THE FRENCH AT FIRST ADVERSE. 23 of his heart's desire by proposing that Canrobert's chap. troops should relieve the English infantry from the task of supporting our Left Attack, and that with the force thus set free Lord Eaglan should undertake the Malakoff.* This English proposal, however, was not adopt- ed by Canrobert ; t and all people now at length saw that, to insist on the necessity of subduing the Malakoff was substantially the same as de- claring that French troops ought to assail it. So long as they were ardently hopeful of bring- The French in<? the strife to an issue on their own chosen verse to his O counsels. ground, the French seemed to hearken unfavour- ably, and not always without signs of impatience, to Burgoyne's able counsels, all tending to draw their energies eastward, and engage them in some way or other against the Malakoff front ;( 8 ) but at last, when under the stress of those gathering perils and troubles to which we saw them laid open by their measures against the Town front, they became more ready to listen ; and Burgoyne, But after- ■' wards more on ihe other hand, seemed going half-way to meet willingly ° listening to them ; because under one of its aspects, he treated them. the new move as one that was auxiliary to their
- Journal Royal Engineers, pp. 63, 139. M. Rousset there-
fore errs when making it appear, as he does (vol. ii. p. 31), that, instead of assailing it themselves, our own people cast off on the French the great task of assailing the Malakoff. He errs also when saying (ibid.) that the French consented to 'substitute ' themselves for the English in besieging the Malakoff.' The English had never besieged it. When they ruined it on the 17th of October 1854, they did this by firing across the Dock- yard Ravine. t Ibid., p. 63.
