Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/373

THE ATTACK ON LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 341 to carry the "Fortress, they could not, if they CHAP. would, raise the siege. What on earth could 1_ they do ? Must they go on without any hope except the one based on a future campaign under Louis Napoleon's strategy, or else on the chance of a battle, if the enemy should be pleased to attack them in the execrable position they oc- cupied with their backs to the cliffs and the sea ? It may seem to be almost incredible, but still is strictly true, that powerful and victorious armies had come to be thus strangely hampered. The predicament was one that appealed — not surely for any weak yielding on a question of honour or principle but — for such a new move against The need Russia as might either untie or cut through the was for i i r, i ii i pi • f effecting a hard bebastopol knot by a fresh exertion of new move against power. Russia. Knowing well that their armies lay thus strangely tethered and hampered in front of Sebastopol, the Governments of Paris and Lon- don were bound of course, if they could, to find and bring into play some new, some extrinsic force calculated to work the needed change ; but either they did not observe the path of duty before them, or did not see how to pursue it. Yet the lever was ready, and only awaiting The lever to ,. , -,-, P ,. , , be found at their touch. Jbar from having declared that Vienna, they would not negotiate without first taking Sebastopol, they had chosen to say the contrary, and for weeks, as we have seen, had been busily treating with Russia in the Conference-room at Vienna on the basis of the accepted Four Points ;