The number of the English soldiers in the field fell lower and lower. The Queen wrote to King Leopold, "We have but one thought, and so has the nation, and that is--Sebastopol. Such a time of suspense, anxiety, and excitement, I never expected to see, much less to feel." On the 13th of November telegrams arrived with the news of the battle of Inkermann, fought against terrible odds on the 5th. The Queen wrote herself to Lord Raglan to tell of her "pride and joy" at receiving the intelligence of "the glorious, but alas! bloody victory of the 5th." She conferred upon him the baton of a Field- Marshal. Her Majesty also addressed a kind and sympathising letter to the widow of Sir George Cathcart. The Queen wrote with high indignation to the King of the Belgians after the battle of Inkermann: "They (the enemy) behaved with the greatest barbarity; many of our poor officers who were only slightly wounded were brutally butchered on the ground. Several lived long enough to say this. When poor Sir G. Cathcart fell mortally wounded, his faithful and devoted military secretary (Colonel Charles Seymour) ... sprang from his horse, and with one arm--he was wounded in the other--supported his dying chief, when three wretches came and bayoneted him. This is monstrous, and requisitions have been sent by the two commanders-in-chief to Menschikoff to remonstrate...." The winter of 1854-55 was a sorrowful and care-laden time. Little or no progress was made in the war, while in the meanwhile the sufferings of the soldiers from a defective commissariat, a rigorous climate, and the recurring ravages of cholera, were frightful. The very winds and waves seemed to fight against the allies and to side with "Holy Russia." Never had the Black Sea been visited by such storms and wrecks. From the palace to the cottage, women's fingers worked eagerly and unweariedly knitting comforters and muffatees to protect the throats and wrists of the shivering men. We have heard that the greatest lady in the land deigned thus to serve her soldiers. We have been told of a cravat worked in crochet by a queen's fingers which fell to the share of a gallant young officer in the trenches--the same brave lad who had carried, unscathed, the colours of his regiment to the heights of the Alma. The hospitals were in as disorganised a state as the commissariat, and Mr. Sydney Herbert, well-nigh in despair, had the bright inspiration of sending to the seat of war Florence Nightingale, the daughter and co-heiress of a Derbyshire squire, with a staff of nurses.