amply provided with gunners and ammunition, are mounted.” Now, it is a rule of warfare that the besieging force should be five times as strong as the besieged. No general with a grain of prudence will attempt to lay siege to a stronghold unless his force is three times as strong as that of the garrison, and unless he has an army of observation besides to protect him from molestation. Before Sebastopol the besiegers were only half as strong as the besieged, and they had no covering force whatever. Like the Athenians at Syracuse, the besiegers had become the besieged. If Lord Raglan did not complete the parallel by sacrificing his army to an eclipse of the moon, he did his best to emulate that historic achievement by sacrificing it to the flank march from the Belbeck to Balaclava.[187] In these circumstances the Russians promptly adopted offensive tactics. Menschikoff ordered Liprandi to march round to the rear of the British position and attack Balaclava, from which we drew our supplies, and on the 25th of October the Russians suddenly drove the Turks from the redoubts that formed one of our chief defences. This gave him the northern half of the Balaclava valley. The British cavalry were withdrawn from the southern half westwards behind redoubts, which were still in our hands, and the road to Balaclava, with all our shipping and our stores, was clear. Yet not quite clear. Sir Colin Campbell and the 93rd Highlanders were in the way, and his consummate skill and their stubborn valour saved our base of operations. At a glance Campbell saw that Liprandi meant to annihilate the Scots, by hurling against them overwhelming masses of cavalry covered by artillery. To such an onset a single regiment in square formation could obviously offer no effective resistance whatever. In an instant Campbell conceived the novel and daring project of receiving the Russian cavalry in line.[188] Such a [Illustration: SIR COLIN CAMPBELL.]