224 HIS DEFENCE OF SEBASTOPOL. chap, but, to avert the impending disaster, he instantly '— assumed a command. He seized, if so one may speak, on a competent body of troops, and rescind from imminent capture the vast, clubbed, helpless procession of Mcntschikoff's retreating artillery.* He was only at first a volunteer colonel, and was afterwards even, no more, in the language of formalists, than a general commanding the Engineers in a fortress besieged ; but the task lie designed, the task he undertook, the task he — till wounded — pursued with a vigour and genius that astonished a gazing world was — not this or that fraction of a mighty work, but simply — the whole defence of Sebastopol. Like many another general, he from time to time found himself thwarted, and too often encoun- tered obstructions ; but upon the whole, even after the 'heroic period,' when the glorious sailors were mainly his trust and his strength, there glowed in the hearts of the Russians with- standing foreign invasion a genuine spirit of patriotism which not only brought them to face the toils and dangers of war with ready devotion, but even in a measure kept down the growth of ignoble jealousies directed against this true chief. and in the The task of defending Sebastopol was a charge wargener- ^ SU p er i ;lt j V( , moment, and drew to itself before long the utmost efforts that Russia could bring to bear on the war. Since the fortress — because not invested —
- Ante, vol. vi. pp. 450, 451.
