Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/449

APPENDIX 427 1 tunity to recover the heights. They will he supported 1 by infantry, which has been ordered to advance on two ' fronts.' This order did not seem to me to have been attended to, and therefore it was that the instruction by Captain Nolan was forwarded to him. Lord Lucan must have read the first order with very little attention, for he now states that the cavalry was formed to support the infantry, whereas he was told by Brigadier-General Airey, ' that the cavalry ' was to advance, and take advantage of any opportunity ' to recover the heights, and that they would be supported ' by infantry,' not that they were to support the infantry ; and so little had he sought to do as he had been directed, that he had no men in advance of his main body, made no attempt to regain the heights, and was so little informed of the position of the enemy that he asked Captain Nolan, ' Where and what he was to attack, as neither enemy nor ' guns were in sight 1 ' This, your Grace will observe, is the Lieutenant-General's own admission. The result of his inattention to the hist order was, that it never occurred to him that the second was connected with, and a repetition of, the first. He viewed it only as a positive order to attack at all hazards (the word ' attack,' be it observed, was not made use of in General Airey's note) an unseen enemy, whose position, numbers, and composition, he was wholly unacquainted with, and whom, in consequence of a previous order, he had taken no step whatever to watch. I undoubtedly had no intention that he should make such an attack — there was nothing in the instruction to require it ; and therefore I conceive I was fully justified in stating to your Grace, what was the exact truth, that the charge arose from the misconception of an order for the advance, which Lord Lucan considered obliged him to attack at all hazards.