Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/203

THK MAIN FIGHT. 159 stances, it so happened that this overthrow of the on a P. twenty battalions, however complete, still failed ' to exert that wide power over the minds and i««^«^- ^ Circum- hearts of men which commonly attends upon stances which victory: for the Kussians, when driven back, marked the J ' , defeat of thf flooded down for the most part by the Mikriakoff twcntj ^ battalions. Glen and the Careenage Ravine, or else by the defile of the Quarry, and dropped away from the Mount under cover of the brushwood and the mist without being seen by their fellow-country- men of the 11th Division then advancing in support along the high ground to take their places in the front ; whilst the English, on the other hand, losing sight of their adversaries for a and im- ' ° ° 111 paired its moment in the dimness of the air and the smoke, moral efre:t and then quickly again finding themselves con- fronted by similar masses, did not even, it seems, imagine that they had finally driven off from the field several thousands of the enemy's infantry ; and, though facing anew big, grey columns, which were really fresh troops, supposed themselves still contending against the obstinacy of their earliest foes. In short, this first hour's achievement, though extirpating from the battle-field, as the Russians declare, more than 15,000 of their in- fantry forces, was nevertheless an event so little known at the time by any other than the fugitives themselves, that to the remainder of the assailing army it brought no discouragement ; to the Eng- lish, no new sense of power, and — except towards the left of the defended ground — no rest, no break, no change.