Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 3.djvu/97

BATTLK OF THE ALMA. 71 they arc to quit good shelter and t^o out into the ciiap. storm, they ought, at the least, to know that ' the movement is one really intended, and is |,'*,g%'^o^the needful to the purpose of the battle. The duty ITuTiT' of pressing forward to terminate the isolation of nl'vilion. Bosquet rested primarily with the General of the 1st Division. General Canrobert was a man of whom great General hopes were entertained. According to every test which could be applied by school and college examinations, he promised to be an accomplished general. To the military studies of his youth he had added the experience of many campaigns in Africa ; and even in the French army, where brave men abound, his personal valour had be- come a subject of remark. He was so deeply trusted by his Emperor, that he had become the bearer of a then secret paper which was to put him at the head of the French army in the event of St Arnaud's death. He had the misfortune to have upon his hands the blood of the Parisians slain by his brigade on the 4th of December ; but it was said, to his honour, that he, more than all the other generals employed at that time, had loathed the work of having to abet the midnight seizure of his country's foremost generals. His spirit, they say, had been broken by the pestilence which some few weeks before had come upon his Division in the country of the Danube ; but the extremity of the grief to which he then gave way had so much to justify it in the appalling nature of the calamity which slew his troops, that it