第19章 "THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA(6)

Inkerman was the most complicated of the battles; the chapters which record it are correspondingly taxing to the reader. More than once or twice they must be scanned, with close study of their lucid maps, before the intricate sequences are fairly and distinctively grasped; the sixth book of Thucydides, a standing terror to young Greek students, is light and easy reading compared with the bulky sixth volume of Kinglake. The hero of the day was Pennefather; he maintained on Mount Inkerman a combat of pickets reinforced from time to time, while around him through nine hours successive attacks of thousands were met by hundreds. The disparity of numbers was appalling. At daybreak 40,000 Russian troops advanced against 3,000 English and were repulsed. Three hours later 19,000 fresh troops came on, passed through a gap in our lines, which Cathcart's disobedience, atoned for presently by his death, had left unoccupied, and seized the heights behind us; they too were dispossessed, but our numbers were dwindling and our strength diminishing. The Home Ridge, key of our position, was next invaded by 6,000 Russians; the 7th St. Leger, linked with a few Zouaves and with 200 men of our 77th Regiment, French and English for once joyously intermingled, hurled them back. It was the crisis of the fight; Canrobert's interposition would have determined it; but he sullenly refused to move. Finally, led by two or three daring young officers, 300 of our wearied troops charged the Russian battery which had tormented us all day; their artillerymen, already flinchingunder the galling fire of two 18- pounders, brought up by Lord Raglan's foresight early in the morning, hastily withdrew their guns, and the battle was won. It was a day of Homeric rushes; Burnaby, with only twenty men to support him, rescuing the Grenadier Guards' colours; the onset of the 20th with their "Minden Yell"; Colonel Daubeny with two dozen followers cleaving the Russian trunk column at the barrier; Waddy's dash at the retreating artillery train, foiled only by the presence and the readiness of Todleben. One marvels in reading how the English held their own; their victory against so tremendous odds is ascribed by the historian to three conditions; the hampering of the enemy by his crowded masses; the slaughter amongst his officers early in the fight, which deprived their men of leadership; above all, the dense mist which obscured from him the fewness of his opponents. If Canrobert with his fresh troops had followed in pursuit, the Russian's retreat must have been turned into a rout and his artillery captured; if on the following day he had assaulted the Flagstaff Bastion, Sebastopol, Todleben owned, must have fallen. He would do neither; his hesitancy and apparent feebleness have already been explained; but to it, and to the sinister influence which held his hand, were due the subsequent miseries of the Crimean winter.

But the epic muse exacted from Kinglake, as from Virgil long before, the portrayal not only of generals and of battles, but of two great monarchs, each in his own day conspicuously andabsolutely prominent- the Czar Nicholas and the Emperor Napoleon:

"dicam horrida belia, Dicam acies, actosque animis in funera REGES."His handling of them is characteristic. Few men living then could have approached either without a certain awe, their "genius" rebuked, - like Mark Antony's, in the presence of Caesars so imposing and so mighty; Kinglake's attitude towards both is the attitude of cold analysis.

In the opening of the fifties the Czar Nicholas was the most powerful man then living in the world. He ruled over sixty million subjects whose loyalty bordered on worship: he had in arms a million soldiers, brave and highly trained. In the troubles of1848 he had stood scornfuland secure amid the overthrow of surrounding thrones; and the entire impact of his vast and well- organized Empire was subject to his single will; whatever he chose to do he did. Of stern and unrelenting nature, of active and widely ranging capacity for business, of gigantic stature and commanding presence, he inspired almost universal terror; and yet his friendliness had when he pleased a glow and frankness irresistible in its charm. Readers of Queen Victoria's early life will recall the alarm she felt at his sudden proposal to visit Windsor in 1844, the fascination which his presence exercised on her when he became her guest. He professed to embody his standard of conduct in the English word "gentleman"; his ideal of human grandeur was the character of the Duke of Wellington. It was an evil destiny that betrayed this high-minded man into crooked ways; that made England sacrifice the stateliest among her ancient friends to an ignoble and crime-stained adventurer; that poured out blood and treasure for no public advantage and with no permanent result; that first humiliated, then slew with broken heart the man who had been so great, and who is still regarded by surviving Russians who knew his inner life and had seen him in his gentle mood with passionate reverence and affection.