198 TllR COUNSELS OF THE ALUKS. C 11 A I'. VII. ' plan csseutiall}' liazarduu.s in il.s luiluie. The ' very safety of ouv forces has come to be so de- ' pendent on our spirit of enterprise, that we shall ' be guilty of a false prudence equivalent to actual ' rashness, if, after our landing and our victory, ' and our daring flank inarch, we now give the ' enemy respite, allowing him to recover from the
- blow he has received, and to draw to himself all
' the strength which the armies of the Czar may be
- able to afford him iu two or three weeks from this
' time. To give the enemy so great an advantage ' is surely more hazaixhjus than to strive to end the ' campaign at once by a timely assault. His posi- ' tion, 110 doubt, is entrenched ; and defended by ' numerous seamen as well as by a detachment
- of land-service troops ; but it is a position four
' miles in extent which has no army to liold it.' * These, I say, are some of the arguments hich might have been adduced on one side of the ([ucstion ; for they are, all of them, based upon knowledge which had reached the Allies on the I'Otli of September; and that, it seems, is the day on which the idea of promptly assaulting Sebas- topol was brought under the consideration of General Canrobert for the second time."|" General
- Prince Mt-jitscliikofT did not even bcyin to ]ioui- troops Liito
the place until the l.st of October. See pust, chap. xii. la the following November, both the French and the Eng- lish engineers felt the strengtli of the meshes in which the Allies had entangled themselves by undertaking a siege, and came back, after all, to ' enterprise ' and ' audacity ' as offering tiie best means of extrication. — See Extracts from Jlcmoranda of Sir John Rurgoync in the Appendix. t The date is fixed by the following words of a private letter.
