During the summer of 1855 the feeling of the country grew more and more warlike. The failure of the negotiations at Vienna had touched the national pride. The State visit in the spring to the English Court of the Emperor Napoleon, and his determination not to withdraw his troops from the Crimea until some decisive victory was won, had rekindled its enthusiasm. The repulse at the Redan, the death of Lord Raglan, and the vainglorious boast of Prince Gortschakoff, who declared 'that the hour was at hand when the pride of the enemies of Russia would be lowered, and their armies swept from our soil like chaff blown away by the wind,' rendered all dreams of diplomatic solution impossible, and made England, in spite of the preachers of peace at any price, determined to push forward her quarrel to the bitter end. The nation, to borrow the phrase of one of the shrewdest political students of the time, had now begun to consider the war in the Crimea as a 'duel with Russia,' and pride and pluck were more than ever called into play, both at home and abroad, in its maintenance. The war, therefore, took its course. Ample supplies and reinforcements were despatched to the troops, and the Allies, under the command of General Simpson and General Pelissier, pushed forward the campaign with renewed vigour. Sardinia and Sweden had joined the alliance, and on August 16 the troops of the former, acting in concert with the French, drove back the Russians, who had made a sortie along the valley of the Tchernaya. After a month's bombardment by the Allies, the Malakoff, a redoubt which commanded Sebastopol, was taken by the French; but the English troops were twice repulsed in their attack on the Redan. Gortschakoff and Todleben were no longer able to withstand the fierce and daily renewed bombardment. The forts on the south side were, therefore, blown up, the ships were sunk, and the army which had gallantly defended the place retired to a position of greater security with the result that Sebastopol fell on September 8, and the war was virtually over. Sir Evelyn Wood lately drew attention to the fact that forty out of every hundred of the soldiers who served before Sebastopol in the depth of that terrible winter of 1854 lie there, or in the Scutari cemetery--slain, not by the sword, but by privation, exposure, disease, and exertions beyond human endurance. [Sidenote: ALL FOR NAUGHT]