160 BATTLE OF TIIK ALMA. CHAP, koffs care was precious, but the Kouigaue Hill .. ^' was the key of the whole position on the Alma. Jhere, and there only, the ground had been en- trenched ; there, and there only, heavy guns had been planted. That barren hill had become the very gage for which the Great Powers of the ^Yest and the Czar of All the liussias were to join in a strife computed to last many days. Prince
- Mentschikolf himself had so judged it. Estab-
lishing his headquarters on the slope overlooking the Great Ptedoubt, and so disposing his troops that whilst standing there he could exercise an immediate personal control over two-thirds of his whole force, he had intended that every move- ment of this part of the field should be under his own eyes. It might well be deemed certain that any one of Prince Mentschikoff's lieutenants en- trusted, during the absence of hi.s general, with this great charge, would be tenacious of the ground. As a general in high conmiand, he would act upon the knowledge that the hill was vital to the whole position : as an officer command- ing troops placed in a ibrtified work, he would be taught by the punctilio of his profession to hold his entrenchments, even at great sacrifice, until the weight of his charge should be taken from him by an order from the commander of the forces. But there was a whim of the Emperor Nicholas which tended to weaken and disjierse the author- ity of any man in command of his army. Longing always to make Wellington an example for his generals, but mistaking the gist of the saying that
