A corporal guides the field officer to the 21-gun battery in open day—The last shot—Two sappers mend a gap of some magnitude in a mortar battery—Scarcity of soil and materials for carrying on the works—Picket-house battery—Mishap to a tracing party—Platforms—Magazines—A detachment with arabas moves from the valley during the battle of Balaklava—Private Lancaster the only sapper engaged in it—Steady conduct of the sappers at the platforms during Sir De Lacy Evans’s combat—Battle of Inkermann—A corporal gallantly alters the splay of an embrasure while the fight rages—Sappers trench the road leading to the heights from the harbour—Two privates repair an embrasure under a severe fire—Submarine divers—Progress of the works—Hurricane of the 14th November; wreck of the ‘Prince’—and the ‘Rip Van Winkle’—Effects of the storm on shore—Lines of Inkermann—Mode of proceeding with the construction of the general works—Strength of corps at the siege and detached—Field electric telegraph—Sergeant Anderson—Casualties—Sergeant Drew—Arrival of second company; its colour-sergeant taken for a Pacha—Incentives to induce the Turks to work—The Navvies—Army Works Corps—The sappers, though under a seeming cloud, are upheld by a vigorous vindication in Parliament.

Next day the bombardment continued to rage, and Colonel Hood of the Grenadier Guards, the field-officer of the trenches on the right attack, was killed. He was succeeded by Colonel Walker of the Scots’ Fusilier Guards. Corporal George H. Collins, chosen as a sure guide, went off with the colonel, passing from the engineer park by the sailor’s camp into the ravine. They then took the Woronzoff road at a run for nearly half-a-mile, and arrived at the foot of a rocky watercourse leading to the hill on which was situated the 21-gun battery, where the colonel dismissed the corporal, and dashed on alone into the work. In going, shot and shell fell furiously into the valley, requiring a sharp look-out to keep clear of splinters. It was even worse in returning; for as the corporal’s back was turned to the fire, he barely allowed himself time to see what were his chances of life and death. Considering that his risks increased by delay, he bounded along the tortuous and broken road, stopping now and then to take breath and cover under some low rocks which jutted from the hill side; and then, pushing up the other slope of the ravine, marched into the camp unhurt. One might have thought that a service of this nature would have excused the corporal from a tour in the trenches; but such was the pressure for sappers, it could not be. At night he was on duty in the Gordon parallel, and four days later was grazed in the back by a shot, which, after striking the earth, rushed past him, and knocked him senseless.^[160] He was superintending at the time a party working in the right Lancaster battery, clearing away the rock for a platform.

Lance-corporal Rinhy, a ready and spirited sapper, was in No. 3 battery of the left attack on the 19th. Well had he worked that day in the embrasures; and at dusk, as the order was given to cease the cannonade, he went up to No. 6 gun to see the last shot fired. The sailors manned the gun, loading it with a Russian 26-pounder ball, which had hopped among the shot piled in rear of the parapet. The ball stuck in the muzzle, and while Rinhy and the seamen were vainly trying to withdraw it, another shot whisked through the embrasure, cut the man-o’-war’s man in two, and striking the trunnion from the gun, the 24-pounder fell and smashed the sailor underneath it. The same shot passed so close to Rinhy, that it rasped a button from his jacket, and the ferocity of its wind knocked him against a traverse some five yards away. In the same battery, two or three days later, he repaired an embrasure no less than twenty-one times during his tour of duty, and kept the cheeks in such serviceable order, that the 68-pounder which fired there, discharged before nightfall as many as 198 shells and 84 shot into the Russian works, dismounting, according to nautical calculation, no less than six guns in the Redan.

Private William Denham was killed this day, while repairing a platform in the 21-gun battery. A shot carried away the back of his head.

Among the instances of well employed zeal that occurred in this bombardment, was one in which privates Jenkins and John Wallace signalized themselves under the eye of Major Biddulph, of the artillery, assistant engineer. They were stationed on the 22nd in No. 3 battery left attack, against which the fire of several guns was concentrated with so ruinous an effect, that about fourteen feet of the parapet was broken down before ten o’clock in the morning. To venture into so exposed a gap in broad day, under a frightful fire, needed a courage which few men could prevail on themselves to exercise; but with a willing promptitude which spoke of their resolution and daring, these two stern sappers passed into the breach, each working for a quarter of an hour at a spell, with the strength of a giant. In seven hours the damage was mended, during which the battery continued in action, though a mortar or two was necessarily silent until sufficient cover was obtained to shield the seamen fighting there.

Everywhere the soil was scanty, and the materials for gaining cover scarce. The few houses that existed in the vicinity of the camp had early been demolished, and the old timbers borne away for fuel. Brushwood and young trees, wherever they could be found, were also taken away; and when the cold became extreme, and the ration wood reduced to a few sticks, the ground was turned over in every direction, by perishing men, to collect the roots for firing. Earth was brought from the rear, in baskets, to fill the gabions; and sand-bags, ready for use, were also brought from the park, or wherever the earth could readily be obtained. As they frequently caught fire and burst on the explosion of the guns, a substitute was found for a time by making the bags from the skins of sheep and from bullocks’ hides, which stood remarkably well, but they could not be procured in sufficient quantity for the work. The inner necks of the embrasures were revetted with sand-bags and the cheeks lined with fascines. The basis of all the works was the gabion. In places not opposed by artillery, stones were used for lining the trenches, which gave them the appearance of ancient walls. The traverses were revetted with old gabions, discarded casks, worn biscuit-bags from the fleet, and ammunition cases. Indeed every material was pressed into the siege that could be turned by ingenuity to any useful purpose. On all sides the works exhibited a curious employment of rude expedients and adaptations to meet the straits and difficulties of an unexampled attack.

With all these shifts, from the inadequacy of material resources to carry on the works, such was the recklessness of the soldiers in seeking means to afford them a modicum of comfort, that the sand-bags were constantly abstracted from the trenches to line their trousers and gaiter their legs; and when wood could not be readily procured, they made no scruple in frosty weather, of purloining fascines and gabions to light their fires. Mandates against such practices were disregarded, and vigilance was no match for men driven by cold to such extremities.

On the 24th October, a battery for three guns and a 10-inch mortar was opened on the left above the picket-house to destroy a two-decker lying snugly in the inner harbour. A few red-hot shot being sent into her, she hastily moved off, and the battery was quickly turned to swell the general armament against the enemy’s land works.

The same night two privates were out in some advanced works tracing a battery under Major Gordon. When returning by a whistle-signal from the Major, they were mistaken for Russians, and fired upon by a party of the 79th Highlanders. The result was that private James Bland, a good sapper, was struck down by a rifle-shot which passed through both his thighs.

It was not long before the Madras traversing platform, considered to be the specific for a great siege, was shown to be a failure. From the hard and uneven bottom of the trench the platforms were, to save them from injury and secure their efficiency, laid upon sand-bags well tamped, but the violent and sudden action of the guns in their recoil shivered the platforms to pieces. A rude substitute was expeditiously furnished by tearing down some dilapidated wooden houses in the neighbourhood of the camp; and resorting to the old expedient of sleepers and floors, the platforms, so prepared by the sapper carpenters, were found to be far less liable to derangement than the engineering-exotic from Madras.

While the Russians and our allies experienced very heavy losses in the destruction of their magazines, no accident whatever occurred to the English powder-magazines, “although more than once exposed to the test of the fall and explosion of a 12-inch shell.”^[161] Offering, as the record does, a tribute of credit to the efficiency of the contrivance, it is no less a testimonial to the skill of the sappers, who, in consequence of the special nature of the service, constructed the magazines themselves. The magazines on the left were constructed on the established model, in places assigned to them by the old engineers, but on the right the ammunition was dispersed in sheltered spots in small receptacles attached to the parapets of the different batteries. The large depôts of ammunition were formed in the caves of the neighbouring ravine; and all the magazines were well protected by sand-bags.

On the 25th October was fought the memorable cavalry combat at Balaklava. Sergeant Joseph Morant and six privates, having in charge thirty Turkish arabas drawn by sixty bullocks, had nearly passed the valley with the train when the fight commenced. The escort was moving to the port for stores, and several of the waggons still within the boundary of the battlefield, were swept and pierced by shots from the Russian artillery. As this was no place for a cumbersome train of conveyances, Morant and his men goaded and whooped on the oxen to Balaklava; and speedily loading the arabas, returned, after the action, to the engineer park in front of Sebastopol. These seven sappers and eleven others who were in the vicinity of the battle, were honoured with the distinction of the Balaklava clasp.

There was only one sapper actually engaged in the battle. Sir Colin Campbell, anticipating an attack, ordered an able sapper to be sent to the Turkish redoubts to superintend any repairs that might be needed. Sergeant Dickson despatched private James Lancaster for the duty. At five o’clock on the evening of the 24th, he arrived at No. 4 redoubt, situated close under the hills of the plateau where the corps d’observation of General Bosquet was encamped. All night Lancaster worked with the Turks in strengthening the faces of the redoubt; and in the morning stretched himself in a shallow trench to take a little sleep. He had not long covered himself with a tarpaulin—a cold substitute for a blanket—when the Russians attacked No. 1 redoubt, which was a considerable distance from No. 4. Instantly awakened by some Turks, who seemingly wanted an Englishman to keep alive in them the little valour they possessed, he was quickly among them. There was also a British artilleryman in the redoubt, with whom the sapper, sharing the kin of country, behaved as became their national prestige. While the cannonading was doing its work on No. 1, a Russian battery pushed up to a height opposite No. 4, and opened its guns on No. 3. The attack was sharp, but the Turks wanting spirit and firmness, made a weak defence, and flew from the fort. In time Nos. 1, 2, and 3 were taken. When the guns in No. 3 were silenced, the Russian battery increased its fire on No. 4, which answering with an energy probably emboldened by the nearness of supports, checked the enemy in his career of success; and though No. 4 might easily have been captured, it escaped the fate which sealed the others. It is due to the gallantry of the Turks in No. 4 to acknowledge that while many of the infantry vaulted in alarm over the parapet at the first blush of the fight, and ran from the opportunity to cover themselves with honour, there were not wanting stanch artillerists, firm and courageous, to stand to the guns; and, as instructed by the British gunner, to work them manfully. The Pasha in command was an old but a brave officer, and his worst trouble was to beat back the flying Turks to join in the defence. The enemy now commenced another movement by collecting on the heights overlooking the plain between the redoubts, the whole strength of his cavalry—a solid menacing body, which in its heaviness threatened that day to strike a decisive blow. Meanwhile the Turks in No. 4, regarding any display of courage on their part as useless, and their position untenable, withdrew the two guns to the rear, halting them on the crest of a slope; and after spiking the ordnance and breaking the spokes of the wheels and the shafts of the carriages, tumbled them into the valley. The garrison then retired to the position where the Highlanders were drawn up. The artilleryman and sapper stood by the Turks to the last, but in the retreat each took a different direction. While sitting in the valley a short distance from the redoubt, Lords Lucan and Cardigan with their staff galloped up to the sapper, and grouped round him. Learning the cause of his presence there, he was asked what he knew of the attack. Lancaster answered to the effect that two of the forts had already been taken, and the others, having been abandoned, would, he feared, soon follow. Away rode the commanders and the staff; the trumpets sounded, and removing the cavalry behind a mound, soon after occurred those cavalry dispositions, and that extraordinary conflict, which prevented the Russians from pouring into Balaklava, and capturing the great base of the allied operations. Private Lancaster succeeded in making good his retreat, under a heavy fire, without mischance.

Neglecting to erect earth-works to defend the right of the position towards Inkermann led to an attack by the Russians, which was met and repulsed with vigour on the 26th October, by the division under the command of Sir De Lacy Evans. The sappers turned out and marched to Victoria Hill, in readiness, if required, to take part in the action. A portion of them was posted behind a rubble wall in “Water” Valley, which was loopholed during the fight; and four men were in the 5-gun battery. The usual parties were also distributed to the trenches, working away in the different batteries as if the combat were at a distance. The fire on the 21-gun battery was very sharp, but under its fierceness a brigade of carpenters, directed by corporal Kester Knight, repaired a platform no less than five times in the course of two hours. It was broken each time by the heavy recoil of the gun. Once, while mending it, a shot plunged through the embrasure and shattered a wheel of the carriage; but looking upon the incident almost as one of the civilities of the siege, the carpenters continued to work vigorously till they had obtained something like the desired solidity.

Another attack followed on the 5th November, in which the English and French, numbering about 14,000 bayonets, were opposed by an army of nearly 60,000 fighting men. For upwards of ten hours the conflict lasted, and ended in a victory to the allies, while the Russians, driven from the hills at all points, took refuge in flight. The losses in the Anglo-French ranks were very severe, but those of the enemy, incredible as it may seem, far exceeded the total force of the allies engaged. This splendid achievement, in which the soldiers stood against overwhelming odds with unconquerable firmness and bravery, will ever rank in the annals of war as one of the most remarkable struggles of modern times. Occupied in the trenches, and forming a guard over the engineer park, the sappers and miners did not fire a shot in either of the engagements. They were, however, drawn up while the fight at Inkermann was raging, prepared to defend the siege depôt had the Russians penetrated to the engineer plateau. Being in position during the battle, the sappers and miners have been considered entitled to the Inkermann decoration, and 341 non-commissioned officers and men of the corps present on the occasion had the honour of receiving the clasp.

Though the night was thick and foggy, the Russian columns were seen surging towards Inkermann from the Mamelon. None of our siege guns could be brought to bear on them; and as it was considered an object of the first moment to rake the masses, orders were given to alter the embrasure of a gun in the old right Lancaster battery, beyond the right of the first parallel. Lance-corporal Trimble, a young and agile soldier, had charge of the two embrasures in the battery, and had with him four men of the 47th regiment to assist in the repairs. No sooner was the decision communicated to the corporal, than he leaped into the opening, followed by his party. Gabions, barrels, fascines, and sand-bags, quickly disappeared; all were thrown or pushed into the ditch in front of the battery, as the readiest means of performing a service from which so much was expected. Then commenced the reformation of the splay by cutting away full half of the merlon on the right cheek, which separated the 24-pounder from the Lancaster gun. When finished, the embrasure had a skew form, with a widened mouth; but as the service was pressing, and the artillerymen impatient—for twice did they stop the work to try the effect of a few rounds—it could not be revetted, and the parapet was necessarily left without a gabion to bank up the earth. The 47th men took a bold and active part in the service, and within an hour, under a fire that would have made many a head reel, the corporal and his men completed the alteration. Barely had they jumped from the opening, when the gunners recommenced a cannonade from the Lancaster which made deadly gaps in the Russian battalions, as in winding round the Mamelon they retreated to their own lines. For their assistance in this hurried duty, one or two of the linesmen were made corporals and decorated with medals; and Trimble, though his rewards were deferred, was promoted to be second-corporal, and honoured with a special gratuity of ten pounds and medal for gallant conduct.

From the stern grandeur of the battle, it was not improbable the attack would be repeated, when, in some degree, the Russians had recovered from the shock. To render an approach less likely to succeed, Lieutenant Ravenhill and a party of sappers repaired to the heights to destroy the road winding from the head of Sebastopol harbour up the ravine to Inkermann. This was simply as a first defensive resource, to be followed by regularly planned works. The hill-top and its slopes were covered with killed and wounded, among whom perhaps the sappers might have performed any amount of duty without accident; but possessing a settled distrust of the honour of the Russians, they first collected all the arms they could see within sixty yards of their work, and broke them in pieces. Thus relieved from a temptation to which the vanquished in their hatred have been known treacherously to yield, the sappers moved to the site of their work, and in eight hours dug a trench across the road eight feet deep and twelve broad.

A few nights later, privates Charles Harris and Nicholas Garrett revetted an embrasure in the 21-gun battery, which had been torn to pieces in the early part of the morning. Shot and shell frequently fell into the work, but the sappers swerved not from the peril it seemed impossible to escape. Lieutenant Murray stood himself in the aperture to relieve the men of the necessity for watching, and warned the two gallant fellows when projectiles were approaching. In such instances, to lessen the chances of risk, all three threw themselves on the sole of the work, and, when the danger passed, resumed the revetment, quitting it only when the embrasure was finished.

When the Russians learnt that a descent was to be made on the Crimean coast, they sank several of their large war vessels and blocked up the passage into the harbour of Sebastopol. Since nautical skill and manœuvring were confessedly unequal to master the difficulty, submarine blasting was proposed as the readiest and most effectual method, and four sapper divers, selected from volunteers at Chatham, accompanied by the necessary apparatus and stores, sailed in the ‘Prince’ on the 27th October, and arrived in the harbour of Balaklava on the 7th November. Several other sappers, then before Sebastopol, who had been practically trained in the art by actual service in the demolition of the wreck of the ‘Royal George,’ were to have been engaged in the perilous duty.

On the 11th November was commenced the second parallel on the left attack, 360 yards in advance of Chapman’s battery. The ground presented a surface of interminable rock, which caused the soil, as before, to be brought from a distance to form the parapets. The labours of the sappers were confined chiefly to mining the hill and blasting the rock, and also placing the gabions in position. Some 350 yards in front of the new parallel a row of Russian riflemen was established, who picked off the guard of the trenches with fatal rapidity. A dash was made for the pits on the 20th, which, after a smart little combat, were captured and occupied by our light troops. The holes were afterwards connected by boyaux to the second parallel. On the right attack a place of arms was formed to shelter the troops when drawn up for assault. A long boyau was run out half way to the intended spot, and the centre portion of the parallel was thrown up by flying sap. Communications being also effected with the rear by means of a double set of approaches, guns and cohorns were mounted in the batteries to defend the stormers and play on the works. This new formation afterwards took its place in the series of trenches for the second parallel.

For two or three weeks the weather had been unpropitious. Snow was upon the ground, and sometimes rain, sleet, and hail varied the inclemency, while frost intervening, nipped the men with its cold grasp, and added to their sufferings. The prevailing aspect of the clouds was gloomy and lowering, but there was nothing to indicate the approach of that memorable storm, which on the 14th November, swept over the Black Sea and the Crimea. Early in the morning the hurricane began its portentous howling, and it was not long before it committed terrific havoc at sea. Ingenuity and precaution did much to save the ships from disaster, but many of the transports, too soon becoming unmanageable, were engulfed as by a spell in the raging surf, or broken to pieces on the shore. Among these was the ‘Prince,’ a magnificent steamer of heavy tonnage, freighted with winter clothing for the army and the diving machinery. For two hours she stood bravely against the storm, but at length driven against the rocks at Balaklava, her timbers were rent in every direction, and she went down. The four sapper divers on board of her, sergeant William Carne, and privates Samuel Lewis, Thomas Price, and Thomas Toohey, sank in the wreck, as also Captain W. M. Inglis, who had been observed on a spar struggling to gain the shore, when a wave of foam broke over him, and he was seen no more.

A like fate attended the ‘Rip Van Winkle;’ and the two sapper photographers—corporal John Pendered, and lance-corporal John Hammond—well educated and trained at great expense in the art, perished in the foundered vessel. The knapsacks and kits of the eighth company were also lost.

On shore the hurricane was not so calamitous, but the tents were all torn up and blown to a distance. Only one solitary marquee remained to mark the site of the encampment. In common with the army the sappers and miners felt the shock of the storm, and were left shivering on the heights, unclad and comfortless. Those in the trenches experienced equal misery, but their zeal in the prosecution of the works was only checked by the fury of the raging wind and the deluging rain. The road to Balaklava soon became one long morass, and both man and horse, in travelling to the port, had to wade the distance up to their knees in mud. From this time the suffering and privations of the troops considerably increased in extent and severity; but, borne with uncomplaining endurance and fortitude, earned for them the abiding admiration and sympathies of their countrymen.

Two days after the conflict at Inkermann, parties of the corps were allotted for the duty of raising appropriate field-works to protect the right, which, shortly after, were increased by the fourth company encamped on the heights. Ill able to spare the men from the general works, the seventh company under Captain Gibb was removed from Gallipoli to take part in the operation. Arriving at Balaklava on the 28th November, the company reinforced the camp before Sebastopol on the 2nd December. Until the 17th, it was employed in the work of the trenches forming the ‘right attack,’ but on the following day it moved to the heights of Inkermann to complete the approaches against the town, and to erect batteries to oppose those of the enemy on the side of the Tchernaya. The fourth company being relieved, was returned to the operations of the right attack. At these lines the sappers, whose numbers varied between 58 and 31, worked only by day, except in a few special instances when the firing of the enemy was too hot and accurate to admit of day labour being carried on with any chance of success. The chief of their work was performed in the parallel, Redoubte du 5me Novembre, and the Mortar and St. Laurent’s batteries. They also laid the platforms, formed the embrasures and traverses, and restored them when injured. Two magazines in the St. Laurent’s battery, constructed by the French of indifferent rubble, were so damaged by shells that both were rebuilt by the English sappers in a serviceable style, with a roof of sand-bags and fascines, covered with a thick substratum of well-tamped earth. Relieved from duty one afternoon, the party was thrown into the trenches at night to level the top of the parapet. Though few in number, they worked with so much energy, that the object of their employment was fully accomplished in the darkness. Another night they crept down into the glen on the right, and tearing down some Russian houses, the timber brought away with them was afterwards turned to account for platforms, &c. In the general business of the trenches they were much impeded by the severity of the weather. The depth of the snow almost baffled them; but by removing it day after day from the interior of the lines, they made commendable progress in the batteries. Blasting rock was one of their ordinary duties; and after the 21st January, when the line troops were wholly withdrawn, the sappers were the only British soldiers working in concert with the allies. A 24 lb. shot struck one of the tents of the seventh company on the 4th February, and, singularly enough, glanced off the canvas without occasioning any casualty. After completing the Mortar battery and perfecting the details of the St. Laurent, the company, on the 7th, quitted the heights, leaving the works solely to the French.

As the siege wore on, it was found advantageous to make each relief commence its allotted labour at the most advanced point, and work backwards. The infantry parties usually opened ground as far as practicable, using straw baskets to gather earth for cover in places where it was insufficient. Wherever the pick was used it struck upon rock, which offered an unfailing obstruction to the progress of the lines. The sappers invariably followed these surface pioneers, and blasted or removed the stony portions. “In this service,” it is recorded, “these men’s exertions have been altogether invaluable, and such as could not be supplied from any other part of the army.”

On the 1st December the strength of the corps in the East was as follows:—

A feeble force compared with the extreme exigencies of the period.

Two sappers in charge of the field electric telegraph for service in the Crimea, arrived at Balaklava on the 7th December, and repaired to the camp on the 19th, taking with them the instruments, batteries, insulated wire, and appliances, packed in two waggons. Twenty-four coils of wire, each a mile long, were packed in them, as also a subsoil plough, appropriate tools, and boats. The apparatus, only available for short distances, was worked by six or eight men. To establish a communication between any two points, the wire, which uncoiled from a drum, revolving horizontally in a carriage drawn in advance, was laid in a shallow trough made by the plough, which served the double purpose of cutting the furrow and depositing the line. The trough was just deep enough to protect the wire from ordinary accidents. Equally effective was the apparatus for communicating with vessels at sea. The two sappers were specially instructed in the electric telegraph establishment at Lothbury in the mode of working the instruments, laying the wire, and in the ingenious manipulation required to give effect to the process. Such, however, was the state of the weather from snow storms, hard frosts, and heavy rains, it was some weeks before the telegraph could be employed. Meanwhile, as the instrument was regarded as an important appendage to the army, sergeants James Anderson^[162] and Montgomery, with several non-commissioned officers and privates, were educated in the art by corporal Peter Fraser; so that when the time arrived for using it, there was an adequate staff of operators to attend to its scientific details and requirements.

Up to this period, in addition to the casualties already mentioned, the following men were put hors de combat:—

The wounded were—

The second company of 113 strong, under Captain King, reinforced the corps in the Crimea on the 20th December. As the weather was severe and the road to the camp almost impassable, the company was attached to the invalid battalion at the port. Considerations for its convenience did not, however, long prevail, for the want of sappers at the siege brought an order from Lord Raglan to remove the company on Christmas-day with its camp equipage and stores to the right attack. To assist the men on the march his lordship sent 150 Turks to meet them at the French barrier near Kadikoi, guided by sergeant Ramsay and another sapper who had reached the rendezvous before the company. The arrival of the new sappers elicited no concern from the stolid Turks, who, seated on the ground, smoking their fuming chibouks, declined to attend to any orders which should impose on them the labour of carrying the stores. Captain King did his best to beguile their obedience, but without effect. It so happened that colour-sergeant Brown of the company, who had been in Syria, had picked up a smattering of Arabic and knew something of the native idiosyncracy. Permitted by his captain, he tried to win the acquiescence of the Turks by appealing gestures and the stammering out of a few imperfect words, which must have grated on their ears as so much jargon; but his best arts, either to force or delude them, failed to dissipate their obstinacy. In the meantime he told off the officers and men to their duties. Brown wore on his breast three medals, one of which he had received from the Sultan for services in Syria. On its reverse was an Ottoman inscription, similar to the standard impression on the Turkish money. Curious to know the history of the medals, a young officer of the detachment stepped up to the sergeant, and handling the decorations, was surprised to find that one of them was the gift of the Sultan. Naming the fact to a group of his brother-officers, it quickly spread among the men, who, thinking that Brown was invested with authority from his Majesty, bounded to their feet, loaded themselves like mules with the equipage, and paced away with their burdens at a warm and earnest rate, stopping not, though fatigued, till their arrival at the sapper camp before Sebastopol. What was more remarkable in the affair, was the refusal of the Turks, though indisposed to give their labour without adequate compensation, to take tickets for working pay. Lieutenant Ewart, at a loss to conjecture the reason, whether to ascribe it to disaffection or disinterestedness, was not a little tickled when informed, that the demonstration arose from the Turks regarding the sergeant as a pacha.

In the early part of the siege, from the afflictions of a hard campaign, great difficulty was found in procuring a sufficiently strong party from the line for trench duty; and to make up for the deficiency a regiment of Turks, quartered at Balaklava, was appointed to the front. From their idle habits and indulgences, seldom could more than 400 men be brought together for work, which number was still further frittered away by disease and death to about 200. From the lack of land transport this force was usually absorbed in the carriage of stores to the batteries. To stimulate them to exertion, the sappers who superintended them were empowered to give such of their parties as deserved it, a ticket for pay, or even two, if their zeal were conspicuous; but to withhold the recognition, if from indolence they did but little to further the service. A sergeant of sappers—who was cashier and paymaster—always gave a day’s pay for every authorized ticket presented to him; and this system, acting like the prick of a spur on the sides of a sulky hack, moved them to the exercise of an amount of effort which it would have been next to impossible to have wrung from them by any other scheme.

Reduced when hostilities commenced to the minimum of peace requirement, the sappers, whose duty it was to execute any description of work which war or the elements might originate, were unable to spare a man from the trenches for the pressing services of the rear. The troops of the line, decimated and exhausted, were utterly inadequate to meet any extra contingency; and thus arose a crisis in the affairs of the campaign which led to the gravest considerations and misgivings at home. So terrible had been the weather, so destructive the storms, so complete the disruption of the communication between Balaklava and the camp—in consequence of the road having become a swamp—that no resource was left to the War Minister but to seek for remedies by the employment of novel establishments. At his call a corps of hardy navvies sprung up in a day, and controlled by civil superintendents, untrammelled by the rigours and nice exactions of military discipline, the Balaklava railway was commenced and carried through with so much despatch, that no one regretted the temporary creation of a force which in its wonderful zeal relieved the overworked and perishing troops of one of the most appalling miseries of the campaign.

So obvious were the benefits evolved from this experiment, that when the engagement of the navvies had ceased, the idea of perpetuating the existence of so useful a body in an altered character assumed a permanent form. Though ready, the navvies were rough and undisciplined, bearing no connection with the great military expedition of which they formed a part. This gave rise to the Army Works Corps, for the execution of all extra services not properly belonging to the battle-field, the trenches, or the operations of an army. It was arranged, it would seem, that their duties should embrace the construction of roads and drains, preparation of sites for encampment, erection of huts, &c. The pecuniary advantages offered to candidates were of such a high standard that an enthusiastic recruitment was the consequence. A few weeks were more than enough to embody the corps, which consisted principally of navigators, and about a fifth of mechanics of various crafts. Overseers were engaged to superintend the gangs, with designations suitable to their avocations, and a civil engineer commanded the whole, with the relative rank of colonel. Later the force formed an important branch of the army. Fostered and shielded by the ministry, it was equipped with gear and working accessories of the most perfect and costly kind; and before the close of the war, it had grown into an authorized body of 3,470 officers and men, requiring for its sustenance in strength and efficiency no less a sum for one year than 408,595l.

In time, the formation of this working force was much commented on in the House of Commons. While it was regarded—with insufficient reason perhaps—as a reflection on the efficiency of the royal sappers and miners, there were not wanting advocates—and none more earnest than members of the ministry, particularly Mr. Monsell—to vindicate the character of the corps, and to compliment it, in terms full of appreciation and praise for its usefulness at the siege, and its capability, with augmented numbers, of performing any amount of work which the terrible exigencies of storm or war might render indispensable.^[164]