1 5 6 Close of the Battle.
victory, which could scarcely have been bought too dear. A real attack would undoubtedly have kept Bosquet from parting with his troops ; Dannenberg, in their absence, would have penetrated our line, a-nd opened the road to the valley, when Gortschakoff would have joined him on the Upland. It was in expectation of such an effort on Gortschakoff's part that Dannenberg remained on the field long after he had abandoned the intention of resuming his independent attacks. He held his ground, though suffering heavy losses, trusting that the storming of the heights lately held by the French, but now comparatively bare of troops, would open a road for him, and straining his ear for the sound of his colleague's guns on the Upland. At last the decline of the autumn day forced him to begin that retreat which the declivities in his rear rendered so tedious and so perilous, encumbered as he was by a numerous and disorganised artillery. Canrobert has been blamed for not attacking him with the 8000 troops he had assembled on the field, the greater part still unused ; and doubtless had the French general taken a bold offensive, the enemy's defeat would have become a signal disaster. But if Dannenberg was looking towards Gortschakoff, so, no doubt, was Canrobert. He could not but remember that the 20,000 troops whom he had watched so anxiously in the morning were still close at hand in order of battle ; the policy he had declared at Balaklava of restricting himself to covering the siege, no matter what successes a bold aggression might promise, governed him now; and this seems, in the case of a gallant, quick-
Terrible Carnage. 157
spirited man like Canrobert — one, too, whom we had often found so loyal an ally — a more plausible explanation of his almost passive attitude at the close of the battle, than either a defect of resolution or a disinclination to aid his colleague.
This extraordinary battle closed with no final charge nor victorious advance on the one side, no desperate stand nor tumultuous flight on the other. The Russians, when hopeless of success, seemed to melt from the lost field ; the English were too few and too exhausted, the French too little confident in the advantage gained, to convert the repulse into rout. Nor was there among the victors the exaltation of spirit which usually follows the gain of a great battle, for the stress of the conflict had been too prolonged and heavy to allow of quick reaction. The gloom of the November evening seemed to overspread with its influence not only the broken battalions which sought the shelter of the fortress, but the wearied occupants of the hardly-contested ground, and descended on a field so laden with carnage that no aspect of the sky could deepen its horrors. Especially on the slopes between .the Fore Ridge and the cliffs had death been busy ; men lay in swathes there, as if mown down, insomuch that it was often impossible to ride through the lines and mounds of the slain. Of these, notwithstanding that the Allies, especially the English, had lost heavily in proportion to their numbers, an immense and almost unaccountable majority were Russians ; so that of no battle in which our nation has been engaged since Agincourt could it be more truly said, —
1 5 8 The Operations discussed.
" When, without stratagem, But in plain shock, and even play of battle, Was ever known so great and little loss, On one part and on th' other ? — Take it, God, For it is only thine ! "
The Russian losses in the battle were four times as great as the number of the troops with which the Second Division met the first attack. They lost 12 ooo, of which an immense proportion were left dead on the field, and 256 officers. The English lost 597, of whom thirty-nine officers, killed, and 1760, of whom ninetyone officers, wounded ; the French, thirteen officers and 130 men killed, and thirty-six officers and 750 men wounded.