THE MAIN FIGHT. 435 general still prcUiiidijig to victory. But then, if chaP. the Russians should undertake to reassert their ^' power, they might well enough fear that they ^'^-^'^'^ would be engendering a fight on Shell Hill, and thus fetching that very contingency which they could not but hold in sore dread ; for they stood, as we know, on an upland, with a numerous and nmcli crippled artillery in their charge, and diffi- cult steeps behind them. Occurring at the place where it did, and occurring, too, at such a conjunc- ture, the dislodgment of the battery was an inci- dent which might force on decisive counsels. It might either provoke an attack, or compel an instant retreat. When the gunners assailed by Acton limbered up, and began to retreat, there was no one, so far as I learn, who ascertained the very time of the movement by casting a look at his watch ; but, succeeding as it did to a long train of ills already suffered by Dannenberg, the spectacle of a Eus- sian battery brought signally under the mercies of the 18-pounder shot, and at the same time at- tacked by infantry, may well have inflicted upon him the final, the conquering pang which at length subdued his will.* What he says himself is that he was brought to his decisive resolve — not by any mere notion that the continuance of the struggle would be fruitless, but — by the actual
- Apparently Damienberg's final resolve must have been
brought about suddenly and by some new calamity ; for otJier- wise it is liardly imaginable that he could have omitted to com- municate on the subject rith Prince Mentschikoff. See ftoat. notp. p. 442.
