Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/436

406 THE CANNONADE OF CHAP, the Allied fleets were losers; they lost some part of that incorporeal strength which, conferred though it be by mere human opinion, may yet be to fleets and armies a main source of warlike ascendancy. Before the 17th of October, that haughty dominion of the seas which the Allies had been able to assert contrasted so painfully in the minds of the Russians with the posture of their own Black Sea squadrons, all sunk as they were or imprisoned, that it oppressed them with a sense of vast power — with a sense of vast power which, though it might not be immeasurable, had, down to that time, been unmeasured ; and there were signs of a spirit in Prince Mentschikoff's troops, which made it seem probable that in moments of discouragement the acknowledged ascendant of the Allies at sea might be used as a pretext and excuse for shortcomings and derelic- tion of duty on the part of the Russian land forces. But by that which they did, and by that which they refrained from doing, on the 17th of October, the Admirals who were wielding this hitherto undefined and therefore most dreaded ])Ower, gave a public acknowledgment of the limits which bound them in approaching the forts of Sebastopol. From that day, their sup- posed pretension to be, some day or other, the assailants of the place was visibly a pretension withdrawn ; and the seaward approaches of the roadstead became added to the range of unchal- lenged dominion thenceforth enjoyed by the for- tress.