The disembarkation of the allied armies, only 50,000 strong, seemed madness in face of our force of 1,000,000 men and our strong fleet. However, Prince Menshikoff, the Commander-in-Chief, and a professional sailor into the bargain, allowed the landing to take place without hindrance at Eupatoria on September 14 and 15, though he had at his disposal sixty vessels, amongst them some steamers. Though the fleet could not, of course, have counted with absolute certainty on victory, we had it in our power then to wreck the enemy’s plan of operations by dispersing their convoys of transports. The Allies were on the sea from September 8 to September 14 between Varna and Eupatoria, but we were unable to find them. At the Alma we had 33,000 men (42 battalions, 16 squadrons, 84 guns), and offered a determined resistance; but though we were operating in our own country, we did not know the locality, and General Boskey, leading his column by a path of whose existence we were ignorant, fell upon our left flank. This attack decided the day, and our troops were routed.[15] Then on September 26 began the eleven months’ struggle for Sevastopol. Our exhausted fleet landed a number of guns and lent some experienced commanders to the army—chief of all, Nakhimoff, Korniloff, and Istomin. Operations now assumed the character of siege warfare, in which our troops played their part most nobly; but it must be remembered that the army of the Crimea was twice severely beaten: on November 5, 1854, at Inkerman, and on August 17, 1855, at the Tchernaya. Regarding the Battle of Inkerman, the above-quoted writer says: “Prince Menshikoff, with the arrival of the remaining two divisions of the 4th Infantry Corps, had, in addition to the Sevastopol garrison, an army of 40,000 men under him, but he lost the great battle of Inkerman on November 5, 1854. Its object was to seize Sapun Ridge, as a first step to raising the siege of the town, after which he would have driven the Allies towards Balaclava and then out of the Crimea. The battle was well planned, every arrangement was made to insure victory, but the result was, owing to the incomprehensible mistakes of individual commanders, a bloody and decisive defeat. * * * * * “Ten thousand casualties, a loss of _moral_ among the troops—the soldiers’ lack of confidence in their leaders, as well as Prince Menshikoff’s distrust of the army under his command—were the results of this disaster which for so long doomed our force to play a passive rôle. The ultimate issue of the Crimean campaign was really settled by this; the moment for the relief of Sevastopol had been missed, and our field operations lost every trace of initiative. A moral deterioration set in which led to unheard-of irregularities in our army.”