So much have I learnt, experienced, and felt this year that I positively do not know what to begin to describe, nor how to describe it as I wish to.... Silistria is now ancient history, and we have Sevastopol, of which I suppose you all read with beating hearts, and where I was four days ago. Well, how can I tell you all I saw there, and where I went and what I did, and what the prisoners and wounded French and English say; and _whether it hurts them and hurts very much_,[18] and what heroes our enemies are, especially the English? I will tell all that later at Yásnaya or at Pirogóvo; and you will learn much of it from me through the press. How this will happen, I will explain later; but now let me give you an idea of the position of affairs in Sevastopol. The town is besieged from one side, the south, where we had no fortifications when the enemy approached it. Now we have on that side more than 500 heavy guns, and several lines of earthworks, positively impregnable. I spent a week in the fortress, and to the last day used to lose my way among that labyrinth of batteries, as in a wood. More than three weeks ago the enemy advanced his trenches at one place to within 200 yards, but gets no further. When he makes the smallest advance he is overwhelmed with a hailstorm of shot and shell. [18] This must refer to some family joke, as it occurs in other letters home, apropos of people who were killed. The spirit of the army is beyond all description. In the times of ancient Greece there was not such heroism. Kornílof, making the round of the troops, instead of greeting them with, 'Good health to you, lads!' says: 'If you have to die, lads, will you die?' and the troops shout, 'We'll die, Your Excellency! Hurrah!' and they do not say it for effect. On every face one saw that it was not jest but earnest; and 22,000 men have already fulfilled the promise.