The battle of Inkerman was the last great battle of the Crimean campaign fought round Sebastopol. The rest of the story of the long siege is one that deals with the heroic if unobtrusive work of the “sappers and miners,” the Royal Engineers, those “handy men” of the Army; with the tale of the trenches and rifle-pits, wherein men carried their lives in their hands night after night; with sudden sorties in the dead of night or the mists of early dawn; and with desperate attempts at storming the outworks of the great Russian fortress, the Redan, the Mamelon Tower, and the Malakoff. Such a siege would have taxed to the utmost the powers of any army, but when we remember how its difficulties were added to by the severity of the Russian winter and the hardships under which our brave soldiers laboured through sickness and for the want of clothing and other necessities of life, we must account it a truly marvellous achievement. Sir William Russell, who was the _Times_ correspondent in the war, fearlessly spoke his mind on the scandalous mismanagement that prevailed, and from his vivid letters we know how too often the stores ran out, how the hospital accommodation was insufficient, and how but for the exertions of Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted nurses we should have lost far more than the 24,000 men who died from cholera and other diseases, or were killed by the enemy’s bullets. Of those days and nights in the trenches Lord Wolseley can speak from experience, for as a young engineering officer he saw some stirring service before Sebastopol. The loss of his right eye, and a long scar on his left cheek, bear witness to one thrilling night’s work in an advance sap. He was out and about again, however, as soon as possible, for every man that could stand up was needed. It is Lord Wolseley’s boast that, apart from the time he spent in hospital, he was never absent from the trenches at night except on one memorable occasion. This was when he and a brother-officer made a hasty Christmas pudding together, compounding it in a hollowed-out shell, with a shot for pestle. The “very bad suet” which they got from Balaclava, or the fact that the pudding had to be devoured ere it was half boiled, may be accounted sufficient explanation for the young officer’s breakdown. “At about twelve o’clock,” he says pathetically, “I thought I was going to expire.” In giving the record of the V.C. heroes who won glory in the long months that elapsed between the battle of Inkerman and the fall of Sebastopol, we may well begin with the Royal Engineers, the popular “Mudlarks,” whose proud mottoes are “Ubique” (everywhere) and “Quo Fas et Gloria ducunt” (where right and glory lead). Eight of the many Crosses to their credit were gained in the Crimea. Let us see in what manner these were won.