derive mutual support, form, at certain intervals, the columns which
separate the aisles from the body of the church, and bear the roof. The
framework of the outer wall is made by long upright timbers, which lean
against the summits of each set of ladders respectively, and are secured
by cords. Across these a few joist-beams are lashed, and the outer wall
of gabions, though thicker at the base than above, in a great degree
rest against these horizontal supports. To form the wall the gabions are
placed end to end, one above the other, until they reach the height of
the roof. Nothing can be more agreeable, during the heat of the day,
than the sensation produced by the air entering through this gauge-work
of twigs; it passes freely, but is so sprinkled, as it were, in its
passage—its force is so broken, that, however strong without, it fails
to cause any unpleasant disturbance within. The sun’s light is broken
with an equally pleasing effect, for the rays which find their way in
are so refracted and disturbed, that all glare and dazzle are prevented.
The roof is made by the platform timbers laid between the tops of the
ladders on each side, and at right angles to these the fascines are laid
in regular rows, until a complete covering is formed. The roof is light,
admits of course of free ventilation, and gives a perfect protection
against the direct rays of the sun. At the end opposite the entrance
into this truly military church, a semicircular sweep is given to the
gabion wall, and in the recess thus formed several sacks stuffed with
straw are arranged, to form a reading-desk and kneeling-cushion for the
preacher. Planks are laid on each side from ladder to ladder, resting at
a convenient height on the lower rails, and these benches are
appropriated for the use of the weak and convalescents from the
hospital; the other soldiers stand during the service.

“When the Union-Jack has been thrown over the primitive reading-desk
above mentioned, and the clergyman is in his usual robes, and the
engineers and sappers are filling the space in their military costume,
all seems so appropriate and in such harmony, that should a visitor be
among the number of the congregation, he soon ceases to feel the
peculiarity of the place, and forgets, while engaged in the service,
that he is not in one of the ordinary churches, with its stoned walls
and steepled roof, in his own mother-country. Now and then the attention
of the listener to the “mission of peace and good-will among men” may be
distracted for a moment by the heavy thunder of a gun, or the bursting
of a shell; for the Sappers’ church is on one side of the ravine leading
to Careening Bay, and since the Russian redoubts and French works have
been established on the heights above, such sounds have become frequent
on all days, and at all hours of the week. But the sappers themselves
know that their yard is out of range, though only just out of it, and
habit in this, as in other matters, produces its usual effect. The gun
is discharged, the shot whizzes through the air, and the shell explodes;
but the sounds, if heard, are not heeded, for the attention is otherwise
occupied.”

By the 10th June, on which date there were 94 sappers in the front, the
batteries were all in admirable order, another screen overlooking the
Woronzoff road was finished, and the lodgment and its communications
looked grim with details which promised to be formidable when completed.
On that day, fifty men of the line had been thrown into the quarries to
assist in converting them to the besiegers’ will; but after a while, so
accurate and fierce was the fire upon them from a mortar and a gun on
the right of the tower, that the party was necessarily withdrawn.
“Whistling Dick,” from the mortar alluded to, was doing its best to thin
the workmen; but luckily its terrific presence was unaccompanied by any
serious disaster. Still the sappers, twelve in number, were retained at
this dangerous spot; and working away amid descending shells bursting in
all directions and splinters driving even into obscure angles, they
strengthened the parapet by building stones into the revetment, made
loopholes, and continued the formation of the banquette. At three
o’clock in the afternoon, Captain Browne of the engineers, persevering
in his endeavours to work the lodgment, sent other fifty men into it who
laboured in the quarries till regularly relieved. More than fifty
casualties occurred in and about the quarries during the day; among
these was private William Lang who was dangerously wounded by a shell
which carried away his arm. A group of his comrades, who were near at
the time, threw themselves down to avoid its splinters. Awful moments
followed, each expecting, but hoping to escape the death that seemed
inevitable. Fortunately the shell buried itself in the earth, then
fizzed in paroxysms for a few seconds, when, grinding further into the
soil, the fuze providentially was smothered. Another sapper, name
unknown, was wounded in the left attack.

Seventy men of the corps were in the trenches during the night of the
10th scattered over the works of the two attacks. The lodgment, still
offering occasion for anxious solicitude, progressed with energy and a
new trench was formed on a segmental trace in front of the quarries,
taking the captured ambuscade as the base of the figure. The spring of
the bow issued from the right of the lodgment, then, bending away in an
arch, abutted on the left of the quarries. The trench was clear of the
salient of the Redan, but intersected the Malakoff abattis at a point
where a gap had recently been made by a round shot from the besiegers.
All the gabions, 180 in number, which lined the excavation, were staked
and filled before the morning. Not a shot or bullet came in the
direction during its progress. Twelve sappers were appointed to this new
trench, who, receiving the gabions from the line, placed them on the
sweep of the curve with a rapidity and sprightliness so marked, it
seemed as if the men were chasing each other to the goal. The workmen
were chiefly of the 19th regiment, by whom, and a party from the light
division, about 180 in all, the gabions were filled.

Next day there were 103 sappers in the lines, and 74 at night. At
daybreak on the 12th, there were 81 men in the front. Considerable
exertions had been made in mining on the left attack, principally in the
round-hill parallel, where, stopped by rock at every step, not a move
could be made ahead, till by great bodily exertion, and patient coolness
against inevitable personal risks, the obstruction was blown away.
Laborious and fatiguing as were these duties, they were executed with no
abatement of care; and it may be mentioned that from the first, out of
thousands of blasts fired successfully throughout the works, and many
more which failed in critical situations, only two accidents by mining
had occurred. A more striking proof of the proficiency of the men need
scarcely be adduced. The sufferers were private John Stancombe who lost
the sight of one of his eyes, and lance-corporal William Eastley who was
severely wounded by a stone of about 14 pounds weight striking him in
the back. The former was blown up, and receiving the blast full in his
face, blood poured from a hundred punctures, and when the wounds were
healed, his skin was thickly speckled with blue marks as if elaborately
tattooed by some unskilful mariner.

Leaving a party of fourteen rank and file at Yenikale, the remainder of
the company with Sir George Brown’s expedition re-embarked on the 11th
June under Captain Hassard and landed at Balaklava on the 14th.
Lieutenant Anderson was located at Yenikale with six sappers, and
Captain Stanton and Lieutenant Drake proceeded with the rest to Cape St.
Paul. The works to defend these captured positions were commenced
respectively on the 15th and 18th June, the French superintending one
portion, the English the other, both assisted by strong parties of
Turks, sometimes as many as a thousand a-day at each fort. At Yenikale
some old houses were pulled down which furnished timber for the works,
and when this source failed, planking and nails were obtained from some
stranded vessels in the channel. The lines consisted of a cordon of
trenches with a strong lunette in rear and a series of rifle-pits in
front. The stockades, platforms, and the folding loopholed gates of the
lunette were chiefly executed by the sappers, who, after the 14th July,
worked in concert with the French in continuing the covered way on the
right to the sea. On the 4th August, Lieutenant Anderson and his sappers
reappeared in the trenches before Sebastopol.

At Cape St. Paul the intrenchments, extending more than a thousand yards
inland, abutted on bold precipices overhanging the sea. Following the
contour of a broken country, the knolls embraced in the lines became so
many salients armed with one or more field-pieces. Strong works were
thrown up in advance of the main trenches to flank them, and
rifle-screens were constructed on eminences to command access to the
wells, which, situated about 1200 yards in front of the works, were open
to hostile interference. The hard nature of the soil in some places
prevented the digging of ditches, and to counteract the defect,
escarpments were erected about 12 feet high. A considerable portion of
the redoubt at the extreme inland angle of the trenches was built with
rough stones, faced by hewn blocks of a softer kind, accumulations of
which were found already dressed and fit for use. Around St. George’s
Hill huge boulders encumbered the trenches, which in time were borne up
by manual strength and built into the parapets. Thunderstorms frequently
occurring, the rains beat down portions of the earthen cover, which were
renewed, though at great labour, with less yielding expedients. A
mamelon, too, was wholly cut away to insure completeness in the
defences, and the isolated battery on the promontory of Akbornou,
standing up with a cold and truculent aspect, was levelled to the rock
out of which it sprang. At that point was thrown up a bastioned trench
by the 71st regiment to protect the right of the position. The sappers,
eight in all, first under Captain Stanton, then Lieutenant Drake,
superintended the construction of the several works, and returned to
Sebastopol in the middle of December. Corporal McKimm and lance-corporal
R. Crawford Cowan, two excellent sappers both of whom had been named
with honour for their gallantry at the siege, were with the party.

At night on the 12th, Lieutenants Elphinstone and Graham traced the
first portion of the fifth parallel facing the right flank of the Redan.
They had with them second corporal George H. Collins and private Moncur,
two smart and reliable sappers, to whom the executive superintendence of
the work was intrusted. After completing the trace, 7 other sappers and
120 of the line commenced a boyau from the most advanced trench in front
of the quarries. Fifty-six gabions were laid and filled in this
approach, and then the sappers run along the new parallel with fifty
other gabions, placing ten more at the extremity of the series, with a
short obtuse angle backwards, to screen the linesmen while filling the
baskets and forming the parapet of the new work. Alarms twice occurred
which caused the workmen to retire. Collins, indisposed to yield to a
questionable danger, went some distance to the front to ascertain if
there existed any reason for it; but seeing nothing to justify the
retreat, he encouraged the men to return and they readily resumed work.
The relief had been in the trench some time when the second interruption
took place. Again Collins restored confidence by mounting the parapet
and there remaining till the ill-founded fears of the linesmen had
subsided. Both parties, nevertheless, worked very well and obtained
excellent cover. The sappers were on duty at this new sap for seventeen
hours without relief.

The following detail shows the force of sappers furnished by night and
day for front duty during the period comprised in the table.
Ever-varying circumstances caused the number to fluctuate, so that with
each party it was hardly possible to afford a stronger contingent of
overseers than was marched at daybreak and at dusk into the trenches:—

                  Attacks.   No. of              Officers on Duty.
                              Men.
 Night 12th  June Right         48    Lieuts. Elphinstone and Graham.
                  Left          33    Capt. Belson and Lieut. Donnelly.
 Day   13th   ”   Right         40    Capt. Browne and Lieut. Darrah.
                  Left          63    Major Chapman, 20th regt., assist. eng.
 Night 13th   ”   Right         40    Lieut. Fisher.
                  Left          32    Captain Jesse and Lieut. Neville.
 Day   14th   ”   Right         44    Lieuts. James and Somerville.
                  Left          65    Capt. Penn, R.A., assistant engineer.
 Night 14th   ”   Right         40    Capt. De Moleyns and Capt. Wolseley,
                                      90th, assistant engineer.
                  Left          36    Capt. Armit and Lieut. C. G. Gordon.
 Day   15th   ”   Right         40    Lieuts. Graves and Graham.
                  Left          49    Lieut. Donnelly.
 Night 15th   ”   Right         40    Capt. Browne and Lieut. Darrah.
                  Left          34    Capt. Belson and Major Chapman, 20th.
 Day   16th   ”   Right         40    Lieut. Elphinstone and Major Campbell,
                                      46th, assistant engineer.
                  Left          42    Lieut. Neville.
 Night 16th   ”   Right         40    Lieuts. Murray and Fisher.
                  Left          35    Capt. Jesse and Capt. Penn, R.A.
 Day   17th   ”   Right       { 32    Lieuts. Murray and Fisher.
                              { 44    Lieuts. James and Somerville.
                  Left          24    Lieut. C. G. Gordon.
 Night 17th   ”   Right         12    Capt. Wolseley, 90th, assist. engineer.
                  Left          23    Capt. Armit.
 Day   18th   ”   Right         20    Capt. De Moleyns.
                  Left          24    Capt. Armit and Lieut. Jones, 46th,
                                      assistant engineer.

During these few days, as an assault was in contemplation, the line
workmen were active and pushing. Rather strong parties of sappers
superintended them, who also cut and formed the embrasures, and took the
lead in the new trenches where the skill of craftsmen was indispensable.
The lodgment was now wholly completed, communications to it were
perfected, and a boyau, issuing from the left of the quarries, had been
thrown up with almost daring impertinence for about 120 yards towards
the Redan. The gabions were lodged by some sappers in so ready and firm
a manner it seemed as if they possessed a genius for such enterprises.
Far from being reckless, they advanced, though diligently and coolly, by
prudential efforts; and thus effected, so to speak, their own
deliverance; while the line, less calculating the danger of their work
and less of course accustomed to it, were struck down in rather serious
numbers. A new battery, No. 16, for three 32-pounders, and one for four
mortars, No. 17, also rose up in the vicinity of the lodgment. Rapidly
they were completed with magazines, platforms, and traverses, and the
guns and mortars, drawn at night to their positions by the track from
Egerton’s rifle-pit, were promptly placed on their beds, armed with
gunners, and worked with more or less fury as occasion served against
the enemy. When all was done the half-moon chevaux-de-frise of spikes
was withdrawn from the front and piled up in the lodgment.

On one of these nights ten men of the infantry under a sapper were sent
to repair a bridge over which the ammunition was usually conveyed to the
batteries in the third parallel. The bridge spanned the fourth boyau a
little in rear of No. 13 battery of the left attack. Sergeant Drew set
the men to work; but as the shelling was warm on the spot the party
asked to be removed. It was of some moment to repair the smashed
timbers, and the sergeant urging the men by an appeal to their courage
to resume the work, said he would visit them again in ten minutes. He
reappeared within the time appointed, but the whole party had decamped.
Going in quest of them, he found that two of the men had been severely
wounded, and the rest were carrying them on stretchers to the rear.

Looking abroad on the works which now spread over many miles of ground,
meshed by cross-trenches in all directions, it was obvious that nothing
had been omitted which it was in the nature of foresight, resource, or
exertion to have executed. In every battery the revetments had been
strengthened or rebuilt; the gabionades improved or restored, and
cheeks, merlons, traverses, magazines, and every imaginable desiderata
attended to with spirited pertinacity. The usual expedients for field
constructions had long since began to fail, but now their deficiency was
largely felt. Still never at a loss for schemes, the engineers applied
all sorts of agencies, regarding nothing as crude or trivial, to perform
in emergencies effectual parts in the great siege. Iron and wooden
hurdles, powder-boxes and ammunition-cases, were thus pressed into the
service to do the work and stand the wear of better contrivances.
Frequently molested by riflemen and shelled from the batteries, the
sappers and pioneers held their posts with unflinching constancy, and
each succeeding night saw the restoration of the day’s havoc. Even in
the glaring sunlight the most essential repairs were executed, while
shot and shell were dropping around and Minié bullets were pinging over
the parapets and thugging into the slopes. A rifle-screen on the right
attack was erected in one night on the very edge of the cliff to sweep
the ravine, which harboured in its cavities the Russian sharpshooters.
It was difficult of access, but to lessen the danger of reaching it, a
species of approach was formed to protect the light troops while driving
into the pit. Ten men of the line prepared the screen superintended by a
sapper. The 21-gun battery, as of old, received material help to make
vigorous and solid its vast proportions and to mend its long inventory
of damages. It was the head-quarters for the right-attack, from whence
the working parties, guided by the sappers, filed off to their appointed
duties. The batteries on Greenhill, the picket-house, and those in the
foremost parallels, were also attended to with equal promptitude and
maintained in a state remarkably efficient.

None laid the platforms or built the magazines, splinter-proofs, &c.,
but the sappers. Everything, indeed, which came under the denomination
of artificers’ work, was executed by them. The fixing of platforms was
only second in importance, as far as hazard was concerned, to the
formation of the embrasures. Repeatedly the carpenters were called upon
in broad daylight to render them serviceable. Relaying sprung sleepers
or planks, and renewing cleets or bolts broken by the violence of the
fire or a tearing recoil, were frequently attended to whilst the siege
was at its highest; and the only protection which the carpenters
received under such circumstances was the scanty cover of a shallow
genouillère, with perhaps a sapper or two in the gorge busy mending the
cheeks of a shivered embrasure. In former sieges the laying of a
platform under fire was held to be an act of great personal daring; but
in this wonderful enterprise, it was so much a habit of the sappers to
see to this particular detail, that it passed among occurrences as a
common matter.

What is an embrasure? So much has been said about it, it needs the
question; and the answer may not be misplaced here. Look at one while
the battle rages. It is a formal cut in a mound of earth, taking the
shape of a wedge, with the broad end to the enemy, the narrow to the
platform. The narrow end is called “the neck,” and possesses just width
enough to admit a man or the muzzle of a gun. It then extends to the
front for more than twenty feet with a widening orifice, ten or twelve
feet broad at the greatest expansion, which is designated “the mouth.”

Bold men stand in rear of the opening and equally bold are they who
work. With some certainty the range is known and but few shots or shells
miss their mark. A ball of weighty metal strikes the embrasure, and
makes a crevice to its centre, scattering the sand as in a sirocco.
Another comes and gashes a well-formed cheek, blows away an angle or a
shoulder, and topples into the space below, broken hide-bags from the
crest and the earth that covers them. The concussion of our own guns
assists to loosen the work and the hot fire of the artillerymen dries up
the gabions rendering them less susceptible of resistance. These, ere
long, woven with so much compactness, are broken up and strewn as in a
wood-yard, and fascines unband and yield their bundles to choke up the
gorge. One slope after another loses form and splay, fissures appear,
stones rock and fall, and the structure totters on a few fragments.
Still it bravely holds up in its ruggedness against a storm of fire.
Another well-directed shell is delivered and its splinters knock
everything to pieces. The feeble props at length are torn away, and all
above, like an avalanche, slides upon the sole, which heaving with its
own weakness gives way, and in part crumbles into the ditch. Necks,
cheeks, and throat—all now have disappeared; and of the outline of that
stern formation, nothing remains but a distorted mouth, with the broken
wattle of gabions and the stakes of fascines sticking confusedly out
along its extended jaw; and there, too, is the remnant of a sand-bag,
caught upon a bending twig, waving lazily with the wind as if begging a
truce.

Who will dare stand among the ruins? Here comes a sapper followed by
another from behind a traverse to survey the desolation. Well is it that
night approaches to cover the adventure. It is more than dusk already.
Into the breach they vault with fluttering hearts, for no panoply guards
them; no helmet, no cuirass, protects them. Soon the emotion passes and
the calmness of extremity prepares them for the worst. Each has his cap
pressed down on his brow, and his greatcoat—pegged or pinned in front,
with perhaps a solitary button to connect the breasts—is girdled with a
couple of well-worn belchers or a piece of cordage. Removing the debris,
they build up the faces with fresh materials handed to them by some
constant linesmen. Now a gabion is fixed and others are forced into
position in quick succession. Sand-bags are crushed into the baskets
till they creak, and others, laid row on row, crown the work. Care is
taken to give the necessary slopes to the cheeks to prevent them
tumbling down. All the interstices and crests are made solid with rammed
earth and bags, and not a nook or chink occurs but something is found to
jam into it to make it whole. Upon the merlon toils another sapper
strengthening it with stones and earth handed to him by his assistants
in the battery. Perspiration drops like rain over his beard, and, driven
by his strong energy through every pore, moistens the rags which cover
him from the night damp. Some bales of hides being brought, feeling
makes up for the want of vision in so dark a night, and the cheeks are
at length covered with hairy skins. Prudence has adapted their use as
well to aid in preserving the embrasures, as to save them from flaming
during the rapidity of our own fire. Now the sole of the opening is
being improved and sloped. Up to the front the comrades push. So far are
they away you scarce can see them. Deadly missiles fly onward and around
and Minié bullets with a wheezing noise spend their force in the
parapet. Who’s touched? Neither. One however has had a ball through his
cap. Still on they work with strength somewhat abated, but no
deterioration of spirit, till a couple of gabions, struck behind by a
shell, are forced outwards and knock down the operators. The fall of one
is awkward, for his head overhangs the trench and the shelving slope of
the sole threatens to shoot him headlong into the ditch. Catching at a
stake he breaks his descent and wriggling back into the aperture, crawls
to the spot where his exertions were interrupted. Joined by his comrade
just rising from beneath a pile of broken sand-bags they recommence the
restoration. Fair excuse this for suspending the work but undismayed
they persevere. Eventually their toils end; their work is completed; and
after six hours’ exposure, they quit the scene uninjured. It is
otherwise in the next embrasure, for one is mown down by a shot and the
other badly wounded. Such is the fortune of war.

With all this danger, and though the fire from the Russians for the
period comprised in the above table was fierce and destructive, the
following men only were killed and wounded:—

June 14th—Private John McRoberts—wounded dangerously, died next day.

   ”       ”    John Murphy—wounded severely in the head, by rifle
                    bullet, while in the quarries.

  ”  15th—Lance-corporal George Peter—wounded in the head and ear.

  ”  15th—Lance-corporal Stephen Daft—wounded severely in the left arm
          by grape-shot.

  ”  16th—Private William Smale, wounded dangerously, died next day. He
          was struck when working in the advanced trench approaching the
          Redan. Tall, stalwart, and strong, few sappers were more
          active in the trench than he; few more skilful; and he bore
          the scar of a severe wound sustained by him at the siege on
          the 14th April.[185]

  ”  17th—Corporal William James—killed by a shell which struck him in
          the chest.

  ”  17th—Private Thomas Patterson—wounded severely in the right
          shoulder by gun-shot.

  ”  17th—Private James Clyde—wounded dangerously, died next day.

For several days each embrasure in the fighting batteries had its sapper
who was held responsible for its efficiency. It so happened, in No. 7
battery, on the 17th of June, a gabion had been knocked from the cheek
and fell across the mouth of the aperture. In other respects the
embrasure was sound enough. The artillery would not fire as long as the
obstruction remained, and called upon the sapper—a young one—to remove
it. Thinking the operation was needless, as it did not interfere with
the line of fire; and if it did, that a single discharge would blow it
out, he declined to incur the risk. Corporal Lockwood who was in charge
of the sappers in the battery, concurred in the propriety of the
refusal, but leaped himself into the embrasure and threw the gabion into
the ditch. The full blaze of day was on him, and as he bounded back to
the platform, he was followed by a string of rifle balls which whizzed
into the opening and harmlessly struck the cheeks.

Twelve days cannonading, sometimes warm, sometimes lessened to an
insignificant demonstration, had, it was considered, so weakened the
enemy’s works, it was decided to assault the Redan and the Malakoff on a
great anniversary day—the 18th of June. At one o’clock on the morning of
the 17th the fourth bombardment began, just prior to which a brigade of
carpenters had traversed the different batteries and examined and
repaired all the platforms, while the remainder in both attacks, filled
up holes and chasms in the parapets, and left every part in excellent
condition for the fight. At that hour there were 72 sappers in the
trenches, who were relieved at night by a small party of 35 men divided
between the two attacks superintending a force of 700 men. On the 18th
before a ray of light had broken the darkness, 44 sappers were in the
lines, with 100 men to assist them on the left, and six only on the
right. Whatever further repairs required were quickly executed, and the
necessary scaling ladders, pickaxes, and shovels, laid out in the first
parallel of the Gordon attack for the use of the columns then parading
for the assault.

During the night Captain Du Cane of the engineers, in charge of the
field electric telegraph, directed sergeant Anderson to sleep in the
office at head-quarters, and be ready by two in the morning to accompany
him and the staff to the trenches for the purpose of sending any
messages from the telegraph cave which Lord Raglan might wish to
despatch. He had barely turned in to take the little repose allowed him,
when a mounted hussar arrived from Sir George Brown in command of the
light division, bearing information to the effect, that the electric
wires were cut and no communication could be held with head-quarters.
Sergeant Anderson at once tried the instrument in the office and found
the line incompetent. It was about ten o’clock. Not a moment was to be
lost; but it was a question whether it was possible by the hour named
for the attack, to renew the lines. In an important point like this,
there was no room for speculation. Much depended upon tact and
quickness. The captain felt most anxious about it, and ordered the
serjeant to test the line and repair it immediately. Lamed by a fall
from a horse the sergeant was unequal to the exertion of running on
foot, and so mounting the hussar’s charger, he bounded off and arrived
at the light division camp just as the stormers were mustering for the
assault. Borrowing a lantern he threaded the line from the station,
carefully examined the wires, and at last came upon the breaks which had
occasioned the interruption. The wires had been cut accidentally by
round shot or shells. With corporal Truscott he finished the lines a few
minutes before the storming columns moved to the assault, and enabled
Captain Du Cane, who was well pleased with the prompt energy of the
sergeant, to report to Major-General Jones the re-establishment of the
required communication.

No. 13 battery of the left attack, armed with 13-inch mortars, had fired
on the Russian works with tremendous results, but its efficiency was, in
time, impaired, by the destruction of one of its platforms. It was of
great moment to renew it, and corporal Borbidge and six carpenters
commenced the work at four o’clock in the evening while the battery was
still in action. A naval mortar required a ponderous arrangement of
sleepers and planks to sustain it, for, with an ordinary charge of
gunpowder, it has been known to make a vertical jump some six inches
high and reach the stand again with a crushing jerk sufficient to shake
the structure in every part. To meet concussions of such violence the
platforms for sea-service mortars were invariably of the strongest kind.
That constructed by Borbidge and his sappers—the type of many more—had,
for its foundation, three transverse sleepers measuring ten inches deep
and eight broad. Above them were laid, longitudinally, six beams eight
inches wide and eight in depth, to which was spiked the covering
consisting of massive planks nine inches in breadth and four deep. At
the sides, ribands or stays of proportionate strength were bolted to the
flooring, and when all was completed the platform spread over an area
ten feet square. This however gives but a faint idea of the amount of
labour employed in producing it. After collecting the timber—principally
old joists and rafters from ruined houses—it took those seven men, using
their best skill and exertions, thirteen hours to complete it! The
darkness increased the difficulties of its construction, and prepared as
it was under a fire of some intensity with blazing shells dropping and
bursting around them, the service was advanced to the dignity of an
example for future imitation. It was ready for action at five o’clock on
the morning of the 18th of June. Corporal Borbidge had the reputation of
being a brave man. He was the tallest sapper at the siege, approaching
in height six feet four inches, and the doubled-up positions into which
he was forced by the peculiar exigencies of his work, did not in the
least affect a stature which was admitted to be perfect in straightness
and equipoise.[186]

To the French was assigned the attack on the Malakoff; to the British
that on the Redan. Four columns of the latter were formed up; the first
to enter the left face between the flanking batteries; the second the
salient angle of the work; the third the re-entering angle formed by the
face and flank; and the fourth, moving towards the Woronzoff ravine, to
enter the right flank of the Redan. To each column was added a brigade
of eight sappers and four carpenters laden with crowbars,
sledge-hammers, grapnels, axes, and powder-bags for removing abattis,
palisades, or any other obstacles which might oppose the onward dash of
the stormers, and also to blow down gates and barriers.

The right column to scale the re-entering angle was formed up in the
trench leading out of the right of the quarries in the following
succession under the command of Colonel Yea of the royal fusiliers:—

 100 rifles, 1st battalion—skirmishers        } Under Lieut. Fisher,
   8 sappers and miners                       }  R.E., with sergeant
   4 carpenters, carrying cutting tools,      }  John Landrey of the
       powder-bags, &c.                       }  royal sappers and
  50 rifles, each with a wool-bag             }  miners.
                                              }

  60 rifles, carrying ladders                 } Under Lieut. Graves,
  60 seamen ditto                             } R.E.

 400 storming party                             Under Capt. Jesse, R.E.

 800 supports

   2 brigades of sappers for the lodgment     } Under Lieut. Somerville,
                                              } R.E.
 400 working party, carrying 200 pickaxes, 200 shovels, and as many
     gabions.

The other columns were marshalled in similar sequence in the foremost
trenches, but it may be well to add the names and duties of the officers
allotted to the left column, appointed under the command of
Major-General Sir J. Campbell to attack the right flank of the Redan.

  Lieutenant Murray, to lead skirmishers and sappers with sergeant John
    Coppin.

  Lieutenant Graham, to lead the parties with wool-bags and ladders.

  Major Bent, to lead the storming party and supports.

  Lieutenant C. G. Gordon, to control the working party with two
    brigades of sappers.

Obedient to the signal, about half-past three o’clock in the morning the
right column debouched from the quarries, the skirmishers opening out in
good order and advancing steadily on the Redan. The spaces between the
files exposed the sappers to a heavy fire, but they pressed forward led
by Lieutenant Fisher, preserving their narrow rank compactly. Bravely
moved the rest of the column headed by Lieutenant Graves, but the weight
borne by the ladder parties did not admit of a dashing approach; the
more so, as the seamen and rifles had to cross with their burdens, two
old Russian trenches before they could lay hold of the skirts of the
wool-bag party. Lieutenant Fisher, nevertheless, strode on at a
confident pace, not too hurried, his sappers at his side, under a shower
of grape and musketry; and on gaining the abattis, halted to receive the
strength of the ladder party, as well as the stormers and supports.
Standing longer inactive than he expected, swept by grape from the
Redan, Lieutenant Fisher’s party threw themselves down to await the
moment when the column could rush forward, unclogged, to the assault.
Interrupted by ditches, the riflemen and sailors bearing the ladders
could only scramble forward. At every step they were smitten by unerring
volleys and with them fell the ladders. All this time Lieutenant Fisher
maintained his post with invincible command. To stand against a storm of
fire with a bared breast was not an easy virtue, yet his men wavered
not. Looking back with some anxiety to watch through the dim grey light
the progress of the seamen and rifles, he could not see a single ladder.
Minutes past and no help reached him; his men were falling fast and his
straits increasing. Emboldened by the apparent hesitation which had held
back the column, the enemy sprang upon their parapets and fired upon the
little force which had the temerity to reach the barricade. Crouched as
the men were under the boughs of the abattis and doubled up in
shell-holes, they were somewhat saved from its fierceness, but every
moment augmented the chances of their not returning. Cool and
lion-hearted, the young engineer was everywhere among his parties
commending their bravery and endurance; and sergeant Landrey, nobly
assisting his officer, encouraged by his conspicuous example and his
cheers the dislocated files of the forlorn hope. Still the ladders were
unseen; the stormers were yet in rear, and, at length, as no means for
scaling the ramparts were with the advance and its numbers were reduced
to a handful, Lieutenant Fisher, seeing no officer present senior to
himself, reluctantly, but wisely, retreated with his men to the
trenches.

A beautiful instance of valiant humanity occurred in the retreat. Seeing
a wounded officer lying near the abattis with a shattered leg,
Lieutenant Fisher, assisted by a sailor, carried him some distance.
Already fatigued by his exertions at the storming, he was soon
exhausted, and private Jesse Head, pushing out from a piece of broken
ground in which he had sheltered himself, took charge of the helpless
grenadier and bore him into the trenches. So grateful was the officer
for the devotion shown to him, that he offered the gold watch he wore to
private Head, who, with the generous feeling of a chivalric soldier,
refused the gift. The officer was shot through the leg below the knee.
He was a very tall fine-looking man, belonging to a grenadier company
of, it is believed, the 33rd or 34th regiment.

Meanwhile, the left column, under the command of Sir John Campbell,
moved out of the trenches to attack the right flank of the Redan. The
skirmishers went boldly forward followed by Lieutenant Murray of the
engineers, leading the sappers and carpenters with destroying tools and
powder-bags. All edged well to the left taking a sort of cart-track
winding along the broken crest of the Woronzoff ravine. Close upon them
were the ladders under Lieutenant Graham, who had in his party two able
leaders, corporal Paul and private Perie. The sappers with this column
belonged to the left attack and were less acquainted with the
characteristics of the ground than those on the right. “Who of the
sappers here know anything of the ground?” asked Lieutenant Graham. “I
do, sir,” cried Perie, with an impatience that evidenced his desire for
selection, “I know every inch of it;” and he was accordingly appointed
to head the sailors with the ladders. The hindmost spur of the hill was
reached when tremendous peals of musketry and grape from the Redan,
flanks, and creek batteries, made the skirmishers falter. Here they
halted, lying down for a few minutes to spring onwards when the fire
should lessen. Lieutenant Murray early fell severely wounded. Though
agonising with pain he declined, after sergeant Coppin and private Mole
had bound up his shattered arm, to be borne away by his men, and so
alone and unaided he walked in a sinking state to the trench and soon
after expired. His place was instantly supplied by Lieutenant Graham.
Tall, commanding, and collected, vigourous in purpose and brave in
danger, he took the direction of the contingents. It was now that
Lieutenant-Colonel Tylden rushed to the front to impart by his presence,
spirit and confidence to the skirmishers. Barely had he approved of
Lieutenant Graham storming the salient instead of the flank of the Redan
than a grape-shot passed through his thighs and took from the crisis an
engineer, whose valour and exploits blazon history. The truly generous
neglect their own safety in the humane wish to administer relief to
those who suffer. Lieutenant Graham first on the spot, raised him from
the ground; and sergeant Coppin with private Ewen of the eighth company,
both of whom more than once had proved their devotion to their officers,
carried the colonel to a sheltered spot under a ledge of rock at the
side of the Woronzoff ravine and there laid him down. Faint as he was
from the loss of blood he would not retain the sergeant; and so
dismissing him to his party, Ewen remained to soothe the colonel by his
attentions, and later in the day to assist four or five sappers in
bearing him from the nook to the camp.

Seeing no chance of an opportunity to make the flank, the skirmishers
rose from the holes into which they had crushed themselves and retreated
to the advanced trenches in the quarries. Some time was spent in filling
up the blanks in the ladder men, who, as soon as the bearers were
paired, were impatient to proceed. Corporal Paul was now strictly
enjoined by Major Bent not to permit the ladder men to move a step
forward unless orders were given for renewing the assault. It was
difficult to fetter the impetuosity of eager men; but corporal Paul, an
imperturbable sapper, displayed so much cool discipline himself, that
gross indications of rashness were immediately restrained the moment his
measured voice was heard among them. Once indeed for the exactness with
which he carried out his orders, he was likely to have been bayoneted by
a brave but inconsiderate comrade. Paul was not the man to flinch from
any attack, or to repel one by a force as irrational as that which
threatened him; and so simply lifting his finger, as if that were
sufficient to ward off the thrust, the exasperated man, sobered by the
corporal’s composure, averted the weapon and both, at the proper moment,
went on with the ladders.

In the same order as before, the stormers again advanced—this time to
scale the salient of the Redan. When the ladders had passed to the front
of the advanced trench, the skirmishers had moved so much to the left,
that the sappers and escalading parties were much exposed. Lieutenant
Graham now halted the sailors and riflemen to allow the skirmishers to
rectify their position, and shelter in degree the sappers, woolsack men
and escalading parties; but the firing on them continued so terrific,
the skirmishers, valiant as they were, could not effect the movement;
and the whole, by order, after standing for ten minutes bared to a
ceaseless cannonade, were withdrawn into the advanced trench. Hopeless
as it was to push on with so small a front, the struggle nevertheless
could not be abandoned save on the gravest grounds; and arrangements
were again made by Lord West, who commanded the storming-party, to essay
the assault. Yet a third time the skirmishers re-formed with a front
increased by a detachment of the 57th regiment led out by one of its
captains, who soon fell. The sappers, too, were drawn up with their
axes, grapnels, and powder-bags, so also were the woolpack men, and the
seamen and riflemen with the ladders. Steadily and firmly they advanced
met by a crashing and annihilating fire. Every step onwards was retarded
by shocks which made the stormers desperate. A few more bounds were
attempted, succeeded by another halt that showed the enterprise was
impossible; and swept back by a continuous roll of musketry and shells
no troops could withstand, the daring men who thrice threw themselves
before the enemy, reeled back into the trenches defeated.

But few of the stormers succeeded in reaching the abattis. Of the
sappers, there were at least four or five who gained it, or nearly so.
Coppin and private Mole, belonging to the party with destroying tools,
made the barricade to the left, while corporal Paul and Perie went
directly to the front. All bent themselves behind knots of rock, or
dropping into shell-holes or hollows, fired away with all the coolness
of riflemen, such ammunition as they could collect from the pouches of
the killed and wounded. When it was evident the day was lost, sergeant
Coppin, directed by Lieutenant Graham, ran to the front to command the
skirmishers to retire. His mien was that of a calm man and a fearless
soldier. He first communicated the orders to the officer in command of
the rifles, and then to the sergeant of the 57th, as the captain who had
led them to the front was killed. Coppin was thus one of the last men to
return to the trenches. Paul and Perie were afterwards awarded
distinctions, which but a minimum of their comrades attained. Besides a
gratuity of ten pounds and a medal for distinguished service, Paul was
promoted to the rank of sergeant and received the Legion of Honour;
while Perie, an unlettered man but a first-class sapper and leader, was
decorated with the military war-medal of France “for valour and
discipline.” Coppin, though it was not his good fortune to obtain a
badge to show his merit, was, by the voice of his comrades, as brave and
ready a sapper as ever toiled in the trenches.

Among the sappers with the right column there were five casualties:—

 Private Thomas McNeil } killed.
    ”    Joseph Barnes }

 Lance-corporal Joseph Maycock, wounded in the head  { Both were struck by
 Private Samuel Spear, wounded in the left knee      { rifle-balls, and died
                                                     { of their wounds.

    ”    Edward Pearson, wounded in the hand.

Private McNeil, when found next day, was under the abattis riddled with
balls. He was a good and an ardent soldier, and his comrades spoke in
high terms of his bravery on all occasions. As already shown, he had his
jaw broken in a strange manner on the 3rd April.

Captain Jesse, who hastened to the front to ascertain the complexion of
affairs, was shot through the head while speaking to Lieutenant Fisher.
Lieutenant Graves was also killed.

Three sappers with the left column were put hors-de-combat:

  Private Robert Eadie—killed by a round shot which went through his
          chest and knocked him to pieces. He was with the Staff at the
          time bearing signal flags.

     ”   John Perie—wounded in right side, by rifle bullet.

     ”   William Preece—wounded slightly.

Two casualties occurred in the column under General Barnard, placed in
position on the right of the Woronzoff road, viz:—

  Private William Rollings—killed by the blow of a shot which rolled
          over a precipice on his neck and broke his spine. He was
          knocked a few yards down the hill, “where,” an observer has
          written, “he sat as if asleep with his face turned up, but he
          was stone dead.”

     ”   Aaron Tickell—wounded severely; leg amputated, and died
          December, 1855.

  Sergeant William Dobbie—wounded in the right shoulder by a spent 32
          lb. shot. He was the sergeant in charge of the sappers in
          reserve.

“I must not conclude,” wrote Lieutenant Fisher, “without bringing under
your notice the very gallant conduct of sergeant Landrey, whose
steadiness in the advance, and exertions in cheering on the men were
most praiseworthy.” Lieutenant-Colonel Tylden, being unable to report on
the operations of Lieutenant Fisher and his sappers, Colonel Gordon
supplied the omission. “The officers of engineers and men,” he wrote,
“attached to this column, performed their duty in a brave and devoted
manner. The non-commissioned officers and men bravely followed their
officers, and were foremost among the assailants. Sergeant Landrey
particularly distinguished himself.”

In awarding high praise to the naval brigade for their noble behaviour
with the ladders, Lieutenant Graham acknowledged “the steady conduct of
the party of sappers under sergeant Coppin of the fourth company,” and
drew attention to the valiant behaviour of private John Perie. Alluding
to the latter at another time, Lieutenant Graham wrote, “he was
invaluable to me on that day, as he followed me everywhere, and was
always ready when I wanted anything done.” His cool determination in
taking a message to Lieutenant Murray in front during the thick of the
fight, and returning with an answer, was one of the instances which
called for Lieutenant Graham’s special commendation. When the assault
was over, a naval officer, seeing a wounded man lying exposed in front,
asked for assistance. With his natural brusqueness, Perie said to
Lieutenant Graham, “I’ll follow you, sir!” All three bounded over the
parapet and brought in the injured man. Had further help of the kind
been needed they would have humanely exercised it. The front fortunately
was clear; and so, anxious to prevent the chance of anything falling
into the hands of the enemy, they threw themselves again over the
parapet, and lugged into the trench some ladders from the open. The
devotion of Perie to his brave leader was the more remarkable, as he had
already been wounded by a rifle-bullet in the side.

Major-General Jones also made this record to the credit of the corps:
“The royal sappers and miners continue to distinguish themselves by
their gallantry and good conduct.”

Under Lieutenant Neville of the engineers and Captain Penn, R.A.,
Sergeant Thomas R. Drew and 30 sappers, with destroying implements and
powder-bags, were detailed to act with Brigadier-General Barnard’s
division, which, having marched across the Woronzoff ravine and halted
under the cliffs, was to move forward and capture the Barrack Battery as
soon as the Redan and Malakoff had been taken; but the utter
discomfiture of the two columns placed this subsidiary attack in the
category of impossibilities. While the assault was still at its highest,
corporal Jenkins obtained permission to go to the front to watch its
desperate phases. He was accompanied by sergeant Drew. Keeping close
under the beetling rocks, which in a measure shielded them from the
gusts of fire that struck the steep and broken sides of the ravine, they
at length reached the left flank of the advance trench, where for a
while they looked at the doubtful strife, and returned to report its
progress. Again they moved to the quarries by the rough unbeaten track
they had previously traversed, guiding Lieutenant Neville and Captain
Penn. A short reconnaissance determined Lieutenant Neville to send
Jenkins with a message to General Barnard. Off he started, and
communicated to the General the information he had been commissioned to
convey. Colonel Waddy of the 50th regiment, who had been appointed to
lead the stormers of General Barnard’s column, expressed a wish to go to
the front to see the aspect of affairs, if any one would show him the
road. “Follow the sapper!” said Jenkins, using the phrase of the
trenches; and Colonel Waddy, glad of the offer, run along under the
brows of the rocks, whither the corporal conducted, and found himself in
less than ten minutes safe in the quarries. A few glances put him in
possession of intelligence he did not expect to learn; the attack was
failing; the scenes he witnessed were untoward and disheartening, but he
still had hope of doing some service to retrieve the fortunes of the
day. Placing himself again under the guidance of the corporal, the rough
route by the hill-side was speedily retraced; and the colonel, boiling
over with desire and anxiety, proposed to lead out the stormers at once
without waiting the accomplishment of those operations which were
considered essential before the secondary attacks should commence. But
the orders for the movement of the column were too explicit and
imperative to admit a deviation without special directions from the
ruling authority, and so Colonel Waddy had not the honour on this great
occasion to “do or die.”

Jenkins now rejoined the officers in the quarries. This was his third
march over that toppling hill-side, almost suffocated with dust and
fatigued with a restless foot, which for six hours and more had been in
active motion. Before this time the fate of the day was irrevocable; the
cannonade had ceased, the stormers had retired, the open was clear, but
a murderous crossfire of musketry still played on our works. Seeing a
wounded man of the 57th regiment struggling in front of the Quarry
batteries, Jenkins and Drew volunteered to bring him in. To this
Lieutenant Neville assented, and in broad daylight they bore him to the
trench, resigning their charge to a party of the 57th in the rear. The
poor fellow had been deeply struck in the right thigh and ankle and was
torn with stones and splinters. A little later they saw other men lying
exposed with bad wounds on the reverse of the advance trenches. With a
broken stretcher, the sergeant and Jenkins carried away one after
another into safe cover. This was a service of supreme risk, and many of
the defeated stormers who filled the trenches, pale with enervation and
panic, possessed nevertheless sufficient self-command to make their
surprise obvious. “Look at those mad sappers!” said they, envying the
courage they feared to exercise; but the humane non-commissioned
officers, heedless of the taunts that assailed them, never slackened
their hand till there was no longer a necessity for their exertions.
Again Jenkins pushed into the ravine by the old track. “A corporal of
sappers came along the hill-side from the direction of the Redan,” wrote
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir James Alexander, 14th regiment.[187] “I asked him
what was the news of the assault from the trenches of the right attack?
He said, ‘Bad news,’ and in a few words he told of the disastrous events
of the morning.” The corporal alluded to was Jenkins. Seeing a comrade,
private Rollings, killed and huddled up on the slope with a broken neck,
he begged Lieutenant Neville’s sanction to bear him away, as no sapper
had yet been buried in the trenches. His request being granted, he, with
the help of three volunteers, carried the dead sapper on a
scaling-ladder across the ravine to the first parallel of the left
attack, from whence he was removed to camp and honoured with a soldier’s
funeral.

Equally conspicuous was private George Ramsey in his endeavours to
succour the wounded. He too belonged to Lieutenant Neville’s party, and
crept along under the rocks till he made the open. It was a wonder with
so hot a fire of musketry that he escaped. He first removed a wounded
sailor who had pushed himself into a rifle-pit; and afterwards, with the
assistance of Lieutenant Hallowes of the royal navy, then mate of the
‘Wasp’ steam-sloop, and a few men, he bore away on a scaling-ladder
softened with wool taken from the sacks of the stormers, a brave
rifleman who was struck down with severe wounds near the abattis.

The cool bravery of these three sappers was brought to the notice of
Major-General Jones by Lieutenant Neville, who recommended them for
distinguished medals. They “succeeded under a very heavy fire,” he
reported, “in rescuing the bodies of several wounded men of the 57th
regiment lying out in front of the Redan.”

The column under Brigadier-General Eyre was directed to push down the
picket-house ravine past the cemetery into the rear of the Barrack
Battery, and there co-operate with General Barnard in its capture. This
column bore on with an irresistible front into the grounds near the
graveyard, but were locked in among some houses of the suburb, beyond
which it would have been more than madness to proceed. As it was, they
held the position until evening under a harassing fire, and retreated
with the loss of no less than 31 officers killed and wounded, as also
the Brigadier struck in the head.

Of second-corporal William Baker, third company, who went forward with
this column, a more than passing notice may be permitted. He was on duty
in the third parallel, and left it without orders, declaring at all
hazards he would that day enter the town. But how brittle is human
intention! Armed with his carbine and a full pouch of ammunition, he
joined the 38th regiment; and losing sight of the fact that he was not
in charge of a working party in the saps, cheered on the men with the
inspiriting cry, “Now, my boys, follow the sapper!” In the excitement of
the moment he caught up the expression, because it had become a settled
by-word of the trenches. On went poor Baker, heedless of those who
followed, and he was killed in the ravine beyond the grave-yard.
Disembowelled, wounded in the breast, and with a broken leg, he lay for
a time in great pain. He was seen to wave his hand as if entreating
assistance, but so thick was the firing up the valley from the
crow’s-nest and garden batteries, none dared to pass into it to help the
corporal in his last agonies.

The casualties in the English troops this day were very great. Both
officers who led the columns on the Redan were killed. In addition to
the engineer officers already named, Major-General Jones was wounded in
the head by a grape-shot; and his Brigade-Major, Captain Bourchier,
received a slight contusion in the arm. The French, in their imposing
but unavailing attacks upon the Malakoff, lost 2 generals, 37 officers,
and 1544 men killed, wounded, and missing; while the Russians in their
sturdy defence, achieved a victory at a sacrifice which counted
thousands of killed and wounded. No less than 797 fell dead in the
various works, and 4979 were wounded.

It was a terrific struggle and a memorable failure. Already weakened by
disease, Lord Raglan, ill able to bear the defeat, survived it only a
few days. A warrior, trained under the Duke of Wellington, possessing in
the highest degree habits of calmness, patience, and controlling
perseverance, he was the fittest general in the English army at the time
to bear the responsibility of a great and critical command; and the
distinguished talent and bravery with which he conducted it, gaining
three brilliant battles and sustaining a violent siege for seven months
with only one drawback—that which cost him his noble life—his career as
a commander-in-chief in a great war, will, in after time, meet the
honourable reward it merits from impartial history.

General Simpson, the chief officer of his lordship’s staff, succeeded to
the command.

-----

Footnote 185:

  Unexceptionable as a sapper and an Ajax in strength and stature, Smale
  was nevertheless a grumbler by nature. This trait in his character was
  well-known to both officers and non-commissioned officers; and as in
  this state he invariably worked the hardest, it became a habit with
  many to endeavour to provoke his indignation. One day Lieutenant
  Graves, who was afterwards killed at the siege, felt it no compromise
  of position—the intercourse between officers and subordinates in war
  being more easy and unrestrained than in peace—to question in a
  jesting manner the usefulness of the second company. This was a
  subject he knew would ruffle Smale’s plume. “Look here,” said he,
  addressing the growler, “I have heard you boasting of the sapper
  qualifications of the second company, but from what I have seen of the
  men belonging to it, I can’t say much in their favour.” “Eugh!”
  mumbled Smale, clutching his pick and shovel, “the second company took
  Bomarsund, and you couldn’t take Sebastopol without it.” So saying he
  walked into an embrasure, and with the coolest activity patched up its
  shattered cheeks. This was the way poor Smale dealt out repartee. His
  retorts were all harmless, but usefully demonstrative.

Footnote 186:

  Borbidge was never sick during the siege. For eight or ten days he was
  at Sinope collecting timber for huts. With this exception he was never
  from the front. But few sappers were oftener on duty than he, for his
  good health and usefulness passed him into the trenches seldom less
  than six times a week. It is melancholy to add, that this fine soldier
  was drowned on the 6th December, 1856, at Rochester, when employed in
  the demolition of the old bridge. The wind was squally, and while
  crossing a plank in a heavy French great coat, a sudden gust carried
  him into the eddying river among the shore piles. He was an excellent
  swimmer, and as soon as he had got his head above water, called
  lustily for a rope; but, before it could be thrown to him, or boats
  could push to his assistance, he was borne away by the current and
  sank about sixty yards from the bridge.

Footnote 187:

  ‘United Service Magazine,’ September 1856, p. 23.

                                 1855.
                          18th June-16th July.
                          SIEGE OF SEBASTOPOL.

Condition of the batteries; their repair—Alarm of a sortie—Noble
  intention of four comrades to recover the body of corporal
  Baker—Strategic occupation of the rifle redoubt behind the
  cemetery—Interchange of civilities between the Russian and English
  truces—Capture of a memento—Escape of Lieutenant Donnelly and
  lance-corporal Veal—Lodgment in the cemetery—A sortie
  frustrated—Destruction of the rifle redoubt—No. 18 battery, right
  attack—Perils in the saps in advance of the quarries—Progress of the
  works—Re-occupation of the cemetery—The stone double sap; corporal J.
  T. Collins—The two Dromios—Industry of the miners—Progress of the
  works and repairs—Even during a storm—Advance of the chevaux-de-frise
  up the Woronzoff ravine—Sappers annoyed by light balls—Difficulties in
  executing the works—Demolitions in the rear parallels—The
  Picket-house—Approach to the cemetery—Wooden bridge—General officers’
  hut—Abstraction of gabions by the French—Gallantry in pushing the sap
  from left advanced parallel, right attack—Night details—No. 15
  battery, left attack—Obstacles to success in commencing the fifth
  parallel, right attack—Trenches in the cemetery—Progress of the
  works—Conduct and exertions of the engineers and sappers.

By the enemy’s fire, a number of embrasures had been seriously damaged
or demolished, and their early fall was ascribed to the unsubstantial
manner in which they had been built under the superintendence of some
young and inexperienced sappers fresh from England. The works which bore
the brunt of the fight were the 21-gun battery and Nos. 13, 14, and 17
on the right attack. The first had ten embrasures in ruins, while the
remaining batteries scarcely retained a vestige of resemblance to their
original construction. At night there were 20 sappers on the right, and
22 on the left, assisted respectively by working parties of 100 and 273
men. Many of the damaged embrasures were rebuilt before morning; a
passage was widened round the traverse in Egerton’s pit for the passage
of guns, and a number of gabions which had been thrown down or fractured
during the bombardment were replaced in the zig-zags leading to the
quarries, and in the saps issuing from them. The platforms which had
been stoutly laid resisted with firmness the violence to which they had
been subjected, and the magazines withstood an exasperated cannonade
with remarkable success. Several scaling ladders which had fallen with
their intrepid bearers in the unavailing assault, and many of the
abandoned woolsacks were removed; and it was due to the endeavours of a
few spirited volunteers, that about twenty-five men, found on the field
disabled by frightful wounds, were carried to the trenches.

At midnight there was an alarm of a sortie among the French in front of
the Mamelon, which rapidly spread to the quarries. A brisk play of
projectiles took place on both sides, in which the men in the rear
trenches heartily joined. Without a real object to deserve such
warmth—for the Russians had not left their works—they necessarily fired
at random, and some of the workmen in the foremost trenches were wounded
from our own missiles.

A wounded sergeant of the 3rd division had crept into the lines next
day, and reported that a corporal of sappers was still alive in the
garden. Four of his comrades—corporals William Donald, John Medway,
Samuel Varren, and Robert J. Fitzgerald, all of the third company—with a
nobleness of feeling that did them infinite credit, agreed, though not
on duty, to go out and bring him to camp. Accordingly they pushed into
the trench in front of the caves, and seeing, by the aid of an opera
lorgnette, that Baker was motionless, they were desired by Lieut.
Donnelly to defer the attempt, as a truce would shortly take place,
which would enable them to recover the corporal without peril or
molestation.

Major-General Eyre wanting support, was compelled to leave the cemetery
he had gallantly taken on the 18th. Conceiving that circumstances
favoured a bloodless appropriation of the rifle-pits near the cemetery,
Lieutenant Donnelly secured the services of these four men to accompany
him; and while he collected twenty volunteers from the 20th regiment,
private Fitzgerald was sent away to get ten riflemen. Communicating his
orders to the officer commanding the covering party of the rifle
brigade, the number of men were soon made up; but before Fitzgerald
arrived with the detachment, Lieutenant Donnelly had gone with his party
from the left of No. 11 battery down the ravine to the garden, where, as
the firing was hot, he and the volunteers were obliged to lie among the
grass and fruit trees till a momentary lull gave them an opportunity of
moving cautiously to some suburban houses, among which they dodged, and
then crept on all-fours to the wall of the cemetery, where they
concealed themselves. Meanwhile Fitzgerald leading the riflemen, started
from one of the boyaux behind No. 7 battery, and dashing down the hill
under a close fire—for all were exposed—they reached the garden wall
nearest to our trenches. It was some five or six feet high, built of dry
rubble stone, behind which, as they were blown by their fleetness, they
halted to take breath. Relieved by a brief stay, Fitzgerald, the first
to spring over the wall, was followed by the rifles, like bloodhounds in
full chase; and redoubling their speed, raced onwards under an incessant
rattle of musketry, stopping not till they had joined Lieutenant
Donnelly at the cemetery wall.

Another move was now made to the head of the ravine, where Lieutenant
Donnelly placed four men in the first pit, and pushed on to a more
commanding pit on a green knoll; but, unable to occupy it, he
distributed his volunteers, for safety, among some trees and old walls
in the neighbourhood. While these dispositions were being enacted a
truce was agreed upon, which turned the young officer loose on the
little Mamelon, around which he placed his detachment as sentries. The
Russians regarding the pits as in our possession, did not ascend the
mound, but an officer, disinclined to yield the spot, passed the
sentries; and after scrutinizing the locality with speculative
curiosity, returned to his men. The four sappers then went in quest of
Baker. When found, he was dead, and had been so for some hours. He was,
therefore, borne away to camp.[188]

At last the melancholy duty of giving a rough and unceremonious
sepulture to the many dead was accomplished, and Lieutenant Donnelly
descending the mound, moved to the nearest rifle-pit, as did also
lance-corporal James Veal, who bore the white flag. Whilst standing near
the pit, shrouded by the sacred truce, two rifle shots, and shortly
after, a score or two of Miniés were aimed at them. This angry attack
was no doubt occasioned by the report of the officer who forced the
sentries. It was useless now to wave the banner to seek protection under
colour of the truce, and as little hope for their lives was left them,
they depended upon the tact they could exercise to effect their escape.
Lieutenant Donnelly jumped over the parapet, and as he ran, a constant
fire, which would have appalled many an older head, neither made him
falter nor stay his course; and he reached the trenches, as if an egis
had shielded him, without a stroke. Veal remained in the pit, assailed
by an incessant shower of grape and Miniés, shot and shell, which made
gaps in the screen that covered him. There he stood till the darkness
fell; when stealing unperceived from the danger he had for so many hours
outlived, he scrambled ahead as best he could, and picking his way
through the suburbs and gardens, hastened up the hill-side to the 5-gun
battery in the first parallel, with the same scathless fortune as his
officer.

This strategic episode opened up new advantages which were instantly
turned to account by the besiegers. Strong parties were sent into the
cemetery grounds to extend the lodgment as far as the vineyard wall. A
communication was likewise opened to it, in part, from the fourth
parallel. Near the vineyard, however, the Russians burnt down some
houses, which enabled them to see into the position and worry the
workmen. In the night of the 19th, corporal Lockwood had with him a
party deputed to a portion of the duty. From the left of No. 7 battery,
which overhung the ravine in rear of the caves, he marched along the
side of the hill, and, diving into the valley, entered the cemetery
through a door-way in the stone boundary wall. His men threw up a
parapet from the wall to some rifle-pits; another party under corporal
William Donald, continued the trench from the pits, which afterwards
became the left portion of the fifth parallel; and a third party under
corporal George H. Collins, worked from the fourth parallel down the
hill to meet the trench opened by corporal Donald. These three parties
were superintended by sergeant Coppin. The firing on the cemetery and
the new trenches was fierce and constant; grape and shells fell in
incessant showers; and in corporal Lockwood’s party alone, no less than
fourteen men were killed and wounded before day-break. In the face of so
much hostile activity, with sheets of flames from the burning village
lighting up the work, it was not an easy matter to labour, but yet the
sappers and linesmen persevered for a time in placing and filling no
less than eighty gabions. At last the working party, among whom so many
casualties had occurred, decamped, leaving their tools behind them,
which were carried away by the sappers, who returned twice to the deadly
trenches to complete the removal of the stores and the muskets of the
killed and wounded.

For a few nights the work continued under circumstances of great peril.
Flights of bullets were levelled at the workmen from musketeers, who,
having crept up among the smouldering houses in the vineyard, and
sheltered themselves in unseen positions, calculated too truly—from
their previous occupation of the place and their foresight—where the
besiegers would be appointed to toil. In the night of the 21st it was
hardly possible, except at a prodigal loss, to employ more than twenty
men and three choice sappers in the lodgment. Covered by a party from
the 4th foot under the command of Captain Dowbiggen, who had judiciously
posted his guard to make the most of any sudden attack, the workmen
repaired the breaches in the trench, and filled as many gabions as it
was found practicable to stake. The linesmen and sappers were directed
by Lieutenant C. G. Gordon of the engineers. A body of Russians advanced
with a cheer towards the cemetery from the vineyard and threatened by
their strength to annihilate the little party; but their fire having
been returned with more warmth by the guard than was anticipated, the
Russians, doubtlessly possessing a delusive notion that the cemetery was
held by a powerful force, retired without personally contesting an
occupation which would have ended to their credit. That the gallant
bearing of the party had deceived the enemy is almost proved by the fury
with which it was plied. During the whole night four mortars played on
them from the garden batteries; and frequent shots and grape raked them
from the Creek and Barrack batteries causing among the steadfast
sentries and the industrious sappers and workmen about twenty-two
casualties.

It behoved the engineers to proceed with caution in so fatal a spot, and
if they could not readily adapt the cemetery to their own purpose, to
make it inoperative to the enemy. At the time, the sacrifice of life in
working it was more than the advantage of its retention; and it was,
therefore, determined to destroy the position and evacuate it. Quietly
and quickly were the entrances from the Russian works into the pits
filled up, and other depredations committed to nullify communication
with the cemetery and little Mamelon behind. In the night of the 22nd,
in order to extend the demolition, five sappers under Lieutenant Neville
of the engineers, crept into the rifle redoubt above the cemetery with
destroying implements. It was a covered loop-holed ambuscade made up of
old doors and window-shutters. No time was lost, for the duty was one of
imminent risk. Mounting the work, the sappers threw down about
thirty-five feet of the splinter proofing, and, hurling it into the
ditch, concealed it from observation by a covering of earth. So hard and
zealously did the sappers work under a heavy fire of grape and shells,
that their names were recorded for the notice of Lord Raglan.
Second-corporal George Henry Collins, and privates David Muir, William
Goddard, John Ford, and William Eddy, were the men engaged in this
intrepid demolition.

The operation was repeated the next night by four sappers under
second-corporal Trimble, who worked for four hours filling up the old
Russian trenches, while a rattling musketry, intermingled with crashing
projectiles, scarcely checked the vigour of their exertions. Though not
wholly destroyed, the ambuscade was abandoned, marked only by one
trifling wound among the men and the breaking of a shovel helve in the
hand of the industrious man who was using it. When the night of the 25th
had well advanced, Captain Belson, unaware that the screen had been
relinquished, told off a working party to augment the ruins; but finding
it unoccupied by a guard, he distributed his men to the general
trenches, and went on with corporal Stredwick and a few cool sappers to
complete what human energy had not time as yet to accomplish. There was
no cover, except what the few standing grave-stones offered, and even
this was questionable from the many sharp-edged fragments which, chipped
from the slabs at every stroke of shot or shell, fell among the party. A
heavy fusillade from sharpshooters in the screens made the situation of
the sappers very critical. They worked, nevertheless, with a manliness
that gave a noble aspect to labour; parapets were thrown down, ditches
filled in, and timbers dislocated; but at length, as a sortie was
apprehended—of which there were unmistakeable indications, for the enemy
was seen moving up in broken bodies to the little Mamelon—the sappers
were withdrawn by Captain Belson from the enclosure without even a scar
to tell of their endurance and danger. It was a lucky escape, for a few
minutes after, the Russians were in the pit.

A new battery—No. 18—for six heavy guns was reared under many
difficulties, to rake the middle ravine and throw its metal into the
Redan and the Malakoff. It was built on the swell of a trench a little
in advance of a group of zig-zags and lateral excavations issuing from
the second parallel of the right attack. The work was commenced on the
23rd June, and does not appear to have been wholly completed till the
7th July. Strong parties worked in it at each relief, and when finished,
its revetments, standing up in the most solid and approved forms,
resisted with some tenacity the crashing cannonade brought to bear upon
it.

In the advance trench on the right of the quarries, the sappers, for
three or four nights, had to watch with more than usual solicitude in
making way against the perils which threatened them. It was good work to
place as few as twenty-six gabions in this exposed situation, for the
moon shining brightly in the heavens discovered to the enemy the true
character of the progress effected; and being within about 300 yards of
the Russian batteries, it needed that the men entrusted with the
operation should be as collected and brave, as resolute and dexterous.
As the moon rose with its meek but tell-tale face, the four sappers were
obliged to quit the head of the sap and retire where the cover was
thick, to protect them from the projectiles, which frequently overturned
the baskets; but when the luminary was dimmed by a passing cloud, which
made the gabionade appear indistinct, the sappers rushed forward, reset
the overturned gabions, and staked as many more as the duration of the
obscurity permitted. In this way was completed a line of initial
revetment extending to about 45 feet. No pickaxe could be used or
blasting resorted to in the vicinity of the sap. The gabions were,
therefore, filled by fits and starts with earth gathered at a distance,
brought to the work by thirty linesmen.

On a subsequent night the sky was almost cloudless, and the moon gleamed
with so much clearness, that the danger of working the sap was as great
as if conducted at noon-day. There were four sappers in the advance and
fifty of a working party. When only a gauzy cloud moved between them and
the moon, the former, bounding as from a lair, leaped a-head with the
gabions and employed the transient intervals in giving them a place.
Their exertions were carried on in paroxysms, and a night’s vigilance
and ardour only counted the lodgment of nine gabions! So fearful was the
risk of achieving even this trivial progress, that none but sappers
could be confidently allotted to it. The line was, nevertheless,
beneficially tasked in strengthening the cover of less exposed works.

Activity was the order of the trenches. Proud instalments of progress in
every direction showed how well the men toiled, and how expeditiously
they converted the enemy’s formations into terrible constructions for
the future siege. On the right, the quarries, far in advance, were
turned into formidable defences. They were strong by nature but vastly
improved by art. The high gabions and flour barrels which faced the
enemy’s revetments, were made to serve similar purposes in the
besiegers’ works. Those quarries became the park for the front, in which
was erected the engineer hut—scarcely bullet-proof—from whence orders
were dispersed with cool despatch by the officers charged with the
execution of the several works. From thence issued the fourth
parallel—partly a Russian entrenchment—which cut up the hill and
extended as far as the middle ravine; while approaches shot out daringly
in front from the left of the old ambuscade in hazardous contiguity to
the Russian lines and pits. Against the incessant firing of
clear-sighted sharpshooters it was difficult to stand and persevere; yet
on went the sap, sneaking stealthily forward like a huge snake, till
branching off on either hand, it stretched its length in another
parallel in front of the Redan. Three boyaux, cut on the crest of the
hill in advance of the quarries, led to the fifth parallel; which,
pushed along by energetic men, joined an abandoned Russian trench that
breasted the left flank of the Redan, and run along ridge and glen to
the famed Mamelon. Old magazines evincing signs of decay were revived,
new ones constructed, and traverses, platforms, and the unending
appurtenances of a gigantic siege, were made, repaired, or reformed.
Instances of instability in the batteries had occurred, which caused the
embrasures, &c., to be rebuilt by experienced hands. The 21-gun battery
had past its day as a depôt. It was no longer the heart of the system,
communicating life by its supplies to the arteries of the hills.
Stupendous as it was, it lost everything but vitality, and the
importance it had once acquired was now possessed by the quarries.

The weather had settled with intolerable heat, and a blazing sun beaming
in a sky of unbroken blue, bronzed the lean faces of the workmen, and,
sweating their spare frames, affected the stamina of all. A thunderstorm
interposing, cooled the air and moistened the rock. It was an auspicious
visitation, for it lessened the oppression and parching to which the
workmen were subjected. The rain fell in torrents, and gushing down the
ravines in floods, tumbled over balls, fragments of shells, and clods
like so many cascades. Young trenches were inundated and older ones in
some places covered with water ankle deep. Fears were entertained for
the stability of the works and the efficiency of the drains, but when
the tempest had ceased, so little was the damage done to the batteries
that the necessary repairs were executed in a few hours. The water
channels, on the contrary, were much impaired and became one of the
chief difficulties in conducting the siege. At this period the number of
the corps available for trench duty was 351 only. The sick present were
110 and those at Scutari, &c., were 51. The force detached to different
places to carry out the multifarious services for which sappers were
constantly demanded was 160. The total strength in the Crimea and in
Turkey, as these details show, was 672 of all ranks.

On the left attack the Mamelon Vert above the Cemetery having been taken
by the French, the post in the graveyard which had been abandoned was
reoccupied in the night of the 27th by a British picquet to protect the
right of the allies. The works in it were speedily turned and traverses
constructed to ward off the firing from the Flagstaff batteries; while
the enemy, confined within the main line of his defences, scarcely dared
pit a rifleman beyond the chain. A brigade of sappers followed by a
working party descended the side of the ravine warily pushing on gabion
after gabion, and then trenching along its bottom and driving through
rocks and unsheltered ground, at length reached a wall through which a
breach being quickly made, on went the trench in the direction of a lone
house in the valley, and in time was extended by blasting to the
cemetery.

By the 27th of June, the covered-way, termed by the sappers the “stone
double sap,” to protect the two large caves or “ovens” where a strong
day picquet was posted, was completed. Like a terrace it run along the
slope of the picket-house ravine among steep and jutting rocks, for
about 300 feet, and was hollowed, every inch of it, by mining. Its face
was between three and four feet high of solid rock, and above was placed
a revetment of gabions, powder-cases and bread-bags filled and backed by
fragments of stone blown up in the blasts and macadamized. Sand-bags
were also used, and earth brought from the rear was shovelled among the
stones to make the mass compact. To protect the trench from enfilade,
six traverses of rock were formed as the work proceeded; but a bold one,
seven feet in altitude, facing the mouth of the first cave, pushed
across the trench for 22 feet, and possessed a breadth adapted to the
object it was intended to serve. A curved continuation of the trench,
stretching up the hill for 100 feet, rounded the second cave, whose
enlarged mouth opening on the Russian batteries required strong cover to
shield the chamber from the enemy’s fire. A parapet was therefore risen
like a butt, some 16 feet broad at the crown, which stood well against
grape and shot and averted dangers it seemed incapable of meeting. The
revetment started from a foundation of rock built up to the necessary
height with sand-bags. Subsequently it was thickened with earth and
stones six feet broad, and faced inwardly by a row of large beef barrels
crammed with rock and clay and crested by sand-bags. The caves
themselves were connected by a cutting effected by four hard-working
sappers under lance-corporal Simon Williams. Two cut from one cave, two
from the other, descending on either side into easy soil to avoid the
rock. Where the latter occurred, it was removed by points and hammers.
The passage, about 26 feet through, was five feet six inches high and
three feet three inches wide, and was completed in ten hours. A free
communication was thus open from one to the other without the necessity
of passing into the trench. Avenues were opened from the covered-way to
the rear, and forward by a long arm, which, joined to a succession of
saps like so many prodigious limbs or joints, skirted the ridge
overlooking the ravine, and then connected with the fourth parallel. The
approach from the caves to the communication leading to the parallel was
by a natural opening in the surface of the hill, widened into a man-hole
by the jumper and mining. At its base there were five or six stairs hewn
out of the rock, on which was super-added an oaken ladder slanting to
the top of the shaft; the entrance to which was screened by a
semicircular revetment of beef barrels loaded with stones. This
covered-way was of great importance, extremely difficult of execution,
and as hazardous as laborious in working it. When finished, it was so
perfect a cover, that the picquet quartered in it sustained a daily fire
with impunity. Corporal Joseph T. Collins under Major Bent, was its
plodding and steadfast overseer. He had with him six picked sappers and
three miners of the 68th regiment, who were specially allotted to the
task. More than three months were spent in its accomplishment, during
which, and the forming of the correlative communications, corporal
Collins was daily in the trenches. In that time many a bullet whizzed
near him, and many a shell burst, splintering the rock and tearing down
the barrels and sand-bags in his front and rear, but he neither dropped
his head nor slackened his hand. Ardent, cool, and efficient, his
example and exertions were of undisguised advantage in the prosecution
of the sap, and his resolution to be compassed by no obstacle had the
effect of establishing among his comrades a spirit to persevere and
succeed. Once only was he struck while driving the sap. A blast went off
unexpectedly, setting a shower of stones in motion, one of which hit him
above the eye, and another, of crushing size and weight, hurtled past
his breast. At last he was overtaken by a serious wound. On the 2nd of
July he was passing through No. 14 battery left attack, when a rifle
bullet pierced his thigh and took him from the trenches. Three months,
save one day, 18th June, when he was granted the luxury of a little
extra repose, he was daily under a fire of varying fierceness, and for
his intrepid conduct in the “stone double sap,” coupled with other
conspicuous acts of skill and fearlessness, he received two steps of
promotion, was granted a gratuity of five pounds, decorated with a
“distinguished service” medal, and also with the star of the French
Legion of Honour.[189]

Hourly the assailants encroached on the area which separated them from
the besieged, beset in their industry by strange and incessant
difficulties. Almost within hail of the Russians, the miners day and
night carried out their tedious labours. As many as forty sappers were
frequently thus employed in the advanced parallels and boyaux. A number
of the line, between 80 and 100—practical quarrymen—afterwards joined
them, who, directed by experienced corporals of the corps, worked with
unwearied exertion. In sets of threes they carried out the operations,
one turning the jumper while the others struck it blow for blow as in a
smithy with hammers of about seven pounds’ weight. The constant clashing
of these heavy tools, which could even be heard at the camp, made the
lines as alive with din and rattle as an arsenal, and brought on the
miners a fire at time so furious, that to see them, amid casualty and
death holding to their employments, was a scene not to be surpassed by
any spectacle of endurance in the trenches. Excavations cut by the
pickaxe or blown into trenches by blasting, completed, so far, a series
of communications which, like so many ligatures, tied together the
several works in front and rear. Elaborate with entrenchments and
batteries, the ground with its mammoth parallels, subordinate approaches
and passages, _places d’armes_, rifle pits and screens, appeared like a
vast labyrinth puzzling to the last degree; but to provide against
chances of miscarriage, the engineers and sappers, forming a corps of
guides, so led the workmen by night and by day, that few parties failed
to reach the sites where they were appointed to toil. Yet with all this
duty and peril, only two sappers were wounded between the 19th and 30th
June. These were sergeant Philip Morant severely in the right cheek, the
ball passing through his nose and escaping from the other cheek; and
corporal James Douglas slightly in the head. The former who was the
sergeant of the trenches on the right attack was working in the quarries
when struck; the latter had just told off a brigade of sappers and 200
of the line to the works.

July found the siege a fixed employment, increasing in magnitude and
approaching nearer to the Russian batteries. On the 1st, there were 24
sappers on the right and 57 on the left blasting in the fourth parallel,
as also in No. 15 battery and the reserve ammunition magazine. With
these they carried out various services in connection with batteries 13,
14, and 15, situated on the third parallel, which, from their
prominence, shared largely in the hostile attention of the Russians.
Their parapets which had been riven and loosened by the cannonade and
washed down by the rain, were raised and strengthened; and their cheeks
insufficiently sloped when originally built, were taken down and
reconstructed; terrepleins were also formed in them and new magazines
reared, with passages cut round the sites; while a strong body of miners
improved the old road communication from No. 5 battery in the first
parallel to No. 9—the left end battery—of the second parallel. On the
right, Nos. 14 and 18 batteries had large parties appointed to them. The
latter, a new formation, had no less than 160 men shovelling earth on
the parapet, and eight sappers fixed the frames and splinter-proofs to
its magazines. No. 14, occupying nearly a central position in the second
parallel, had two of its embrasures cut and formed by the sappers.
Others were widening approaches and communications, draining the second
parallel, making a rifle pit in front of it, constructing sea-service
mortar platforms on left of the 21-gun battery, repairing the parapet in
the left communication to No. 18 battery, and removing revetting stores
from No. 6 battery in the first parallel to the new works in front. The
working parties consisted of 600 men; and though shelled with some
briskness during portions of the day, all left the trenches unharmed.

Next day at dawn, 56 sappers, chiefly miners and carpenters, were sent
into the foremost trenches on the left to blast the rock and lay
platforms in the new batteries. They were unassisted by the line
workmen, for a drenching rain confined them to camp. As from waterspouts
the torrent fell, choking up the channels, inundating the works, and
beating down some of the more fragile batteries. In such weather it was
out of the question to continue the mining; but every man though wet and
smoking with heat, exerted himself in clearing the standing water from
the different formations. On the right attack there were 310 men in the
trenches during the storm with 28 sappers under Captain De Moleyns. The
second relief, at 3 o’clock, gave 200 men with 20 sappers, while the
numbers furnished for the left attack were 400 under Major Chapman,
assistant engineer.

In the following night 800 men, guided by 24 sappers, were sent into the
right attack, and 150 of the infantry and 25 sappers into the left. The
chevaux-de-frise in the Woronzoff ravine, which did good service in
checking the advance of the enemy’s riflemen, was now moved from its
original position to one in line with the memorable quarries, so that
the rear works were not likely to be attacked by Russian columns
stealing up the valley. A banquette was also made behind the iron
barricade for a row of sharpshooters to pick off the artillerymen
serving the Russian guns. The firing on various parts of the works was
heavy through the night, and bouquets of shells were discharged with no
better effect than slightly wounding three or four men, one of whom was
private Thomas Luscombe.

On the 4th at night, four sappers and fifty men in the right portion of
the trench in front of the quarries, pushed the sap to the right and
widened and deepened the passage that led to it. Two light balls sent
among them fell so near, one in front the other in rear, that, enclosed
for nearly a quarter of an hour within a blaze, they were compelled to
bend under the low parapet to save themselves from the effects of a
furious shelling. Relays of grape succeeded, intermingled with Miniés,
all striking the work but none injuring the workmen. Stout as was the
opposition no less than twelve gabions were fixed by the sappers, and
more would have followed, but the moon, appearing with a steady light
uneffaced by driving clouds, caused the party to be withdrawn from the
trench.

As cover could not be procured with sufficient expedition in the saps,
earth was brought in baskets from a distance to make screens for the
miners whilst blasting the rock. Excessive was the labour necessary to
form the foremost trenches, and the perils attending the exertions of
the miners, who made head against extraordinary difficulties, were only
mitigated by wiles which experience and vigilance had taught them to
employ. It was a subject of astonishment how the rock—that giant
obstacle which appeared in every trench—could, in the face of a keen
enemy, be thrown up and worked into solid mounds of parapet. A passage
was cut that night in a novel manner with as much design and
self-possession as on an English railway. One party descended the hill,
the other forced up from the valley; and though the labourers
encountered no end of trials from the obtrusion of rock, they effected a
junction, building as they proceeded, a parapet two feet six inches in
height. The miners were brawny fellows—each, in truth, a Hercules.
Nothing overmatched their strength and industry; every foot driven in
advance was full of interest; and in a few nights more, an uninterrupted
communication of 250 yards with sufficient cover was completed from the
left of the round hill parallel into the sombre graveyard. This parallel
was a wonderful work. Its most advanced point was a place of arms. From
its form and strength it was called by the sappers “the double elbow.”
Jealous of the gradual development of our colossal system of saps and
batteries, the enemy poured streams of grape and canister into the
advances, causing many casualties. Hand balls in groups of forty or
fifty thrown from mortars, were added to the roll of deadly agencies
employed to pick off the miners.

No longer of use, the old engineer hut in the first parallel was pulled
down and the barrels which made it splinter proof, were turned to
account in improving the revetments of Nos. 14 and 16 batteries on the
left attack. The picket-house battery, No. 6 armed with three heavy guns
and three 10-inch mortars, posted on the French side of the ravine, was
also demolished, and its serviceable materials used in the advanced
works. The battery took its name from a deserted residence that stood in
the glen a little below it, and which, from the commencement of the
siege was occupied by a picket. The picket-house, known as such, _par
excellence_, was situated on the crest of the Woronzoff ravine to the
rear of the 21-gun battery. It was first the look-out place of the
generals, and lastly the rendezvous of officers and amateurs of all
countries; but even that interesting quarter yielded to the devastating
necessities of the siege and was razed to the ground by some sappers.
Its rafters, planks, and doors, torn by many a shell, were converted
into platforms and splintering for magazines and huts. By degrees the
walls were removed, chiefly for building hospitals; and fragments of
wood, turned into articles of taste, were retained by the curious as
memorials of the picket-house. Nothing was left of that celebrated
structure, associated with so many exciting reminiscences, but the
crumbled vestiges of its humble stateliness designated by the French “La
ruine des Anglais.”

Corporal Lockwood on the 7th had charge of fifty men and three sappers
forming a parapet with stones in the communication leading from the
fourth parallel to the graveyard. The sappers attended to the building
of the wall and the line handed to them the blocks and fragments. In
time not a stone could be found not even as large as a walnut; and in
order to keep the builders at work, the corporal spread a few of his
party over the hill side in front to collect materiél. In this situation
they were uncovered. Just then a fire-ball dropped among them, and on
came discharges of grape and shells which struck down the corporal
wounding him severely in the right thigh by the splinter of a shell.

About this time the sapper carpenters built a wooden bridge across the
communication from the fourth boyau to No. 14 battery on the left
attack. The battery rose out of the centre of the third parallel, and
the approach stretched obliquely across the hill. This and one or two
other similar constructions were the only instances during the siege of
bridges being thrown under fire. The ramps formed out of the solid rock
were blasted and shaped by six miners. Indeed the entire communication,
about sixty feet, was driven through rock with no little skill.

On the right the sapper carpenters erected a splinter-proof hut for the
general of the trenches in the new zigzag from the left of the second
parallel. The struts and timbers were strong and braced, to resist, as
far as contrivance could ensure safety, the shocks of heavy projectiles.
Its roof was formed of fascines resting on rafters, thickened by three
layers of sand-bags with earth riddled in among them to fill up the
vacuities. The hut was nine feet six inches long by six feet broad and
about seven in height, with a passage into it just ample enough for a
good sized man to enter. There was no royal road to safety; no means of
isolating this interesting quarter from the chances of danger. Sunken as
it was, bringing its roof only a few feet above the level of the trench,
and protected by traverses and parapets, splinters of shells and large
shot were lying in its environs in dismal corroboration of the fact that
the siege was no respecter of persons nor recognised any spot as
entitled to the privilege of escape.

Seeing a collection of gabions idle, some French soldiers of the 20th
and 27th regiments of the line, carried off about a hundred from the
store and broke them up for firewood. Private Calderwood in charge of
them, failing to make his bad French understood, remonstrated with the
depredators by an extravagant display of gesture and grimace. The allies
were humourous and treated the appeal of the irate sapper with more
risibility than was agreeable. Lieutenant Darrah of the engineers
appearing, he spoke of the abstraction to one of their officers, telling
him the gabions were British property; and as if to add weight to his
assertion, pointed out the unarmed soldier who had charge of them.
Without attempting to excuse the appropriation, the French officer
shrugging his shoulders, merely observed, that as the sapper had no
carbine to show the nature of his authority, he could not be regarded as
a sentinel; and so the gabions were borne away to cook French soup!

Next night 2 privates and 50 of the line were deputed to the right
advance of the Gordon attack, who, in the face of light-balls and grape,
staked no less than 79 gabions. Under the circumstances this was a feat
in war. Nevertheless, from the briskness of the fire, there was an
unwillingness to continue the sap, and the private in charge withdrew
the party for a time to the left advanced trench, reporting the
arrangement to Lieutenant Graham, who indisposed to spare the labour of
a moment from the work, repaired himself to the spot. No sooner had he
and the sapper arrived, than a shot bounded before them, and scattering
the stones with great force, wounded Lieutenant Graham so severely that
the trenches for a while were deprived of his services. The fire on the
party in its new position, being still unrelaxed, the line-officer who
commanded felt it his duty to take his men away, telling the sapper left
in charge, that he regarded the place too perilous for line-men to work
in. Inferentially, it was not too dangerous for sappers; but as a
solitary individual could not hope to do much in so exposed a situation,
he was removed by the assistant-engineer, Captain Wolseley, 90th
regiment, to other work in the foremost trenches. Private Bernard Murray
was this night wounded in the right hand, and next day privates James
Mehan in the right ankle and Peter McNulty slightly by rifle bullets.
The last had done good service in repairing an embrasure under fire at
the request of a naval officer; and besides being in brigade orders for
his conduct was given a donation by Lord Raglan.

On the night of the 10th, 18 sappers provided for the Gordon attack were
told off to the following works under Captain Cooke of the engineers and
Major Campbell, 46th, assistant-engineer:—

 Sappers. Men.
    3     200— new trench in front of No. 18 battery; placed and filled
                 143 gabions.
    1      38— building 18 battery.
    1      41— building traverses in 19 battery, and trenching an
                 approach to it.
    1      21— carrying platforms.
    2      50— left advanced trench; placed and filled 14 gabions and
                 improved old part of trench.
    2      80— right advanced trench; placed and filled 42 gabions, and
                 connected the cutting with end of new wall.
    4      60— wall in continuation of right advanced trench; built it up
                 four feet high and two feet six inches thick, grape
                 proof.
    3      90— turning the advanced Russian trench into a parallel, in
                 which considerable progress was made.
    1      20— excavating for small arm ammunition magazine and engineer
                 hut.

The above detail, taken with all its precision from the diary of the
siege, may be regarded as the type of employment and distribution of the
sappers at this era of the struggle.

About this time was finished No. 15 mortar battery in the third
parallel. It was commenced on the 24th June, under the foremanship of
second-corporal James Hill, who since the middle of May had been
employed as one of Major Bent’s permanent day overseers. The way to it,
from No. 14 battery, was driven through rock when occurred a good stiff
clayey soil, upon which the new formation was founded. Wholly built of
earth accessible at the spot, without a single sand-bag to assist its
solidity, it was reckoned to be the boldest construction on the left
attack. Stretching along the trench for 200 feet, with a parapet about
10 feet deep and 26 to 30 broad, it covered an armament of twelve
10-inch mortars, which were fed from three strong magazines and a
shell-room. Free from the annoyance of cross-fires, there were no
traverses in the work; and it was remarkable that during its progress
only three shells pitched into it in day-time. One killed a line-man at
the mouth of a magazine, another burst in the distance, and the third
passed between Major Bent and the corporal. It was near enough to be
alarming, but both were instantly prostrate, and on exploding the
splinters flew high above them. When the battery opened fire, the earth
shook down in various places, especially at the angles; to remedy which
powder-barrels were added to the revetment. No work perhaps throughout
the siege cost less labour in repairs and less casualties than No. 15
battery.

On the 14th July was commenced the fifth parallel of the Gordon attack
on most intricate ground. The pioneers were horribly exposed to a
cannonading from the Redan, Garden batteries, and Bastion du Mât. Hours
of dogged labour failed to show an excavation which was worth the
trouble of calculating its dimensions. Earth was collected with as much
care as flour in a famine and brought on men’s shoulders from a distance
to give quality to the cover. Every stone dislodged by the miners,
treasured as if it possessed intrinsic value, was pitched into the
gabion or added to the parapet behind. Upon the tier of gabions forming
the revetment, sand-bags were laid in courses as fast as they could be
delivered by the line. The trials of this foremost work were
incalculable; the placement of every gabion was opposed, and every inch
of progress furnished its obstacles. On one occasion several of the
baskets were thrown down and not a few were broken and rendered useless.
Difficult to labour under such circumstances, most of the working party
were withdrawn; but all the breaches nevertheless were made good before
the morning at a cost of two sappers and six of the line wounded.

Blanched bones buried for years in the Russian cemetery turned up in the
excavations, took their places in the parapets with blocks of rock,
broken tombstones, shattered coffins, and consecrated earth. It was not
a time to care about memories, or removing marks fixed with hallowed
care to point out the sites of favoured remains, but an innate feeling
of reverence for the dead prevented the sappers and workmen, as much as
in them lay, from disturbing the dread repositories of the dead or
defacing the memorials, rude as many of them were, which filled the
graveyard with melancholy records of the departed. This consideration
for the relics of poor humanity did not produce among the workmen any
false sentiment with regard to the living; and on every side powerful
works and engineering stratagems were in operation to weaken the vigour
and hauteur of a brave but insolent enemy.

Ceaseless perseverance drove on the works and sustained valour kept the
men at their posts. One trench after another was added to the vast
net-work of defences, which, crowding on the edges of the hills,
descended the valleys as if pushed down by some capillary law. In this
way the glens were crossed more than twice with saps. New approaches
were thrown out in front like so many antennæ striving to clutch the
enemy’s works. Still the progress was slow, for the oolitic rocks out of
which the hills were formed obtruded everywhere, defying from their
hardness all arts but those of blasting. Rifle-pits on the right were
constructed on the very rim of the hill in front of the fourth parallel,
to which they were connected and each to the other by long zigzags and
passages. One built in a secluded nook or gorge commanded the
chevaux-de-frise which stretched across the Woronzoff road. About this
time the use of hay-band hurdles was resorted to with fair success as
screens to the embrasures, to cover the artillerists at the guns. The
pressure in front for materials caused some of the field-battlements in
the rear to be dismantled, and the stores and armaments to be employed
in the new works, while a few coopers augmented the stock by recovering
the staves of broken casks and rehooping, them with iron.

So well, indeed, were the extensive and complicated requirements of the
siege attended to, that Major-General Jones, a close observer of the
exertions of his force, commended it in these encouraging words on the
16th July. “The officers of engineers and the men of the royal sappers
and miners continue to perform their duties in a very zealous manner.”
None flinched, none evaded his allotted labour; but many, from the
“great heat of the trenches,” and the constant recurrence of a hard and
fatiguing duty, were worn out or laid up and consumed by fevers. Truly
wasting was the season, very light breezes only being astir to mitigate
its oppressiveness. Strong hot winds at times, and heavy thunderstorms
with frightful lightning playing above in angry forks or blazing sheets,
told of its sultriness. Genial showers, however, now and again occurred
to relieve it, which had the effect, in some degree, of refreshing the
men, and giving an inspiriting spur to the flagging energies of
overtasked industry.

-----

Footnote 188:

  A Russian officer who could speak English fluently had charge of a
  searching party to collect the dead. Entering freely into conversation
  with an officer of the 14th foot, he expressed a hope that the day
  would soon come when the belligerents would again be cordial friends.
  Warming with the occasion he asked the officer and his men if they
  were disposed to make any exchanges with him as pledges of the
  interview and probably hereafter of recognition. Corporal R. Jasper
  Fitzgerald of the third company, was specially spoken to by the
  Russian; and feeling in his pockets to meet the wishes of the
  inquirer, mentioned his regret that he had nothing to offer except a
  penny. “Let me see it,” said he, and Fitzgerald at once presented it.
  “Ah!” exclaimed the Russian officer with evident pleasure, “It’s one
  of old George’s! If this is a fair exchange you are welcome to it.”
  And the good-natured officer handed Fitzgerald a handsome silver
  devotional cross. To the British officer he gave a silver snuff-box.

  In the peregrinations Fitzgerald felt it desirable to make to increase
  his acquaintance with the locality, thinking it not improbable he
  might soon have a “job” there, he entered a house near the cemetery,
  and not wishing to quit it without some memento of his visit, nothing
  apparently turned up for acceptance more valuable or less portable
  than a sofa! A burly sailor and he shouldered the huge piece of
  Russian furniture and stumped away with it wonderfully tickled with
  the idea of the fun it would occasion when they reached the trenches;
  but while jogging on, an alarm being given of the termination of the
  truce, the bearers instantly dropped the “family seat” and run for
  their lives. The alarm proved to be a false one, and Fitzgerald and
  the jolly Tar, having like coursers retraced their steps to recover
  the spoil, found that swifter feet than theirs had taken a fancy to
  the prize and vanished with it.

Footnote 189:

  The corporal belonged to Captain Brine’s company. With a warm
  appreciation of military merit, the lady of the Captain presented
  Collins with a miniature legion of honour, in order to impress the
  Queen, when she reviewed three of the Crimean companies at Aldershot,
  with a more adequate notion of his services than would have been
  conveyed to Her Majesty had he only worn the ribbon of a chevalier. At
  that time the French decorations had not been issued to the troops.

  He had a brother with him in the Crimea, so exactly like himself in
  face, figure, and speech, it was perplexing to say which was Joseph
  which George. The old story of the two Dromios, to a certain extent,
  was acted over again in their persons. Both were useful and brave;
  neither more so than the other. Joseph obtained all the honours which
  a gallant soldier could claim and to which he was fully entitled, but
  George seemed to have been totally eclipsed, no one could explain how,
  by his brother. Joseph, indeed, was considered to be George, and
  George the veritable Joseph; and so in this “Comedy of Errors,”
  George, by the misfortune of resemblance to his brother, was lost
  among the undecorated.

  It is almost a marvel to add, that Joseph, though a first corporal,
  wearing orders that none of his rank had obtained, deserted from the
  corps soon after landing in this country from Sebastopol.

                                 1855.
                         17th July-25th August.
                          SIEGE OF SEBASTOPOL.

Trials in carrying on the works—Fifth parallel, right attack—Detachments
  and statistics—Spirited conduct of corporal Ross—Neglect of
  non-commissioned officers—Trench dress of the line—Shifts of the
  miners to form the parallels and approaches—Siege minutæ—Trenches
  flooded—A sergeant, in the absence of an engineer officer, in charge
  of the lines—Casualties—Sortie by the Russians—Sergeant Docherty
  examines the chevaux-de-frise—Overseers of the miners—The
  carpenters—Renewal of the chevaux-de-frise demolished in the
  sortie—Casualties during a moonlight night—Exertions of sergeant
  Jarvis and party; the sailors—Strange sensation produced by the blow
  of a shell splinter—Resources for field-work purposes—Progress of the
  trenches and batteries—Removal of the right attack sappers to the camp
  of the left attack—They thus escape a subsequent catastrophe—Fifth
  bombardment—Cost of a whiff of tobacco—Activity of the sappers in the
  batteries and works—Anecdote of a new comer visiting the works—No. 17
  battery, left attack—Corporal Jenkins, the master carpenter of the
  left attack—The white-banded cap—Fifth parallel, right attack—Breaking
  ground from it for the last approach to the Redan—Workmanlike industry
  and vigour of corporal Ross in the sap—Corporal William Baker, 7th
  company—Progress in the advanced trenches; sergeant Hale of the
  guards; corporal Stanton—Prolongation of fifth parallel, right
  attack—Effects of wounds.

In the trenches were distributed, on the 17th July, a working party of
550 men superintended by 97 sappers. Of the latter, 73 were on the left
where the mines demanded the skilled employment of men used to blasting.
Several carpenters were detailed to the platforms and magazines, and
others were sprinkled singly to the different works, embrasures and
traverses. The majority were in advance prolonging the parallels and
blowing up the rock. On the right attack, corporal George Luke was
killed. A first-class miner and sapper, he was of signal service in the
trenches, and his steady conduct throughout the siege added to the
credit he had received for his exertions at Bomarsund.

In the night an old Russian trench, which by degrees had been reversed,
was connected with the fifth parallel on the right attack by 11 sappers
and 200 men, while 4 of the corps and 100 linesmen joined the approach
from the left of No. 19 battery to the fourth parallel. These junctions
were both effected under Lieutenant Brine of the engineers. Of the fifth
parallel, a moiety was formed wholly of rubble masonry. Lacking gabions
and revetting materials, the stones thrown up in blasting were the
readiest means of forming the parapet. This rubble mound, forming a line
of trench for about 450 feet, and stretching along the brow of the hill
to the left of a hollow in the rock, which had acquired in official
description the designation of the “little ravine,” was completed and
backed in with earth by the 28th July. Being so near the enemy’s works,
and disturbed by daily showers of grape, shell, &c., the construction of
this stone parapet formed one of the curiosities of the siege.

Both attacks were hourly approaching nearer to those extraordinary
structures it was hoped every day to storm. It still required time to
render the preparations complete for the dénouement. The ever present
rock, covered only by a few inches of soil, greatly increased the trials
of the workmen. Sacrifices of energy and strength were made in its
removal that ended in casualties unknown in former wars. The siege was
one continuous battle; yet it was more than strange, considering the
ferocity of the cannonade, that comparatively so few casualties
occurred. Engines to destroy human life in the most approved methods
were complete among the Russians; still they did not scruple to resort
to the uncivilized use of horse-shoes and scrap-iron to mow down the
assailants. So close were the parallels to the enemy’s works, that, on a
clear day, a finger could easily be discovered above the parapet. Where
the cover was scanty, it was a virtue to double up one-self into a
cramped position and labour like a giant. The miners and sappers in
every contortion of body, wheedled themselves under cover and stole
onwards with insidious certainty; but to preserve a strict concealment
was not an easy matter. For ambitious men the times were tempting;
opportunities seemed to impel one forward, or to unbend one-self into an
erect posture in delivering a blow; for, intent on progress, the mind
forgot dangers, and it was just then that the ardent man let his head or
his arm appear above the parapet, or his leg stray beyond the last
pitched gabion, when he was struck down. It was different, however, at
night, when all were alike veiled by the darkness. Works then were
commonly prosecuted on the open in front of batteries, on the tops of
merlons and magazines, and the crests of parapets. Experienced sappers
after dusk seldom sought to shield themselves by the sap-roller or
mantlet. A check to their progress, it was almost always cast aside to
be used by men who feared to go ahead without it.

Private Rowland Nicholas was struck severely in the right foot while
working in the fifth parallel of the right attack, and died of his
wounds. The firing was more true than severe and eight casualties
occurred in this parallel during the night.

There were nine companies in the Crimea on the 21st July, each of
reduced strength, giving a total of 678 sergeants and rank and file. Of
these there were 97 detailed to the following places:—

                                   Sergts. Corporals. Bug. Privates. Total.
 St. Paul near Kertch.                0        2       0      12      14
 Scutari                              2        3       0      21      26
 Balaklava                            2        6       0      22      30
 The monastery                        0        0       0       2       2
 Telegraph stations                   1        1       2      10      14
 Head-quarters of the army            1        2       0       8      11
                                                                      ——
                                                                      97
 Otherwise employed, and as batmen    5        0       1      33      39
                                                                      ——
                                                      Total           136
                                                                      ——

At St. Paul the detachment conjoined with the French and Turks in
raising defences for the protection of the post. The men at Scutari
attended to the artificers’ work in the hospitals and barracks, many
being foremen, and sergeant William Sargent overseer. This
non-commissioned officer was soon after discharged and appointed civil
foreman of works at that great invalid depôt. Corporal Rinhy was the
military foreman, and a most energetic and useful man he was found.
Other non-commissioned officers were detached to the hospital-stations
on the Bosphorus as overseers. Sergeant Barnard was at Pera, sergeant
Lynn at Kulalee, corporal Cann at Ismid,[190] and corporal J. T.
Collins, after leaving the trenches in consequence of his wound, was
appointed sapper superintendent in the island of Proti, where the
Russian prisoners were confined, and for whose accommodation huts were
erected and an old Greek monastery converted into an hospital. At
Balaklava the detachment superintended the removal and erection of the
huts at the camp and elsewhere, and fulfilled various duties in relation
to the stores, wharves, and defences; while the party at the monastery
and with the telegraph were busy in carrying out the details of that
interesting field adjunct. Those at headquarters were employed in
offices and as orderlies. Sappers were appointed bâtmen from the
impossibility of retaining civil servants with the officers, and thus a
rule had been broken, which for forty-four years had been adhered to
without infringement. Of the remaining number on the rolls, there were
90 men sick in camp, and 59 dispersed in invalid ships and in the
hospitals on the Bosphorus. Taking all these details into account, there
were only 393 fighting-men left for trench-work, which will at once show
how hard must have been the duties of that half-battalion. As, moreover,
there were other indispensable services in camp which could not be
relinquished, it followed that the usual routine of the companies
necessarily appointed the same men to the trenches every other day or
intervening night; and this, continued without intermission for months,
amid varying vicissitudes of weather, of fearful exposure and untold
hardships and suffering, gives an aspect of sapper character and
endurance which few will be slow to eulogize. Indeed several of the
non-commissioned officers charged with particular services, were every
day in the trenches and sometimes even at night. Nor should it be
omitted to observe that the extreme heat of the season had so enervated
the men, that none but the most acclimatized and inured to fatigue could
bear up against its exhausting influence. Thinned, therefore, by
disease, hard work, long vigils, and night damps in the trenches and
mines, the numbers of the sick fluctuated to such an extent, that the
proportion above stated was at times considerably overshot. The
reinforcements which arrived from England to fill up the places of
casualties almost to a man fell sick from these causes, and many wanting
sinew and hardihood were removed as invalids from the camp without
seeing the trenches.

There were some works in the advance which required a nice appreciation
of intention on the part of the operatives to carry them into effect. Of
these the connection of an approach with a parallel, and one trench with
another, were among those which called for particular circumspection.
Expert men were invariably selected for those duties, whose wariness
greatly mitigated their risks. Few appeared to be more skilful in these
employments than their comrades, but on the night of the 21st, corporal
John Ross, untiring, patient, and intrepid, pushed on like a master in
the sap, and connected, under showers of grape, enough to disturb the
equanimity of the sternest coolness, the fourth parallel with an old
Russian rifle-pit in front. It will help to elucidate the business of a
sapper to describe the process by which the corporal accomplished this
service. With 200 men and a couple of privates of his own corps, he was
sent forward, after dark, to trace and form an approach between the
fourth parallel and the Russian advanced trench. Halting his men in the
parallel, each bearing an intrenching tool and a gabion, he moved to the
front with his two sappers and traced the zig-zag. Without losing a
moment he returned to the party, and to prevent confusion, led them from
the trench in single file. As each man arrived at his place, one sapper
staked the gabion, and the other instructed the workman with respect to
the space to be left for a berm and how to act in forming the parapet.
So pushed on the line of gabions, till the end one touching the
rifle-pit, approached within forty yards of the Russian trench. All the
way the ground was solid rock. To make up for this disadvantage the
corporal sent to the depôt for baskets and had the earth brought up a
distance of sixty or seventy yards. So spiritedly was everything done
through his own laborious example, that the gabions were not only filled
but cover sufficient was obtained for the miners to work in the approach
the next day. To a brisk musketry fire the party was exposed the whole
time, but the darkness of the night favoured the exertions of the
corporal and his men, and they left the boyau without casualty. Corporal
Ross’s conduct in effecting the junction was noticed in brigade orders,
and considered so deserving of reward that General Simpson ordered him
to be paid a gratuity of two pounds. Private James Lacy of the ninth
company was also noticed for his zeal in the work.

Next day private Nathanial Gillard, a rough but hardy miner, was killed
in the advance trenches on the right attack.

While no instance of applause in which the merits of the men are
concerned have been omitted, it would be unfair to hide any
indiscretions which may have subjected any of them to censure. These
pages would be incomplete if commendable deeds only were paraded and the
objectionable ones suppressed. Well is it, however, that no case of
cowardice has occurred in our ranks, although instances of natural
timidity were sometimes discovered. Neglect in the trenches amount to
offences among the sappers which in other corps would not be entitled to
more than ordinary notice. A flagrant instance occurred on the night of
the 22nd July. Very little work was done though the party was large. A
sharp fire was maintained upon the linesmen which made it difficult to
keep them to their tasks. Greatly as this may have operated in retarding
the works, the indolence of the workmen was chiefly attributable to the
carelessness of the non-commissioned officers of sappers in charge, who
added to their heedlessness a disregard of orders repeatedly given them.
Lying down in the trenches, the parties idled away their hours under the
apparent sanction of the overseers, and the names of three
non-commissioned officers seemingly unimpressed with the importance of
their responsibility, were mentioned to General Simpson.

On the 25th the linesmen appeared in the trenches in a brown linen
fatigue suit, like so many storehousemen from a sugar refining
establishment. Unrestrained by stout cloth and tight sleeves they worked
with obvious energy. This novel dress had also the advantage of enabling
the engineer to distinguish the workmen at a glance from the guard of
the trenches, and of assisting the sappers to look after their parties
and prevent attempts at straying or shirking.

On the left three more rifle-pits were sunk in sheltered spots to
command positions from which danger threatened. In broad daylight the
blasters carried out their duties in the communication leading to the
French picket near the cemetery. Many sappers were pushed into the
foremost trenches of both attacks, who blew out the rock with a spirit
that suffered no abatement, though the same men for many successive days
had given their exertions in removing impediments which nothing but
mining could reduce. Impossible to get earth in those difficult
trenches, it was even scraped from the face of the rock, and picked out
of crevices and indentations in which the sweeping wind or the rushing
torrent had lodged it. Soil carried from the rear was husbanded in
diminutive heaps, and shovelled at night on the incipient works. Clay
also was gathered for the purpose and borne in baskets to the front.
Walls of loose stones were formed in short lengths along the different
traces to protect the sappers in their progress. Without this temporary
expedient they could not have advanced. Where their lives were
imminently imperilled, the trench was not thrown forward by day, but was
simply deepened or widened by numerous small explosions. The boulders
and stones thus loosened were worked unsquared into the parapets at
dark, and all vacuities stuffed with clay or earth. So effectual were
the efforts of the blasters, it was ascertained that one sapper in
daylight upheaved enough rock to occupy nine men for four hours at night
in giving it a lodgment in the parapet.

In the valleys the besiegers had penetrated to some old walls and crazy
structures, which formed the buildings of a wild and scattered suburb.
All these were made to serve their uses, either as parts of the
trenches, or in furnishing materials for platforms and magazines. A few
brigades of carpenters having the run of the batteries, took pride in
the efficiency of their labours. In the front parallels sand-bag
loop-holes, and others of wooden troughs after the Russian fashion, were