When the Royal Irish reached England they were quartered at Chatham and Canterbury. At first there seemed no likelihood of their being actively employed, for when the regiment had left India many men had volunteered into other corps, and the climate of Burma had told so heavily on those who still remained with the Colours that a large number of them were unfit for active service. Fortune, however, befriended the XVIIIth; in October the flank companies under Brevet-Lieutenant-Colonel Edwards were ordered to Windsor, to strengthen the militia battalion which had replaced the regiment of Foot Guards at the Royal Castle. Her Majesty, Queen Victoria was much impressed by the bronzed and soldierly appearance of the detachment, and learning from Colonel Edwards that the regiment was most anxious to serve in the war, she was pleased to direct that the XVIIIth should proceed forthwith to the Crimea, where reinforcements were urgently required. As the result of the medical examination proved that less than four hundred men were fit for the campaign, volunteers were invited from other regiments: four hundred joined from the 94th, a hundred and fifty from the 51st, and smaller contingents from other corps. On December 8, 1854, the regiment, eight hundred and forty-eight strong,[161] embarked at Portsmouth in the s.s. _Magdalene_, and reached the Crimea at the end of the year, about three months and a half after the Allies had made good their footing on Russian soil. To enable the reader to understand the condition of the British Expeditionary Force when the _Magdalene_ steamed into the harbour of Balaclava, it is necessary to give a very short account of the main events of the war up to the end of 1854. Between the 14th and 18th of September the Allies[162] were engaged in landing at Kalamita Bay, about thirty miles north of Sebastopol; two days after their disembarkation was completed they forced the passage of the river Alma, defeating the Russians so completely that they were allowed to march southward without molestation, and to form bases on the coast within a few miles of Sebastopol, the British establishing themselves at Balaclava, a little port eight miles to the south, the French at Kamiesch Bay, six miles to the south-west of the fortress. The Russian stronghold lies on the shores of a harbour, in shape not unlike a T: the top of the letter is represented by an arm of the sea running eastward from the Euxine for about four miles, and varying in width from a thousand to twelve hundred yards, while the leg is formed by a narrow creek which from the south runs into the main inlet, about two miles from the entrance to the open sea. On these deep and sheltered waters the whole of the Russian fleet could ride in safety, protected by a ring of forts from attack by land or sea, and the labours of successive generations of engineers had converted the western shore of the creek, or inner harbour, into a vast arsenal