Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/362

 332 THE LANDING. CHAP, the French from the British forces during the ^^^^- operation of landing, but the evil thus encoun- tered was a hundred-fold less grave than the evil avoided — for, even in the face of an enemy, the separation of the French from the English would have been better than dispute or confusion ; and, moreover, the observations of the previous day had led the Allies to conjecture that the enemy did not intend to resist the landing. The morn- ing showed that this conjecture was sound: there- fore, great as was the danger from which the Alliance had been delivered, it turned out in the ' their leader, and got mixed with the French transports ; but ' Sir Edmund Lj^ons wisely resolved to make the best of it, ' ' and at once ordered the troops to land in the bay next to the ' northward.' I may add that all the many accounts which I have seen of the movements and counter-movements of the ships and the transports on the early morning of the l-lth of September tally perfectly with the above statement by Lord Ilaglan. In saying this, I include Captain Mends's letter to the newspaper. See the Appendix. It Avill be seen that the facts which he de- scribes in the fourth and fifth paragraphs of that letter are ex- actly those which would naturally result from the discovery and the change of plan which Lord Kagbm communicates to the Minister of War. I may add that Sir George Brown was on board the Aga- memnon ; that he was personally cognisant of the change which Lord Kaglan described ; that many years ago he recorded what occurred in language tallying perfectly with Lord Raglan's account ; and, fmally, that he (Sir George I5rown) is still alive. —Note (slightly altered) to 4th Kdilinn. The kiudiiess of Captain Arinytage (who was first lieutenant of tlio Iligliflier at the time of the landing) has now enabled mo to give the words of the written order from Sir Edmund Lyons, proving the absolute accuracy with which Lord Raglan wrote when he said 'it had been settled that the landing should be
 * effected in Old Fort Bay, and that a buoy should be placed