d'autemarre's TROors. 203 comrades, there well might follow a conquest in- chap. volving the fall of Sebastopol. If not, the brave 1_ men who had broken through the Eussian de- fences, and long held the ground they had won, would perforce be all sacrificed, or driven out of the fortress ; and, there being no other path open for even attempting assaults on the works of the Karabelnaya, it followed that the crisis of the con- flict undertaken by d'Autemarre's troops would be also nothing less than the crisis of the whole day's engagement, excepting only that part of it on the skirts of Sebastopol town where General Eyre was commanding. A time at last came when, no reinforcements approaching, the men of the Chasseurs battalion were forced to abandon the ground they had seized in the Karabelnaya, and when also fresh bodies of men — men drawn from the Jakoutsk regiment — assailed and recaptured the Gervais Battery, driving out what remained of the little body of 80 French Engineers which had gallantly seized and long held it. Their commander, the brave Major Abinal, who had led the attack, and re- mained to the last in the battery, was one of those mortally wounded * The battalions of the Zouaves of the Guards that had been called up from the somewhat too distant reserve appeared at length on the ground, but by that time the crisis had passed, and they never were brought into action.
- Kiel, p. 318.
