380 THE BA'ITLE OF INKEUMAN. CHAP, plete, iiiul it was with almost perfect impunity that his gunuei'S thenceforward continued to 4th Period, pixvagc the encuiy's batteries.* The scope Froui this ruin of the enemy's artilleiy power change thus ou Shell Hill many hastened to infer his ap- wiougi pi-oachiug defeat ; and in truth the change wrought was one of great moment. This will seem plain to all who remember the nature of the enemy's footing on Mount Inkerman. He there indeed had a lodgment and magnificent vantage- ground from which to deliver his successive assaults, but this was not all; for his hundred guns established in battery along a range of com- manding heights upon a front scarcely short of a mile, and his ample masses of infantry drawn up in support, were forces so placed as to be in reality constituting that instrument of tena- cious power which soldiers call an * army in ' position ; ' and it was in the centre — the culmin- ating centre — of a line of battle thus puissant for either attack or defence that the two eighteen- pounders were now fast breaking its strength. What the enemy had suffered before was a succession of calamitous discomfitures, which nevertheless, after all, were only so many ' re- ' pulses ; ' but the force now exerted against him
- As some proof of the importance which Lord KugUin attaclied
to the action of the two eighteen-pouiiders, I may mention that he took the unusual course of ordering that it shoukl he spe- cially commemorated in the official records of service. The words are : — ' Present at the battle of Inkerman with the two ' 18-pounder batteries [battery] which rendered such distin- ' gnished and splendid service.'
