PLAN OF THE FLANK MARCH. 399 out some hesitation, had already made up his chap. the flank iiarcli. mind to accept it.* On tliis subject, therefoie, '__ neither one nor the other of the two commanders ^.';l^^i'„ had need to use words of persuasion. They HI^qI^^ agreed to attempt the flank march. -f*
- On the 24111 the llarslial wrote in liis jnivato jonrnnl :
' We start at eleven o'clock. We shall turn the positions anil ' the batteries by the left.' Lord Raglan's view seems to have been that the Marshal's assent to the Hank march did not so much result from positive approval of the measure as from re- luctance to go on with the original jdan of attacking the Star Fort after hearing of the new works which commanded the mouth of the Belbec. In his private letter of the 28th of Sep- tember to the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Raglan, after speaking of Sir John Burgoyne's memorandum respecting the flank march, says : ' The Marshal did not veiy readily adopt the idea ' in the first instance ; but when he found that the mouth of the ' Belbec was commanded, and that strong works were erecting ' in front of Fort Constantine ' [meaning the Star Fort] ' which ' would impede the use of the river, he assented to the proposition ' without hesitation.' I imagine that the hesitation which Lord Raglan hei'e ascribes to St Arnaud must have shown itself after Burgoyne's interview with the ILarshal, and before the discovery of the new field-work overlooking the mouth of the Belbec. t Statement by an officer present. Writing that same night of the deliberations between the French and the English Head- quarters, Lord Raglan says : ' We shall move again to-morrow ' morning, and we have nearly determined to attempt the
- attack of Sebastopol from the south side, abandoning our com-
' munication with the Katcha.' — Private letter to Duke of Newcastle, dated, 'On the Belbec, 24th Sept. 1854, night.' In qualifying his language by the word 'nearly,' Lord Raglan, as I understand him, was adapting his statement to the fact that the execution of the plan was to be subject to the result of the reconnaissance he was going to undertake on the morrow. He did not, in any other sense, mean that the resolve was otherwise than final; and as the intended reconnaissance was to be in the course of the flank march, and, so to speak, a part of it, I can make, without qualification, the statement in the text to which this note is appended.
