Lord Raglan, an old pupil of the Duke of Wellington, who had lost his right arm at Waterloo, was appointed to command the English forces, and Marshal St. Arnaud those of the French. Their instructions were to communicate with Omar Pasha, the Turkish commander, and then to decide whether an immediate attack upon Sebastopol, the Crimean stronghold, was advisable. The three commanders did consult, and did not altogether relish the idea of such an attack; but it had been strongly urged by the {412}English and French governments, and, therefore, was it undertaken. On the fourteenth of September, twenty-seven thousand English, thirty thousand French, and seven thousand Turks landed without opposition on the shores of the Crimea. On the nineteenth they marched towards the river Alma, and reached its banks at noon of the twentieth. Prince Menschikoff thought his position invulnerable with his Russian batteries, his artillery, and his dense masses of infantry covering the hills; and when he saw the enemy approach, he began to congratulate himself upon the glorious victory that he already considered assured. He did not open fire on them as they crossed to his side of the river; that was not in accordance with his plan. He had told the czar that he could easily hold his position for three weeks; and so he would merely play with the allied troops until his immense reinforcements arrived, and then it would be so easy to pounce down upon them and crush them. So certain did he feel of the result of a fight that some of the precautions that a less arrogant general would have taken were entirely unheeded. The consequence was, that after a desperate combat the allied forces drove the Russians from the field and gained a complete victory. If an immediate attack had been made upon Sebastopol in the face of this victory, it might have been taken; but there was no Marlborough, no Wellington, in the English army at that time, and the flying Russian troops were not even pursued. Thus they gained time, not only to consider the cause of their defeat, but to increase their defences. On the third day after the battle, the allied troops gazed in wonder at certain movements of the Russians in the Black Sea. "What were they about?" was the question that was asked on all sides. "Were they going to attack the {413} [Illustration: 0419] {415}English and French ships?" It seemed so, for seven of their war vessels were drawn up right to the very entrance of the harbor, and under the very noses of the enemy. The operation was soon explained; for slowly but surely did the seven vessels go down, down into the water, until nothing was to be seen of them but the tops of their masts. Then vanished all hope of a speedy capture of Sebastopol. Her harbor was as impassable as though huge rocks guarded it.