Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/237

 SUFFERINGS OF THE ARMIES. 193 separating the component forces of will which chap. joined to bring abont the result, I speak simply ^-^^^^ of the Anglo-French army as an ag^re^ate bound -^l^'^^ ^° o J oo D Winter or up by alliance into a single unit of strength, theCher- ^ . ~ o ' sonese with a strategy which, however originating, how- Heights, ever compounded, was at all events so decisively- accepted by the two Allied armies, that it led them, one along with the other, to take the course we have traced. Their chosen strategy led them to waste the priceless fruits of the Alma, to spare the ' North side ' of Sebastopol, to abandon their conquest of almost the whole Crimea, to surrender to the enemy his all-precious line of communica- tion, to give him back all those country resources — food, forage, shelter, and fuel — which armies com- monly need, to abstain from attacking the south front of Sebastopol whilst it lay at their mercy, and wait until it grew strong, to undertake a slow engineer's conflict of pick-axe and spade and great guns against an enemy vastly stronger than themselves in that special kind of strife, to submit to be hemmed in and confined by the beaten enemy, to let him drive them from the Woronzoff Road — the only metalled road that they had between the plain and our camp — to throw away the ascendant obtained by a second great victory, to see in the Inkerman day a reason for not pushing fortune, and then, finally, in the month of November — too late, of course, for due preparation — to accept the hard, perilous task of trying to live out through a winter on the corner of ground where they stood, there maintaining by day and by night a ceaseless VOL. VII. N