Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/397

 THE PLAN OF THE ENTERPRISE, 3G7 them to a halt whenever he chose; and, forcing chap. them to tiy to convei't their flauk into a front, ^^^^' inifrht compel them to liLiht a battle with their Penioua o 1 o character of back to the sea-cliff— to figlit, in short, upon }r^o'nJ'o[^'' ground where defeat would be ruin. "When, ^'"^• therefore, on the 19th of September 1854, the Allied armies broke up from their bivouacs and marched towards the south, they were engaging in a venturesome enterprise.

It seems that, although by human contrivance a whole people may be shut out from the know- ledge of momentous events in which its armies are taking a part, there is yet a subtle essence of truth which will permeate into the mind of a nation thus kept in ignorance. To a degree which freemen can hardly imagine to be possible, the first Napoleon had succeeded in hiding the achievements of the English army from the sight of the French people; and since the French in after years were little tempted to gather up by aid of history the events which they had been hindered from learning in the form of 'news,' there was — not merely in tiie French army, but even in all France — a verv scant knowledge of the way in which the two mighty nations of the West had encountered one another in the great war. Yet, now that the time had come for test- ing the faith which one army had in the prowess of the other, it suddenly appeared that a belief in the quality of the English soldier was seated as deep in the mind of the French army as though it were a belief founded upon historic knowledga