112 BURGOYNE. chap, public service,* and he therefore requested the 1 — general to remain for a while at headquarters. Departure This Burgoyne did, and it was only in the third of Sir John e J ' J Burgoyne. week of March that he left the Crimea.t In the autumn of the previous year Burgoyne not only championed that measure which restored to the enemy's forces their all-precious line of communication, but opposed himself to any prompt seizure of the then almost helpless Sebas- topol which Mentschikoff had left to its fate; J and he clung indeed so tenaciously to the idea of proceeding against the place by means of covered batteries that — almost without knowing it — he drew the Allies on and on into the curious error of preferring a siege to a conquest, though better than most men he knew that the siege thus strangely preferred must needs be one under- taken with grossly inadequate means ;( 7 ) and of course with the plain facts before me, I have not been able to think that any such counsels were sound.§ But when once the Allies had committed them- selves to the task of a siege, and the thus nar- rowed question asked only how best to conduct it, Burgoyne — then no longer the strategist but — the skilled, the accomplished engineer, brought to
- Lord Raglan of course imparted to his Government the
step he thus took. — Lord Raglan to Lord Panmure — Private Letter— 3d March 1855. f Lord Raglan to Secretary of State, 19th March 1855. % See ante, vol. iv. pp. 12, 13, 19, 92, 100, 129. 148, 149, 150. § See ante, vol. iii. chaps, iii. v., vol. iv. chaps, iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. x. xii. xiii. xiv. and xv.
