Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/158

 128 HEROIC RESISTANCE OF SEBASTOPOL CHAP, for the most part mere barricades lo shelter tliom, or having to serve guns which fired over the para- pets, would have been ruinously exposed, at that time, to the eye and the ball of the riflenian* ^■llm(>ri^al To det'cud this weak line Korniloff had indeed as many artillerymen as he needed ; but it seems that the whole number of men whom he could employ as infantry to defend the now endangered South Side was only 16,000.f In this force there was one stray battalion of regular ti-oops, an iiii})erfect bat- talion of sappers, and a body of 5000 militiamen.^ + Todleben speaks of this body of 16,000 as representing the whole force of ' combatants' avaihible for the Soutli Side ; but an examination of his details, and the comparison of them with a former chapter, will show that he must mean to include in the 16,000 those only who were s(^rving as infantry, and not the gunners. Korniloff (forgetting to reckon the Taroutino battalion) calls the force only ir»,000. When Prince Mentschi- koff and his army had abandoned Sebastopol on the night of the 24th, the sailors, marines, sappers, militiamen, and local com- panies there left to their fate had (with the addition of the 'stray Taroutine battalion' wluch came back some hours after- wards) a strength of about 28,000 ; but out of this force there had to be provided the numbers still required for manning the fleet, for meeting the great exigencies of the artillery service, for garrisoning (though not, indeed, strongly) the North Side, and besides, for many other iirecautionary duties which coiild not well be neglected. Under such conditions there is no diffi- culty in believing that the number of men who could be spareil for the task of acting as infantry in defence of the South Side may have been as small as General de Todleben represents it, i.e., 16,000.
 * Toelleben, vol. i. p. 256, 2.".7.
 * In the night the third Taroutine battalion, which had lost

its way, and was supposed to be cut off, came back into Seba.s- topol, and there remiuncd. It was solely owing to a misadven- ture that this solitary 'stray battalion' of regular infantry came to be in Sebastopol during the last days of September.