orth side of which was formed by the south front of the
fortress, another by the sea, and the third by a cliff edge leading
down into the wide valley below the Tchernaya and Balaklava. Reversing
the order of attack at the Alma, the Allies now changed flanks, the
British from Balaklava taking the right as far as they could afford to
go (this flank had later on to be extended by the French), while the
French from Kamiesch Bay occupied the left of the besieging line. Thus
it was not even a complete investment of the southern side. The right
of the English section was at the beginning quite _en l’air_. There
was no covering army to watch and meet the Russian army known to be
outside and free to act. Balaklava was fortified, camps were formed
on the upland; the Woronzoff road, by which Todleben, in command at
Sebastopol, communicated with the interior of Russia, was defended
by a few weak redoubts held by Turks; and the camps of the cavalry
brigades were formed in the lowland between the road and the upland
cliffs. Nothing could prevent the continual reinforcement of the
garrison, nothing could prevent an attack by Mentschikoff’s army from
Baghtcheserai; but the investing force must in that case turn its back
upon the defenders of the fortress to meet the attack of the relieving
army.

Sebastopol was neither to be invested nor reduced. The siege was merely
a means to an end, that of draining the resources of the adversary, and
the cost of doing so, both in lives and in suffering, was great in the
extreme.

The siege itself is too complex to deal with in detail. The place was
bombarded on the 17th October, and the fleet co-operated. The first
sortie was made on the 26th; by January 1854 there were 14,000 men
in hospital, and there were scarcely any horses; there was a second
sortie in March; on the 9th April there was a second bombardment, but
nothing came of it; on the 6th June there was a third bombardment and
an assault, and the Mamelon was taken; the fourth bombardment on the
17th June was also followed by an a