VARIOUS MOVEMENTS AND CHANGES. 41 knowledge desired, but effected their tasks with c ha p. a brilliant smartness and skill which drew warm . — praise from Lord Kaglan. It was to one of these admirably conducted reconnaissances that the Allies owed their know- ledge of the enemy's withdrawal from the plain of Balaclava. Amongst those 'reorganising' directions which The treat ° o o merit ex- General Niel had brought out, there was one perienced ° by Forey which removed General Forey from the command of the 1st Corps d'Armee, and entrusted it to General Pelissier — an officer destined to reach, though not until some months afterwards, a yet more exalted command. General Forey on the 2d of December 1851 had done an act of great moment, and he possibly thought himself one who, whatever might be the mute feeling of his country at large, did at least deserve well of the ' Empire.' * So far as concerns his part in the siege of Sebastopol, I am not myself cognisant of any fault or shortcoming with which he could rightly be charged ; for the care, the severity with which he strove to maintain the warlike spirit of the French army, and to expose evasions of duty on the part of its officers was plainly a merit, and one of very high value. Still, by merit of that unpleasing kind he of course stirred up hatred; and it seems probable that the enemies he thus raised up against himself may have been the men
- He captured Parliament ' sitting,' and marched it off to
prison. See ante, vol. i. chap. xiv. p. 260 et seq.
