THE COUNSELS OF THE ALLIES. 181 ' uiteiiy unjustifiable;* would indeed be almost ' a crime.' t Lord Eaglan, and Lyons, and Catlicart, they have all passed awa}' ; and, except to the extent already shown, I have no acquaintance with the reasons by which any of them might have been prepared to enforce proposals for an immediate assault ; but, partly by becoming acquainted with the events of the campaign which followed, and partly by help of the criticisms which later years have produced, it is practicable to discern the nature of the argument which the united counsels of the Frencli Headquarters and of Sir John Burgoyne might well have provoked at the time: — ' Lefore engaging in the main argument, it is Arsmnent , . . „ , , in favour of convenient to examine some oi your lesser and assauitin- ' collateral reasons for objecting to a prompt ' assault. And first, you are wrong in imagining ' that the embarrassment created by the ravines ' is one which would only be felt by the assailants. Iter 1854. In this paper Sir John says: 'On arriving before ' Sebastopol, after the battle of the Alma and the taking pos- ' session of Balaclava, the place appeared to be in such a state, ' and the garrison so busily, and with so much apparent con- ' fidence, engaged in improving it, that, with a fine battering- ' train on board ship close at hand, no one for <i moment ' contemplated the attempt of so rash an act as to storm it ' at once.'
- ' The place was in such a state when the army first ap-
' pcared before it as rendered an attempt to stoi'm it by a coup ' de main utterly unjustifiable.' — IMenioranduin by Sir John liurgoyne, dated 30th December 1854. t This last, 1 believe, was one of the forms in which General Canrobert expressed his opinion of the idea of storming without first using the siege-guns.
