m. The repulse at the Redan, the death of Lord Raglan, and the
vainglorious boast of Prince Gortschakoff, who declared 'that the hour
was at hand when the pride of the enemies of Russia would be lowered,
and their armies swept from our soil like chaff blown away by the wind,'
rendered all dreams of diplomatic solution impossible, and made England,
in spite of the preachers of peace at any price, determined to push
forward her quarrel to the bitter end. The nation, to borrow the phrase
of one of the shrewdest political students of the time, had now begun to
consider the war in the Crimea as a 'duel with Russia,' and pride and
pluck were more than ever called into play, both at home and abroad, in
its maintenance. The war, therefore, took its course. Ample supplies and
reinforcements were despatched to the troops, and the Allies, under the
command of General Simpson and General Pelissier, pushed forward the
campaign with renewed vigour. Sardinia and Sweden had joined the
alliance, and on August 16 the troops of the former, acting in concert
with the French, drove back the Russians, who had made a sortie along
the valley of the Tchernaya. After a month's bombardment by the Allies,
the Malakoff, a redoubt which commanded Sebastopol, was taken by the
French; but the English troops were twice repulsed in their attack on
the Redan. Gortschakoff and Todleben were no longer able to withstand
the fierce and daily renewed bombardment. The forts on the south side
were, therefore, blown up, the ships were sunk, and the army which had
gallantly defended the place retired to a position of greater security
with the result that Sebastopol fell on September 8, and the war was
virtually over. Sir Evelyn Wood lately drew attention to the fact that
forty out of every hundred of the soldiers who served before Sebastopol
in the depth of that terrible winter of 1854 lie there, or in the
Scutari cemetery--slain, not by the sword, but by privation, exposure,
disease, and exertions beyond human endurance.

[Sidenote: ALL FOR NAUGHT]

France was clamouring for peace, and Napoleon was determined not to
prolong the struggle now that his troops had come out of the siege of
Sebastopol with flying colours. Russia, on her part, had wellnigh
exhausted her resources. Up to the death of the Emperor Nicholas, she
had lost nearly a quarter of a million of men, and six months later, so
great was the carnage and so insidious the pestilence, that even that
o