thousand men, and the Allies about three thousand four hundred. The Allies might have marched into Sebastopol with very little resistance, but their commanders were uncertain as to the number of troops defending the city, and hesitated to make the attempt.
On the 17th of October the siege began. A grand attack was made by the Allies, but was unsuccessful, and eight days later the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava was made. On the 5th of November the Russians attacked the Allies at Inkerman, and were repulsed. The battle of Inkerman was fought in a fog by forty thousand Russians against fifteen thousand French and English. The latter had the advantage of position and weapons. The Allies frankly credited the Russian troops with the greatest bravery in returning repeatedly to the attack as their battalions were mowed down by the steady fire of the defenders.
During the winter the siege was pushed, and the allied army suffered greatly from cholera, cold, and sickness. The siege continued during spring and summer; the Allies made an unsuccessful attack on the Malakoff and Redan forts on the 18th of June, 1855, and all through the long months there were daily conflicts between the opposing armies.
The Russians sunk several ships of their fleet in the harbor of Sebastopol soon after the battle of the Alma, but retained others for possible future use. On the 8th of September the French captured the Malakoff fort, the English at the same time making an unsuccessful attack on the Redan. The fall of these forts was followed by the evacuation of Sebastopol, the objective point of the war, and was therefore the decisive event of the campaign.
An incident of the siege, though forming no part of its military history, has been so admirably told by Bayard Taylor, that it is worthy of repetition in this narrative. It is as follows:
