Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/129

 AVAY OF MINISTERING TO THE AEMIES. 85 they prepared to undertake regular operations chap in the field by striving to collect with all L speed the requisite means of land-transport.(^) Next, transported by sea to the Crimea, and there landing without opposition, they seemed to have the inchoate dominion of a country abound- ing in food for man and beast and means of land-carriage. But next — intent on Sebastopol — they abandoned for the moment their inchoate dominion by converting themselves into a ' mov- 'able column,' and committed their very exist- ence during a period of some thirty hours to the governing fortune of war. Next, by their vic- tory on the Alma they converted their inchoate dominion of the country into unresisted posses- sion, and for a moment it seemed that the task of thenceforth supplying the armies had been happily lightened. But this period of commis- sariat tranquillity was not suffered to last five days ; for by their flank march, commenced on the 25 th, the Allies abandoned their conquest of almost all the Crimea, and by descending the Mackenzie Heights — heights too formidable, as they afterwards judged, to be prudently assailed from the south — made the step they were taking irrevocable. Next — intent on their siege — they suffered themselves to be compassed about, and imprisoned upon what we have called their pittance of utterly barren ground ; and then it became evident that — at least for some time — the life of the troops must depend altogether upon what might be brought them by sea. But another and even more trying change