On the 23d the armies marched again, and as before, over dry grassy plains, and passing the Katcha, seven miles from the Alma, encamped on the heights beyond about noon. The village here had been deserted in haste by the inhabitants.

It had been expected that that enemy might make another stand in the strong position which these heights offered. But their defeat had been too absolute, their retreat too hasty, to admit 'of such a rally. Kinglake says it became a panic flight for the shelter of Sebastopol. On the other hand, it must be observed that this panic was not evident at the close of the battle, and that our march on the footsteps of Menschikoffs army did not show us marks of such complete disorder.

At the mouth of the Katcha the Scots Greys and the 57th regiment (of the Fourth Division) were disembarked, and joined the army.

The next day a march of six miles carried us across the Belbek. Here the character of the country changed from grassy plains to hills clothed with coppice, and here the army halted during the 25th. These heights were waterless, and the cavalry and horse-artillery led a hard life while covering the army; the horses had neither forage nor water for forty-eight hours, all which time they remained accoutred and harnessed; and the men and officers did not, for these and two other days, taste meat.

Close

The army was now so close to the prime object of the enterprise that, by going about a mile and a half beyond the halting place, the towers and fortifications were seen at no great distance in the basin below. And it was during the halt here that the question arose whether the army should at once attack the north side of Sebastopol. It may be doubted whether it was ever seriously considered.

The harbour of Sebastopol is from 1000 to 1200 yards wide. On the north side, besides some storehouses and a factory, the only constructions were forts at the entrance; others on the cliffs, looking on the sea outside; and on the heights inland a large permanent work, known to us afterwards as "the Star Fort," which, supported by earthen works and batteries, recently thrown up on either flank, dominated all the ground within range of its guns. It was on the south side that the city stood, with its public buildings, the quarters of the garrison, the docks, and the arsenal. The harbour between these was filled with the ships of war, whose broadsides could, of course, be brought to bear on either side, but which were at first disposed with the object of resisting an attack on the northern bank, where they swept the ground over which an enemy would advance.

It is asserted that on the 21st, the day after the battle of the Alma, Sir Edmund Lyons, second in command of the fleet, urged Lord Raglan to follow up the success, and " try to take the northern forts by a coup de main." But, from what has just been said, this was manifestly not only a quite desperate but a fruitless enterprise, except on one condition, namely, that the Allied Fleet should take a principal part in the attack; and it was only in such a case that the view of a naval commander need have been an element in he question. Had some of our ships engaged the forts, had the rest passed in and attacked the vessels of the enemy, while the Allied Army stood on the heights above ready to descend, it is conceivable that Sebastopol might have fallen in a storm of battle as tremendous as the work has ever witnessed.

But those who assert that this opportunity continued to exist when the armies were on th Belbek (23d and 24th September) ignore the change which had taken place in the problem. Menschikoff, singularly inefficient as a tactician, seems to have possessed both sagacity and decision in other fields of the military art. Immediately on entering Sebastopol after his defeat, he perceived two measures to be necessary.

The one way to keep open, by means of an army in the field, his communications with Russia, while leaving a sufficient garrison in Sebastopol; the other was to bar the harbour against his enemies' fleet. Therefore, contrary to the advice of his admiral, he caused seven ships of war to be sunk across the entrance of the harbour, in line with the forts, on the night of the 22nd. On the 23d our vessels in observation off the port perceived that this had been done, and it was reported to St Arnaud the same evening.

Thus an attack would now be made under very different conditions, for the rest of the Russian Fleet, thus rendered secure again attack, could still bring an exterminating fire to be; on the north side. The proper person for Lord Raglan to consult on the subject (if it was any longer matt, for consultation) was his chief engineer, Sir jot Burgoyne, who always denied that the proposition was ever seriously entertained, or that Lord Raglan had ever discussed it with him. And in support of this it is to be remembered that, as has been already said, the shore north of Sebastopol offered landing-places, but no harbours. The only point it afforded for the disembarkation of supplies was the mouth of the Katcha, open to every wind, and the communications with which would have been liable to be intercepted at any time by a Russian army in the field.

Finally, supposing all the success possible to be achieved, the Allies in possession of the north side, and the ships in the harbour by some miracle got rid of, it may be askedwhat next? How were we to compel the surrender of the south side by means of our field-artillery, across an interval of 1200 yards, against an enemy who, besides the artillery in his great stone forts, could from an inexhaustible arsenal line the whole southern shore, as well as the Inkerman heights on our left flank, with heavy guns? It may safely be said that, after driving the enemy off the north side, we should have found ourselves in a position of greatly augmented difficulty.

It would not have been necessary to dwell upon this but or the support afforded to the theory which Todleben, the engineer who became so famous for his defence of Sebastopol, has set forth in his ample, and in most respects excellent, account of the siege. Unfortunately, not only his opinions but his facts are frequently more than questionable, and he gives but too much reason to infer that he exaggerated the insufficiency of the means of resistance in order to exalt the importance of his own splendid services in enabling the garrison to make so memorable a defence.

For example, he desires to show that the Allies, upon reaching the Belbek, ought to have made an assault on the north side. On the highest part of the ground there was the Star Fort, with the trenches and batteries in extension of it. To carry this by assault Todleben represents as an easy matter. This fort was a permanent work of 700 yards extent round the lines of fire; it had escarps of masonry, and a glacis, and was surrounded by a ditch twelve feet deep and eighteen feet wide. It was armed with forty-seven guns. The ground over which the assailants must have advanced was swept by the broadsides of the ships below.

Is it possible that an engineer could have looked on such a scheme as practicable? But he says the enemies' ships, approaching the shore, could batter the fort almost with impunity. The impossibility of this is best shown by the fact that, in the subsequent engagement between the fleets and forts, one of the batteries on the cliffs (100 feet high) of the north side disabled several of our ships without receiving a shot in return, although they made it the object of their fire, and that the Star Fort is distant inland from this battery 1000 yards. Thus, according to Todleben, the ships, while themselves under the fire of the coast batteries, which they could not injure in return, were to bombard a fort a thousand yards beyond these batteries, and which would be invisible from the sea.

The second alternative suggested by Todleben is that the Allies should have established a force on the road to Bakshisarai, thus intercepting the communications between Russia and Sebastopol, which would, he says, have brought the campaign to an end. Now the nearest point at which the Allies could have touched the Russian communications was Mackenzie's Farm. But the heights there were waterless, therefore the intercepting force could not have remained there; it must have gone farther, to the Upper Belbek. It would then have been some seventeen miles from its base on the Katchaone so precarious that a strong breeze from the wrong quarter would render it useless.

This long line of supply must have been covered by the rest of the army, throughout its length, from attacks which might be directed on any part of it either by the garrison of Sebastopol on the one side, or by Menschikoff's army in the field on the other. The reduction of a fortress by pressure of this kind must of course be slow in its operation, and had the Allied commanders been reckless enough to put a force into such a position, it would have been impossible to maintain it, under the stress of such enterprises against their communications and their line as the enemy showed himself capable of undertaking shortly afterwards at Balaklava and Inkerman.

On the afternoon of the 24th Lord Raglan visited Marshal St Arnaud, and the arrangements for the flank march were then agreed on. The French commander sat rigidly in his chair during the interview, and his manner and looks showed that his sickness was gaining on him.

On leaving the French camp, Lord Raglan said to one of his staff, "Did you observe St Arnaud? He is dying." (Kinglake.) When the visit was repeated next morning, the Marshal was no longer able to take part in discussion.

On the morning of the 25th the heavy cavalry, a troop of horse-artillery, and a battalion of rifles, were sent as ail advanced guard on the road through the woods leading to Mackenzie's Farm. Towards noon the march of the maiii body began. Four field batteries advanced up one of the roads leading to Sebastopol.

Outside a small house by the roadside Lord Raglan and General Airey were seated with a map before them, and Lord Raglan himself indicated to the officer at the head of the column the direction in which it was to strike through the wood on the left of the road, and called out to him to go " south-east."

Thereupon the guns, with their waggons and carriages, in long procession, plunged into the narrow woodpath, the wheels crashing through the coppice, and steering by the sun when there was a divergence of ways, kept the main path for about an hour, passing as they went some of the heavy cavalry, small bodies of which were drawn up on their right, on the edge of the heights that looked down on Sebastopol.

Their further progress was stopped by the troop of horse-artillery which was halted in the path in front. The cavalry and rifles, either by accident or design, had diverged to the right, and the troop thus found itself leading the advance of the army in ground where it could do nothing effectual for its own defence, and was devoid of all proper protection or support. Presently Lord Raglan rode up with his staff, demanding sharply why the troop had halted, and ordered it immediately to proceed, himself leading the way.

The march was continued in this extraordinary manner, the headquarter staff first, then thirty guns in long procession, through a thick wood, and moving round an enemy's fortress and army. What this might have portended was presently made evident, for in an open space Lord Raglan came suddenly on a Russian column moving at right angles to his own course.

This singular rencontre had come about in this way: Menschikoff, after sinking his ships, and making irrangements for the defence of the fortress, had left Sebastopol that morning, with the army which had ought on the Alma, in pursuance of his design of keeping open his communications with Russia by means of holding a position in the open country. The highroad from Sebastopol to Bakshisarai, after ascending steeply from the valley of the Tchernaya, crosses the end of the plateau on which the English were moving at the open space on which stand the buildings and fields of Mackenzie's Farm, before again descending to he plain on the way northward towards the Upper Belbek. He had begun his movement before dawn on the 25th, and the halt we made in the wood had enabled his army to pass by, except some of the baggage and its escort. Prince Menschikoff, with the leading troops, had at this time reached the village of Otarkoi on the Belbek, and thought so little of keeping himself informed of what might be passing near his army (being probably altogether intent on transporting it unobserved into its new positions), that he remained for several days in the belief that the eruption on his rear had been made only by a patrol. Some of his baggage train was captured, but many of the vehicles hurried off, on the one side towards Bakshisarai, on the other towards Sebastopol.

Taken Unawares

We had been absolutely unaware of this march of an army across our front till we stumbled on it; while Menschikoff remained in such complete ignorance that the Allied Army was defiling within four or five miles of him, that even on the 28th a messenger from him arrived in Sebastopol, part of whose errand was to get news of the movements and position of the enemy.

The English forces gradually assembled on the ground around the farm, and then resumed their march, descending to the Traktir Bridge, where the road to Balaklava crosses the Tchernaya. There, on the banks of the stream, the leading troops bivouacked after nightfall, while the rear divisions and batteries did not arrive till some hours afterwards. Looking back to the heights we had quitted, the glare in the sky showed that our allies, following in our steps, were bivouacking there.

Cathcart had been left with his division on the Belbek to send the sick to the embarking place on the Katcha, and to cover the march of the armies. A messenger sent by him succeeded in reaching the British headquarters, and returned with news of the progress of the movement, which Cathcart sent on to the Katcha ; and Lyons despatched a naval officer, who also managed to reach Lord Raglan, and to return with a message to the Admiral. Thus the fleet was prepared to co-operate on the next day in the seizure of the port of Balaklava. On the 26th Cathcart followed the march of the armies, and arrived unmolested on the Tchernaya.

This same day, the 26th, the British resumed their march, crossing the valley of the Tchernaya towards the low hills which separated it from that of Balaklava. It was, perhaps, partly in consequence of the long, fatiguing march of the day before that men seized with cholera began to strew the roadside directly the advance began. Troops moving on the enclosing hills right and left of the valley protected the flanks of the main column, and some guns which accompanied them opened fire, while other and heavier shots were heard from the sea.

On passing the ridge which divided the valleys right athwart our path, we looked down on the object of the whole movement, and very insignificant it seemed. At the end of a piece of richly cultivated garden ground was seen a pool lying deep between enclosing cliffs, which were crowned by walls and towers. From thence there presently came a shell travelling towards us at a height which showed it had been fired from a mortar.

At the same time some companies of our rifles running along the hills on the left of the lake clambered over the walls, along which the garrison was seen to run, and from whence they presently made signs of surrender. Thereupon a small English steamer appeared suddenly in the piece of water below, assuring us that the harbour was our own, and the communication with the fleet reestablished.

On this occasion four shots only were fired by the garrison (composed of militia of the place), and their commander, in excusing himself for provoking an assault by firing at all, said he thought he was bound to do so until summoned to surrender. Nobody was wounded on either side. But the following account appears in Todleben's official narrative:

"The enemy opened against Balaklava a powerful cannonade. Twenty ships approached the coast and bombarded the old ruins. The mortars, however, only ceased fire after having exhausted their ammunition. This imperceptible garrison had defended itself even to the last extremity. There remained only Colonel Minto, six officers, and sixty soldiers, all wounded in many places."

What an thus described as having " remained " were all that had been in the place-the account belongs to the realm of fiction.

This day the French Army crossed the Tchernaya and bivouacked on the Fedukhine heights.

A question entailing momentous consequences now arose. It was whether the English or the French should occupy as a base the harbour of Balaklava. Hitherto on the mere evidence of the map, it had been counter on as available for both armies, but now that it was before their eyes, a mere pool, already crowded, wit one straggling row of poor houses for a street, it was seen that it would not bear division. The French had a strong ground of contention on their side, for the right of the Allied line had hitherto been conceded to then and whoever took the right now must hold Balaklava. General Canrobert, who had succeeded Marshal St. Arnaud in the command, took a course very considerate towards us. Seeing that we were already in possession, and that it would be difficult in many ways for us to move out, he gave Lord Raglan his choice whether to keep the left of the line, and give Balaklava to the French, or to take the right and keep that harbour. Admiral Lyons counselled strongly for keeping Balaklava, as the place best adapted for securing a due communication between the army and its base on the sea. It was an occasion which a Greek poet would have represented, after the event, as one in which the chooser, blinded by some angry god, had made choice of calamity. Lord Raglan took the right, and Balaklava, and with them brought untold miseries on his army.

We have now reached the point in the drama where the main action begins to which all that had passed was merely preliminary. The armies thenceforward assumed that position towards the enemy which they were to keep up to the final act of the war. Above them stood the broad Upland of the Chersonese, on which for nearly a year their lives were to be passed, and for the most part ended, and to which, after a time, they were chained by necessity until their task should be accomplished. It becomes necessary, therefore, to describe the conditions in which the forces opposed were operating.

Geography and Conditions

The outer harbour or roadstead of Sebastopol is a creek about four miles long from the point where it breaks, nearly at right angles, the coast line to its extremity where the Tchernaya flows into it. It maintains a great depth throughout, even close to the shore.

On the points which mark the entrance stood two stone forts, that on the north named Constantine, on the south Alexander. Outside Alexander, looking out to sea was the Quarantine Fort. After entering the roadstead, the Artillery Fort was passed on the south; and about a mile from the entrance the Inner or Man-of-War harbour ran for a mile and a half into the southern shore.

On the two points which marked this inlet stood two other forts, Nicholas and Paul. On the western shore of this inner creek stood the city of Sebastopol ; on its eastern shore, indented by the inlet on which the dockyards were built, was the Karabelnaia suburb, where stood the extensive barracks for the garrison. Nearly half way between this inner harbour and the head of the roadstead was another much smaller inlet, the Careenage Creek.

The ground south of the roadstead was marked by very singular features. The plateau or plain, the ancient Chersonese (which, following Kinglake's more descriptive phraseology, will in future be called the Upland), where the Allied Armies stood was marked off from the valley of the Tchernaya by a wall of cliff, which, following up that stream southward for about a mile from its mouth, turns round south-west and defines the valley of Balaklava, passing about a mile north of that place, and joining the sea-cliffs. This plateau is channelled by many chasms or ravines, which, beginning with slight depressions in its midst descend between rocky walls to the shore, and between these rose elevated points, lying all round the town and suburb, which, crowned by such works as the Malakoff, the Redan, the Flagstaff Bastion, and others, afterwards acquired each a fame of its own. Another feature of first-rate importance was the conformation of the coast line at Cape Cherson, where the northern side of its angle was indented by twin inlets, Kazatch and Kamiesch Bays, having a common entrance, which throughout the siege constituted the French base, being most conveniently adapted for the purpose; a road, paved afterwards by the French, and thus placed beyond the vicissitudes of weather, passed from these creeks along the rear of their Divisions as they faced Sebastopol.

The largest of the ravines, dividing the plain from south to north, descends to the head of the inner harbour. It was at first the line of separation between the French and English.

Two French Divisions, under General Forey, the Third and Fourth, forming the siege corps, encamped between it and the coast. Kamiesch Bay was immediately filled with their shipping, whose masts looked like a forest; and a wharf was made for landing the multitude of stores which crowded the beach and the environs of a small city of tents. The First and Second French Divisions, and some battalions of Turks, under General Bosquet, were posted on the eastern and south- eastern cliffs of the Upland, to cover the siege against an attack from the Russian field army.

On the right of the great ravine were the Third and Fourth English Divisions; beyond them the Light Division rested its right oil the ravine descending to the Careenage Creek; on the other side of which, near the eastern edge of the Upland, was posted the second Division, looking towards the heights of Inkerman, and some hundred yards in rear of it the First Division wa encamped, its right also near the edge of the Upland and both these were available for mutual co-operation with Bosquet, while, unlike his force, they sent their quota of men to the trenches.

Bosquet set about fortifying the edge of the height, on which he stood and, so far as the position on the Upland was concerned, the armies there were for the present (that is to say, while their force held its present relation to that of the garrison of Sebastopol and Menachikoff's field army) sufficiently secure. But there were two vulnerable points in our line; that with which we will first deal was caused by the need to cover Balaklava.

About 4000 yards from that place a row of heights crossed the valley, low on the side of the Upland, but rising into higher and sharper hills towards the heights of Kamara. On these, slight works were constructed armed with iron twelve-pounders, and garrisoned by Turks. The 93d Highlanders (left there by the First Division) were encamped between these heights and Balaklava; a thousand marines were landed and placed on the hills to our right of the harbour, on the heights before which places were found for guns brought from the ships; and in the valley below the cliffs of the Upland, and on the left front of the Highlanders, were the camps of the two brigades of cavalry.

A point of special importance was that the one metalled road, the Woronzoff road, which ascended the cliff of the Upland, and wended thence to the town of Sebastopol, lay, as it crossed the valley of Balaklava, between and along the hills occupied by the Turks. The road continued on to Yalta, the Woronzoff country house and estate on the south-eastern shore of the Crimea; another branching from it crossed the Tchernaya, and went on up the Mackenzie heights to Bakshisarai.

The Russians could approach Balaklava quite out of range of the guns and troops on the Chersonese; thus the Allies must be drawn from their heights down to the valley in case of an advance of the enemy in that direction. Therefore, the valley of Balaklava was a vulnerable point, and, if possible, should have been made strong enough to secure the Woronzoff road throughout its extent from Balaklava to the plateau.

The Russians in Sebastopol now knew exactly what they had to face, and were at least delivered from the perplexities which had at first beset them.

The tidings of defeat on the Alma reached Sebastopol about ten or eleven at night on the 20th, when Menschikoff arrived in the fortress. The Prince gave orders to Admiral Korniloff to bar the entrance to the harbour by sinking some of the war-ships. Next morning the Admiral summoned his naval captains, and after telling them of Menschikoff's design, put it to them whether his own proposal would not be preferable, which was to put to sea and, by attacking the Allied Fleet and flotilla, deprive the enemy of the means of subsistence. The council did not concur with him, believing that the time for such an enterprise had gone by, and preferring to bar the harbor by sinking the ships. The same afternoon those which were to be sunk were moved into their places.

During the 21st, Menschikoff's troops from the Alma, after reaching the north side, were transported across the harbour, in accordance with his determination to move his army into the open country, and bivouacked in a field outside the town.

During this day Colonel Todleben was occupied considering how to meet the attack which he says he expected on the north side. As we have seen, he to a view of the prospect which was entirely unreasonable. He considered the case of 60,000 men, protected from the assault of an equal number by fortifications and heavy artillery, as absolutely desperate. In his book, he blames the other 60,000 for not sweeping them off the face of the earth.

He communicated his foreboding to Admiral Korniloff, who took command on that side, the 24th, and who made preparations to defend the St Fort and the adjacent ground in a spirit of absolute despair. But on the 25th the march of the Allied Armies along the Mackenzie heights was discerned from the Naval Library, which occupied a very lofty position in the city. Thereupon all doubt was at an end, the garrison was concentrated on the south side, and the preparation for the long struggle began.

Garrison

The strength of the garrison was thus: six militia battalions, 4500 ; gunners at the coast batteries, 2700; marines, 2600; seamen of the fleet, 18,500; workmen, 5000; the Taroutine battalion of Menschikoff's army left in the town, 750; marine battalions landed from the fleet, 1800: in total 35,850 men.

The Russian sailors were habitually drilled and organised as soldiers in addition to their proper duties, in consideration that (as now happened) the fleets might easily be shut in by a powerful enemy. These men were therefore excellent for their purpose, and could also supply an immense number of trained gunners for the heavy artillery which armed the works. The workmen also, being in Government employ, had received military training, and a very large proportion of the whole force was particularly valuable, far more so than ordinary troops, for constructing works, for handling the machines used in moving and mounting heavy guns, in fact, for the business of creating a fortress.

Lieut.-Colonel Todleben, henceforth the inspiring genius of the defence, was thirty-six years old, in the fullest vigour of body and mind. Educated at the military college at St Petersburg, he had been trained and commissioned as an engineer. He had just been employed in the siege of Silistria, and when that was abandoned, had been sent to Sebastopol, strongly recommended to Menschikoff. Placed at first on the general staff, he had begun to act as chief engineer when the invasion was imminent.

On the 14th September he had added the earthworks already mentioned to the Star Fort, and, a few days later, took charge of the defences of the South Side. These had been traced, and partially executed, years before. Loopholed walls of stone and earthen batteries formed a continuous line round the town itself, from the sea to the great ravine, and these he had begun to strengthen.

On the other section of the line, extending from the great ravine to the harbour, he had raised extensive batteries on the sites of the Redan, the Little Redan, and the Bastion No. 1, close to Careenage Bay. The Malakoff Tower was semi-circular, of stone, five feet thick, fifty feet in diameter, twenty-eight feet high, prepared for musketry, and having five guns on the top; it was covered at the foot by a slope of earth, but was not yet surrounded with works.

These constituted, on the 26th September, very formidable defences against an assault, and were daily growing stronger. The whole line was armed, by that date, with 172 pieces of ordnance, many very heavy, and in great part overwhelmingly superior to field-artillery.

The reader has now before him the means of determining the question whether the Allies were wrong in not at once proceeding to assault the place. It is said that Sir George Cathcart strongly advised it, though it appears that his opinion was formed on too incomplete a view of the enemy's works, and was greatly modified afterwards. What is more surprising is that Todleben is found to maintain, in his official narrative, that Sebastopol could not have been defended against an assault in the last days of September. It must be remembered that part only of the Allied Army could have been available for the purpose. Menschikoff's army, of unknown strength, might have been within six miles of us, for, as we had no troops beyond 'the Tchernaya it was impossible to know what might be passing in the wooded heights on its further bank. Therefore Bosquet's two divisions and the Turks must remain as a covering force, and even our First and Second Divisions could only havebeen taken from the same duty at great risk, to say nothing of the necessity of protecting Balaklava.

Thus the assaulting forces would be actually fewer in number than the defenders; moreover, it would have been extremely difficult to have supported the attack with artillery, since our field-guns in the open must have been at once crushed by the heavy and long-reaching artillery in the works, while endeavouring to get within their own more limited range.

Thus the two French and three English Divisions must have advanced unsupported for 2000 yards, under the fire of the numerous and powerful artillery already described, to attack works defended by forces equal to their own. Their first object must have been limited to seizing these works, and occupying the ground on which they stood, for to advance down the slopes towards the harbour would have been impossible under the broadsides of the Russian ships.

Heavy guns must have been brought up and placed in battery to disable the ships before anything further could have been attempted. And, at any stage of these operations, a repulse, which could only have taken place after heavy losses, would have entailed tremendous consequences. Nevertheless, this singularly able engineer represents both himself and Admiral Korniloff as addressing themselves to the business of defence in a spirit of despair. They did all that skill and energy could do, but without the Lope of being able to resist the expected attack. And in his official narrative, written long afterwards, he still maintains that an assault must have succeeded ; but in supporting the opinion, he represents the garrison (the numbers of which, as stated by himself elsewhere, have just been given) as only 16poo, while he estimates the forces which the Allies could assail them with at 40,000. These miscalculations do not diminish the difficulty of understanding how so accomplished an officer could risk his own repute by persisting in giving expression to conclusions so opposed by facts.

After the commanding engineers and artillery officers French and English, had made a reconnaissance of the Russian works, it was deemed indispensable to endeavour, before proceeding to assault, to silence the Russian artillery with the guns of our siege trains, and the disembarkation of these at the two ports began on the 28th.

On the 2d October, at daybreak, a long train of carriages, escorted by troops, was seen ascending the heights bordering the Belbek. It conveyed the civil inhabitants of Sebastopol, their families, and their goods; under cover of night they had passed along the southern side of the harbour, and crossed the bridge and causeway of the Tchernaya. Thus the garrison, freed from all encumbrance, and from the task of feeding all these noncombatants, was now reduced to a large compact body of defenders, regular troops, sailors, and marines, and workmen necessary for the business of the siege, and was thus, in all respects, in the best possible condition for beginning the struggle which Todleben, disturbed by no anxieties from within the fortress, could now enter upon with the whole force, of his rare ability.

Every day saw additional strength bestowed on the works, the labour on which never ceased day or night. The Central and Flagstaff Bastions were heightened and thickened, and a new work placed between them, and new batteries above the inner harbour looked up the great ravine and its branches. The Redan received the additions of the formidable Barrack Battery between it and the inner harbour, and of another battery on its other flank. The Malakoff Tower was surrounded with a bastion, from which extended batteries on each side, and a continuous line of trench connected it with the works between it and the harbour. All this was effected by the time of the attack. These works were armed as fast as made with heavy artillery. Also a ship of eighty-four guns, moored at the head of the inner harbour, bore on the mouths of the ravines which issued there.

Chapter V: Beginning of the Siege