Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/304

282 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap he so acted as to convey the impression that he '___ reserved his energy and attention for the purposes of command, and did not conceive it his duty (except in actual self-defence) to become, with his own hand, a slayer of men. As might be expected, the obstinacy of the Eussians, interrupted in their task of carrying off the guns, was very unequal ; and if some fought so hard as to involve our people in the combat we have just been speaking of, there were others who attempted no active resistance. Several drivers, for instance, threw themselves off their horses, and so crept under them, as in that way to seek and find shelter. In the end our Dragoons got the mastery, and not only suc- ceeded in preventing the withdrawal of all the pieces of cannon which they had seen in the line of the battery at the time of their entering it, but also arrested and disabled some other guns — already a little way from the front — which the enemy was in the act of removing. The busi- ness of repressing the enemy's obstinate endea- vours to carry off his guns was of such duration that again there interposed a long distance be- tween the 4th Light Dragoons and the regiment (the 11th Hussars) with which Lord George Paget had sought to align himself; for whilst tlte 4th Light Dragoons remained combating on Farther the site of the battery, Colonel Douglas, as we advance . . of Lord know, was advancing: but his task in the bat- Geor^e Paget. tery being almost complete, Lord George, with a part if not with the whole of his troops, now