genius of Todleben, and defended by forces numbering 120,000 men. The allies, moreover, were spread along an exterior line of twenty miles; the Russians held interior lines only four miles long. The Russians had already attacked Balaclava at one extremity of the allied position; Inkermann was a daring, well-planned, and powerful effort to pierce the other extremity of that position.

The scene of the fight, surveyed from the British camp, is a tiny and steep plateau, shaped like the buttend of a musket or the letter L turned the wrong way. The post-road from Sebastopol bisects the cross-ridge, which runs east and west, and at its rear was the camp of the Second Division. The crest lent itself perfectly to defensive uses. On the east it fell by a steep ravine to the Tchernaya; on the north, the "fore ridge," as the upright part of the letter L was called, sank into the Quarry Ravine; to the west the gloomy depths of the Careenage Ravine protected the crest. A few entrenchments and a dozen guns in position would have made the hill impregnable. But not a battery had been erected, not a trench dug, not a square yard of scrub cleared! Such was British generalship! On the tip of the Fore Ridge, or half-way down its slope, stood what was called the Sandbag Battery. It was without guns, and so badly constructed that the soldiers who undertook to hold it against the enemy found themselves in a death-trap. The parapet from the inside was so high that they could not see over it or shoot over it. Sandbag Battery had no relation to the defence of the ridge, and it is an illustration of the distracted quality of the battle that round this useless

point the most desperate fighting of the day took place. Guards and Russians fought round it muzzle to muzzle and breast to breast till the dead lay on the blood-wet ground literally in strata. More than 1100 dead bodies were counted after the fight round the Sandbag Battery. It was as though two football teams in a great match forgot football, umpire, and goals, and fought to the point of exhaustion over a bit of orangepeel!

The Russian plan was that a column of 19,000 men and 38 guns, under General Soimonoff, should advance before daybreak, seize Shell Hill-a summit to north of the crest of Inkermann, and commanding it—plant its guns there, and crush the scanty British regiments holding the crest with its fire. Another force of 19,000 men and 96 guns, under General Pauloff, was to cross the harbour head, climb up the Quarry Ravine, join hands with Soimonoff, and together break through the British defence. Prince Gortschakoff, with another force of 20,000 men and 88 guns moving from Balaclava, was to add himself to the attack, or, at all events, detain the French by feints from moving to the British help. As a further distraction a powerful sally was to be made on the French siege-works from Sebastopol itself. The British force holding Inkermann was only 3000 strong; the Russians calculated that they would brush this force aside, roll up the British lines to the south, and 60,000 victorious Russian soldiers would compel the allied forces to abandon the siege, or even themselves surrender. It was able strategy; and, in its earlier stages, ably carried

out.

Soimonoff moved from the city in the blackness of

the winter morning, while the stars yet shone keenly in the sky. His gun-wheels were muffled, the sternest silence was enforced in the ranks, and, without alarming a British outpost, he climbed the West Sappers' Road, as it was called, and moved on towards Shell Hill. It was a great feat to move 20,000 infantry with guns and tumbrils through the darkness to within 1300 yards of the British position undetected. But the silent grey line of Russian battle stole on, and no murmur of human voices, no sharp clang of steel, no rumble of tumbril or gun, broke through the fog and the darkness to the listening-or, perhaps, the dozing-British sentries. At last a sentry of the 41st, on the northern slope of Shell Hill, saw the dim outlines of a huge gliding column mounting from the ravine. He called his officer, who, satisfied as to the character of the approaching body, opened fire upon it with his tiny picket, and clung to his position with almost ludicrous obstinacy—a handful opposing an army. The sound of their inuskets rang loudly across the ravines, and the British sprang everywhere to arms. But Soimonoff's men pushed forward, his guns swung round from the crest of Shell Hill, and opened their tempest of shot on the very tents of the Second Division, and many men and officers, running out at the sound, were slain before they knew that the enemy was within striking distance.

The Russian generals had thus carried out part of their scheme. Almost without discovery, and with no other resistance than a few shots from an obstinate picket, they had made themselves masters of threefourths of Inkermann, and were pouring an overwhelming fire into the very tents of the British camp. Pauloff's

men, too, were by this time moving up the Quarry Ravine from the east. It was possible now to throw some 40,000 men, with over 100 guns, upon the 3000 British soldiers who formed the Second Division. The Guards, 1300 strong, were half a mile to the south; a brigade of the Light Division, 1400 strong, was a mile and a half distant to the west!

Now the character of the resistance offered by the British was determined partly by accident, and partly by, not so much the military skill as the fighting temper of the British general, Pennefather, who temporarily commanded the Second Division. De Lacy Evans, its general, a war-wise and experienced soldier, had his own plan for the defence of the crest. He would have allowed his pickets to fall back, and the Russian columns to climb the ridge and come along the narrow front of 800 yards, covered by the fire of his field batteries. Thus he would concentrate his own forces, cover them with the fire of his field batteries, and with a minimum of loss he calculated he could crush the Russian attack. But De Lacy Evans was lying ill on board a ship in Balaclava Harbour, and Pennefather was left to take counsel of nothing but the effervescing and warlike blood in his own veins. He was a type of soldier familiar enough, and valued enough, in the British army: an Irishman, who borrowed his tactics from Donnybrook; of obstinate and combative temper, loud of speech, cheerful of face, an ideal leader for a forlorn hope. Pennefather's expletives were the jest of the camp. Years afterwards he was appointed to the command at Aldershot, and the Queen on chancing to ask, "Has the new general taken up his command yet?" was