Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/469

 APPENDIX. 427 lifelike letters of Colonel Yea, nor the short telling letter of Colonel Aldworth. Yet when all this authentic testi- mony of eyewitnesses is laid before me, I find it confirm- ing what I had asserted in print some months before. See- ing this, I cannot but think that — even in the battle-field — there is truth, after all, to be found. If I might be suffered to press this view for a moment more by giving a chosen instance of the way in which it applies to my own narrative, I would venture to speak of one only amongst those several pieces of testimony by which I now support my account of the operations of the Grena- dier Guards at the Alma. I support what I say of the battalion by giving extracts from the journal and private letters of its honoured chief, Colonel Hood. These extracts correspond so closely with the tenor of the narrative, that the reader would be likely to say,—' That journal and 1 those letters were evidently the authority on which the ' author based his account of the operations of the Grena- ' dier Guards.' It is, however, a fact, that I never saw the journal, nor the letters, and never knew anything of their tenor, until after the publication of the first and second editions of this book. It was then that Mrs Grosvenor Hood (the widow of him whose achievement on the banks of the Alma had won so large a share of my attention) re- solved to give me fresh means of substantiating the narra- tive, by placing in my hands the treasured words which were written to her from the banks of the Alma.* head of the family. I may here say (though I thiuk I have clearly explained it in the foot-note), that the order with respect to which Colonel Hood wrote, ' Thank God I disobeyed ! ' was not an order given by the Divisional General H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge. Colonel Hood had been directed by General Bentinck to conform to any movements on his left, and it was only by being applied to the event which afterwards happened— viz., the temporary retreat of the Fusilier Guards— that General Bentinck's order became in effect an order directing Colonel Hood to retreat.
 * This she did with the full approval of Lord Hood, the present