With the fall of the fortress the war in the Crimea came virtually to an end. The Allies had accomplished their self-imposed task of destroying Sebastopol and the Black Sea fleet; there was no immediate object to be gained by a pitched battle with the Russian Field army; disagreements on questions of future policy caused a considerable amount of friction between the Ministers of Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon III., and fettered the movements of the Generals, who engaged in no further operations except two comparatively unimportant raids against the towns of Eupatoria and Kilburn, in neither of which the XVIIIth regiment took part. The French, indeed, were not anxious, if indeed they were able, to continue the war; but the English had atoned, though very tardily, for their previous neglect of their army, by preparing so energetically for another campaign, that in November there were in the Crimea 51,000 British troops, a contingent of 20,000 Turks, raised, trained, and officered by Englishmen, and a German legion of ten thousand men.[177] The good health of this large body of soldiery showed how excellent our system of administration had become at the seat of war; at home recruits were forthcoming in great numbers; the militia had relieved the troops in the United Kingdom and the Mediterranean of much garrison duty; Malta was full of trained soldiers, eager to be employed on active service; in short, the Army, purified by the ordeal it had passed through, had become once more a first-rate fighting machine. But the troops arriving after the fall of the fortress had no opportunity of distinguishing themselves, for though the enemy annoyed us by cannonading Sebastopol from the northern shore of the harbour, he made no offensive movement against the camps on the Upland. Thus the second winter in the Crimea was a time of comparative rest for the greater part of the army, though not for the regiments placed at the disposal of the Royal Engineers to complete the destruction of the forts, arsenals, and dockyards of the fortress. To the Royal Irish fell a very heavy task, the demolition of the docks in the inner harbour. As Colonel Edwards was senior to the engineer officer in charge of the work, the headquarters of the XVIIIth remained outside the town, and Major Call was placed in command of the working parties, which practically consisted of the whole of the Royal Irish. The labour of preparing the docks for destruction was very great, and the hardships of the men extreme: to quote the words of the general order of February 7, 1856, praising the zeal and perseverance of all ranks, and thanking Major Call, among other officers, for his valuable services, “the work was carried out in the depth of winter; the docks occasionally flooded, the shafts filled with water, the pumps choked with frost; but all ranks united to overcome difficulties, and the mass of ruins is a proof of the success attending the cheerful performance of a laborious duty.”