However, Balaklava was reached without further misadventure, the result of blind accident rather than knowledge of how war should be conducted; and the two armies settled down before Sebastopol on the Chersonese Upland, the north side of which was formed by the south front of the fortress, another by the sea, and the third by a cliff edge leading down into the wide valley below the Tchernaya and Balaklava. Reversing the order of attack at the Alma, the Allies now changed flanks, the British from Balaklava taking the right as far as they could afford to go (this flank had later on to be extended by the French), while the French from Kamiesch Bay occupied the left of the besieging line. Thus it was not even a complete investment of the southern side. The right of the English section was at the beginning quite _en l’air_. There was no covering army to watch and meet the Russian army known to be outside and free to act. Balaklava was fortified, camps were formed on the upland; the Woronzoff road, by which Todleben, in command at Sebastopol, communicated with the interior of Russia, was defended by a few weak redoubts held by Turks; and the camps of the cavalry brigades were formed in the lowland between the road and the upland cliffs. Nothing could prevent the continual reinforcement of the garrison, nothing could prevent an attack by Mentschikoff’s army from Baghtcheserai; but the investing force must in that case turn its back upon the defenders of the fortress to meet the attack of the relieving army. Sebastopol was neither to be invested nor reduced. The siege was merely a means to an end, that of draining the resources of the adversary, and the cost of doing so, both in lives and in suffering, was great in the extreme.