Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/341

BETWEEN THE CZAIi AND THE SULTAN. 299 XII. The whole number of people killed by the chap. troops during the fort} 7 hours which followed upon XIV " the commencement of the massacre in the Louie- uncertainty as to the vards, will never be known. The burying of the mimbercf bodies was done for the most part at night. In kM " d - searching for a proximate notion of the extent ' of the carnage, it is not safe to rely even upon the acknowledgments of the officers engaged in the work, for during some time they were under an impression that it was favourable to a man's advancement to be supposed to be much steeped in what was done. The colonel of one of the regiments engaged in this slaughter spoke whilst the business was fresh in his mind. It would be unsafe to accept his statement as accurate or even as substantially true ; but as it is cer- tain that the man had taken part in the trans- actions of which he spoke, and that lie really wished to gain credence for the words which he uttered, his testimony has a kind of value as rep- resenting (to say the least of it) his idea of what could be put forward as a credible statement by one who had the means of knowing the truth. What he declared was that his regiment alone had killed two thousand four hundred men. Suppos- ing that his statement was anything like an ap- proach to the truth, and that his corps was at all rivalled by others, a very high number would bo