Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/307

BATTLE OF THE ALMA, 281 lie yearued to witness and to control was swiftly chap. passing. It w^as not, I am sure, from any neglect .___J or delinquency that Prince Mentschikoff came to be annulled during all the lieavy stress of the battle. We left the Prince handing over to Kiriakoff the charge of the great column of the eight battalions, and it is only by conjecture that I can form an idea of wliat became of him dur- ing the critical period of several minutes which then immediately followed. He would not have abandoned the personal command of the column which he had eagerly gathered together for a great enterprise, unless he had been dragged away by tidings of what was happening in the I'^nglish part of the iield. Thither, therefore, he would ride, and he would ride, no doubt, with the knowledge (for that was what his last tidings must have taught him) that the English had stormed and carried the Great Piedoubt. But he would have to cross the great road, and before he got thither he would see — and would see, one may imagine, with unspeakable astonishment — that the Volhy- nia columns then constituting what remained of his ' great reserves ' were no longer in their place. Finding that they were retiring, or had already retired, and knowing nothing of the way in which Lord Eaglan had driven them from the field by the use of his two guns on the knoll, the Prince would be likely to ride in the direc- tion which the reserve columns took, very eager to find some man upon whom to vent his anger.