THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 295 suits ; * but that same present knowledge which chap we now have is exactly what at the time was L_ most wanting : and of course it is no more than right that the soundness of an officer's judgment should be viewed in its relation to those circum- stances only which were fairly within the range of his knowledge or surmise when he had to make his resolve.-f* The Heavy Dragoons at this time were but our Heavy little if at all vexed by fire ; and there was at this twit nothing to distract their thoughts from the Light Brigade, or from the pain of dwelling on their own condition as bystanders withheld from the combat. At first, the grey boundary of their sight was from time to time pierced by the flashes from the battery at the foot of the valley ; the thunder of the guns was still heard, and the round-shot, one after another, came bowling along up the slope ; but next there followed a time when the cloud at the foot of the valley remained blank without issues of flame, when a terrible quiet had succeeded to the roar of artillery, when no token of the fight could be seen, except a disabled or straggling horseman or a riderless charger emerging here and there from the smoke. Thenceforth the cause of anguish to those who gazed down the valley was no longer in what they could now see or hear, but in what they
- See the state of the field as shown ante, p. 284 et seq., and
the plan illustrating the statement. + With respect to Lord Raglan's opinion as to the way in which Lord Lucan supported the Light Brigade, see his letter of the 16th of December 1854 in the Appendix.
