the Emperor to follow Lord Raglan's lead-was burning for action. His health was rapidly failing him, and he was loth to leave his command till he had struck at least one blow. Lord Raglan's mind was made up. Admirals Lyons and Bruat were in favour of the expedition, and every other officer in either army or navy was opposed to it. The commanders had their way; and the plan finally adopted was, eschewing regular operations, to land a movable column at the mouth of the Katscha, force on a battle, and carry Sebastopol by a coup-de-main.

The cholera, which still clung to the allied forces—a fire, at which St. Arnaud "displayed great coolness and judgment," according to Major Calthorp, and is not, strange to say, asserted by Mr. Kinglake to have "contrived to appear in seeming peril"-caused delay, and it was not till the 24th August that the embarkation commenced. On the appointed day, the 2d September, the impatient marshal started with his sailing ships. The English were four days behind time, but they had cavalry to embark. The marshal's petulance soon wore off: he stood back, and the whole flotilla was reunited. Lord Raglan's grave letter certainly implied rebuke; but if St. Arnaud's eager temperament sometimes betrayed him, the sweetness of his temper prevented any evil consequences. While on the voyage, the French officers drew up a paper, in which they objected to landing at the Katscha, and proposed to land at Kaffa, in the extreme east of the Crimea. Finally, St. Arnaud left the decision to Lord Raglan, being himself prostrated by illness. This was on the 8th. On the 10th the marshal wrote to his wife. His letter shows that there can be no doubt what the proposal to land at Kaffa meant: it was intended that we should fortify ourselves there, and make it the base for regular operations against Sebastopol in the spring. In short, the whole plan of the campaign was to be altered. St. Arnaud himself was still in favour of landing at the Katscha at all hazards, for he felt the days of his command were numbered; but it is characteristic of the man that he writes throughout as if the choice of a landing-place still rested with him, and the reconnaissance was in the hands of his inferior officers. It was in the hands of Lord Raglan, who himself surveyed the coast, peremptorily rejected the idea of Kaffa, rejected the Katscha, on the opinion of the naval officers that the bay was too small for our enormous flotilla, and fixed on Old Fort.

A mistake was made, according to Mr. Kinglake, by the French on the night of the 13th in laying down the buoy which was to divide the allied flotillas at the landing-place. Perceiving this, Lord Lyons determined at once to avoid confusion by landing the English army about a mile to the

north. It is wearisome to have to notice the continued perverseness with which Mr. Kinglake sees here on the part of our allies either over-greediness for space, or a desire to bring the enterprise to a close. The last notion is perfectly preposterous. An alliance must be weak indeed which could be endangered by a mistake so trifling, and of which the consequences were so easily rectified. In landing, our cavalry again made us two days longer than the French. All the 17th the marshal fumed; on the 18th he says that he wrote to Lord Raglan that he would start the next morning, and nothing should stop him: and it is true that on the 19th the Allies were on the march for the Alma.

At one o'clock on the 20th September, Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud held a short conference in front of the allied line. Before them was a gentle slope leading down to the Alma, to the south of which the ground rises to an average height of about 300 feet. On the plateau at the top the Russian army was ranged in position. The point at which the French and English lines united was opposite to the village of Bourliouk. The French position was to the right of this, and extended to the sea. From Bourliouk to Almatamack, a distance of two miles and a quarter, the hill could be scaled every where by foot-soldiers; but there was but one road practicable for artillery, this was near Bourliouk. At Almatamack there was another, and a third where the Alma enters the sea. Between these two points, about a mile apart, the cliff is altogether inaccessible.

The hill opposite to the English portion of the allied line rose gradually, more like our own chalk downs. It was called the Kourgané hill. Here was the great redoubt containing fourteen guns, which swept the whole naked hill-side. Close to Bourliouk, but on that side which is furthest from the sea, and therefore nearly in the Russian centre, was a ravine in the shape of a V, up which ran the great road from Eupatoria to Sebastopol. This ravine, like the Kourgané hill, was strongly defended by infantry and artillery. The hill to the west of the ravine, and therefore in front of the French left, was crowned by an unfinished turret, and was thence known as the Telegraph hill. The first necessity of the moment was a plan of attack. St. Arnaud, the night before, had proposed that Bosquet should turn the Russian left by scaling the cliff at Almatamack and close to the sea. This being done, he would himself attack in front, while the English turned the Russian right. Lord Raglan, as usual, seems to have let the marshal talk, who went away naturally fancying that silence had given consent. Now that

So at least says Lord Raglan, in a letter of the 10th September, quoted in the Saturday Review of March 14th. Captain Mends, however, who had the management of the disembarkation, in his letter to the Times denies the whole story.

they were in front of a position over five miles in length, measuring from the sea, it became evident that to turn the Russian right was dangerous, as the ground was peculiarly adapted for cavalry, in which we were just as weak as the Russians were strong. Besides, to have attempted to turn both the flanks of the Russian army would have left a gap in the allied centre. Lord Raglan simply, therefore, said that he would attack in front. The marshal remained till death under the notion that the English had engaged to turn the Russian right. And the battle commenced without a plan.

The cliff to their right was soon scaled by the French ;-by Bosquet with one brigade at Almatamack; by Bouat with one brigade and a Turkish division by the sea. This was the first blunder. The coast, within a mile of the sea, was swept by the fire of the fleet, and Bosquet, with only one brigade, was unable to push on. Of Bouat and the Turks no more was seen that day. Canrobert now advanced; but though his men climbed the hill, his artillery had to be sent back by Almatamack, and he too was therefore paralysed. Why Prince Napoleon remained where he did so long is a mystery, for he had a road practicable for artillery in his front; but he suffered from minor mishaps, and St. Arnaud was personally present with the division. Therefore things at present looked ill; yet the danger was more apparent than real. So confident had Prince Mentschikoff been that the cliff at Almatamack was inaccessible, that he had never troubled himself to examine it, and had left the ground for two miles from the sea wholly unoccupied. Then, when Bosquet appeared, he was thrown into perplexity, and commenced moving some of his reserves from his right to his left in a vague and helpless way. Had he attacked Canrobert and Prince Napoleon vigorously at this moment, the result of the day might perhaps have been different. But he was not a competent commander.

At least two urgent messages having come from the French, though none apparently from the marshal, Lord Raglan ordered an advance. In front were Sir George Brown with the light, and Sir De Lacy Evans with the second divisions, being respectively supported by the first and third divisions. Sir George Cathcart was in reserve. No sooner was the advance well commenced than Lord Raglan took the extraordinary course of crossing the Alma a little west of Bourliouk, and riding with his staff in advance of his own army, and right into the Russian lines. He left his own army without a general, and ran upon great good fortune. Probably he had divined the fatal gap which here intervened in the Russian line; for the order to bring up Turner's battery seems to have been first given just after he had crossed the river. A few minutes later

he had reached a little knoll forming one of the spurs of the Telegraph height. "Now, if we had a couple of guns here!" said he, instantly; for he saw that he was in a position to enfilade the Russian batteries defending the great road.

From this position Lord Raglan had the pain of seeing the advance, victory, and repulse of the light division. Originally too little ground had been taken up, so that the extreme regiments of the light and second divisions overlapped each other, and in passing through the orchards, which lined the river-bank, all formation was lost. Thus five regiments-four from the light, and one from the second division-all in a huddle, carried the great redoubt; and then being unsupported had to relinquish it, and retreated down the hill in confusion, carrying away the Fusilier Guards, and thereby leaving an awkward gap in the second line, which was at last coming up in support. All this time Lord Raglan was at too great a distance even to attempt to check the advance of the first, or hasten that of the second line. There are some inconveniences when a commanderin-chief stations himself in the midst of the enemy. But just at this moment the two guns of Turner's battery had arrived on the knoll; and soon the Russian artillery barring the great road to Sebastopol had to retire. Then the British line, consisting of the Highland brigade, the brigade of Guards, and Pennefather's brigade, steadily advanced.

Meanwhile, just as the light division commenced its retreat, Canrobert, unable without artillery to bear up against the Russian "column of eight battalions," fell back over the edge of the plateau. But the opportune arrival of his artillery, which soon shattered the Russian column, enabled him to push on; the Telegraph height was carried after a sharp struggle; and all parts of the position were at about twenty minutes to four in the hands of the Allies. Lord Raglan wished to pursue, and offered our cavalry and Cathcart's division; but the French marshal declined.

Into the details of this last victorious advance, space will not permit us to enter. It is described, diffusely perhaps, but still with admirable clearness and spirit, by Mr. Kinglake. If some of his pictures of the deeds of inferior officers-such for instance as that of Colonel Yea-seem at first too highly coloured, the feeling passes away when we remember in how short a time the subjects of them met the death which they escaped here. But the old animosity to the French still remains. He even goes the length of absolutely denying the truth of their account of a severe hand-to-hand fight near the Telegraph; and this merely on the negative evidence of the Russian general Kiriakoff, and of two Russian officers who were present at the

battle, none of whom make any mention of the matter. If French narratives pass over in silence any incident in which they did not maintain the mastery, their silence would be very differently treated. But Mr. Kinglake, who himself mentions Colonel Hamley's book with approbation, ignores that officer's evidence in a way which is hardly ingenuous. "There appeared," says Colonel Hamley at p. 36, "signs of a sanguinary conflict. Many Russians lay dead there, and they lay thicker near the signal tower, the hillock on which it was built being strewn with them. Three or four had been bayoneted while defending the entrance; and in the narrow space within, which was divided into compartments, were three or four small groups slain in the defence. Another spot near contained three or four hundred corpses." This is the evidence of an eyewitness, and, as it appears to us, settles the question.

Prince Mentschikoff's tactics it is hard to criticise, for he had none. Relying on the strength of his position to cover his left, he had never broken up the artillery roads by which the cliff could be scaled there, nor did he so much as know of their existence. Still more inexplicable is the inactivity to which he condemned his splendid cavalry, which, by threatening our left, might have seriously imperilled our advancing line. But bad as were his tactics, his strategy was probably no better. With his small force (even at the Alma he had but 39,000 men, of whom some had arrived only that morning, to oppose to the 60,000 of the Allies), perhaps he could do no better, if fight he must, than choose a strong position to fight in. Either in opposing the landing, or, if he had manoeuvred with his back to the great road from Simpheropol to Sebastopol, in attempting to drive the Allies into the sea, any advantage to be derived from his great superiority in cavalry would have been neutralised by the terrible fire of the fleets. Probably his best course would have been to allure the Allies into the interior, by falling slowly back towards Perekop, receiving as he retired the reinforcements which were daily hurrying from the Pruth. If the Allies had refused his lead, and marched on Sebastopol, he should have followed them closely, and they could hardly have attempted a coup-de-main, which they shrunk from after a victory, while an unconquered army of 40,000 men, daily increasing in numbers, was hanging on their rear.

Had Lord Raglan had the good fortune to command an army in the field while still in the prime of life, he might not improbably have attained no inconsiderable reputation; for he had that quickness of eye and readiness of judgment which enables a commander to act in the hour of battle with promptitude and decision. But for nearly forty years he had led an