by some that his so-called fatalistic views were imbibed from
the Mohammedans in the Soudan. This sentence in a letter written by him
before he had ever held an intimate conversation with a Mohammedan
shows that such was not the case. Allusion is made to the incident here
merely to show what the condition of faith and state of mind of Charles
Gordon were during the Crimean War. There is one other letter on
record, written about this time, which is worthy of mention here. When
the Commander-in-chief of the Crimean army died, Gordon wrote, "Lord
Raglan died of tear and wear and general debility. He was universally
regretted, as he was so kind. His life has been entirely spent in the
service of his country. I hope he was prepared, but do not know."

* * *

Beyond a few deeds of personal daring, there is not much to record of
Gordon during the Crimean War. He went out, as has already been said,
when the principal battles were over, and his position being quite a
subordinate one, he had no opportunities of distinguishing himself. He
gained the esteem of all those who did come in contact with him; he
took every opportunity of gaining a professional insight into the
science of war; he had many narrow escapes of being wounded, and once
he was struck on the head by a stone thrown up by a round shot. He
formed a high estimate of the Russians as soldiers, with a
correspondingly low one of our allies the French. Writing home of a
favourable opportunity lost of assaulting Sebastopol, he says, "I think
we might have assaulted on Monday, but the French do not seem to care
about it. The garrison is 25,000, and on that day we heard afterwards
that only 8000 were in the place, as the rest had gone to repel an
attack (fancied) of ours at Inkerman."

The history of the Crimean War has been written so often, that it is
unnecessary to occupy much space with detail, especially in view of the
unimportant part Gordon had to play. On June 7th he accompanied the
attacking force under Sir John Campbell, which was severely repulsed in
the assault upon the Great Redan. A delay of over two months took
place, and then the French attacked the Malakoff, and the English again
attempted to seize the Redan. The French were successful, but we
failed, and so it was decided to renew the attack on the following day.
The Russians, however, seeing it was useless to continue the struggle,
evacuated the post on the night of