CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE BESIEGERS. CHAP. I. The task of defence now weighing upon their energies : and defence under hard conditions. No idea of raising the siege could be well or even pru- dently har- boured. risk striking any prompt blow ; and on the other hand now, they lived subject to whatever might be adventured against them by a closely hover- ing army which they could not shake off, and be- sides — at still closer quarters — by the garrison of a fortress which they had not even tried to invest. They indeed might still be preparing the means of some future attack, but meanwhile, they found themselves thrown upon the defensive, and this too, under conditions of a perilous kind; for whilst closely cooped in as we saw, on the land side, they stood with their backs to a shore over- hung by precipitous cliffs ; and tacticians all know that to have to accept battle from a powerful enemy without enjoying due freedom of move- ment towards the rear, is to be in a sort of pre- dicament which is adverse to the hope of a vic- tory, and makes defeat utter ruin. Pride alone would perhaps have sufficed to pre- vent the thus hampered Allies from indulging any thought of retreat ; but it is certain that motives deriving from a warlike sense of honour and courage were reinforced by the dictates of prudence ; for, whatever the peril and difficulty of forcibly reducing Sebastopol, an undertaking to withdraw the Allied armies, and to cover their embarkation, would have been one of a kind still more formidable, and — except upon condition of abandoning siege-guns to the enemy — must have proved a task utterly desperate.*
- Under stress of an imprudent question exacting a categori-
cal answer, Lord Raglan confidentially informed Lord I'anrnure
