402 COUNSELS ENDING IN THE CHAP, to avoid. With liis old spirit of resistance to ^ bodily weakness, he clung to his command, and apx^arently with the more tenacity from the time when he suspected that measures had been secretly taken to provide for the event of his becoming unable to remain at the head of the army. So when, as a substitute for the attack of the Star Fort, there came the proposal to resort to the flank march, he could see that the measure was one which averted the immediate necessity of his resigning the command by shifting the stress of duty in the Allied army from its right to its left, and thereby enabling him to do now again what he had so happily done once before when he lay struck down by illness * — that is, to leave the virtual leadership of the whole expe- dition for the time in the hands of the English Commander. This way of explaining what passed is the more to be welcomed since it tends to disperse the seeming cloud that was thrown upon the French army by the counsels of its chief, and recognises that singular power of fighting against bodily sickness which was one of the most in- teresting features in the character of ^larshal St Arnaud.f If this linal determination to turn aside from
- During the voyage. See ' Invasion of the Crimea,' vol. ii.
chap. XX. of Cabinet Edition. + Since I wrote the above, I have had an opportunity of seeing that General dc Todleben ascribes the avoidance of the Star Fort to the same cause — the maladies of the French Marsha}.
