216 OMAR PASHA'S RECONNAISSANCE. CHAP, them duly repulsed without having done any ' harm great enough to be specially memorable. The real advantage achieved by these petty en- terprises was of a general — not special — kind. They kept the besiegers on the alert, and made it their duty to go on unceasingly with the always harassing task committed to their ' guards of the ' trenches.' These night sorties against the English trenches took place sometimes under conditions which gave our people occasion for showing their superb fighting qualities, and winning the gracious ap- proval of Lord Eaglan — a commander so just and so generous, that he did not like his praise to be stinted by the smallness or obscurity of the arena in which his officers and men might be often dis- closing their prowess. There for instance was heart in his tone when, to take but one sample, he told the Home Government that a determined sortie had been ' most nobly met and repulsed.' * Arecon- Omar Pasha, one day, from his camp in the naissanco by Omar plain of Balaclava, effected a little reconnaissance to the left bank of the Tchernaya. This I mention because the battalions composing his principal
- See his published Despatches on the sorties of the nights
of the 5th, 9th, and 11th of May. — Sayer's Collection, pp. 158, 160, 161. In these Lord Raglan accords high praise to the troops, and — by name — to Captain Williamson and Lieutenant Gubbins of the 30th, Lieutenant Rochfort of the 49th, Colonel Trollope, Lieutenant-Colonel Mundy, Captain Turner of the Royal Fusiliers, Captain Jordan of the 34th, and Captain Edwards of the 68th, killed.
