Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/513

 SEQUEL TO INKERMAN NARRATIVE. 4G9 threatening danger, and again begin plying their chap. firelocks when a good opportunity comes. Troops '_ suffering under a fire from assailants thus hidden are apt to become indiscriminately savage against all prostrate foes, and in fairness it may be taken for granted that this impulse caused some part of the killing and maiming which Eussian soldiers at Inkerman intiicted upon disabled men. Yet, after making all fair allowance for error and venial rage, it still remains certain that Rus- sian soldiery in this battle of Inkerman did not only stab wounded men, but commit the crime with fell industry indicative of a strongly set purpose, and this, too, in the presence of number- less comrades apparently approving the outrages. Full proof of all this was elicited by a military Court of Inquiry, and General Canrobert con- curred with Lord Eaglan in denouncing to Prince Mentschikoff the atrocious acts of his soldiery.* As regards the true source of an exceptional tiic motivea malignity driving good-natured men to go and caused the ,, , nil 11 atrocities. butcher the wounded, there has been a general concurrence of judgment ; and the tenor of Prince Mentschikoff's answer will be hardly sur- prising to those who remember that this war, after all, in its origin was a war of the Churches, and that the infuriate soldiery who could plunge Judge- Advocate, that Lord Raglan assembled the Court of In- quiry ; the French framed the remonstrance at first in language 30 grand, and — to the English taste — so bombastic, that Lord Raglan refused to sign it whilst in that state, and the docu- ment was duly sobered down before he put his name to it.
 * It was upon the suggestion and advice of Mr Romaine, the