast. 11 A.M. Close of the combats undertaken liy French infantry. When Bosquet gave the order for the advance of the Zouaves and Algerines, he also appareiitly meant that Bourbaki's brigade, and in particular the 6th of the Line and the 7th L(^ger, should execute an attack on the enemy's centre;* but the actual result was that these two battalions advanced by the line of the Post-road, and there they had our people in front of them.-f* For Haines at the Barrier still maintained his dominion. As during the First, and the Second, and a part of the Third, and the whole of the Fourth, so also throughout this Fifth Period, the enemy's attacks there delivered were defeated one after another, and the favourite ridge of loose stones, now yet further endeared to our people as the object of numberless fights, remained in their hands to the last. It was now only eleven o'clock, but the con- flicts we have been witnessing were the last that the French infantry undertook in the battle of Inkermaii.^: + The Frencli official accounts represent l)oth these battalions to have advanced down the Post-road, and nevertheless use language importing that they had come into contact with the enemy and 'forced back his troops,' tluis i<;noring the fact that tile English all this time were holding the Harrier. As though to reconcile geography with this statement, the official framer of the 'Atlas de la Guerre d'Orient ' has Imldly moved away the IJarrier to ground some way west of the Post-road, thus applying, as it were, to geography the [iriiiciple of 'taut pis ' pour les faits. ' J See post, Sixth Period, and notes, and Appendix, Note XI.
 * Their advance was to be a part of the ' supreme effort.'