Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/48

 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP. I. These re- sources en- tirely at the cominand of the eneu;y. The Allied armies wholly de- pendent upon sup- plies brought by sea ; and con- sequently upon the exertions of others. stores abounded. (■*) Euriched by that singular exchange of dominion which he owed to the two Hank marches of the 25 th of September,(^) and displaying his command of those very pos- sessions which our people most bitterly needed, the enemy sometimes pastured his flocks — his immense flocks — of sheep under the eyes of our outlying sentries, and showed to any observers who chose to put up their field-glasses his stacks of forage piled up in ranks that seemed miles and miles long.(^) Nor did ' Inkerman ' alter this contrast between abundance and want ; for, when once the Allies had determined that the battle, though ending in victory, furnished never- theless a good ground for deferring their intended attack, and remaining, as before, in close duress, it followed — however anomalously — that the products of the country would still be withheld from the victors, and still accrue to the van- quished. When they thus yielded up to their adversary the resources of the invaded country, the Allied armies threw themselves wholly upon aid brought from over the sea ; and more absolutely than ever before their welfare became committed to distant Ministers of State, and numberless officers and public servants of lesser degree, to mer- chants, contractors, ship-owners, sliip-captains, and sailors, to artificers of various callings, and workmen of various races. A default, though in only one part of all this living machinery, might cruelly, might fatally aggravate the hard- ships of a soldiery condemned to be camping