There was a good deal of blunt and honest truth in what that Russian prisoner said; and even while he spoke, the hordes of the enemy were coming down on us from the north, and it would soon be decided whether they or we should gain a battle, the loss of which would be for them defeat, but for us disaster and degradation as a nation.
There was much anxiety, nevertheless, on board the Gurnet; for, laugh as Sturdy might at the bold, almost bragging Russ, neither he nor any one else could deny that the danger to our arms was now very extreme.
"What will they say in England," said Captain Gillespie to Sturdy a day or two after the Russian had told them of the reinforcements pouring into the Crimea from the north—"what will they say in England if we are beaten?"
"Ah, what indeed, sir? But though the crisis is coming, we'll get over it. It really seems to me, however, that we should smash Menschikoff and his general Liprandi before the other army arrives."
Let us now return, to the field, reader.
If we take the Russian Todleben as our best authority—and he was no mean one; very fair, I think, though he does blab out truths that are not over palatable to burly John Bull—the forces to be marshalled against us at Mount Inkermann were most formidable.
Listen. The allies, including seamen and marines, were barely 65,000; and Menschikoff had an army of 115,000 to confront us with, not counting seamen.
Of the Russians who were actually engaged in the great fight, General Soimonoff commanded 20,000 inside Sebastopol, and General Pauloff had 16,000 on the hills above and beyond Tchernaya. These would combine, and independent of fifty guns in bastions or batteries, they would have eighty or more field-guns.
Then there was the great force of Liprandi, that we had hurled back from the valley of Balaklava, which lay on the Fedioukine heights, from the hills they had captured from the Turks to the Tchernaya valley.
The Russians, therefore, had a terrible army, and if praying could have done it, they would have conquered us.