Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/527

SEQUEL TO INKEIIMAN NAKUATIVE. 48. 'j The enemy's liikeruian plan was free from the CHp. glaring defects of the one imagined by Dannen- 1. berg, and indeed it had been cleverly — nay, in most respects, ably contrived ; but, whether from pedantry, or from the want of a trusted com- mander, its framers committed the old Aulic fault of trying to make prescript words perform the task of a general. In providing that Prince GortschakofT should be unleashed by an imagined contingency only, and not by a message from his chief, they sought to make their plan what mechanists would call ' self-acting,' and made it, as we have seen, self-hampering. But, although the plan had this fault, and in practice worked so perversely that it battened down Gortschakoff in the valley, and there kept him neutralised with forces 22,000 strong, there is nothing in its provisions that will serve to account for the discomfiture of the other 40,000 men undertaking to seize Mount Inkerman. In the course of the efforts men made to show Real extent of the why the many succumbed, a good deal was said advantase ■^ . "^ . . possessed l>y of their weapons ; and it is true that the bulk of the aihcs '■ In point of the Russian infantry still carried the smooth- arms, bore musket, whilst the bulk of their foes had the rifle. The superior ' precision ' of the rifle was a quality of but little worth in that early and most critical part of the fight, where the the Light, the 3d, and the 4th — and the French in abundant numbers coukl have been speedily drawn from the corps of both Forey and Bosquet.