which rose a wooded mountain, its craggy peaks breaking through the verdure. A wood path, winding amid tall trees, led to the next summit, which disclosed a magnificent landscape. Below lay the valley of Baidar, stretching from the edge of the sea-cliffs to the distant mountain range — a tract of flowery meadows sprinkled with trees and groves. In the midst of the valley stood, at some distance apart, two villages, their roofs gleaming red through the surrounding trees ; but no labourers, nor waggoners, nor cattle gave life to the scene, nor had any corn been sown for this year's harvest. The villages were not only deserted but, as some visitors had ascertained, quite bare of all tokens of domestic life. Turning back along the seacliffs, the silent, deserted, beautiful region came to an end on reaching the fortified ridge above Balaklava ; here were the troops busied with their camp duties, mules and buffaloes toiling with their loads ; and up the hills beyond Kadukoi, above the Turkish camp, the bearded pashas, sitting in open, green tents, smoked their long-stemmed pipes in that blissful calm which such matters as wars and the peril of empires could not disturb.
CHAPTER XII.
A SUCCESSION OF CONFLICTS.
The Emperor persists in His Plan — Pelissier opposes It — The Objects of the Attack — Assault of the White Works— Assault of the Mamelon — The Struggle for It — Assault of the Quarries — The Emperor still persists — Error of Pelissier — His Second Error — His Insufficient Reason — Failure at the Malakoff — Failure at the Redan — A Partial Success — Todleben wounded — Pelissier's Persistency in prosecuting the Siege — Vaillant sides with Pelissier — Death of Lord Raglan — His Funeral — Sufferings of the Defenders — Russian Plans of Battle — Russian Advance for Battle— Battle of the Tchernaya — Retreat of the Russians — Russian Losses in the War.
MEANWHILE the energy of the French General was impelling him, in complete accord with his British colleague, towards one of his main objects. This was to storm the White Works, the Mamelon, and the work between the English trenches and the Redan known as the Quarries. Todleben many times asserts that the Flagstaff Bastion, and other works in front of the town, had frequently been reduced to so desperate a condition from the artillery fire that an assault on them must have been successful, and that the loss of any of these would have entailed the surrender of the place. That the matter did not so present itself to Pelissier's mind is evident from the fact that, with all the means of forming a judgment which the proximity of his siege works to the town defences, and his frequent attacks on the enemy's outworks gave him, he deliberately adopted
The Emperor persists in His Plan. 247
the course of attacking the proper left half of the Russian line of defence, that covering the suburb ; and a necessary preliminary was to wrest the outworks just mentioned from the enemy. With this view, the arming of fresh batteries, and the storing of the great quantities of ammunition necessary for a sustained cannonade, once more went on in the trenches.