Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/370

 328 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1S53 CHAP. XIV, Anxiety of the plotters, anil of Mag- nan and the generals under him. EfTect of anxious sus- pense upon French troops. Finally, it must be repeated that on that 4th of December the army of Paris was kept in a state of inaction during all the precious hours which elapsed between the earliest dawn of the morning and two o'clock in the afternoon. These are signs that the brethren of the Elysee were aghast at what they had done, and aghast at what they had to do. And it is obvious that Magnan and the twenty Generals who had em- braced one another on the 27th of November, were now more involved in the danger of the plot than at first they might have expected to be ; for the isolation in which the President was left for want of men of character and station who would consent to come and stand round him, must have made all these Generals feel that even the sove- reign warrant of ' an order from the Minister of ' War' was a covering which had become very thin. Now by nature the French people are used to go in flocks ; and in their army there is not that social difference between the officers and the common soldiers which is the best contrivance hitherto discovered for intercepting the spread of a panic or any other bewildering impulse. With their troops, any impulse, whether of daring or fear, will often dart like lightning from man to man, and quickly involve the whole mass. <jenerally, perhaps, a panic in an army ascends from the ranks. On this clay, the panic, it seems, went downwards. For six hours the army had been kept waiting and waiting under arms within