The total line then to be occupied by the defenders was about twelve miles, and into this front was crowded the heterogeneous mass of troops of all arms. The post of honour was at Catcliffe, the dominating key to the whole position, which was occupied by the sturdy soldiers of the 1st Battalion West Riding Regiment and the 2nd Battalion Yorkshire Light Infantry, while commanding every bridge crossing the rivers which lay between Sheffield and the invaders were concentrated the guns of the 7th Brigade Royal Horse Artillery, and of the Field Artillery, the 2nd, the 30th, the 37th, and 38th Brigades, the latter having hurriedly arrived from Bradford. All along the crests of these slopes which formed the defence of Sheffield, rising steeply from the river at times up to five hundred feet, were assembled the Volunteers, all now by daybreak on Thursday morning busily engaged in throwing up shelter-trenches and making hasty earthwork defences for the guns. The superintendence of this force had merged itself into that of the Northern Command, which nominally had [Illustration: Battle of Sheffield] its headquarters in York, but which had now been transferred to Sheffield itself, for the best of reasons--that it was of no value at York, and was badly wanted farther south. General Sir George Woolmer, who so distinguished himself in South Africa, had therefore shifted his headquarters to the Town Hall in Sheffield, but as soon as he had begun to get the line of defence completed, he, with his staff, moved on to Handsworth, which was centrally situated. In the command were to be found roughly twenty-three battalions of Militia and forty-eight of Volunteers; but owing to the supineness and neglect of the Government the former regiments now found themselves, at the moment when wanted, greatly denuded of officers, and, owing to any lack of encouragement to enlist, largely depleted in men. As regards the Volunteers, matters were even worse. During the past five years as much cold water as possible had been thrown upon all voluntary and patriotic military endeavour by the “antimilitant” Cabinets which had so long met at No. 10 Downing Street. The Volunteers, as a body, were sick to death of the slights and slurs cast upon their well-meaning efforts. Their “paper” organisation, like many other things, remained intact, but for a long time wholesale resignations of officers and men had been taking place. Instead, therefore, of a muster of about twenty-five thousand auxiliaries being available in this command, as the country would have anticipated, if the official tabulated statements had been any guide, it was found that only about fifteen thousand had responded to the call to arms. And upon these heroic men, utterly insufficient in point of numbers, Sheffield had to rely for its defence.