Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/514

 470 THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP, and re-pluuge their bayonets into the body of a —. — '— prostrate, disabled adversary, had been 'conse- ' crated ' only a few hours before by blessings and prayers, and psalms and anthems grandly roaring for blood.* In answering the denunciation, which reached him under a flag of truce, Prince Mentschikoff resorted to one of those shameless forms of Rus- sian denial, for which Wellington found the right word,t and loftily repudiated the complaint as a charge which could not be even listened to, if brought against the Imperial array generally ; de- claring that a defenceless enemy was, and always would be, under the protection of the Russian flag. He, however, admitted it to be possible — though he did not, he said, know the fact — that ' individually, and in the heat of combat,' some exasperated soldier may have suffered himself to do an act of violence which was to be deeply re- gretted ; but then he went on to show that, sup- posing the imputed butcheries to have been really committed, they must have been provoked, after all, by a religious sentiment. His countrymen, he said, were an eminently religious people, who could not but be filled with horror when they learnt that a church — very holy in their estimation — had been desecrated by the invaders of Russia; and thence he went on to conclude that, if any of war (which had been almost forgotten by statesmen, but not by either the priests or the common soldiei's of Russia), see ' Inva- ' sion of the Crimea,' vol. i. As to the 'consecration' for Inkernian, see ante, chap. ii. sec. iv. t ' It sickens me.' — Duke of Wellington to Lord Aberdeen.
 * As to the relij^ious, ur rather ecclesiastical, orii,'iii of the