148 pelissier's sudden change. CHAP. VI. Pelissior's sudden Hi :m e of purpose ; not im- parted at the time: to Lord Itaglan. Its purport VI. But unhappily in the evening of the 17th of June, the resolve of Pelissier underwent a change wild and abrupt. Whether duped by 'informa- ' tion ' from some returned prisoner, or some de- serter or spy, which told him that — ripe for con- quest at once by the mere sight of infantry columns advancing against them at daybreak — the works of the Karabelnaya would fall, as it were, at his touch ;* or whether — because at last weakened more than ever before by the tortures we saw him enduring at the hands of his sove- reign — he simply was carried away by the flood of exultant Opinion then sweeping over the camp, he at all events made a rush headlong — a rush towards what was much worse than simply pre- cipitate action.! Strange, flighty, and wrong as so great a derelic- tion must seem after what he had announced in the morning at the English headquarters, he did not consult Lord Eaglan on the change he was making. He assembled some generals at his own headquarters, but they did not restrain him, and I treat the resolve as his own. He determined — determined irrevocably — that the further preparative measure of bombarding the enemy's works which was to have opened the
- This seems to have been widely believed iu Frauce, and
the name of the deceiver used to be mentioned, but I have no proof that the conjecture was sound. + Because, an attack that same evening would have been vastly more prudent and hopeful. '
