Friedrich Engels

The Course of the War

Written about March 30, 1855.

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune” No. 4366, April 17, 1855, leading article]

While the diplomats have assembled in Vienna to negotiate the fate of Sevastopol, and the Allies are trying to make peace on the best possible terms, the Russians everywhere in the Crimea are resuming the offensive, taking advantage of their adversaries’ blunders as well as of their own central position in the country. When one recalls the boasts with which the Allies began their invasion, the state of things appears quite strange and has the effect of a gigantic satire on human conceit and folly. But in spite of this comic side, the drama is at bottom profoundly tragic; we therefore once more invite our readers to a serious consideration of the facts, as they appear from our latest intelligence, which we received on Sunday morning by the “America”.

At Eupatoria Omer Pasha is now, in fact, pinned down on the land side. Their superiority in cavalry enables the Russians to throw out their pickets and vedettes close to the town, to scour the neighbourhood with patrols which cut off supplies, and, in case of a serious sortie, to fall back on their infantry. Thus, as we anticipated <See present volume, pp. 121-23>, they do everything to keep a superior Turkish force in check with, perhaps, no more than a quarter or a third of its number. Omer Pasha is waiting for cavalry reinforcements to arrive, and in the meantime has been to the Franco-English camp to inform the Allies that for the present he can do nothing, and that a reinforcement of some 10,000 French soldiers would be very desirable. No doubt, but equally desirable for Canrobert himself, who must have discovered that he has at once too many and too few troops – too many for the mere continuation of the siege as such and for the de-

fence of the Chornaya; but not enough to break out from the Chornaya, drive the Russians into the interior, and invest the North Fort. To detach 10,000 men to Eupatoria would not enable the Turks to take the field with success; especially as their absence would weaken the French army just at the moment when, together with the reinforcements arriving in spring, it ought to take the field.

The siege looks rather dismal at present. The night attack of the Zouaves on February 24 was even more devastating in its results than we reported a week ago. <See present volume, pp. 152-53> It is evident from Canrobert’s own dispatch that he himself did not understand what he was about when he ordered that attack. He says:

“As the object of the attack was now attained, our troops fell back, because nobody could think of our establishing ourselves at a point which was so completely under the enemy’s fire.”

But what object was attained? What was there to do, if the position could not be held? Absolutely nothing. The destruction of the redoubt was not completed, nor could it have been completed under the enemy’s fire, even if the Zouaves had, as the first report pretended, for a short time completely taken the work. But that was never the case; the Russian report positively denies it, and Canrobert insists upon nothing of the kind. But what, then, was the object of this attack? Simply this: seeing that the Russians were establishing themselves in a position that placed the besiegers in a very difficult and at the same time humiliating position, Canrobert, without reflection, without taking the trouble to examine the probable issue of the affair, sent his troops forward to the assault. It was a perfectly pointless butchery, which will remain a blot on Canrobert’s military reputation. If any excuse can be found at all, it lies only in the supposition that the French troops could bear the storm no longer, and the general, therefore, wanted to give them a slight foretaste of such an assault. But this excuse discredits Canrobert as much as the attack itself.

In the affair at the Malakoff the Russians proved their superiority on land immediately in front of their defensive works. The work situated on the brow of the hill and vainly attacked by the Zouaves is called by them, after the regiment which defended it, the Selenginsk redoubt. They at once set about improving their advantage and turning the confidence of

victory thus gained to good account. Selenginsk was enlarged and strengthened; guns were brought up, although they had to pass through the heaviest fire of the besiegers; and counter-approaches were made from it, probably to establish one or two smaller works in front of the redoubt. Similarly, on another spot, in front of the Kornilov Bastion, a series of new redoubts has been thrown up, 300 yards in advance of the old Russian fortifications. On the strength of earlier British reports, such a measure appears rather astonishing, for we were always told that the Allies had thrown up their own trenches at a shorter distance from the Russian lines. But as we were able to establish about a month ago from the very best military authority, the French lines were still some 400 yards from the Russian advanced works, and the British lines twice as far. Now at last, in the letter of March 16, the Times correspondent confesses that, even at the latter date, the British trenches were still 600 to 800 yards away, and that
indeed the batteries which are about to play on the enemy are the same that opened their fire on the past 17th of October!
So this is the great progress made in the siege – the advance of the trenches which has cost two-thirds of the British army their lives!

Under these circumstances, there was plenty of room in the interval between the two lines of batteries for the construction of the new Russian works; but nevertheless it remains an undertaking without parallel, the boldest and most skilful ever attempted by a besieged garrison. It amounts to nothing less than opening a new parallel against the Allies at a distance of 300 to 400 yards from their works; a counter-approach on the grandest scale against the besiegers, who are thereby all at once thrown on the defensive, whereas the first essential condition of a siege is that the besiegers should throw the besieged on the defensive. Thus the tables have been completely turned, and the Russians are rapidly gaining the upper hand.

Whatever blunders and fantastic experiments the Russian engineers under Schilder may have made at Silistria, here at Sevastopol the Allies have evidently to deal with a quite different sort of men. The prompt and rapid orientation, the immediate, bold, and faultless execution which the Russian engineers have displayed in throwing up their lines round Sevastopol; the untiring attention with which every weak point has been protected as soon as the enemy discovered it; the excellent arrangement of the line of

fire, which makes it possible to concentrate on any given point of the ground in front a fire superior to that of the besiegers; the preparation of a second, third, and fourth line of fortifications behind the first – in a word, the whole conduct of this defence has been classical. The last offensive advance on the Malakoff Hill and in front of the Kornilov Bastion has no parallel in the history of sieges, and stamps their authors as masters of the first order in their branch. It is only right and fair to add that Colonel Todleben, chief engineer of Sevastopol, is a comparatively unknown figure in the Russian service. But we must not take the defence of Sevastopol for a typical specimen of Russian engineering. The average of Silistria and Sevastopol comes nearer to the true state of things.

Both in the Crimea and in England and France people are now – though only gradually – beginning to discover that there is no chance of taking Sevastopol by storm. In this awkward predicament the London Times has applied to a “high military authority” and has learned that the only sensible thing is to take the offensive, either by crossing the Chornaya and effecting a junction with the Turks under Omer Pasha, whether before or after a battle with the Russian army of observation, or by a diversion to Kaffa, which would compel the Russians to divide their forces. As the Allied army now numbers 110,000–120,000 men, such movements must be within its power. Now nobody knows better than Canrobert and Raglan that crossing the Chornaya and junction with Omer Pasha’s army would be very desirable; but as we have proved over and over again <See present volume, pp. 76-77>, unfortunately on the heights before Sevastopol the 110,000 to 120,000 men of the Allies do not exist, and never have existed. On March 1 their strength did not exceed 90,000 men fit for duty. As for an expedition to Kaffa, the Russians could wish for nothing better than to see the Allied troops scattered over three different points, 60 to 150 miles distant from the centre, while at neither of the two points they now hold are they strong enough to solve the problem before them! Obviously the Times’s “high military authority” has been hoaxing it, by seriously advising it to advocate a fresh edition of the Eupatoria expedition!