THE VEIL BETWEEN OPPOSED ARMIES. 217 topol before the close of the day. Yet, if at that chap. very same time, a glance through the ' veil ' had !_ been only vouchsafed to the then dispirited gar- rison, they would promptly have seen that their efforts were proving successful, and would earn them a long time of respite from any determined attacks. By repulsing all five of the columns which the The gam- French and the English had launched against achieve- their works of defence, and yielding to only one force — the force commanded by Eyre which did not attack their enceinte — the garrison had earned a good right to rejoice in the general result of their whole morning's work ; but strangely enough its actual it occurred that, for want of a glance through the feeling to- ' veil,' their hour of real deliverance was to them close of the an hour of deep gloom, and of even some approach to despair. Coming after the terrible losses inflicted upon them by siege-guns, not only in the earlier days of June, but before, in the month of April, the sacrifices made by the garrison — not so much whilst encountering infantry on the morning of the 18th, but rather when exposed, as they had been on the previous day, to the mercies of the Fourth Bombardment — had brought about in the Army a feeling of something like horror not un- mingled with grave indignation against a plan of defence which so ruthlessly exacted its victims* This was only too natural. The best battalions
- Accounts of deserters. Letters from Headquarters, vol.
ii. p. 350.
