of its size ; and Todleben not only describes a Russian regiment 3000 strong as fighting desperately with our Coldstreams for the possession of it, but as capturing nine pieces of artillery "as the prize of this brilliant feat of arms " ; some of which, that imaginative chronicler tells us, were carried off by the victors, and the rest spiked. It is true that some hours later in the day one French gun was carried off from this part of the field, and was afterwards recovered in a ravine, so the Russian historian could at least plead that his version is not in this case, as it is in some others, absolutely without foundation. But all this gives to the battery an importance quite fictitious. It was simply a wall of earth, several feet thick and twelve paces long, with two embrasures cut in it, the parapet, elsewhere considerably taller than a man's head, sloping rapidly for a few feet at each end. Behind it might have stood, in two ranks, thirty-six men in all, of whom twenty, ten of each rank, might have been able to fire through the embrasures arid over the ends, while the other sixteen would have been better employed elsewhere. It was conspicuous from its height and position, and the enemy, seeing it from below, might easily have imagined it more formidable than it was ; but how could 3000 men be employed in attacking, or a battalion such as the Coldstreams in defending it ? Sixty men would have been an ample number wherewith to assail it. As for the intrenchments on each side of the road, a common bank and ditch, such as those which generally border our fields, would have been incomparably stronger for defence. Yet Todleben speaks of this
1 62 What was at Stake.
useless mound, and these insignificant banks, as "the enemy's works," and another Russian writer says, " in spite of the accumulated forces of the enemy, our columns succeeded in occupying his batteries and fortifications."* The truth is that few battlefields have been so devoid of obstacles of this kind as that of Inkerman. The difficulties of the attack lay in the hindrance which the coppice and crags opposed to regulated advances and deployments, though, on the other hand, these objects afforded to the enemy the not inconsiderable advantage of sheltering his skirmishers.
Those who were children at the time of the Crimean War can scarcely realise how ardent, how anxious, how absorbing was the interest which the nation felt for the actors in that distant field, insomuch that Mr Bright, theoretically a man of peace, publicly said he believed there were thousands in England who only laid their heads on their pillows at night to dream of their brethren in the Crimea. This feeling reached its climax with the news of Inkerman. and it was not, nor indeed could it be, in excess of the magnitude of the stake which depended on the issue of that battle. The defeat of that slender Division on its ridge would have carried with it consequences absolutely tremendous. The Russians, arriving on the Upland, where the ground was bare, and the slopes no longer against them, would have interposed an army in order of battle
* It is just possible that these writers may have supposed that some of the works placed on that ground long afterwards, were there at the time of the battle.
Consequence of Victory. 163