Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/217

PKKGKDING TIIK INVASION. 187 to come with his plot avowed into the very pres- cijap. once of an English Ambassador. Afterwards Lord _L 1_ liaglan carae into the room, and then the Marshal began upon the business in hand. He said he had required, and the Turkish Government had consented, that Omar Pasha should be placed under his orders; that a brigade of Turkish infantry and a battery of artillery should be incor- porated into each of the French divisions ; that fifteen hundred of the Bashi-Bazouks should be dismounted, that their horses should be turned over to the French troopers, and that the Bashi- Bazouks should be paid (it was not said by whom), and then be sent baclv to their homes. If this proposal had been then for the first time made known to Lord Stratford, his iiery nature would scarcely perhaps have suffered him to hear with temper ; but he had been prepared by Lord Raglan for what was coming, and he seemed all calm and gentleness. After hearing the proposal with benign attention, he quietly asked the Marshal whether he had cognisance of the tripartite treaty ; and then, turning to a copy of the treaty which happened — not at all by chance — to be lying within his reach, he read aloud the fourth article : an article Avhich pro- ceeds upon the assumption that the three armies would be under the orders of distinct commanders. The Marshal — ready perhaps to encounter the more obvious arguments against the expediency of the plan — was scarcely prepared for this quiet reference to the twins of the treaty. Lord liaglan