THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 197 But between the two ranges, thus each of them chap. inviting attack, there unhappily lay a smooth ' valley, which offered itself to those horsemen ^ a e t ^y ey who might either be weary of life, or compelled them een by a sense of duty to go down and commit self- destruction. Our Heavy Dragoons were on one of the slopes position of of the Causeway ridge, not far from the scene of at this time their late victory. Lord Cardigan's brigade stood, drawn up in two lines, and so placed as to be fronting straight down the North Valley. Lord Lucan was sitting in the saddle in front Arrival of of his troops, and between the two brigades, the 'fourth
- order.*
when Nolan came speeding from the Commander- in-Chief, and made haste to deliver the paper with which we saw him entrusted. By pursuing a theory that he seems to have formed in regard to the real authorship of directions from the English Headquarters, Lord Lucan had taught himself to mistake the channel for the source, and to imagine that General Airey must be often the originator of orders which, in fact, he was only transmitting. For this reason, and as tend- ing, perhaps, to account in some measure for the way in which the order was about to act upon the mind or the temper of the general to whom it was addressed, it is worth while to remember two circumstances which would have been other- wise unimportant. The bearer of the order, as it chanced, was the aide -de - camp of General ment and of the batteries near it is the one applicable to this part of the nariativp
