but so heavily had the campaign told upon them that, when in the small hours of the 18th of June Eyre mustered these five battalions, there were but two thousand men in their depleted ranks. Covered by an advance-guard of a hundred and fifty sharpshooters--volunteers from each company in his command--the General left his camp while it was still black night, and marched down the great ravine towards the Dockyard Creek. At daybreak, just as the troops detailed for the assault on the Redan were swarming out of the trenches in which they had been assembled, Eyre’s advance-guard reached a cemetery, surprised the occupants of the rifle pits by which it was defended, and captured it without much trouble. This cemetery marked one flank of the enemy’s line, the other rested on a mamelon;[170] and to quote the words of Eyre’s report, the intervening ground “was intersected, and the road barricaded with stone walls, which our men were obliged to pull down under fire before they could advance. In rear of this position, towards the fortress, the enemy occupied several houses, there were bodies of the enemy seen in rear, but in what strength I could not say. This position, under cover of the walls of the fortress, was strong.” Well might General Eyre describe the position as “strong.” The suburb, of which these houses formed part, consisted of villas standing in gardens, planted with peach-trees in full blossom, and surrounded with low stone walls, thickly overgrown with vines. From several points it was commanded by the Russian artillery; to our “half-left” was the Garden Wall battery; in front rose the Creek battery, built at the head of the inner harbour of Sebastopol; on our right was the Barrack battery, and hidden behind the Redan were field-guns, which after the assault on that work had failed turned their fire upon Eyre’s regiments. Before describing the doings of the XVIIIth in detail it will be well to give a short account of the work done by the brigade as a whole. Such an account is to be found in the letter to ‘The Times’[171] by Sir William Russell, the celebrated war correspondent, who, writing only two days after the battle, seems to have obtained his facts from the reports supplied to Eyre by the officers commanding his units. As Russell’s letter is in substantial agreement with Eyre’s report to his divisional general, its evidence appears valuable. After mentioning that the advance-guard occupied the cemetery with small loss, he says--