Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/357

THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 335 stood at the time of the combat, Lord Lucan was chap so much advantaged afterwards by the alleged ' tenor of the blaming words as to be able to place himself — not, of course, in the right, but — still in the attitude of one who can take fair exception to the terms in which his chief has reproved him. It might be thought at first sight that, correla- General • i-ii it- • n ! Liprandi's tively with the anger and the pam evinced by questions respecting Lord Eaglan, there would be exultation on the the exploit & . of the Light part of Liprandi ; but this was not so. On the Brigade, contrary, he seems to have been thrown into a state of angry vexation ; and perhaps, after all — for in war reputation is strength — he was right in believing that the deduction of three or four hundreds from the numerical strength of our Light Brigade could be no sufficing compensa- tion to him for the moral disaster sustained by the main body of his powerful cavalry — the disas- ter of having been overthrown and put to flight by the desultory and uncombined onsets of scanty numbers of horsemen Perceiving, as he could not fail to do, the unspeakable rashness, or rather self-destructiveness, of the charge, he was dis- posed to attribute it to the maddening power of alcohol ; and it would seem that he was rendered all the more indignant by imagining that the dis- grace of his cavalry — his cavalry numbered by thousands — was the result of a drunken freak. He found himself obliged to abandon that some- what easy mode of accounting for heroism when he had examined our prisoners. Upon his asking