picture to the sombre coloring
and the dreary details of the attack on the Redan. To three thousand
doomed men was assigned the perilous undertaking. Incredible as it
may appear, in view of previous failure, there seems to have been no
adequate preparation, no intelligible plan, no competent leader. It
was simply brute force assailing brute force. The few men who actually
entered the Redan neglected to spike the guns; no reinforcements came to
their aid; everything was blind excitement, and headlong, undisciplined
haste. "The men of the different regiments became mingled together in
inextricable confusion. The Nineteenth men did not care for the officers
of the Eighty-Eighth, nor did the soldiers of the Twenty-Third heed the
command of an officer who did not belong to their regiment. The officers
could not find their men,--the men lost sight of their officers." But
why dwell on what soon became mere butchery? The loss of the storming
party, in killed, wounded, and missing, was 2447.

Considered as a military movement, it would seem to be conceded that no
grosser blunder could have been made than the selection of so small a
force for so desperate an undertaking. There was no chance of success
but by attacking simultaneously both flanks and the salient of the
Redan. The storming party was barely large enough for the assault of the
salient, thus exposing the handful of men to a murderous and fatally
destructive fire from the flanks. This was bad enough, certainly, but
worse remains behind. English critics have most severely censured
our generals for sometimes placing new recruits in posts of danger,
requiring cool heads, steady nerves, and the habit of discipline.
Perhaps they have forgotten the following incident. Among the picked men
selected out of the entire British forces as this very storming party
were raw recruits from the Ninety-Seventh Regiment, who were designated
for this perilous service as a punishment for their cowardice in a
recent skirmish!--and to make this punishment still more severe, they
were ordered to _lead off_ in the assault! An historian of the war
says,--"The inexperience of some of these recruits seems almost
incredible. One young fellow, who came to the field-hospital with a
broken arm and a bullet in his shoulder, carried his firelock with him,
but confessed that he had never fired it off, _as he was unable to do
so_. The piece, upon being examined, was found to be in perfect order.
Such poor