RESIGNATION OF GENERAL CANROBERT. 297 him to assume the command* This Pelissier, CHAP. XI with a plainly wise self-control, declined to do, ' maintaining that the instruction was only meant to be acted upon in the event of Canrobert's death or serious illness.t General Canrobert, however, on the 16th of i6thMay. . His second May, wrote by telegraph thus to his ruler : — ' My endeavour. ' health and my mind fatigued by constant tension ' no longer allow me to carry the burthen of an ' immense responsibility. My duty towards my His resig- nation ten- ' sovereign and my country forces me to ask leave dered. ' to deliver to General Pelissier a commander of ' skill and great experience, the letter for him ' which I hold. The army which I shall quit is ' intact, inured to war, ardent, and confident. ' I ask the Emperor to leave me a combatant's ' place at the head of a simple division.' J General Niel must have felt that his ' mission,' strange in- and his claim to be superintending the ostensible ofSSS. 0I commander-in-chief, were brought into jeopardy by a change which removed the docile Canrobert, and raised up in his place so strong a man as Pelissier; but acting, as may well be believed, under an imperious sense of public duty, whilst also perhaps somewhat eager to move, if moving at all, on the topmost crest of the wave, he was
- This step, as Pelissier said, was taken by Canrobert ' five
' or six days ' before the 19th of May. t I do not observe that this transaction was ever made known to the French Government ; but General Pelissier im- parted it to Lord Raglan. Lord Raglan to Secretary of State, Secret, 19th May 1855. + Rousset, vol. iL
