At 7 a.m. on the 5th November heavy Russian batteries opened fire from “Shell Hill.” The piquets fell back fighting, and were reinforced by the Second Division. It is the most curious battle to record that has ever been fought. In other great struggles, army corps, great units of sorts, are used to express the action during the phases of the fight. But Inkerman! One has to tell of what mere handfuls of men did. How the first reinforcement was 650 men; how the 49th defeated a strong column, and pursued it even to Shell Hill; how 260 of the 77th fired into, and charged and dispersed, two Russian battalions; how 200 men of the 30th charged with the bayonet two out of four battalions, driving the whole off; how the 41st, 525 gallant souls, met five other battalions and drove them into the valley of the Tchernaya; how in this, the first stage of this “soldiers’ battle,” 15,000 men had been shattered by less than 4000 all told! Nor is the next stage, which began at 7.30, less extraordinary. Against the remnants of that weary force some 19,000 fresh troops were to be brought into action, and 10,000 of them attacked the right at the Quarry Ravine. There were actually 2100 of Cathcart’s Division arriving! Round the Sandbag Battery the fight seemed now to centre. First, some 4000 Russians attacked the 700 British there, who held them in check until reinforced by the Guards. The fighting was individual, almost, and desperate. At one moment there must have been some 6000 Russians against a few hundreds of the Coldstreams, who were holding the battery, and here occurred, perhaps, the “bloodiest struggle ever witnessed since war cursed the earth. Back to back on that bloody ground, sodden into a hideous quagmire, the gallant Coldstreams fought against an infuriated multitude, till their ammunition was expended; and then, clubbing their muskets, by dint of blows from stock and stone, they drove the Russians back far enough to obtain room to form in line, and with levelled bayonets charged the retreating masses, and again joined their comrades.” Cathcart, arriving with his command, essayed a counter attack on the right, but he fell, and his force suffered severely. The opposing forces were curiously intermingled in that misty confusion, and a vigorous effort again made by the Russians from the Quarry Ravine seemed, at one moment, likely to succeed, for guns were captured. But the end was near. An English eighteen-pounder battery and some French guns had beaten down the fire of the Russian artillery on Shell Hill, and at eleven o’clock the “Russians, when hopeless of success, seemed to melt from the lost field,” and the British were far too exhausted to pursue.