Friedrich Engels

The Campaign in the Crimea

["New-York Daily Tribune" No. 4246, November 27, 1854, leading article]

Our readers will certainly have been struck by the new spirit which speaks from the news of the seat of war in the Crimea, received by us yesterday with the "Baltic" and published this morning in our columns. The comments of the British press and the reports of the British and French correspondents on the events and prospects of the war have hitherto been distinguished by an arrogant and supercilious confidence. But this has now given way to a feeling of apprehension and even consternation. It is generally admitted that no such superiority as the allied armies claimed exists over the opponents, that Sevastopol is stronger, Menshikov a more capable general, and his army far more to be feared than was supposed, and that the French and English, instead of a certain and decisive victory, see themselves exposed to the possibility of a fiasco and to disgrace. Such is the feeling expressed by our Liverpool correspondent—himself an Englishman, susceptible to all the patriotic impulses and prejudices of his country—and this feeling expresses itself equally in the very energetic action of the French and English Governments. Desperate efforts are being made to bring reinforcements to Sevastopol with the utmost speed; the United Kingdom is being stripped of its last soldier, many steamers are being employed as transports, and 50,000 French have been sent out in the hope that they may still reach the scene before it is too late to take part in the last, decisive struggle.

On Saturday we published a mass of documents relating chiefly to the earlier stages of the siege and the partially effective, but on the whole unfortunate co-operation of the fleets; we now add the official reports of Liprandi’s bloody attack upon the Allies at Balaclava, together with other accounts of the further progress of the operations, all of which, we are bound to say, were very unfavourable to the Allies. After a careful examination of these documents, we arrive at the conclusion that the position, though difficult and even precarious, as we have often stated, is hardly so bad as our Liverpool correspondent infers. We do not believe that anything worse threatens them than a forced retreat and a forced embarkation. On the other hand, it is still possible that they may capture the town by a desperate and bloody assault. But be that as it may, we believe that these things must long since have been decided before the reinforcements from France and England can reach the Crimea. The campaign is evidently approaching its turning-point; the movements, blunders, and omissions which have determined its character and caused its results have been made; we possess authentic and irrefutable information on the most important facts. We therefore propose to set forth the course of the struggle briefly and concisely.

It is now established that at the time when the Allies landed at the Old Fort, Menshikov had at his disposal on the battlefield only forty-two battalions and two cavalry regiments, besides some Cossacks, while in Sevastopol the seamen and sailors of the fleet formed the garrison. These forty-two battalions belonged to the 12th, 16th, and 17th Infantry Divisions; assuming that each battalion had its full strength of 700 men, there were in all 29,400 infantry, plus 2,000 hussars, Cossacks, artillerists, sappers and miners, in all about 32,000 men in the field. With these Menshikov could not prevent the landing of the Allies, since in doing so he would have exposed his troops, without having sufficient reserves, to the fire of the allied fleets. A strong army, which could afford to sacrifice a part of its forces, might have detached troops to open a petty warfare, with surprise raids and night attacks, against the invading landing parties; but the Russians, in this case, needed every man for the great impending battle; besides, the Russian foot soldier is the most awkward soldier in the world for petty warfare; his strength is fighting in column in close order. The Cossack’s mode of fighting, on the other hand, is too irregular, and it is effective only in proportion as the prospects of booty increase. Moreover, the campaign in the Crimea appears to prove that the process, gradually carried out over the last thirty years, of turning the Cossacks into regular troops, has broken their personal spirit of enterprise and placed them in a state of subordination in which they are useless as irregulars and still of no account for regular service. They now seem fit neither for outposts and detachments, nor for attacking the enemy in line. The Russians were, therefore, perfectly right to hold back every sabre and every bayonet for the battle of the Alma.

On the banks of this river the 32,000 Russians were attacked by 55,000 Allies. The proportion stood almost one to two. After about 30,000 Allies had been brought into action, Menshikov ordered the retreat. Of the Russians, not more than 20,000 men had so far been engaged; a further attempt to hold their position would have turned the Russian retreat into a complete defeat, for the whole Russian reserve would have had to be thrown into the fight. Once the success of the Allies, through their enormous numerical superiority, was beyond doubt, Menshikov broke off the battle, covered his retreat with his reserve, and, having overcome the initial confusion caused by Bosquet’s flanking movement on the Russian left wing, withdrew from the battlefield unmolested and unhindered “in proud order.” The Allies assert that they had no cavalry with which to pursue the Russians; but since we know that these had only two regiments of hussars—even fewer than the Allies—this excuse falls to the ground. As at Zorndorf, Eylau, and Borodino, the Russian infantry, though beaten, behaved true to the estimate given of it by General Cathcart, who commanded a division against them and described them as “incapable of panic.”

Although the Russian infantry remained cool and undaunted, Menshikov himself was seized with panic terror. The strong forces of the Allies and their unexpected resolution and vehemence in the attack threw his plans, for a moment, into confusion. He abandoned his intention of retreating into the interior of the Crimea, and marched to the south of Sevastopol in order to hold the line on the Chernaya. This was a great and unpardonable blunder. Since he could overlook the whole allied position from the heights of the Alma, he must have been able to recognise the strength of his opponents to within 5,000 men. He must have known that, despite their relative superiority over his own troops, they were not strong enough to leave an army to observe Sevastopol while they followed him into the interior. He must have known that, however much the Allies stood two to one against him on the coast, at Simferopol he could have faced two to one of them. And yet he marched, as he himself admits, to the south side of Sevastopol. But after accomplishing the retreat, unmolested by the Allies, and after giving his troops one or two days’ rest on the mountains behind the Chernaya, Menshikov resolved to make good his mistake. He did so by a dangerous flank movement from the Chernaya to Bakhchisaray. This was in contradiction to one of the most elementary rules of strategy, yet promised great results. Once a blunder has been committed in strategy, its consequences can rarely be escaped. The question then is only whether it is more advantageous to resign oneself to them or to overcome them by a second, deliberately false, movement. We believe that in this case Menshikov was perfectly right to venture a flank march within reach of the enemy, in order to extricate himself from his unnaturally “concentrated” position around Sevastopol.

But in this struggle between mediocre strategists and routine generals, the troop movements of the hostile armies assumed forms which were unknown in previous warfare. The predilection for flank marches became an epidemic, like the cholera, in both camps. At the same time that Menshikov resolved upon a flank march from Sevastopol to Bakhchisaray, Saint-Arnaud and Raglan had got it into their heads to set out from the Kacha to Balaclava. The Russian rearguard and the British vanguard encountered each other at Mackenzie’s Farm (named after a Scotsman who was last an admiral in the Russian service), and, naturally, the rearguard was beaten by the vanguard. As the general strategic character of the flank march of the Allies has already been criticised in the “Tribune,” we need not return to it.

On the 2nd or 3rd of October, Sevastopol was invested, and the Allies occupied the very position which Menshikov had just left. Thus began the memorable siege of Sevastopol, and at the same time a new phase of the campaign. Hitherto the Allies, by their undisputed superiority, had been able to act according to their own discretion. The fleets, which commanded the sea, secured their landing. Once the Allies had landed, their numerical superiority, and certainly also their superiority in the attack, secured them the victory on the Alma. But now that balance of forces began to establish itself which, in operations far from the base and in the enemy’s country, must sooner or later inevitably be brought about. Menshikov’s army did not yet make its appearance, but it necessitated the posting of a reserve on the Chernaya, with an eastern front. Thus the actual besieging army was seriously weakened and reduced to a number not much larger than that of the garrison.

Lack of energy and system, particularly in the cooperation of the various departments of the British land and sea forces, difficulties of terrain, and above all the indestructible spirit of routine, apparently inherent in the planning and operational departments of the British administration, delayed the start of the actual siege until 9 October. On that day at last the trenches were opened at the enormous distance of 1,500 to 2,500 yards from the Russian fortifications. Nothing of the kind had ever been seen in any previous siege. This shows that the Russians were still able to hold the ground around the fortress within a radius of at least a mile, and they actually did hold it until 17 October. On the morning of that day the siege works had advanced far enough for the Allies to open their fire. They would probably have waited a few more days, since the Allies were by no means in a position on that day to do so with success, had there not arrived the glorious news that all England and France were full of joy over the predicted capture of Sevastopol for 25 October. This news naturally enraged the troops, and the fire had to be opened to calm them. But it turned out that the Allies had only 126 guns against 200 to 250 of the enemy. Now it is said, after the great principle of Vauban, which was always used by the English and French to reassure the public,

“that a siege is an operation that leads to success with mathematical certainty; it is purely a question of time, provided it is not disturbed from outside”.

This great principle is based on that other of the same engineer,

“that in a siege the fire of the attack can be made superior to that of the defence”.

In Sevastopol we have exactly the opposite; the fire of the attack, when opened, was decidedly inferior to that of the defence. The consequences showed themselves very soon. Within a few hours, the Russians silenced the fire of the French batteries and throughout the whole day waged an almost equal fight with the English.

A naval engagement was carried out as a diversion. But it was neither better directed nor more successful. The French ships attacked the Quarantine Fort and Fort Alexander, thereby supporting the attacks of the land forces on these works; had they not rendered assistance, the French would undoubtedly have fared much worse. The English ships attacked the north side of the harbour, including Fort Constantine, the Telegraph Battery, and a battery temporarily erected north-east of Constantine. The cautious Admiral Dundas had his ships anchor 200 yards from the forts – he apparently loves the method of firing from a great distance. Now it is a fact long established that in a fight between ships and shore batteries the ships are defeated if they cannot approach within 200 yards or less of the batteries, so that their projectiles strike with complete accuracy and greater effect. Therefore Dundas’s ships were also dreadfully mauled, and he would have suffered a glorious defeat, had not Sir Edmund Lyons, apparently contrary to orders, brought three ships of the line as near as possible to Fort Constantine and inflicted some damage upon it in return for his own losses. Since, however, the reports of the British and French admirals have not yet let fall a single word about the actual damage they inflicted on the forts, we must assume that the forts and casemated batteries, here as also at Bomarsund the Montalembert towers, withstood an engagement with twice the number of naval guns. This is all the more remarkable, since it is now obvious that the exposed masonry of these forts, as was partly confirmed at Bomarsund, cannot withstand the breaching fire of heavy naval guns mounted on the shore for more than 24 hours.

After this, the French remained fairly quiet for a few days. As the English had placed their batteries at a greater distance from the Russian lines and had heavier calibres than their allies, they were able to continue the bombardment and to silence the guns in the upper tier of a masonry redoubt. The attack from the sea was not repeated – the best proof of the respect that the casemated forts had inspired. The Russian defence destroyed many illusions of the victors of the Alma. For every dismounted gun, a new one was there. Every embrasure destroyed during the day by enemy fire was repaired overnight. Entrenchment stood against entrenchment, and the fight was almost equal, until the Allies took measures to gain superiority.

Lord Raglan’s ridiculous order “to spare the city” was revoked and a bombardment opened, which, through its concentrated effect on the crowded masses of troops and its devastating character, must have caused great losses to the garrison. In addition, skirmishers were deployed in the foreground of the batteries with orders to shoot down the Russian gunners from every covered position they could find. As already at Bomarsund, the Minié rifles proved their worth. In a few days, the Russian artillerymen were almost entirely hors du combat, partly through heavy guns and partly through Minié rifles. This also affected the sailors of the fleet, the part of the garrison most familiar with the heavy guns. Then recourse had to be had to the usual expedient of besieged garrisons: the infantry was ordered to serve the guns under the guidance of the remaining artillerymen. But as may be imagined, their fire was almost ineffective, and the besiegers were thus able to push their approach trenches ever closer. It is reported that they have opened their third parallel 300 yards in front of the outworks. We do not yet know what batteries they have erected in this third parallel; we can only say that in formal sieges the third parallel is always laid out at the foot of the glacis of the attacked works, i.e., approximately 50 to 60 yards from the fortress ditch. If this distance is greater at Sevastopol, we can only see in it a confirmation of the report of several British newspapers, namely that the irregular defence lines merely confused the British Engineer officers, instead of giving them new opportunities for their inventiveness. These gentlemen, who are certainly able to destroy a regular bastioned front according to an approved pattern, seem to get into severe distress as soon as the enemy deviates from the rule prescribed by recognised authorities in this field.

Once it had been decided to attack from the south, the parallels and their batteries should have been directed against one, or at most two, sharply defined defence fronts. With concentrated forces, two of the outer forts lying nearest to each other – or, at the very outside, three – ought to have been attacked; once these were destroyed, all the remaining outworks would have been useless. Had the Allies directed the weight of their entire artillery on a single point, they would thereby have immediately and easily gained a great superiority of fire and could have considerably shortened the siege. Insofar as one can judge from plans and maps, the front from the Quarantine Fort to the upper end of the inner harbour – that is, the front against which the French are now directing their efforts – would have been best suited for the attack, because its destruction would have completely opened up the access to the town. The 130 guns would have immediately secured for the Allies a superiority of fire on this limited front. Instead, the endeavour to let each army act independently of the other gave rise to this unprecedented mode of siege, in which the entire line of fortifications, extending over more than three miles, is simultaneously bombarded along its whole length. Nothing like this has ever been seen. Who has ever heard of an attack that enabled the defence to bring into action at once the immense number of 250 guns from simple bastioned works and lunettes? A single bastioned front can hardly bring twenty guns into position, and in an ordinary siege at most three or four fronts can support the defence. As long as the Allied engineers cannot give convincing reasons for their peculiar proceeding, we must conclude that they were incapable of making out the weakest points of the defence and therefore, in order not to go wrong, opened fire on the entire line.

Meanwhile, both sides received reinforcements. Liprandi’s continuous and partly successful attacks on the Allied outposts showed that there were more Russian troops at Sevastopol than Menshikov had taken with him to Bakhchisaray. They do not yet seem, however, to be strong enough to bring relief by a battle. Considering the progress of the besiegers; considering that the damage they have inflicted on the defence increases in geometrical progression the closer the besiegers approach the fortress walls; considering that the outworks are still holding out but that the inner wall seems to be weak, one may assume that something decisive will have occurred between 9 and 15 November: that either the south side of the fortress has already fallen, or the Allies have suffered a decisive defeat and have had to abandon the siege. But one must remember that such predictions depend on circumstances that cannot be accurately assessed at such a distance from the theatre of war.