CHAPTER VII.

1854-1856.

THE WAR IN THE CRIMEA.

When the Royal Irish reached England in June, 1854, after a six months’ voyage from Calcutta, they were greeted by the news that for the first time since Waterloo Britain had become embroiled in a European war, and in alliance with France had sent troops to protect Turkey against the Russians, who had invaded the part of the Sultan’s dominions then known as the Danubian principalities. The Czar had long cast covetous eyes on Turkey, whose European provinces on the Ægean and the Sea of Marmora prevented the expansion of Russia towards the Mediterranean, and thus limited her seaboard to the Baltic and the Black Sea. In the middle of the nineteenth century Turkey appeared to be so decadent a country that its ruler was commonly described as “the sick man”; the Czar actually threw out suggestions to England that she should divide with him “the sick man’s heritage,” and on her indignant refusal he determined to bide his time and pick a quarrel with the Sultan on the first opportunity. A pretext soon presented itself in a dispute between the Greek and Latin branches of the Christian faith concerning their respective rights in the Holy Places of Jerusalem: the Czar hotly espoused the cause of the Greek Church, while the Emperor Napoleon III., reviving the historic claim of France to represent the Latin Church in Palestine, vigorously supported the views of the Roman Catholics. The Sultan, profoundly indifferent to the rivalries of those whom his religion taught him to regard as infidel dogs, attempted to propitiate both sides, but with such conspicuous ill-success that the Czar declared war against him in October, 1853, and invaded the Turkish provinces on the Danube. To defend Turkey against this wanton and unprovoked attack, England and France in the spring of 1854 landed a considerable number of troops at Varna, a Bulgarian port on the Black Sea. It was from no love of the Turks that England thus plunged into war with Russia: she took up arms in pursuance of the foreign policy which for centuries she has followed on the Continent, and sided with the weaker state--not on altruistic grounds but solely to preserve the balance of power in Europe, and to prevent the Czar from possessing himself of Constantinople, and thus obtaining direct access to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Anglo-French troops were still at Varna when, in the interests of peace, Austria brought such pressure upon the Czar that he recalled his armies from Turkish soil. But though the immediate danger to Constantinople was averted by this intervention, the governments of England and France agreed that there would be no safety for Turkey, and therefore no tranquillity in European politics, until the Russian fleet in the Black Sea had been captured or destroyed, and its base at Sebastopol levelled to the ground. When the demolition of this great naval station was thus determined on, the allies knew little of Sebastopol,[159] except that it was a fortress in the south of the Crimea, a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea from the mainland of Russia: and no soldier in western Europe had any conception of the difficulties awaiting the Anglo-French Expedition when it put to sea from Varna on September 7, 1854. Exclusive of the crews of the great fleet of warships by which the transports were escorted, the fighting men numbered about 63,000, of whom 28,000 were French, 7000 Turks, and 28,000 British. The French were under Marshal St Arnaud; Lord Raglan, who had served on Wellington’s staff in the Peninsular war, commanded the British troops. Neither of these officers lived to see the end of the campaign: St Arnaud died in September, 1854, and was succeeded by General Canrobert who, after a few months, resigned his post to General Pélissier: Lord Raglan fell a victim to cholera at the end of June, 1855, and was replaced by General Simpson. The Turks were commanded by Omar Pasha.

The effort to collect and equip for war the comparatively small body of men forming the British quota of the combined forces had greatly taxed the military resources of England. After the fall of the great Napoleon had restored peace to Europe, enormous reductions had been made in our military expenditure;[160] not only was the _personnel_ of the army cut down, but the _matériel_ was allowed to fall into decay. For more than thirty years every arm and every department of the service was systematically starved, with results well summed up by Lord Palmerston, who in 1846 bluntly informed his colleagues in the Cabinet that our military weakness was such that England existed “only by sufferance and by the forbearance of other Powers.” This opinion was endorsed by the highest authority in the British army, for Wellington himself acknowledged that our supply of guns, arms, ammunition, and all kinds of stores was inadequate. Nor were these grievous shortcomings atoned for by any high standard of efficiency amongst the troops, for though the drill and discipline of the army were alike excellent, neither the soldiers nor the departments vital to their existence in the field were trained in the slightest degree for active service; indeed, until 1853, when a few thousand men spent some weeks under canvas, no camp of exercise had been formed in England since the end of the Great War with France. Marksmanship was almost a lost art; and although the deadly volleys of the British infantry in the Peninsula had won for our troops the reputation of the best shots in Europe, musketry was so entirely neglected during the dead period after Waterloo, that the injunction “Fire low, and hit ’em in the legs, boys,” was the only instruction given to recruits. Even in the Foot Guards the men were considered to be masters of their weapon if, once in every three years, they fired thirty rounds of ball cartridge. The military education of the officers was no better than that of the rank and file; there was no attempt to teach them anything beyond barrack-square drill; the vast majority grew up ignorant of every detail of their profession, and as the Staff College at Camberley was not then in existence, the officers selected for employment on the staff proved in the majority of cases to be blind leaders of the blind. The few veterans of the Peninsula who were still to be found among the Generals had seen war on a grand scale; the officers who had served in eastern and colonial campaigns had acquired much useful knowledge in these distant operations, but with these exceptions the Staff and regimental officers were as untrained in the practice, as they were unversed in the theory of war.

When the Royal Irish reached England they were quartered at Chatham and Canterbury. At first there seemed no likelihood of their being actively employed, for when the regiment had left India many men had volunteered into other corps, and the climate of Burma had told so heavily on those who still remained with the Colours that a large number of them were unfit for active service. Fortune, however, befriended the XVIIIth; in October the flank companies under Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel Edwards were ordered to Windsor, to strengthen the militia battalion which had replaced the regiment of Foot Guards at the Royal Castle. Her Majesty, Queen Victoria was much impressed by the bronzed and soldierly appearance of the detachment, and learning from Colonel Edwards that the regiment was most anxious to serve in the war, she was pleased to direct that the XVIIIth should proceed forthwith to the Crimea, where reinforcements were urgently required. As the result of the medical examination proved that less than four hundred men were fit for the campaign, volunteers were invited from other regiments: four hundred joined from the 94th, a hundred and fifty from the 51st, and smaller contingents from other corps. On December 8, 1854, the regiment, eight hundred and forty-eight strong,[161] embarked at Portsmouth in the s.s. _Magdalene_, and reached the Crimea at the end of the year, about three months and a half after the Allies had made good their footing on Russian soil.

To enable the reader to understand the condition of the British Expeditionary Force when the _Magdalene_ steamed into the harbour of Balaclava, it is necessary to give a very short account of the main events of the war up to the end of 1854. Between the 14th and 18th of September the Allies[162] were engaged in landing at Kalamita Bay, about thirty miles north of Sebastopol; two days after their disembarkation was completed they forced the passage of the river Alma, defeating the Russians so completely that they were allowed to march southward without molestation, and to form bases on the coast within a few miles of Sebastopol, the British establishing themselves at Balaclava, a little port eight miles to the south, the French at Kamiesch Bay, six miles to the south-west of the fortress. The Russian stronghold lies on the shores of a harbour, in shape not unlike a T: the top of the letter is represented by an arm of the sea running eastward from the Euxine for about four miles, and varying in width from a thousand to twelve hundred yards, while the leg is formed by a narrow creek which from the south runs into the main inlet, about two miles from the entrance to the open sea. On these deep and sheltered waters the whole of the Russian fleet could ride in safety, protected by a ring of forts from attack by land or sea, and the labours of successive generations of engineers had converted the western shore of the creek, or inner harbour, into a vast arsenal and dockyard, round which a thriving and populous city had sprung up. The Generals of the Anglo-French forces soon ascertained by reconnaissance that they had not nearly men enough to invest the whole perimeter of the fortress, and at the same time to repel the attacks to be expected from the enemy’s field troops. All they could hope to accomplish was to pour upon one portion of the defences a fire so heavy as to become insupportable; and as the real power of the defence was obviously concentrated in the arsenals, stores, and barracks round the inner harbour, the Allies selected the southern works, those protecting the heart of the fortress, as the object of their first attack, and took up positions on the plateau between Balaclava and Sebastopol. Bounded on the north by the harbour, on the west and south by the sea, and on the east by the valley of the Tchernaya, the surface of this plateau, or “Upland” as the British termed it, was seamed by ravines which, beginning as mere depressions in the ground, grew deeper as they approached the fortress, finally becoming precipitous gorges, difficult for troops to cross. Close to the harbour the ground between these gorges rose into gentle elevations, crowned by works which, as soon as the Russians realised that the southern side of the fortress was threatened, were heavily armed and greatly strengthened. The largest of these ravines, dividing the plain from south to north, descended to the head of the inner harbour, and served as the boundary between the British on the right, and the French on the left of the besiegers’ line.

Owing to the inability of the Allies to invest the fortress completely, communication continued uninterrupted between the northern part of Sebastopol and the interior of the Crimea; early in October the civilian population quitted the town, and thus relieved the troops of the burden of feeding thousands of useless non-combatants. The forethought of the Russians had collected in the magazines of Sebastopol enormous supplies of guns, ammunition, and warlike stores; the commissariat was well provided; the garrison consisted of 38,000 men--soldiers, military workmen already partially trained to arms, and sailors from the men-of-war which, at the approach of the Allies, had been sunk to block the mouth of the outer harbour. Among the regular troops was an officer in himself worth an army--Todleben, an engineer who had already made his mark in the fighting on the Danube. When it became known that the Allies were sailing for the Crimea he was sent to Sebastopol, where he became the mainspring of the defence. His courage and genius, his versatility and resource, his boundless energy, his power of inspiring enthusiasm and devotion among his men won for him the deepest respect of his enemies, and the fervent admiration of his fellow countrymen, who with good reason claim for him a high place among great military engineers. He soon had an opportunity of displaying his talents. In the middle of October the Allies opened fire upon the fortress, and at the close of the bombardment had reason to be satisfied with the result, for the works were reduced to shapeless heaps, the batteries ruined, the guns disabled. But next morning the assailants discovered that in Todleben they had to meet a master-mind: during the night he had rebuilt the parapets, repaired the batteries, and replaced the damaged guns from the almost boundless supply of cannon at his command. On the 25th, the Russian Field army, which after its defeat at the Alma had retired into the interior of the Crimea to await reinforcements, made an unsuccessful attempt to break the line of communication between the British camps on the Upland and Balaclava. A few days later the Allies determined to assault the fortress, but their project was discovered by the enemy. At dawn on the 4th of November, the garrison and the field army together attacked the British right; and though after a desperate battle, to which the name of Inkerman has been given, the victory remained to the Allies, it was dearly bought: the British casualties were 597 killed and 1760 wounded, while those of the French were 143 killed and 786 wounded. The Russians on their side lost more than 12,000 men, of whom a very large proportion were left dead upon the field.

So far our army had not fared badly in the campaign: the hardships had not been greater than were to be expected on active service, and reinforcements had filled the gaps caused by casualties and disease. Cholera, indeed, hung about the camp, and the men were undoubtedly overworked, for when the Anglo-French generals drew up their plans for the siege, the share in the operations which Lord Raglan undertook was greater than his troops could accomplish without undue fatigue. But despite sickness and overstrain the health of the army was fairly good, and when, a few days after Inkerman, it was officially announced that the Allies would spend the winter in the Crimea, men looked forward to the prospect without great apprehension, for the weather was fine, and the Indian summer, bright, mild, and dry, gave no hint of the rigours of the coming winter. Suddenly a terrific storm of rain and wind burst upon the Crimea, levelled whole camps and blew the tents, and all that the tents contained, far and wide over the Upland; the supplies of food and forage at the front were destroyed, and communication with Balaclava was temporarily cut off by the force of the hurricane. Had the fleet of store-ships then at anchor at Balaclava, or lying off the port, escaped destruction, the damage, in great measure at least, could have been repaired; but twenty-one vessels were dashed to pieces, and eight more disabled. The ships that went to the bottom contained forage, ammunition, war-like stores of every kind, drugs and surgical appliances, warm flannel shirts and drawers, woollen stockings, boots and watch-coats--everything that the army most urgently required. When fresh supplies arrived at Balaclava from England the means of conveying them to the Upland was utterly inadequate, for we had landed without a transport corps, depending for land carriage on such horses and vehicles as could be seized in the Crimea. The animals thus obtained died fast from want of forage, and in January, 1855, the Commissariat department could only muster 333 horses and mules and 12 camels, while the divisional transport consisted of a few ponies, dying from starvation and overwork. Though horses in plenty were to be bought in the countries near the Crimea, and many transports were available to bring them to Balaclava, it was useless to import animals until forage arrived to feed them, and forage unhappily was an article of which the Treasury had neglected to make an adequate provision. Consequently upon the troops fell the whole labour of carrying on their shoulders from the port to the camps everything that was required, not only for their own support, but for the conduct of the siege. As was to be expected, the men broke down terribly fast; in November there were nearly 17,000 on the sick list; in December there were more than 19,000 ineffectives, and in January, 1855, no less than 23,076 men filled the hospitals. The horrors of this period of the war are well described by Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, who served on shore as a midshipman in one of the Naval brigades.

“In the early part of the winter the battalions at the front were generally on duty two nights out of three, and later, every alternate night. The life of the rank and file was thus spent:--The men were mustered carrying great-coat and blanket, just before dusk, and marched through a sea of mud into the trenches. These were cut up by deep holes from which boulders and stones had been taken, and into these holes on dark nights, the men often fell. When the soldier reached his position, he had to sit with his back to the parapet, and his feet drawn up close under his body to allow others to pass along the four-feet-wide trench. If he was not detailed for a working party, nor for piquet in the trenches or in advance of them, he might lie down, resting as best he could, in a wet ditch. Assuming that the soldier was not on piquet, and that there was no alarm--and these were of frequent occurrence--he could, after the working parties and their reliefs had ceased to move about the trenches, repose till daylight, when he marched back to camp, and after a few hours’ rest had to carry a load of some kind.

“The comparative repose enjoyed by those men who were required only as a guard, or reserve in the trenches, was very different to the condition of those who were employed from 200 to 300 yards in advance of our works, often within conversational distance of the opposing sentries. The reliefs for the sentries could snatch a dog’s sleep for four hours out of six, hoping their comrades would by remaining on the alert give them time to jump up ere the enemy was on them; but for the two hours that each man was out near the enemy, the strain on the nervous system would have been great even to a robust, well-fed man. These sentries had necessarily to stand absolutely still, silent and watchful, and as the severity of the weather became more and more marked, numbers of men whose frames were weakened by want of adequate nutritious food, were found in the morning frost-bitten and unable to move. One battalion which landed nearly 900 strong early in November, was actually in the trenches six nights out of seven, and then became so reduced, not only in numbers,[163] but also in the men’s bodily strength, that it was unable for some time to go there again.

“When the soldier got back to camp, he used to lie, often in a puddle, which chilled his bones, under a worn-out tent, through which the rain beat. The less robust would fall asleep, completely worn out, to awake shivering, and in many cases to be carried to a hospital tent scarcely more comfortable than the tent which they had left, and thence to a grave in two or three days. Those who were stronger, went out to collect roots of brushwood, or of vines, and roasted the green coffee ration in the lid of the canteen, afterwards pounding it in a fragment of shell with a stone, ere they boiled it for use. Others, unequal to this laborious process, would drink their rum, and eating a piece of biscuit, lie down again in the great-coat and blanket which they had brought, often wet through from the trenches.

“In the afternoon the soldier was sent on ‘fatigue’ duty from five to seven miles, according to the position of his camp, usually to Balaclava, to bring up rations. On his return he had again to gather fuel in order to boil the salt beef or salt pork in his mess tin, which did not hold water enough to abstract the salt. A portion of the meat therefore only was consumed, and it was necessary from time to time to tell off men to bury the quantities thrown away. Salt pork which was issued two days out of seven, was frequently eaten by the men in its raw state, from the difficulties of finding fuel to cook it.

“Shortly before dusk the soldier either marched back to the trenches, or lay down to sleep if he was not on piquet in front of the camp. Many men disliking to report themselves sick, were carried back from the trenches in the morning, and died a few hours afterwards. Those who were reported sick were taken to hospital, in many cases merely a bell tent; here the men lay, often in mud on the ground, and in many instances their diet was only salt meat and biscuit.[164] They were moreover so crowded together that the doctors could scarcely pass between the patients.

“The Regimental Medical officers unable to provide comforts, medicine or proper housing, were eager to send down their patients, even in storm and rain, to Balaclava, as the best chance of saving their lives. As we had no ambulances, and the French could not always lend us mule litter-transport, many were necessarily carried on cavalry horses, which slipping upon the hill outside Balaclava, often caused further injury or the death of the patient.

* * * * *

“The small schoolhouse at Balaclava, which we used as a hospital, held only between 300-400 men, thus the great majority of the sick and wounded were necessarily laid on the beach, exposed to all weathers, while awaiting their turn for embarcation in the transports. On the steamer running between Balaclava and the Bosphorus--a voyage of 36 to 48 hours--the soldier seldom got anything but tea and biscuit, sometimes only water. During this short but terribly trying passage, from 8 to 9% succumbed and were thrown overboard. Once on shore there was often a further painful wait on the beach before they were carried up to the hospital.

* * * * *

“We who saw the ‘old soldier’ die without a murmur may well be excused dilating on his virtues, when we endeavour to describe what he suffered for our country, the ministry of which, having given him a task far beyond his strength, failed to supply him with clothes and food. It is impossible to overpraise the disciplined silence of men under privations, which in a few weeks reduced one battalion from nearly 1000 effectives to a strength of 30 rank and file.”[165]

This misery was at its height when the Royal Irish disembarked at Balaclava on December 30, 1854; casualties, hardships, and disease had so thinned the British ranks that in January, 1855, to meet all requirements of the siege Lord Raglan had only 11,000 men at duty on the Upland, many of whom were only fit to be in hospital: one day, indeed, after providing fatigues to bring up the necessaries of life from Balaclava, he could only turn out two hundred and ninety officers and men to guard his trenches--about one-twentieth part of the garrisons of the forts opposite his works, against which at any moment the Russians might have directed a sortie. The regiments upon which the war had told most heavily had almost ceased to exist: one battalion paraded for duty with a few officers, a sergeant, and seven rank and file. With his army in such a condition, it was impossible for Lord Raglan to continue responsible for the whole of the ground allotted to him at the beginning of the siege, and the French, who had been very largely reinforced, and whose sufferings, though great, were in comparison with ours but insignificant, relieved him on the extreme right of his line. The material result of this necessary but deplorable admission of weakness was to “sandwich” the British between two wings of the French army, while morally it reduced us to the position of a mere contingent in the forces of Napoleon III. By England’s persistent neglect of all things military she had sown the storm, and her unhappy soldiers in the Crimea reaped the whirlwind; and it was not for many months, after thousands of lives had been wasted[166] and money spent like water, that her army was once more able to take its proper place in the forces of the alliance against Russia.

The Royal Irish were not at once sent up to the front, but for nearly a fortnight were employed on fatigues about the port. Thanks to this delay they were able to see their baggage and camp equipage safe on shore, and thus, when ordered to the Upland, they began the campaign well prepared to face the hardships that awaited them. In this respect they were far better off than the regiments which first landed in the Crimea. The original expedition had disembarked with hardly any vehicles; the men were so much enfeebled by the climate of Varna that they could not bear the weight of their knapsacks, which with the rest of the baggage were left on board the transports; and when these vessels ultimately reached Balaclava, knapsacks, stores, and regimental property of every kind were lost in the confusion which for many months reigned supreme at our base of operations. The miseries undergone by the troops who landed at the beginning of the war have already been described; and the ragged, jaded starvelings who dragged themselves from the camps on the Upland to the port of Balaclava on the daily quest for food were in pitiable contrast to the well-fed, well-clothed, well-shod men of the XVIIIth. These material advantages doubtless contributed largely towards the comparative immunity from sickness enjoyed by the regiment during the siege, but an even more important factor in its well-being was the presence in its ranks of a large number of soldiers who had been on active service, and of many officers who had learned in two long wars not only to take care of themselves, but also of the men under their command.

On January 12, 1855, the Royal Irish received orders to join Major-General Sir William Eyre’s brigade, then composed of the 4th, 38th, and 50th regiments, which formed part of the third division under Lieutenant-General Sir Richard England; and leaving a guard over such of their property as they could not carry with them, they started for the Upland. Their introduction to campaigning in the Crimea was a rude one; a blizzard raged as they floundered through deep snow along a track, marked by the bodies of transport animals killed by starvation and overwork; and when late in the afternoon they reached Eyre’s camp, they were told off by companies to find shelter in the lines of other corps, for their own tents had been left standing at Balaclava from want of transport to move them. When the Royal Irish succeeded in bringing up their tents from Balaclava, they settled down in camp with the handiness of seasoned troops. Most of the officers dug out the earth inside their tents to a depth of eighteen inches, piling the soil on the curtains to keep out the wind. There was no means of draining the inside of these habitations, “holes in the ground, roofed over with canvas,” as they were well described, but as the camp of the third division was pitched on dry and porous ground the XVIIIth were not troubled with water inside their tents, nor outside had they the miseries of mud and standing pools which made the camps on low ground so wretched. As for “warming the tents,” continues Captain Kemp’s[167] statement,

“in mine we improvised a stove out of an old square biscuit-tin; we let part of it into the earthen wall of the dug-out tent, and made a chimney-pipe out of round meat tins, slipped one inside the other. This chimney passing through the soil, came out clear of the canvas and was then turned upwards for a couple of feet. It answered well, though we were at times half smothered with the smoke. Wood for fuel was very scarce. A small quantity was served out for the soldiers’ cooking places, but the men had to carry it into camp on their shoulders for a distance of two miles or more. Their cooking was done in the usual trench in the open, but in very severe weather--rain, wind or snow--it was impossible to keep the fires going: this was one of the great hardships of the campaign. The cooking for the officers was done close to their tents, in holes or trenches dug by the servants, who used to throw the earth round the kitchen, and cover it with any bits of canvas they could find. Our servants had to forage for firewood, and generally brought back nothing but the wet roots of vines which they had grubbed up.”

Each officer took out with him to the war a canteen containing cooking utensils, plates, dishes, and cups, but the wear and tear of camp life soon made havoc of this kit. At a farewell dinner given in March by the XVIIIth to Colonel Reignolds when, completely broken down by hardships, he made over the regiment to Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel Edwards and went home invalided, each of the officers had to cook some part of the feast in his own kitchen, and brought the remnants of his plates, knives and forks, and the articles of food he had provided to the dinner, where empty jam pots took the place of soup plates and champagne glasses.

As soon as the Royal Irish joined Eyre’s brigade they began to do duty in the trenches, where parties were sent for twelve hours at a time to guard the works, make good with sand-bags the damage done to the parapets by the enemy’s projectiles, and improve the drainage. In March, when the weather began to moderate, the tour of duty was increased to twenty-four hours, much to the men’s satisfaction, as those who were not wanted by day for guards or working parties snatched some hours’ sleep in the dry caves of the great ravine which, as has already been mentioned, marked the left of the British front. The duty, heavy for all, was particularly hard on the officers, who were often in the trenches for seventy-two hours in the week. By day they had to direct the men at their labours, by night to be prepared to meet an attack from the fortress. Thanks to their incessant care in seeing that the men were always ready for any emergency, and to half-hourly visits to the sentries, the officers of the XVIIIth were never surprised, and whenever the regiment was in the trenches the Russians received so unfriendly a welcome that they never attempted to push home, though on several occasions they crossed bayonets with the outlying sentries. These local attacks were not the only dangers of night work during the siege. If the wind served, and the Russians heard a party at work, they threw fireballs, which on striking the ground burst into a great flare; then, guided by the light, they poured grape upon the labourers, who used to throw themselves for shelter behind the parapet of the trench until the cannonade ceased. Things began to brighten on the Upland in March: a great burst of indignation at home against the archaic methods by which the army was administered had roused the officials of the War Office and the Treasury to a tardy sense of their shortcomings: a gang of navvies from England had almost finished a railway from Balaclava to the camps; a transport corps had been organised and was doing good service,[168] and the troops, once more properly clothed, discarded the weird garments with which they had covered their nakedness during the winter months, and began to resume the bearing of British soldiers. So marked was the improvement in the appearance of the men that some martinets considered that only one thing was required to bring the army up to its old level--the resumption of the stock, which by general consent had been discarded at the beginning of the war: but this relic of barbarism was not taken into use for many months, and then only on the ceremonial parades at the end of the war. In justice to the XVIIIth it should be said that throughout the siege all ranks managed to turn out respectably attired. The officers wore their red shell-jackets or blue frocks under the regimental great-coat; and they were also provided with a non-regulation garment, much like the “coat-warm-British” of the present day, made of serge, lined with rabbit-skin, and reaching almost to the knee. The great-coats of the men looked decent, and concealed the blankets below them, converted into loosely fitting under-coats by the simple expedient of cutting holes in them for the men’s arms to come through. All ranks had fur caps, the envy of the whole army. About this time the Minié rifles, with which the army were then supposed to be armed, were issued to the Royal Irish, who had been hurried off to the war equipped with Brown-Bess percussion muskets, the same weapons that they had used in Burma.

Even in the worst part of the winter the Allies never wholly discontinued their siege operations, and as the weather became less severe their parallels were pushed forward steadily towards Sebastopol. The Russians on their side had not been idle: large reinforcements from the field army so abundantly made good the losses of the garrison that Todleben could command the services of 6000, and even on occasions of 10,000 men in carrying out his improvements of the defences. He seized and fortified fresh ground overlooking some of the works of the Allies, and devised a successful method of harassing the men on duty in the trenches. Under cover of darkness he dug numbers of shallow rifle-pits within musketry range of our lines, posting in each a marksman whose duty it was to shoot at every living target he could see. These pits were gradually connected by continuous trenches, and became a source of much annoyance to the Anglo-French troops, who found them difficult to deal with: to turn the sharpshooters out with the bayonet was costly, while to shell so small a mark as they presented was very difficult, and therefore little sandbag forts were run up at intervals on the parapets of the trenches, manned by soldiers detailed to keep down the skirmishers’ fire. In spite, however, of Todleben’s efforts the Allies succeeded in arming their batteries with an imposing number of heavy guns, and early in April finished their preparations for a vigorous bombardment, the prelude (as it was universally believed) to the storming of Sebastopol. The French could bring to bear 378 pieces of ordnance; the British had only 123 guns and mortars available, but as for the most part they were much more powerful than those of the French, the difference in weight of metal was not great. The cannonade began on the 9th of April, and raged for ten days and nights, for though the guns did not fire after the sun was down, the mortars continued to play upon the fortress throughout the night. Though mitigated by Todleben’s genius for rapid repairs, the effect of the bombardment was very great, and all ranks were awaiting orders for the attack when Canrobert, who on the death of St Arnaud had succeeded to the command of the French, decreed that the assault was to be postponed.[169] The fire of the guns was gradually allowed to die down: the digging parties resumed work upon the approaches: and the Russians were allowed to carry out the restoration of their works without interruption other than that of occasional shots from our batteries. This bombardment cost the enemy 6000 men: in the ranks of the Allies the casualties were far smaller, amounting among the French to 1585, among the British to 265 of all ranks.

Up to the middle of June the record of the XVIIIth is one of exceedingly hard work, unbroken by the excitement of any important engagement. The Royal Irish were employed in many different ways. They toiled along the track, first from Balaclava, and then from railhead to the camps on the Upland, laden, to use the soldiers’ expression, “like commissariat mules,” with stores; they were on fatigues of every kind, from digging parallels and throwing up batteries to making gabions and fascines; and they took their turn in the trenches, where, though they demanded and often obtained the dangerous privilege of guarding the approaches nearest to the enemy, their losses were small. Between the 6th of February, when their first casualty occurred, and the 17th of June, only six men were killed and thirty-six wounded. Of these injuries, however, many were of the gravest nature: on one occasion a shell from a Russian mortar burst among a detachment on its way to the trenches and struck down ten of the party. To save the lives of the wounded the surgeons had to perform amputations upon each of them, and seven men lost a leg apiece, two an arm each, while the least hurt escaped with the loss of a hand. This comparative immunity from casualties, however, was not to last, for the regiment was now to be called upon to undergo an ordeal nearly as severe as those in its campaigns under William III. and Marlborough. At the beginning of June the immediate object of the Allies was the capture of three outlying fortifications, outposts which covered the left of the line of Russian defences. The trenches of the French right attack were faced by the White Works and a hill called “the Mamelon,” the latter of which barred the way to the Malakoff redoubt, one of the keys of the main position; the British sap led to “the Quarries,” where a number of works covered the Redan, a fort as formidable and as important as the Malakoff itself. On the 6th of June another great bombardment began; five hundred and forty-four pieces of heavy ordnance hurled shot and shell into the Russian works, and though answered by almost an equal number inflicted great injury: many cannon were dismounted and earth-works ruined before darkness imposed silence upon our guns, though not upon our howitzers, which continued to fire throughout the night. Thanks to the boundless energy of Todleben and the dogged industry of his men, much of the damage was made good before dawn; the cannon were remounted and the parapets rebuilt; but early in the morning the English and French re-opened fire with such terrible effect that in two hours the _morale_ of the defenders was seriously affected. Then the infantry of the Allies was let loose, and after heavy fighting succeeded in taking the points assailed. In these achievements the XVIIIth had no part, as the third division was not employed in the capture of the Quarries.

As soon as these three outlying works had been taken, the Allies began to prepare for an attack on the Malakoff and the Redan, and on the 17th of June the batteries concentrated a furious fire on the Russian fortifications, with results so destructive to the enemy’s artillery that everything appeared to promise success for the assault on the morrow. Lord Raglan and Marshal Pélissier, who had recently been placed in command of the French army, had already agreed upon their plans; remembering how rapidly during the night of the 6th-7th of June the Russians had re-fitted their batteries, the Generals decided that the cannonade should be resumed at daylight for two hours, when it was calculated that the enemy’s guns would be silenced and the repairs of the night destroyed. The infantry was then to come into action, the French against the Malakoff, the British against the Redan. Barnard’s brigade of the third division was to support the storming columns, while on the extreme left Eyre, with the other brigade of the same division, was to threaten the fortifications on the Russian right of the Redan and in front of the Dockyard Creek, and to convert his demonstration into a serious attack if the assault on the Redan proved successful. Raglan’s preparations for the execution of his part of this scheme were completed, when suddenly, late on the night of the 17th, Pélissier informed the British Commander-in-Chief that he had resolved to dispense with the preliminary bombardment, and to storm the Malakoff at daybreak. Against his own judgment, and in an evil hour for the Allied armies, Raglan consented to this all-important change of plan; the infantry attacks on the Malakoff and the Redan were delivered without adequate artillery preparation; Todleben, who had done wonders during the night, was ready at every point, and the combined assault was beaten back with heavy loss. The only troops on whom Fortune smiled this day were those of Eyre’s brigade, who fought magnificently, and worthily sustained the honour of the British army. The brigade was at this time composed of the 9th, XVIIIth, 28th, 38th, and 44th regiments, but so heavily had the campaign told upon them that, when in the small hours of the 18th of June Eyre mustered these five battalions, there were but two thousand men in their depleted ranks. Covered by an advance-guard of a hundred and fifty sharpshooters--volunteers from each company in his command--the General left his camp while it was still black night, and marched down the great ravine towards the Dockyard Creek. At daybreak, just as the troops detailed for the assault on the Redan were swarming out of the trenches in which they had been assembled, Eyre’s advance-guard reached a cemetery, surprised the occupants of the rifle pits by which it was defended, and captured it without much trouble. This cemetery marked one flank of the enemy’s line, the other rested on a mamelon;[170] and to quote the words of Eyre’s report, the intervening ground “was intersected, and the road barricaded with stone walls, which our men were obliged to pull down under fire before they could advance. In rear of this position, towards the fortress, the enemy occupied several houses, there were bodies of the enemy seen in rear, but in what strength I could not say. This position, under cover of the walls of the fortress, was strong.” Well might General Eyre describe the position as “strong.” The suburb, of which these houses formed part, consisted of villas standing in gardens, planted with peach-trees in full blossom, and surrounded with low stone walls, thickly overgrown with vines. From several points it was commanded by the Russian artillery; to our “half-left” was the Garden Wall battery; in front rose the Creek battery, built at the head of the inner harbour of Sebastopol; on our right was the Barrack battery, and hidden behind the Redan were field-guns, which after the assault on that work had failed turned their fire upon Eyre’s regiments.

Before describing the doings of the XVIIIth in detail it will be well to give a short account of the work done by the brigade as a whole. Such an account is to be found in the letter to ‘The Times’[171] by Sir William Russell, the celebrated war correspondent, who, writing only two days after the battle, seems to have obtained his facts from the reports supplied to Eyre by the officers commanding his units. As Russell’s letter is in substantial agreement with Eyre’s report to his divisional general, its evidence appears valuable. After mentioning that the advance-guard occupied the cemetery with small loss, he says--

“the moment the enemy retreated, their batteries opened a heavy fire on the place from the left of the Redan and from the Barrack battery. Four companies of the XVIIIth at once rushed on out of the cemetery towards the town, and actually succeeded in getting possession of the suburb. Captain Hayman was gallantly leading on his company when he was shot through the knee. Captain Esmonde followed, and the men, once established, prepared to defend the houses they occupied.[172] As they drove the Russians out, they were pelted with large stones by the latter on their way up to the battery, which quite overhangs the suburb. The Russians could not depress their guns sufficiently to fire down on our men, but they directed a severe flanking fire on them from an angle of the Redan works. There was nothing for it but to keep up a vigorous fire from the houses, and to delude the enemy into the belief that the occupiers were more numerous than they were. Meanwhile the Russians did their best to blow down the houses with shot and shell, and fired grape incessantly, but the soldiers kept close, though they lost men occasionally, and they were most materially aided by the fire of the regiments in the cemetery behind them, which was directed at the Russian embrasures; so that the enemy could not get out to fire on the troops below. The 9th regiment succeeded in effecting a lodgment in the houses in two or three different places, and held their position as well as the XVIIIth.... While these portions of the 9th and XVIIIth, and parties of the 44th and 28th were in the houses, the detachments of the same regiments and of the 38th kept up a hot fire from the cemetery on the Russians in the battery and on the sharpshooters, all the time being exposed to a tremendous shower of bullets, grape, round-shot, shell. The loss of the brigade under such circumstances, could not but be extremely severe. One part of it, separated from the other, was exposed to a destructive fire in houses, the upper portion of which crumbled into pieces or fell in under fire, and it was only by keeping in the lower storey, which was vaulted and well built, that they were enabled to hold their own. The other parts of it, far advanced from our batteries, were almost unprotected, and were under a constant mitraille and bombardment from guns which our batteries had failed to touch.”

Though the repulse of the main British column left Eyre in a situation of hourly increasing peril, he resolutely continued to hold the points which the dash and bravery of his troops had gained. At first he hoped that the Redan might yet be stormed, when his brigade would be ready to follow up the victory; and when it became clear that the attack was not to be renewed he declined to fall back, until an authority higher than his own had decided how much of the ground that his brigade had won was to be retained. Though Eyre was wounded comparatively early in the day, it was not until late in the afternoon that, after giving orders for the gradual withdrawal of the troops from the houses nearest to the enemy, he made over his command to the next senior officer and quitted the battlefield. The process of withdrawal took several hours, and it was not until 9 P.M. that the Royal Irish, the last regiment of the brigade to retire, began its march back to the camp of the third division.

How the XVIIIth fared must now be told, as far as possible, in the words of the officers who had the honour to be present. Late on the 17th, the rumour had run through the lines of the Royal Irish that the town was to be assaulted next day. The men were wild with joy at the prospect of taking part in the attack, and talked and sang in their tents so incessantly that the officers could get no rest during the few hours allowed the regiment for sleep. At 1 A.M. on the 18th of June, a date ever memorable in the annals of the regiment, six hundred and sixty-nine officers and men paraded in front of the camp of the 9th regiment, where the brigade was formed, the XVIIIth in front, the 44th, 38th, 28th, and 9th regiments following in the order named. On the march down the great ravine occurred an interesting instance of the rigidity of the drill which, in the middle of the nineteenth century, fettered the movements of the British army. It has been mentioned that every infantry regiment then had two flank companies of picked men: those of the right, or grenadier company, were chosen for height and strength; those of the left, or Light company, were selected for activity and intelligence. On the parade ground the rule was that all battalion movements should be made from the right, and consequently that in column the grenadier company should always lead. Colonel Edwards had learned in the school of the Chinese and Burmese wars that all drill is but the means to one end, the successful attack on an enemy; and thinking that on this occasion the quick-moving “Light Bobs” were the men first to be employed, marched off “left in front.” This daring innovation did not long pass unnoticed, and almost within sight of the enemy he was ordered to halt, and countermarch his regiment in order to bring the grenadier company to the head of the column. In 1855, the countermarch was an evolution slow and ponderous in broad daylight, and doubly difficult of execution in semi-darkness, at a time when the pulses of all ranks were throbbing with the excitement of a night march and an impending battle. After the manœuvre was carried out, the brigade once more advanced, forming into a mass of close columns whenever the ground permitted. Though it was now almost day the Russians had not yet detected the presence of Eyre’s troops, and the General took an opportunity of addressing the Royal Irish, telling them he knew they would prove themselves good soldiers and “this day do something that will ring in every cabin in Ireland.” Then he added, “Now, men, above all things you must be quiet or you’ll get peppered!” In answer to this very reasonable appeal a shout arose from the ranks, “All right, your Honour, we’ll get in. Three cheers for the General!” Before the officers could stop them the men had given three lusty cheers. Eyre remonstrated, but the Royal Irish were far too eager for the fray to be sensible, and in response to his reiterated entreaties for silence they burst out into stentorian cheering, this time for Old Ireland. “Let them go in and attack,” cried the General in despair; “they will only draw fire upon us!”

From a letter written by Colonel Edwards two days after the battle, it appears that while the advance-guard was driving the Russians from the cemetery at the point of the bayonet, the XVIIIth

“halted in the open ready for action. Just here the first round-shot danced among us, and as the advance party had extended and were under such cover as they could find, we met the intruder. That peculiar thud (once heard, never forgotten) denoted that the round-shot had told, two men being killed. But we were compelled to wait a little longer, and then the Grenadier company moved off in skirmishing order, soon followed by Nos. 1 and 2 companies. These three companies occupied the ruined houses on the Woronzoff road.”

As the grenadiers, led by Captain Armstrong, were pressing forward they found their way obstructed by one of the stone walls mentioned in General Eyre’s report. Two subalterns raced for the wall, and leapt it at the same moment: Lieutenant Taylor landed safely on the other side, but Lieutenant Meurant was shot dead as he rose at the jump. Soon afterwards the remainder of the regiment in column of sections was moved forward in support, along a lane leading towards the suburb from the great ravine, the rocky cliffs of which gave the XVIIIth some cover from cannon shot. The Russian riflemen, however, speedily found the range, “and the men,” says Colonel Edwards,

“commenced to fall fast. The General had given me orders to stand there, but the casualties were then so great that I put the men behind the houses and walls, which saved them much. I did not see the General again; he was wounded across the head.

“All this time the men were coming back from the front, hopping or crouching according to the nature of the wound, amongst them my friend Captain Hayman, supported by two men, shot through the knee, but with a cheerful smile on his face. Seeing that the advance was much weakened I supported them with two other companies, sending Major Kennedy to the front; he was shortly after slightly hit on the side of the head, but not compelled to return. The enemy knew well the position of the houses they were in, and threw the shell amongst them. Fancy one of these visitors falling within ten feet of you--down you must lie, and close too, and wait for its bursting, when you are fortunate if you have nothing worse than dust to complain of! They not only gave shells, but rifle-balls and grape, and many a poor fellow who went out to help a wounded comrade was obliged in his turn to be carried in desperately wounded.

“Again the front calls out for ammunition and more men. ‘Up, my boys, catch hold of that barrel of ammunition, and rush through the whizzing balls, the tearing grape!’ Away they go with a cheer! About 12 o’clock the last company but one went out and other companies, returning, dreadfully thinned, formed the support. Shortly after one, more men were wanted; I sent out the last company and went myself. Away we hop from stone to stone or bush: ‘ping-ping’ passes the rifle-bullet crashing around you; you feel the grape; never mind, on you must go! I found the advanced parties in a row of houses under the battery, regularly enclosed by a screen of projectiles; you could only creep about. In the morning these houses had been occupied by the Russians; by the time I got there, everything was broken:--pier glasses in shivers; the piano (or as a man called it, the music-box) torn open; beds, tables and wardrobes in jumbles of masses. The enemy did not like our being there, nor did they like that the houses gave us cover; they therefore set fire to them with shells. About 3 o’clock I received an order to retire, which I could not comply with as there were eighteen wounded men to bring away, which could not be done till dark.”

According to Colonel Edwards, the three companies of the XVIIIth in the ruined houses on the Woronzoff road and the other battalions of the brigade also received this order, and gradually drew back, leaving the greater part of the Royal Irish in a most dangerous situation.

“Every moment our small party was decreasing. What weary hours they seemed from three till eight, and just before it was time to move, the enemy brought field-pieces to bear upon the houses, and they commenced knocking them down about our heads. At last I heard with joy ‘The last wounded man has been carried off, Sir.’ ‘Well, then, go away by twos and threes: keep up a warm fire. When across the open, bugler, sound the Regimental Call and the Retire.’

“The work is done, but out of 669 men who left the camp, 250 of the Royal Irish had suffered more or less. We did not get home till ten o’clock, wearied and exhausted. The remainder of the brigade acted on our right, and the 44th lost nearly as many in proportion as we did. Our brigade was more than successful, and have received great praise, especially the Royal Irish regiment.”

In so broken and disjointed a combat it is always difficult for the General to select officers and men for special commendation. Eyre appears to have found it impossible to do so, and after stating in his report that every one in his brigade “most nobly performed his duty,” and that “the conduct of all was so exemplary that he could scarcely with justice particularize individuals,” he contented himself with mentioning the names of his staff and the officers commanding the advance-guard and the five regiments of the brigade. Colonel Edwards’ report on the part played by the XVIIIth doubtless recorded some of the deeds of valour performed by the Royal Irish; but unhappily no copy of this document has been preserved in the archives of the regiment. His letter, vivid and deeply interesting as it is, was written, it is believed, for the information of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, and aims obviously at giving a general account of the engagement, without any unnecessary detail. The “Digest of Service” should have contained every particular of the doings of the regiment, but unfortunately it was compiled by an officer who recorded the adventures of the XVIIIth in the Crimea in two or three loosely-written pages of foolscap, from which everything of historical value was omitted. Thus the only accounts of the exploits of the Royal Irish on the 18th of June are to be found in a few statements, contributed by officers many years after the war was over, and in the dry official words announcing the bestowal of decorations. Every soldier knows that for one specially brave deed reported after an engagement, scores pass unnoticed or are forgotten, and therefore the instances now given can be regarded only as specimens of the conduct of the regiment as a whole.

Captain Thomas Esmonde was awarded the Victoria Cross[173] for two acts of bravery, the first of which was performed on the 18th of June. The Gazette runs as follows: “for having, after being engaged in the attack on the Redan,[174] repeatedly assisted at great personal risk under a heavy fire of shell and grape, in rescuing wounded men from exposed situations; and also, while in command of a covering party two days after, for having rushed with the most prompt and daring gallantry to a spot where a fire-ball from the enemy had just been lodged, which he effectually extinguished before it had betrayed the position of the working party under his protection, thus saving it from a murderous fire of shell and grape, which was immediately opened upon the spot where the fire-ball had fallen.”

Captain Dillon volunteered to rescue from under a heavy fire of grape and musketry seven wounded men, who were lying in the houses nearest to the Russian works, and succeeded in doing so.

Sergeant John Grant belonged to one of the companies in the houses nearest to the Russian battery, and brought a message from his captain to Colonel Edwards. When Colonel Edwards saw that Sergeant Grant was bleeding from two severe wounds he desired him to fall back out of harm’s way, but Grant so earnestly begged to be allowed to return to his officer that Colonel Edwards permitted him once more to risk his life in crossing the fire-swept belt of ground between the supports and his own company. Grant lived for many years to enjoy an annuity of £20, which accompanied the medal for meritorious service in the field, awarded to him for this act of bravery.

Lieutenant T. D. Baker displayed great gallantry throughout the day, as did Sergeant John Gleeson, Corporal Niel O’Donnell, and privates J. Weir, E. Loughton, and J. Byrne.

As an instance of the spirit shown by the wounded who were left upon the field, this story is quoted from Russell’s account of the battle. During the armistice of the 19th for the collection of the wounded and the burial of the dead, Major-General Eyre came to the part of the cemetery where a sergeant of the Royal Irish lay, with both his legs broken by a round-shot. “General,” exclaimed the non-commissioned officer, “thank God, _we_ did _our_ work, anyway. Had I another pair of legs, the country and you would be welcome to them!”

The operations of the 17th and 18th cost the French 3500 men, the British 1500, the Russians 5400, and of the six generals and commanders, French and English, who led the attacks on the 18th, four were killed and one disabled. When Eyre’s casualty returns were made up, it was found that his brigade had lost 562 killed and wounded. To this total the Royal Irish contributed no less than 259, almost 39 per cent of the regiment as it went into action. Among the officers, Lieutenant J. W. Meurant was killed, and ten were wounded, several being dangerously or severely injured. They were--Major J. C. Kennedy; Captains J. Cormick, A. W. S. F. Armstong, M. Hayman, H. F. Stephenson, and J. G. Wilkinson; Lieutenants W. O’B. Taylor, W. Kemp, F. Fearnley, and C. Hotham. Of the other ranks 57 were killed or mortally wounded, 16 were dangerously and 87 severely wounded, and 88 more slightly injured.[175] The wounded were gradually carried back to the camp of the IIIrd brigade, which they soon filled to overflowing. To our modern ideas the preparations for their reception were singularly rough. “So many of us had been hit,” writes Captain Kemp, who himself had been struck by a bullet in the knee, “that the orderly room and mess huts and every other available place was appropriated for our use. At first my leg was doomed to come off, and I was laid on the amputation table for the purpose, but as I was too weak then it was left on till the morrow. Next day I was allowed to retain it by the decision of one of the staff surgeons, who said, most luckily for me, ‘Let us give the poor lad a chance,’ but I became very ill from fever and the intense heat of the tent,[176] and shortly afterwards was ordered home. I was moved to Balaclava in one of the ‘carrying chairs’ slung on the side of a mule, and fainted nearly all the way from sun and weakness.”

After their double repulse at the Malakoff and the Redan the Allies lost no time in resuming the ordinary operations of the siege: their approaches were steadily pushed forward, and their guns kept up a heavy fire upon the fortress. In July the average daily loss in Sebastopol was two hundred and fifty, while each day in August saw the strength of the garrison diminished by eight or nine hundred officers and men. The Russians, magnificently stubborn fighters as they were, began to realise that the place was becoming untenable. The parapets were crumbling under the projectiles of the Anglo-French artillery; many guns were disabled or worn out, and though there was still a large reserve of cannon in the arsenal, the fire of our mortars made it impossible to mount them on the shattered batteries. Round the disabled guns the dead lay in great heaps, while the wounded could not be moved till darkness brought some respite to the harassed garrison. Barracks, arsenals, and store-houses were all more or less in ruins; and the hospitals, overflowing into the streets and squares of the town, were rapidly emptied into a cemetery, grimly termed “the grave of the Hundred Thousand.” Towards the end of August the Russians determined to abandon Sebastopol; they began to build a bridge across the outer harbour, strong enough to carry guns and waggons upon its sixteen feet of roadway; threw up barricades across the streets of the town, and laid great mines under the forts and magazines. On the 5th of September, the Allies once more brought all their guns into action, and bombarded the fortress, almost without intermission, for three days and nights, and on the 8th, the French once more assaulted the Malakoff, and the British the Redan. As the third division was in the reserve and did not come into action, the XVIIIth regiment was not engaged, and therefore all that need be said about the result is that we failed to take the Redan, while the French carried the Malakoff, and succeeded in holding it against the strenuous efforts of the enemy to recapture it. These attacks were made by the Russian rear-guard to gain time for the retreat of the main body from the southern shores of the harbour, and were so far successful that when the French General heard that the head of the enemy’s column was marching over the bridge, he was still too uncertain of ultimate success to attempt any interference with the retirement. During the night the Russians successfully exploded many of their mines; destroyed their few remaining warships; set fire to the town in many places, and called in the troops from the forts; and by daybreak on the 9th the whole of the garrison, carrying with them most of the wounded, had crossed the bridge, broken it behind them, and found safety on the heights to the north of the harbour of Sebastopol. The losses on both sides in this, the last important episode in the Crimean War, were very heavy. Our defeat at the Redan cost us 2271 officers and men, among whom were three generals, wounded: the French casualties amounted to 7567 of all ranks, including five generals killed and four wounded: the Russians lost nine generals and 12,906 other officers and men.

With the fall of the fortress the war in the Crimea came virtually to an end. The Allies had accomplished their self-imposed task of destroying Sebastopol and the Black Sea fleet; there was no immediate object to be gained by a pitched battle with the Russian Field army; disagreements on questions of future policy caused a considerable amount of friction between the Ministers of Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon III., and fettered the movements of the Generals, who engaged in no further operations except two comparatively unimportant raids against the towns of Eupatoria and Kilburn, in neither of which the XVIIIth regiment took part. The French, indeed, were not anxious, if indeed they were able, to continue the war; but the English had atoned, though very tardily, for their previous neglect of their army, by preparing so energetically for another campaign, that in November there were in the Crimea 51,000 British troops, a contingent of 20,000 Turks, raised, trained, and officered by Englishmen, and a German legion of ten thousand men.[177] The good health of this large body of soldiery showed how excellent our system of administration had become at the seat of war; at home recruits were forthcoming in great numbers; the militia had relieved the troops in the United Kingdom and the Mediterranean of much garrison duty; Malta was full of trained soldiers, eager to be employed on active service; in short, the Army, purified by the ordeal it had passed through, had become once more a first-rate fighting machine. But the troops arriving after the fall of the fortress had no opportunity of distinguishing themselves, for though the enemy annoyed us by cannonading Sebastopol from the northern shore of the harbour, he made no offensive movement against the camps on the Upland. Thus the second winter in the Crimea was a time of comparative rest for the greater part of the army, though not for the regiments placed at the disposal of the Royal Engineers to complete the destruction of the forts, arsenals, and dockyards of the fortress. To the Royal Irish fell a very heavy task, the demolition of the docks in the inner harbour. As Colonel Edwards was senior to the engineer officer in charge of the work, the headquarters of the XVIIIth remained outside the town, and Major Call was placed in command of the working parties, which practically consisted of the whole of the Royal Irish. The labour of preparing the docks for destruction was very great, and the hardships of the men extreme: to quote the words of the general order of February 7, 1856, praising the zeal and perseverance of all ranks, and thanking Major Call, among other officers, for his valuable services, “the work was carried out in the depth of winter; the docks occasionally flooded, the shafts filled with water, the pumps choked with frost; but all ranks united to overcome difficulties, and the mass of ruins is a proof of the success attending the cheerful performance of a laborious duty.”

This official record is not the only testimony to the good behaviour of the Royal Irish while they worked like navvies in the docks. General C. G. Gordon, who as a young officer of Royal Engineers had served in the Crimea, replied to a request for information about the doings of the XVIIIth at the siege of Sebastopol in a characteristic letter:--

“PORT LOUIS, 3/3/82.

“MY DEAR MAJOR SAVILE,--Thanks for your note received to-day. I am afraid I cannot write anything which would be of value about the 18th Royal Irish, as it is now 28 years ago or nearly so, since the Crimea. I know that they were a favourite regiment with the R.E. for work, both in the trenches and in the destruction of the docks, from the energy and pluck of the officers and men, and it was then that I formed my opinion of Irishmen being of a different nature than other Britishers inasmuch as they required a certain management and consideration, which, if given them, would enable you, so to speak, to hold their lives in your hand. The officers liked the men and the men liked the officers; they were a jovial lot altogether, but they would do anything if you spoke and treated them as if you liked them, which I certainly