Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/48

 4 TIIK 15ATTLK OF INKKUMAN. CHAP, exactly 10,000.* auiieral Caurobevt and Lonl ^- Kaglan had also under their orders, the one, a body of near 5000,t and the othor a body of near 6000,; Ottoman soldiery. These brave men, under the leadership of a few gifted Indian officers, might have proved themselves excellent troops ; but from a want of the requisite know- ledge both at the French and the English Head- quarters, the resource had been neglected, and notwithstanding their warlike capacity, it woiild be illusory to reckon the Turks, in unqualified words, as components of the ' effective ' strength now possessed by the Allies. For the moment they were almost as useless to Canrobert and Lord Raglan as a diamond is to a man who mis- takes it for a worthless pebble.§ But whether reckoning or excluding those Turkish contingents, the Allies were numeri- cally inferior to their adversaries by several tens of thousands. So, the world, with its mighty experience, having always held it most certain that the strength of those who would beleaguer ^ 4907.— Atlas Guerre d'Orient. t Lord Raglan to Duke of Newcastle, 28th October 1854. g The Turkish troops at this time were so seriously believed to bo valueless that Lord Raglan refused to receive more of them. After mentioning in his private letter of 28th October 1854 to the Duke of Newcastle that Omar Pasha had offered him the garrison of Varna as well as some other troops from Shumla he adds : ' / declined them before I received your Ict- • ter ' This ill opinion of their quality resulted in great measure from their loss of the redoubts entrusted to them on the 25th of October; but with respect to that see 'Invasion of the
 * Viz., 15,992; ' Morning State' of 4tU November 1854.
 * Crimea,' vol. v. of the Cabinet Edition.