Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/511

 SEQUKL TO liNKI'-.RMAN NAUUATJVK. 467 CHAPTER VJII. SEQUEL TO THE INKERMAN NAKRATIVE. I. The Allies proposed to Prince MentschikofF un- chap. der a flag of truce, that his people should come !_ out to bury their dead ; but the Prince was too ufi^pro^ws'lai wary to undertake a task which could hardly siansshouw have been executed by Eussian soldiers without b^y their* deepening their sense of defeat, and might even "^ have roused in their bosoms a perilous distrust of their chiefs, if not, indeed, of themselves. For, whilst the bodies of the Allies were many, and in some places heavily scattered, the Eussian dead lay in heaps ; and it must have been hard for a Eussian observer to avoid the conclusion that, whether from any inferiority of weapons, or of warlike prowess, or from the incapacity of some chief or chiefs, or from some grievous fault in the Czar's way of driving his flocks, their brethren had been as sheep against wolves. Piince Mentschikoff answered rightly enough, that, by the custom of nations the task of burying