376 COMBAT OK THE 26TH OF OCTOBEK. CHAP, ently taken for granted that the ground in front ' of the position should not be thus yielded up; and they, both of them at different moments, petitioned their chief to give the pickets support. Thus there showed itself now that same eager and general desire to maintain a fight ' out in the • front ' which was destined to exert a wild sway over the tenor of the subsequent battle ; but on The policy this 26th of October, General Evans, as we saw, of Evans. still commanded the 2d Division, and his concep- tion of the way in which Mount Inkerman should be defended was the very opposite of the one formed by his successor on the later day. From the first, Evans made up his mind that, whenever attacked, he would draw full advantage from the natural strength of the ground ; and this, as he judged, he might best do by declining to rein- force his pickets, by keeping his main strength collected on the Home Ridge, and there awaiting the time when he might deliver over the enemy's advancing battalions to the mercies of artillery- fire. At one point, it is true — on the left of the combating line — he suffered Captain Armstrong to strengthen the hard-pressed picket of the 49th by bringing it two companies in support; but this was all he conceded, and to Percy Her- bert, who asked for a battalion, his answer was — ' Not a man ! ' * With his eighteen field-pieces in battery on the Home Ridge, and the main
- Colonel Percy Herbert, 1 believe, did not fail to become a
strong admirer of the determination which subjected him to this refusal.
