Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/183

 STATE BEFOKK THE HURRICANE. 139 amount of toil which was cruelly and unfairly chap. excessive. For the error, if error there was, [ in tolerating all this French evasiveness, Lord Eaglan was plainly answerable ; but it will be acknowledged that the alternative open to him was one of a formidable kind. For, although it be true that to go on enduring the injustice from week to week was to leave our weakened soldiery under a burthen wrongly apportioned, there is also strong ground for saying that the opposite, the peremptory course of action, might have brought about an evil of huge proportions — a disagreement or even a rupture with the French, and that too in front of the enemy. No dilemma more embarrassing to a general could well be imagined. On the one side, a certainty that the sufferings of our troops would continue undiminished, and that many a life would be sacrificed ; on the other, a risk, a grave risk, of disaster to the whole Allied army, resulting from want of concord. VI. From the time when these armies were first Their stau 1 • 1 111 11°^ health. smitten m Bulgaria, they had been ceaselessly pursued — pursued over sea, pursued in their marches, pursued in the very hour of battle by not only the cholera but a whole train of other dis- orders ; and it was owing to sickness much more than to losses in combat that — notwithstanding the large reinforcements already obtained — the whole strength of their ' effectives ' now present