Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/184

162 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. c ii a p. the carnage resulting from the actual fight bore . . no proportion to the scale, the closeness, and the obstinacy of the conflict ; but also, for want of the mere slaughtering and capturing power that can be exerted in pursuit by squadrons which are not in a state of dispersion, the English dragoons were prevented from conveying to the world any adequate notion of the victory they had gained. When they had been rallied and re-formed, they not only disclosed no abounding exultation, but even evinced a sense of disappointment which bordered on anger. The men found that at the close of what had seemed to them a life-and- death struggle, the enemy had at last been enabled to gallop off without sustaining grave loss, and their inference was that they had been fighting almost in vain. They were mistaken. Without having wrought a great slaughter or captured a host of prisoners, they had gained so great an ascendant that of all the vast body which is known to have been opposed to them there was hardly one squadron which afterwards proved willing to keep its ground upon the ap- proach of English cavalry. Theadmira- But if the men of our Heavy Brigade were b'ythe e'x- e themselves ill content on account of the seem- sr'uVtt's ing barrenness of their victory, it was otherwise with the spectators who had witnessed the fight — who had seen the few wrestling with the many and finally gaining the day. The admiration with which the French had watched the fight was expressed by them with a generous enthu- Hrigade.