It has been said that the plan of attack, on the 17th October, was that the French should assault the Flagstaff Bastion, and the English the Redan.

Jumbo Map: Sebastopol Siege Works (extremely slow: 488K)

The first was the chief object, the second subsidiary. To establish French troops and batteries on the Flagstaff Bastion, and maintain them there, would have gone far to assure the surrender or evacuation of the place; but in order to effect this, it would be indispensable to hold the Redan also, the close fire from which would otherwise render the French operations very costly, or impossible.

But a great master of engineering science had been labouring on these works with unceasing energy, and with formidable effect. During the first winter months Todleben had greatly extended and strengthened both of these works, and also the Malakoff; and the Redan was so completely dominated by the Malakoff that the capture of this great work also had become an essential part of the plan of attack.

This had always been Burgoyne's opinion, and he now supported it by arguing that the Malakoff was more easy of approach than the other works; that the possession of it, even if it should not, of itself, cause the surrender of the place, would render the assault of the others far less desperate, while guns placed on it would at once rid us of the fire of the Russian ships.

He represented, moreover, that the Allies would thus best attain their real object, which was not so much the capture of the town, as the destruction of the docks, arsenal, and fleet. Since the battle of Inkerman had given us possession of the heights overlooking the harbour and the Careenage ravine, this plan had obviously become more feasible, and Burgoyne had, in November and December, urged officially his reasons for desiring that the English should undertake the business, and that, as their numbers were manifestly unequal to such an extension of duty and work, the French should relieve them of the charge of pushing forward and guarding the British Left Attack, the batteries of which, however, would be held and fought by our men as before.

This would set free the Third Division to perform the operations on Mount Inkerman. Immediately after the battle of Inkerman the Allies had begun to strengthen the ground there with works, one made by the French on the end of the Fore Ridge, three by the English (one of them on Shell Hill), to command the approaches, and to overlook the bridge and causeway over which Pauloff had advanced; and we had further made in front of these a first parallel, and begun a second, as approaches to the works between the Malakoff and the harbour.

When this proposal was finally considered at a conference of chiefs at the beginning of February, the French preferred to leave our Right and Left Attacks to us as before and themselves to take charge of Mount Inkerman, except that the British artillerymen and sailors already occupying our works there, should so remain. It was so settled: Mount Inkerman and the Victoria Ridge were given into the charge of Bosquet's Corps; and at the same time the plan of advancing on the Russian works from the Malakoff to the harbour, by approaches from Mount Inkerman, and of pressing the attack, not there especially, but along the whole Russian front, was definitely adopted.

Allies Invigorated

Meanwhile the Allies had not been idle in the trenches, even in the time of their direst trials. The first parallel of the British Right Attack was completed, as well as another in advance of it. A second parallel was carried across the front of the Left Attack, and down the ravine on its right, barring the Woronzoff road there.

The French had sapped up to within 180 yards of the Flagstaff Bastion, and now, seeing the relations of mutual defence between it and the Central Bastion, deemed it necessary to include the latter also in their front of attack. Yet withal the business of the siege proceeded of necessity very slowly. What transport the Allies could muster was taken up with bringing food, clothing, and shelter.

In the trenches the men stood generally ankle deep, sometimes knee deep, in snow and liquid mud; except near the cliffs, and at a great distance from the camps, the supply of fuel, in the form of brushwood, which the plains afforded, had long since been exhausted, and even the roots of the vines had been grubbed up for cooking. And this want had become a hindrance to the siege in another way.

"It is very unusual," says the Engineer journal, "to see smoke from fires in trenches, yet this took place daily." The cause of this was the want of fuel in the camps. The coffee issued to the men was in the berry, which is the best form of it when means for roasting are at hand, for wet does not injure it, and it has, of course, far more flavour when freshly ground.

But when there was no fuel in camp, the men took the green coffee with them to the trenches, ground it with fragments of the enemy's shells, roasted it on their mess tins, and boiled it in them, with fuel taken from the gabions and fascines forming part of the works, and the parapets, of course, suffered seriously from these depredations. The troops, driven to these shifts, had become so few that the French could only afford about 400 by day and 200 by night for employment on the works, and the English a much smaller number, while, according to the Engineer journal, the trenches of our three attacks, the Right, the Left, and that on Mount Inkerman, were at this time guarded only by 350 men, and on one day in January by only 290 men, being about one-twentieth of the number of the part of the garrison opposed to them, and which might have attacked them.

On the other hand, the Russians having after Inkerman abandoned the idea of using the field army for attacking the Allied position, had begun to withdraw troops from it to strengthen the garrison, and readjusted the supply between them.

They poured reinforcements into the place, till they had not only made good the losses of the first weeks of winter, but enabled its commander to employ on the works a force varying, according to need, from 6000 to 10,000 men. The guns, lying in the arsenal in thousands, and the ammunition were easily brought to the batteries along the paved streets.

Thus the fortress was immensely augmenting its power of resistance just when we found the greatest difficulty in holding our ground. Therefore, readers who have been accustomed to hear the chiefs in Sebastopol and their troops lauded as maintaining a struggle against unheard-of difficulties, and as exhibiting extraordinary energy and powers of resistance, may ask themselves how it was that an enemy who possessed such enormously superior forces in men and material, and who could at any time, during a period of months, have directed on some selected point of the siege works thousands of troops, that would have found only hundreds to meet them, did not muster the courage for such an enterprise when it promised deliverance to the fortress, and ruin to their foes.

Yet they might perhaps have given the reason which Canrobert had already pleaded for restraining enterprise, that they were unwilling to set the great stake on a single cast, and preferred to let delay and all its evils fight for them.

With this important exception, however, the Russians showed great energy, even beyond the limits of a mere passive defence, and every kind of work demanding skill and labour they did well. Thus, Todleben developed a new feature in trench warfare, which the range and accuracy of the rifle had rendered possible.

At night, parties issuing from the place dug, on selected parts of the ground between the opposing lines, rows of pits each fitted to hold a man, and having in front a few sandbags, or sometimes a screen of stones, so disposed as to protect his head, and to leave a small opening through which to fire.

At daybreak they began to harass the guards of the trenches opposite, within easy range of them. The French especially suffered by being thus overlooked, and their proximity caused the enemy to adopt this form of warfare chiefly in opposing them. To direct guns on objects so small as these pits, and frequently at a great distance from the batteries, seemed but a doubtful policy, and they were therefore opposed by men, similarly covered by sandbags, from the parapets.

After a time, Todleben, finding his idea so successful, expanded it; the rows of rifle pits were connected, by trenches, in parts of which shelter was given to continuous ranks of riflemen, and the defence being thus pushed out in advance of the general line, wore the aspect of besieging the beseigers.

He had begun these enterprises in November, greatly aggravating the cares of the scanty defenders of the trenches. Beyond the advanced trench of our Left Attack some of these pits had been placed, screened by small stone walls, causing great annoyance both to our people opposite and to the French across the ravine, whose advanced works they partly looked into.

It was on the night of the 20th November that a party of the rifles was ordered to clear these pits, which were supported by another row in rear. The occupants were driven out after a sharp struggle, with losses on both sides, and a working party made the spot tenable by our people--a service so highly appreciated by our Allies that Canrobert passed a warm encomium on it in general orders.

In November there also began, in the French attack from Mount Rodolph, a war of mines and countermines. A gallery was being driven towards the Flagstaff Bastion, when it was detected and blown in by the enemy. A mine was, however, placed in the gallery, far short of the position at first destined for it, in order to break up the ground before the bastion, and thus enable the French to effect a lodgment there.

But this plan did not turn out happily; the watchful engineer opposed to them proved himself a master also of this subterranean warfare, and when the mine was exploded, it was the Russians who succeeded in establishing themselves on the crater.

It was on the 22d of February that the Russians undertook an enterprise which marked an epoch in the siege, and which was caused by another, the intention of which had become apparent on the part of the Allies. In front of the Malakoff, at about 500 yards from it, and on the same strip of the plain, was a conical hill, of rather greater height, and of such importance to either side which should seize it that it would doubtless have been a main object with us from the first but for our deficiency in numbers. This was the hill which afterwards became famous as the Mamelon.

To place it, as well as the Malakoff and the intervening ground, under such a cross fire as might assure its capture, two batteries were prepared, one by the French, on a near spur of Mount Inkerman, and one in the English Right Attack. But their wary antagonist had not failed to note and appreciate the design, and was now ready with his counterstroke.

On the morning of the day named, the French, who the day before had seen the Russian works end with the mouth of the Careenage ravine, now beheld new works begun on, and in extension of, a hill in front of them, being part of Mount Inkerman itself, which the enemy had seized in the course of the night, thus extending the front of the fortress to new ground, and flanking the approaches to the Malakoff and Mamelon; while the new work was itself protected by so powerful a fire that the French might well hesitate to attack it.

Night Attack

All the 23d the enemy were again at work on it. That night, however, five French battalions, under General Monet, issued from the trenches, and while two remained halted in support, three advanced to the assault. This step had been anticipated and provided for by the Russians. Besides three battalions assigned to work on and to defend the hill, four others, being an entire regiment, were disposed for its defence, and now met the attack. They were supported by guns both from the fortress and the ships, which were brought to bear on the ground between the hill and the French trenches.

The combat lasted an hour; the French succeeded at one time in entering the work, but were driven out by the strong supports, and forced to retreat, bearing with them General Monet, desperately wounded, and sustaining a loss of 270 men, with nineteen officers, while the Russians lost 400.

Todleben credits the French troops on this occasion with "a remarkable valour." This defeat was so far acknowledged and accepted by the French that the enemy was thenceforth left almost undisturbed to complete and arm his new work, and a few nights later he began another on a hill to his own left of it. These were in future known to the Allies as the White Works from the chalky soil they stood in. Thus, having completely abandoned Mount Inkerman after the battle, the enemy had now returned to it in a fashion which showed that he intended his occupation of it to be permanent. By this rare display of sagacity and daring, Todleben immensely increased the difficulty of the problem before the Allies.

At a conference of chiefs, on 6th March, Burgoyne urged the French to attack these works as the indispensable preliminary to progress on this part of the field; but the proposal was put aside on the ground that, if captured, they could not be held under the guns which the enemy could bring to bear.

The two batteries, French and English, looking towards the Mamelon were pushed steadily towards completion, and on the 10th March the commanding French engineer, Bizot, advised Canrobert to seize the hill that night. Canrobert declined the enterprise, but Todleben settled the question. On this same night the Russians seized it, and morning saw the outline of a work crowning it.

The question of attacking it was now more urgent than before. But Canrobert still found reasons against so decided a course, and preferred to besiege it. Consequently, the French opened a parallel against it on the Victoria Ridge, and the new batteries were also directed on it. On the other hand, the enemy held his ground, and not only completed and armed his new work, but spread rifle pits, connected with trenches, along its front and flanks.

Thus a very formidable element entered into the problem of the siege. It has been already pointed out how embarrassing to the Allies were the outposts the enemy had placed, in October, in advance of their works, Here was a tremendous aggravation of the infliction for not only did the Mamelon cover what had hitherto been the objects of attack in that quarter, but it looked into trenches of our Right Attack hitherto secure from fire, and forbade, under heavy penalties, its further approach towards the Redan.

The French had pushed their approaches so close to the small works covering the Mamelon that they might be expected presently to seize them, when, in the night of the 22d March, the enemy cast large bodies of troops on the opposing lines. Between 5000 and 6000 men attacked the French trenches before the Mamelon, and at first penetrated into them, driving in the guards and working parties. But their success ended there; the French showed so firm a front that the attack collapsed, and the enemy fell back and re-entered the fortress, after inflicting on their opponents a loss of 600 men.

Simultaneously with the entry of the French works, 800 Russians moved out for an advance upon our Right Attack, but were easily repulsed for the time. This attack had been made on the part of the trenches next the Docks ravine. An hour later another assault (which apparently ought to have been in concert with the first) was made on the left portion of the same trenches by Greek and other volunteers.

Led by an Albanian, in the dress of his country, they broke into the parallel, where the leader, first shooting one of our officers, discharged a pistol ineffectually at the magazine, and was then killed himself The assailants moved along the trench from left to right till the guards and working parties, having been got together, met and drove them back upon the Redan.

At the same time with this last, another assault had been directed, with Soo men, on the advanced trench of our Left Attack, close to where the ridge was cut short by the ravine, and penetrated to the third parallel, where they were attacked by the nearest bodies of those guarding the trenches, and driven back like the rest.

In these fights the officer commanding the guards of the Right Attack was wounded and captured, as was the engineer of the Left Attack, with about fifteen men, and a quantity of entrenching tools, dropped by the working parties when they took up their arms. In all, we lost seventy men. The enemy left about forty dead in front of our Right Attack, ten killed and two wounded in the trenches of the Left; and his losses, in all, that night were 1300 men.

If the Russians aimed, in this sortie, at establishing themselves in the French lines, it was so far a failure. But the object of such an enterprise is mostly to inflict hasty damage and discouragement on the enemy, and to gain a temporary facility for executing some of the defensive operations; and on this ground the Russians might claim a certain success, for in the following night they connected the pits in front of the Mamelon by a trench, which their engineer extended to the verge of the ravine. Thus he had succeeded in forming and occupying, within eighty yards of the French, an entrenched line, supported by, while it covered, the Mamelon.

A truce was agreed on for burying the slain, to begin half-an-hour after noon on the 24th. White flags were then raised over the Mamelon and the French and English works, and many spectators streamed down the hillsides to the scene of contest.

The French burial parties advanced from their trenches, and hundreds of Russians, some of them bearing stretchers, came out from behind the Mamelon. The soldiers of both armies intermingled on friendly terms. The Russians looked dirty and shabby, but healthy and well fed. Between these groups moved the burial parties, collecting the bodies and conveying them within the lines on both sides.

At 450 yards from the scene rose the Mamelon, its parapet lined with spectators. Five hundred yards beyond it, separated by a level space, stood the Malakoff, its ruined tower surrounded by earthen batteries; and through the space between it and the Redan appeared the best built portion of the city, jutting out into the harbour, and near enough for the streets, with people walking in them, the marks of ruin from shot, the arrangement of the gardens, and the line of sunken ships, to be plainly visible.

About forty bodies were removed from the front of the English Right Attack, among them that of the Albanian leader, partially stripped, and covered again with his white kilt and other drapery. In two hours the business was over, the soldiers on both sides had withdrawn within their lines, the flags were lowered, and the fire went on as before.

This was the only considerable attempt as yet made on the trenches, but small losses from fire occurred in them almost daily and nightly. At one time the men killed had been taken at night to the front of the works, and there buried, and a strange experience fell in consequence on a young engineer, destined to a place in the esteem of his country far beyond that of any other soldier of these latter generations, Charles Gordon.

In carrying a new approach to the front, these graves lay directly across it, and he described how the working party had to cut their way straight through graves and occupants, and how great was the difficulty he found in keeping the men to their horrible task, which, however, was duly completed. He had a brother, Enderby Gordon, on the staff of the artillery, to whom he used to relate his experiences; among others, of strolls he was in the habit of taking at night far beyond our trenches, one of which led him up close to the outside of the Russian works, so that he could hear the voices of the men on the parapet.

A singularly ghastly incident of these burials took place about this time. One night two men had carried the body of a comrade, just slain, on to the open ground for interment, and had finished digging the grave, and placing the body in it, when, as they were about to fill it in, a shot from the enemy, who had perhaps heard them at work, killed one of them. The survivor laid his comrade's body beside the other, buried both, and returned to the trench.

In the period to which this chapter relates several events of military importance had occurred, to have chronicled which, at their respective dates, would have broken the narrative of the siege.

On the 6th December the troops which Liprandi had established in the valley of Balaklava were withdrawn across the Tchernaya, leaving only detachments of the three arms in the villages of Kamara and Tchorgoun, and a field work with guns to guard the bridge at Traktir.

On the 30th December a considerable French force advanced up the valley, while the 42d Highlanders moved by the hills above, swept the residue of the enemy over the stream, and shelled the guns out of the bridge head, and the troops out of Tchorgoun.

After destroying the Russian huts and forage, and capturing their cattle and sheep, the troops returned to their camps. Access was thus once more gained to the Woronzoff road, and in time a good road was made connecting it with Balaklava.

In January two French officers arrived in the Crimea, both destined, though in entirely opposite ways, to exercise an important influence on the course of the war. The Emperor Napoleon, regarding the appointments already made to the command of Corps and Divisions by Canrobert, under the pressure of circumstances, as provisional merely, had summoned General P61issier from his Government of Oran, and placed him in charge of the ist Corps, that besieging the lines before the town; and it will be seen how powerful was the impelling element introduced with the presence of this masterful spirit into the attack on the fortress.

And, on the 27th of January, General Niel, the engineer who had just conducted operations against Bomarsund, and who was regarded as the military counsellor of the Emperor, arrived in the Crimea on a special mission. The nature of this, kept secret at the time, will appear in the next chapter; but he at once expressed his ideas of the military situation. Regarding it, from the engineer's point of view, as a siege, and what should consequently follow the rules of a siege, one of which was that a necessary step towards the capture of a fortress is its investment, so he believed that all the efforts of the Allies must be vain until they should have intercepted all communication between Sebastopol and Menschikoff's army. "Believe, Monsieur le Marechal," he wrote to the Minister for War, " that nothing can be done without investing," and with this opinion his language at the conference was in unison.

And, no doubt, to have severed all communication with the city must have been effectual in the end, if practicable ; but the event showed that the measure was not indispensable. That the Russians feared such a step was shown about this time. Omar Pasha had been for some time assembling, at Eupatoria, bodies of his Turks from the Danube. The town had been surrounded with works of earth and loose stones by the French officer at first left in charge of the place.

These, thrown forward to a salient in the centre, bent round on both flanks to the sea. About 23,000 Turks and thirty-four heavy guns were within these works, when the Russians, alarmed for their communications with Perekop, delivered an attack upon the place with a large force drawn from Menschikoffs army, and said by Todleben to number 19000 infantry, with a strong cavalry and numerous artillery. Both flanks of the works of the place were defended by a French steamer, a Turkish, and four English steamers lying in the bay.

On the 16th February the Russians appeared before the place. They spent the night in throwing up cover for their batteries, and by morning had seventy-six guns, twenty-four of them of heavy calibre, ready to open at from 600 to 800 yards from the works. At daybreak the cannonade began, and when the fire of the place seemed to be overcome, three columns of attack, supported by field batteries, advanced on the centre and flanks of the defensive line. Two of these were stopped by the fire of the steamers and of the place; the third, on the right front of the Turkish line, finding cover in the walls of the cemeteries there, assembled under their shelter, and advanced more than once almost to the ditch, but were easily repulsed; and with the last attempt in this quarter the enterprise came to an end, and the Russians drew off at once towards the interior. They lost 769 killed and wounded; the garrison, 387.

Even had they carried the works, it is difficult to perceive how they could have proposed to maintain themselves in the place, under the fire of the ships. It was probably his experience of what this fire could effect, and against which no return could be made, that so convinced the Russian commander of the hopelessness of the enterprise, as to render the assault weak and futile in comparison with his forces.

No further attempt was made on Eupatoria during the war. This failure, following on the others, was visited on Menschikoff by withdrawing him from the command of the Forces in the Crimea, in which he was succeeded by Gortschakoff.

Port Blockade

In February the Russians, finding that the line of sunken vessels across the harbour had been much broken up by the waves, sank six more, in a line inside the other; and on the 6th March an English battery on Mount Inkerman brought some guns, with hot shot, to bear on two warships in Careening Creek which had greatly annoyed the French, and drove them, one much damaged, round a sheltering point.

An important figure also disappeared from the councils of the Allies. In February the new Government, in order to appease a vague desire (part of the general discontent and impatience agitating the country) for any change which might quicken the siege operations, had decided on the recall of Sir John Burgoyne, and General Harry Jones had in that month arrived in the Crimea as his successor. But Lord Raglan desired to keep his old counsellor by his side at a time when so many important engineering questions were pending; he continued to be present at the conferences, and to issue plans and suggestions, till the third week in March, when he departed for England.

The defence of the place lost a redoubted champion, on the 19th March, when Admiral Istomine was killed in the Mamelon. He was buried by the side of Korniloff, in a tomb made by Admiral Nakimoff with the intention of lying there himself, but he now ceded the place to his illustrious comrade.

With the advance of spring the situation of the Allies (though the siege seemed as far as ever from its end) had become greatly more favourable. Not only had the climate grown mild, not only were the plains, clad in renewed verdure, once more easy to traverse, but the time of privations was long past, and almost seemed a bad dream; the men were well fed, well clothed, and well housed; the horses had been restored to condition and duly recruited in numbers; a city of huts, like those to be seen at Aldershot, spread over the Upland; the railway brought vast stores from Balaklava to the plateau, from whence they were forwarded to the dep6ts of the camps by a growing land transport. Colonel MacMurdo, armed with independent purchasing powers, had come out to superintend the formation of that transport corps, manned both by old soldiers and recruits specially raised, and had so used his opportunities that horses, trained drivers, escorts, and vehicles, were being rapidly assembled and organised.

All this demanded a great outlay, insomuch that on one of the Colonel's many large requisitions the Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Charles Trevelyan, had written: "Colonel MacMurdo must limit his expenditure."

When the paper returned to the Colonel with these words, he wrote below them: "When Sir Charles Trevelyan limits the war, I will limit my expenditure." Equal improvement marked the condition of the French, and vast stores of guns had been brought up and mounted in the batteries early in April, with, for the English ordnance, a supply of 500 rounds for each gun, and 300 for each mortar. We had thus accumulated the means of a sustained and tremendous cannonade, in which 378 French guns would take part, and 123 English, proportionate to the extent of trenches and batteries occupied by each; but the English guns were for the most part so much more powerful that the difference in weight of metal was not great.

On these, 466 Russian guns (out of nearly 1000 on the works) could be brought to bear. And it was certainly expected, as before, on both sides that, as soon as the cannonade should have produced its effect, the Allies would be prepared to assault.

So all three armies believed; so Lord Raglan believed. But, as has been said, General Niel, the counsellor of the Emperor, had no faith in any measures which did not include an investment. It had been evident that some influence had been at work which had held back the French troops from assaulting many parts of the defences which seemed to offer fair chances of capture; and circumstances, afterwards found to have existed, seem to show that the French commander did not at this time intend to push matters beyond a cannonade.

On Easter Sunday, the 8th April, orders were given for opening fire next morning. The mortars, absent on the former occasion, were now a prominent feature in the attacking batteries, placed behind lofty and solid parapets, and hurling their great missiles high into the air, to drop thence into an enemy's work, and there explode. The various character of the soil of the plains must now once more be noted, as it very seriously affected the siege operations carried on in it.

On the slopes of Mount Inkerman, and in our Right and Left attacks, especially the right, the soil was thin, the rock lay immediately below, and the workmen painfully scooped an often insufficient cover, frequently by dint of blasting; and the want of earth for parapets was in many cases supplied by sandbags filled elsewhere.

But on Mount Rodolph, and to its left, the soil was favourable, easily trenched, and supplying earth in quantity sufficient to rear the parapets high, and thicken them to solidity; and thus the French had been able on that side to sap up and push their trenches to within 16o yards of the Flagstaff Bastion, while our fire was still mainly delivered (though some mortar batteries had been formed in advance), as in October, from the batteries first constructed, Gordon's and Chapman's.

When the sun should have appeared next morning, a dense mist covered the plains. It lifted a little, and at half-past six our guns, as they caught sight of the opposing batteries, opened fire, and the French soon followed. The Russians were so completely unprepared that it was twenty minutes before they began to reply.

A strong wind swept volumes of the smoke from the Allied trenches over the Russian works, and must have added greatly to the difficulties of the men who worked the guns there. They were slack in replying; the guns in the redoubted Mamelon fired slowly, so did those of the Malakoff, as if insufficiently manned, though really owing to dearth of powder; and a face of the Redan was silenced.

On the other hand, the French breached the salient of the Central Bastion, and inflicted immense damage and loss of men on the Flagstaff Bastion. When the sun went down, the fire of the Allied guns ceased. Not so those of their mortars, which did not depend on keeping sight of their object, and all night the great shells climbed the sky, and descended on their prey. Nevertheless, the works were again in a condition of defence next morning. On this second day the White Works were reduced to silence and ruin.

On the 11th the English and French batteries directed on the Mamelon extinguished its fire, and the Malakoff scarcely fired at all, while the Flagstaff Bastion had been again and again reduced to the direst extremity.

Therefore, in momentary expectation of an assault, the Russian troops were kept at hand in, or close to, the lines of defence, and as a consequence suffered heavily. They were subjected to terrible trials, from which the Allies were exempt, for the hurricane of iron which, besides ruining works, dismounting guns, and exploding magazines, swept without intermission through the whole interior space of the fortress, where it had already razed the barracks and public buildings of the suburb to the ground, and choked the streets of the city with destroyed masonry, could not but tell heavily on uncovered troops.

Remarkable Incident

A remarkable incident occurred at this time. In the trenches on the furthest point of our Left Attack, on the verge of the ravine, two batteries had been constructed, but not armed. On the night of the 11th guns were conveyed to one of them, across the open ground, and these on the following day were placed on their platforms. These batteries were on much lower ground than the Redan and the Barrack Battery on the one side, and the Garden Batteries and Flagstaff Bastion on the other.

Nevertheless, this battery of four guns opened fire on the 13th on its formidable opponents. From their commanding heights, they very soon concentrated on it the overwhelming fire of about twenty heavy guns. The contest was hopeless, but it was maintained.

For five hours the English guns, gradually reduced to one that remained in a condition to fire, replied, not without effect. Then, this last gun disabled, nearly all the gunners struck down, the parapets swept away, the remnant of men were at length withdrawn. Out of forty-seven men, forty-four had been killed or wounded.

In the night the damage was repaired, and the four guns were put once more in fighting condition. And the battery no longer fought singly in the front line; its neighbour was armed with six guns. On the 14th they opened and brought on themselves a terrible stress of fire. All day (with one relief), and even into the night, they maintained the fight, when, with many guns disabled, many men killed and wounded, and the parapets once more knocked into shapeless heaps, they were withdrawn from the works, which were not again manned.

This episode, while it did little (that little, perhaps, in the way of attracting shot from the enemy which would otherwise have been directed on other points) towards a general result, enabled Todleben to score a substantial and indisputable success in the midst of his calamities elsewhere. Yet these English gunners had not fought quite in vain; they are still remembered as having set a rare example of valorous devotion.

Ten days did the terrific storm of iron hail endure; ten days did the Russian reliefs, holding themselves ready to repel attack, meet wounds and death with a constancy which was of necessity altogether passive.

On the 19th they saw the fire of the Allies decline, and settle into its more ordinary rate; they saw, too, that the sappers were again at work with their approaches, and reading in this the signs of a resumption of the siege, and the abandonment of the policy of assault, they once more withdrew their sorely harassed infantry to places of shelter and repose. Then they began to reckon their losses, which amounted for the ten days, in killed and wounded, to more than 6000 men. The French lost, in killed and disabled, 1585 men; the English, 265.

During these days and nights the great ballroom of the assembly rooms in Sebastopol was crowded with the wounded incessantly arriving on stretchers. The floor was half-an-inch deep in coagulated blood. In an adjoining room, set apart for operations, the blood ran from three tables where the wounded were laid, and the severed limbs lay heaped in tubs. Outside, fresh arrivals thronged the square, on their blood- steeped stretchers, their cries and lamentations mingling with the roar of shells bursting close by.

Many more were borne to the cellars of the sea-forts; and those capable of removal to the north side were conveyed thither to permanent hospitals. In a church near the harbour the mournful chaunt of the office for the dead resounded continually through the open doors of the building.

It was there that the funeral service was celebrated of officers dead on the field of honour. Such is the picture drawn by eye-witnesses of what was seen of the results of the conflict in the more remote parts of the city. Nor was the change to the country outside the fortress much for the better. A Russian, passing from thence to St Petersburgh, there testified that the route from Sebastopol to Simpheropol was so encumbered with dead bodies, dead horses, and dead cattle, that the whole line was infected with pestilential vapours, and, being impassable for vehicles, could only be traversed on horseback.

All these days great impatience had prevailed in the English camp. It was asked why the cannonade had been begun if not to be followed to its legitimate conclusion. The key to the mystery is to be found in the following chapter.

Chapter X: Important Events Elsewhere