294 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. CHAP. I. the Light Brigade fading out of their sight. The full import oi Lord Lucan's decision. Dragoons to whom the advancing brigade re- mained visible.* They saw our Light Cavalry fade away into the smoke which hung thick at the foot of the valley. This parting was disruption — disruption in the very crisis of the exigency — disruption of that chain which hitherto had been binding into one the strength of the whole English cavalry. To repress the idea of going down with fresh troops to the rescue, to abstain from all part in the combat below the battery where the Light Brigade was engulfed, to allow the communica- tion between the two brigades to remain broken without risking even one squadron in an attempt to restore it — this, all this was the import of the painful decision to which, by a sense of hard duty, Lord Lucan had found himself driven. Our present knowledge of what was going on at the foot of the valley tends to show that a decision in the opposite direction would have been likely to produce good and brilliant re-
- This was the time when General Scarlett (finding suddenly
that his brigade was retiring, and not knowing that the move- ment had been ordered by Lord Lucan) sent back his trumpeter with orders to sound the halt. At the sound the brigade in- stantly halted, and fronted beautifully, as at parade. As I have named Colonel Beatson, let me here say that I have abundant proofs before me of the warmth with which General Scarlett expressed his grateful recognition of the Colonel's ser- vices in the Crimea ; and it is only from the want of that detailed information which none but the Colonel himself who is now (1868) in India— would be able to give mo that I have been prevented from narrating the part that lie personally took in the battle. See in the Appendix papers illustrative of his distinguished services.
