Nr. 217, 11. Mai 1855.
Mittagblatt

X. London, 8 May. (The Siege of Sevastopol.) The opening of telegraphic communication from Balaklava to London and Paris has, as far as the public is concerned, so far only served to create greater confusion in the material communicated to it. The English government publishes nothing, or at most a few vague assurances of successes achieved; the French government publishes dispatches under the name of Canrobert, but so truncated and falsified that it is almost impossible to extract anything from them. For example: The bastion against which the main French attack is directed has hitherto been invariably called the Flagstaff Bastion or Bastion du Mât. Now we are told that great advantages have been gained against the Central Bastion, then against Bastion No. 4. After lengthy comparison with earlier reports, especially the Russian ones, it turns out that it is still the same old familiar one, the Bastion du Mât, that is being spoken of, but under various new titles and nomenclatures. This kind of mystification is thoroughly tendentious and, in a way, also “providential”.

But even if the telegraph is of no benefit to the public, it has unquestionably brought some life into the allied camp. It cannot be doubted that the first dispatches Canrobert received conveyed peremptory orders to act with greater decisiveness and to gain some successes at any price. An unofficial report asserts that all the advanced works, Selenginsk, Volhynsk and Kamchatka, as well as the trenches in front of the entire line, have been evacuated by the Russians. The Russians would thus have been thrown back upon their original line of defence, although it remains very striking that reports of the capture of the Sapun hill and the Mamelon by the allies are still lacking. But even supposing the redoubts on these hills were no longer in Russian hands, no one can deny that they have derived great advantages from them. They held Sapun from 20 February and Mamelon from 12 March until the end of April, during which time the allies’ trenches were enfiladed from there or exposed to sustained frontal fire, while the key to the whole position – Malakoff – was completely protected by them during the fifteen-day cannonade.

Through the latest allied successes, the distance between the hostile armies here and there has been reduced to hand-grenade range, i.e. to 20–30 yards from the Russian covered way or to 40–60 yards from the main rampart. This seems to be particularly the case in front of the Flagstaff Bastion and the Redan. However, as long as the allied batteries are situated 4–500 yards behind the advanced trenches, it is not clear how the Anglo-French expect to hold such exposed positions against sudden sorties undertaken with sufficient strength; and after the acknowledged failure of the “great” bombardment, it will take time before new and more advanced batteries can be brought into play.

Even this sudden advance of the allies forms only one link in the chain of planless notions that characterise this siege – where regular blockade, violent assault, and dreams of coups de main are all jumbled together. The first bombardment from 17 October to 5 November had already been preceded by the allies’ decision to disregard the north side of the town and to undertake a separate attack on the south side, i.e. to run the risk of venturing into a place that would remain dominated by a fortification impregnable to them. Then even the first bombardment was characterised by the dispersal of fire over an enormous line, instead of concentrating it on one or two points. The five months between the first and second bombardment were not used to find out the main points of attack, but only to elaborate in detail and as drowsily as possible the original mistake – the uniform attack from all points of an enormous semicircle. Everything was expected from the reopening of fire. That was the general excuse for every hesitation and inaction. Just wait until the batteries open! Although it is in fact difficult to say what was expected from this great event – from batteries at 600–1,000 yards from the object of their attack! At last the fire was opened. Approximately 150 rounds per gun in the first two or three days, then 120 rounds, then 80, then 50, finally 30, after which the cannonade was suspended. The effect was scarcely visible, except in the guns rendered unserviceable and the empty magazines of the allies.

A cannonade of 5 or 6 days with full force would have done more damage to the Russians and opened up more chances of success for the allies than 15 days of a fire that began with great vigour only to slacken immediately. This prolongation of the cannonade by weakening its intensive force is such a great and inexplicable deviation from all rules of war that it can only be explained by political reasons. The necessity of keeping up the semblance of a cannonade during the Vienna Conferences must be behind it. The cannonade ends, the Vienna Conferences are suspended, the telegraph is completed. Change of scene. Orders arrive from Paris to act quickly and decisively. The old system of attack is given up; small-scale storms, lodgments by mine explosions, fighting with rifles and bayonets follow the resultless roar of the artillery. Advanced points are won and even held against the sorties of the besieged. But unless batteries are erected a short distance from the Russian lines and made too hot for the besieged, nothing at all is gained by this. These advanced points cannot be held without heavy and daily repeated losses, and without regularly recurring engagements of doubtful and fluctuating outcome. And even supposing that these batteries of the second and third parallel are to be constructed, that to open them it was necessary first to drive the Russians out of their trenches, how long will it be before these new batteries have received enough guns to successfully reduce the Russian fire, which during the two bombardments held its own against the fire of the allies? The closer batteries advance to the hostile works, the more destructive the cross-fire that can be concentrated upon them, and the more restricted the space for deploying guns becomes: in other words, the more equal the fire of the attack becomes to the fire of the defence, unless the latter has been previously silenced by the more distant batteries, which is not the issue here.