190 THE COUNSELS OF THE ALLIES. c H A P. ' pass away before you can put your siege-guns in ^' ' battery ? If indeed you can now tit once use ' your siege-guns as means of getting down your enemy's fire, such a measure, it nnist be acknow- ' ledged, will be a good preparative for the as- sault ; but is that what you will really do ? When you have landed your siege-guns, will you not want to provide cover for the batteries in which you intend to range them? You confess ' that you will. Your confession simplifies the • question. It is now at last clear that you are ' really entering upon the business of trenches, ' with the prospect at least before you of ap- ' proaches, and first, second, and third parallels, ' and all the laborious processes by which men • attack a great fortress. Call the task what you ' will, you are gonig to undertake a siege ; and ' this, though yuu know that you must omit what ' ought to be the besieger's first step. Without ' the possibility of investing the place, you are ' going to sit down before the South Side of ' Sebastopol. It will not be in less than three ■' weeks from the day when we first came down ' here to Balaclava that your batteries will open ' their fire.*
- The Allies completed their flank march on the 27th of
Septenilier, and their batteries did not open until the I7th of October. Tiie time they took was not len^'thened liy stress of war, or by aecidcnts of weather or of any other kind, and there- fore it is legitimate to suppose that the number of days required for the merely mechanical o[)erations preparatory to the open- ing of the fire might have been computed in the last days of yeptember with a fair approach to accuracy.
