to the shelter of their trenches. The officers had exposed themselves throughout at every point with the utmost recklessness of life, and covered themselves w^ith inextinguishable glory; Brigadier-General Windham was especially conspicuous amongst this band of heroes, and his great personal daring was almost eclipsed by the lustre of the still higher qualities displayed in his coolness and self-possession, his unbounded fertility of resources, his ready adaptation to circumstances, and his thorough mastery of a situation perhaps the most trying to a British officer. All this noble devotion on the part of the officers and men was, alas! fruitless in insuring a success which the blood of too many of them was insufficient to purchase; but will it now be denied that, sad as is this page of the military annals of England, its gloom is not untempered by the light of glory? True it is that every detail of the terrible scene has been described with the most painful minuteness and the most graphic eloquence by writers who never left Cathcart's Hill for one moment during its enactment, and that conclusions the most disparaging to the honour of the British arms have been freely drawn in consequence, by pens on which patriotism should at least have enjoined silence, if honest commendation was felt to be impossible. But it should be remembered that the most powei'ful opera-glass may fail, at a distance of two miles, to unravel the perplexed intricacies of a lifeand-death struggle within a narrow space of ground, in which the combatants themselves, enveloped in the smoke and dust of battle, can scarcely see a score of yards before them: and camp stories, though questionless a piquant food to satisfy the hunger of a public craving for excitement, are not quite the solid materials of which the stately fabric of a nation's history should be composed. General Pelissier states in his despatch (in which he either speaks the simple truth as a chivalrous gentleman and gallant soldier, or deliberately gives the sanction of a public document to a falsehood, contrived for the unworthy purpose of sparing the amour propre of an ally), that the English behaved with their usual intrepidity, and that when, after sustaining an unequal contest for nearly two hours, they resolved on evacuating the Redan, they did so with such an appearance of firmness, that the enemy did not venture to advance upon them. What that " usual intrepidity" was, had been too amply proved in the sight of the world by Alma, and Inkermann, and Balaklava, and by months of nearly nightly fighting in the trenches, to require comment or explanation; and the most intelligent of newspaper correspondents need hardly blush to own his inferiority to France's victorious general in deciding how soldiers should acquit themselves in the day of battle.
Meanwhile the lesson, that even unimpugned valour does not always command success, may be learned from the fate of the French attacks other than that on the MalakoiF.
At the Central Bastion, in spite of a shower of baU and projectiles, the indomitable courage of our Allies for a while, as on the left, triumphed over the resistance of the enemy, and the assaulting columns, overcoming innumerable obstacles, actually penetrated the work. But the enemy, retiring behind their traverses, displayed the greatest firmness; fresh guns were unmasked at commanding and unsuspected points, and field-pieces, rapidly brought up to the front, vomited forth volleys of grape upon the stormers.
Two generals were wounded and two killed, some mines exploding added to the confusion, and at last, borne down by a resistless charge of the masses of the enemy, the French troops were driven from the work, and compelled to return to whence they came.
On the right, the first successes at the Little Redan and the Curtain had been dearly atoned for at the price of torrents of blood. "Three times," says General Pelissier, " did the Dulac and De la Motterouge divisions take possession of the Redan and the Curtain, and three times were they obliged to retire before a horrible fire of artillery and the deep masses that they found opposing them, when the two field batteries in reserve at the Lancaster Battery came down across the trenches (over which a road had been levelled for the purpose), and, boldly taking up a position within half gun-shot, succeeded in driving back the enemy's columns and the steam-ships.* A portion of these two divisions, supported in their heroic struggle by the troops of the Guard, which was covered with glory on this occasion, established itself aU along the left of the Curtain, whence it could not be driven by the enemy."
These attacks were however virtually repulsed, and that on the Little Redan alone is said to have cost the French 4000 men.