The siege itself is too complex to deal with in detail. The place was bombarded on the 17th October, and the fleet co-operated. The first sortie was made on the 26th; by January 1854 there were 14,000 men in hospital, and there were scarcely any horses; there was a second sortie in March; on the 9th April there was a second bombardment, but nothing came of it; on the 6th June there was a third bombardment and an assault, and the Mamelon was taken; the fourth bombardment on the 17th June was also followed by an assault, the cemetery at the foot of the Green Hill being taken; a fifth and sixth bombardment was carried out on the 17th August, and from the 5th to the 7th September; and then the final assault was made, when the Malakoff Tower was taken, and the attack on the Redan failed. This terminated the siege. The Russians, after a prolonged defence, of which they are justly proud, sank their ships, blew up the forts on the south side, and retreated to the north side of the harbour, leaving the bloodstained ruined city and fortifications to the victors. They had nothing to reproach themselves with. But, meanwhile, an expedition to Kinburn had cut off one of the arsenals on which the Russian commander in Sebastopol depended, and the exhaustion of Russia (she had lost 240,000 men up to the late Czar’s death, and 80,000 since) was evident. Otherwise the Russian position was still admirable, and the war might have been prolonged indefinitely. But the fall of the southern forts led the way to armistice and then peace. But while the siege was thus dragging on its weary length, the Russian field army and the garrison had not been passive. There had been three efforts to raise the siege, namely, those which led to the battle of Balaklava on the 25th October 1853, when the relieving force numbered 22,000 infantry, 3400 cavalry, and 78 guns, and advanced from the Tchernaya by Kamara, across the Woronzoff road; the battle of Inkerman, on the 5th November 1854, when the garrison made a sortie with 19,000 infantry and 38 guns, aided by Pauloff with 16,000 infantry and 96 guns from the Inkerman heights, while Gortschakoff threatened the upland from the Balaklava valley; and the battle of the Tchernaya, on the 16th August 1864, in which our new Sardinian allies shared, and which was fought by them and the French only, with a Turkish reserve, but which does not enter into the story of the British army, except as an incident in the campaign.