While the French amused their leisure with private theatricals, getting up an impromptu theatre, the English Sappers built a church—built it entirely of siege apparatus, the materials so arranged that they were only in store, ready for use at a moment’s notice: scaling ladders, gabions, fascines, timbers ready cut and shaped for gun platforms, a few planks and pieces of rope. Two scaling ladders locked into each other at the top, formed at certain intervals the columns which separated the aisles from the body of the church and bore up the roof. The framework of the outer wall was made of long upright timbers which leant against the summits of each set of ladders respectively, and were secured by cords. Across these a few joist beams were lashed, and the outer wall of gabions in a great degree rested on these horizontal supports. The roof was made by the platform timbers laid between the tops of the ladders on each side, and at right angles to these, fascines were laid in regular rows until a complete covering—but one admitting of free ventilation—was formed. There solemn service was often held, and good words spoken by good and brave men—with the Union Jack for a pulpit cloth.
Through the freezing winter and the wasting summer, for 337 days the Sappers carried on their work before Sebastopol. The trenches they made were nine miles long; twenty-two batteries were on the right, and twenty batteries on the left; in the formation of the works there were no less than 20,000 gabions, 4000 fascines, 340,000 sand bags, 7413 bread bags, and a hundred different extemporaneous expedients to give shape and solidity to the works.
They witnessed the triumphant end of their work; and they received no small share of honour and reward, for the work they had done was unsurpassed in ancient or in modern history.
During the Indian mutiny the services of the Engineers were of great advantage, and the bravery and determination of the men both in defence and attack were worthy of the highest commendation. In India there are, we believe, still employed in the engineering arm of our service no less than twelve companies of native Sappers and Miners.
We are all justly proud of our army, proud of its station among the armies of Europe; its appearance, discipline, drill; proud of the history of its achievements
⸺“of most disastrous chances;
Of moving accidents by flood and field;
Of hair-breadth ’scapes i’ th’ imminent deadly breach;”—
but there is no division of our army of which we should be more justly proud than of the Sappers and Miners. It toils for us wherever our flag is unfurled to the winds; it explores unknown regions; surveys and maps new and old regions; it makes roads where no roads were, and iron roads in place of common roads; it blasts rocks; heaves up drowned treasures from the deep; it serves as the pioneer of civilization abroad, and extends and consolidates civilization at home; it labours as hard in peace as in war—labour often unseen and unsuspected, but none the less worthy of the respect, honour, and admiration due to the brave sons of a brave people.