Now General Pennefather galloped up, as radiantly happy as any schoolboy who has just finished his fifteenth round.
"I should like to press them, my lord. They are retreating already, and we could give a fine account of them."
"What have you left to pursue with?" asked Lord Raglan, still hoping to encourage the French to undertake the offensive.
"Seven or eight hundred now, in the first brigade alone."
"To pursue thousands!" exclaimed Canrobert, when this was interpreted to him; "you must be mad! I will have nothing to do with this; we have done enough for one day."
Now again, as on the Alma, when the heights had been carried by storm, the fruits of victory were lost by our unenterprising, over-cautious allies.
This, indeed, is the true story of Inkerman, as told on incontestable evidence of the great historian of the war. The French did not rescue the English from disaster; they were themselves repulsed. At the close of the action, when they might have actively pursued, their irresolution robbed the victory of its most decisive results.
It was a terrible and far too costly victory, after all. The English army, already terribly weak, suffered such serious losses in the fight that there were those who would have at once re-embarked the remnants and raised the siege. Retreat on the morrow of victory would have been craven indeed, but to stand firm with such shattered forces was a bold and hazardous resolve, for which Lord Raglan deserves the fullest credit, and the coming winter, with its terrible trials, was destined to put his self-reliance to the proof.
It is time to return more particularly to our friends, who took part in this hard-fought, glorious action.
By midday the worse part of the battle was over, and although Colonel Blythe still clung to his Barrier, whence he launched forth small parties to harass the retreating foe, McKay was released of his attendance upon the acting brigadier, and suffered to follow his own general to the rear.