200 THE GARRISON REINFORCED CHAP. XII. &. sortie. Petty ventures against the besiegers : it will come to hold itself equal — nay, soon, per- haps, mure than equal — to the troops it has lately been dreading.* This opportunity of regaining their self-con- fidence was one of the many advantages which delay conferred on the liussians, and they availed themselves of it with great skill and sagacity. One of the sorties they undertook was a good deal above the ranl< of what I called ' petty ven-
- tures ; ' for it seems that the enterprise which
ended in the well-known result of burning down the Kodolph farmhouse, and destroying the wall of the homestead, was effected by one battalion of seamen, with some sappers, a handful of Cos- sacks, and a couple of guns, in the teeth of two French battalions and a squadron of horse ;-}- but, commonly, the enterprises of the garrison were of the humbler kind already indicated. The use that could be made of these trivial acts was per- ceived. Admiral Istomin formallv submitted to
- The materials before me show at length and in mucli detail
liie whole process of this moral recovery from the disheartening fffects of the blow received on the Alma. t The distance of the farm from the llussian lines of defence was about two-thirds of a mile, and the time three o'clock in the afternoon of the 5th of October. — Niel, ' Si^ge de Sebasto- ' pol,' p. 50. As General Niel has not mentioned the fact, that any French troops were present when the Russians came out and burnt the house, it may be well to give the authority on which the statement rests, ivorniloff records that he him- self both ordered and witnessed the exploit. In his private journal he says, ' Our brave fellows drove away two l)attaliuns of ' Frenchmen and a squadron of their cavalry, destroyed the wall, ' and burnt the house There could be no exaggeration as to • Nhat was done, because the feat was achieved in ov.r sight.'
