Neue Oder-Zeitung.
Nr. 273, 15. Juni 1855.
Mittagblatt

X. London, 12 June. (Critique of the Crimean Undertakings.) The telegraphic despatch which announced the resumption of the bombardment of Sevastopol on 6 June rested on an error.

It was merely a cannonade directed at specific points, with the object of taking them at once. The outworks, constructed by the Russians on 23 February and 12 March on the eastern front of their defence line—the Selenginsk, Volynsk and Kamchatka redoubts—had hitherto kept the besiegers and their batteries at a distance. On the western front, the left attack of the Allies, no such outworks existed, and the French had here established themselves almost on the edge of the ditch of the defence works. Thus the progress made on this side far outstripped that on the right attack. Since the siege plan of the Allies regarded the two large sections of the line—the town west of the inner harbour and the suburb of Karabelnaya on its eastern side—as two separate fortresses to be attacked simultaneously, the right attack had to be pushed forward with more energy and the outworks had to be forced, in order to bring the Allies on this side once more into line with their advanced parallels on the left attack. To accomplish this, the above-mentioned redoubts and some lesser entrenchments in a quarry flanking the Kamchatka redoubt on its right had to be carried. Accordingly, after a 36-hour cannonade, on the evening of 7 June, the French stormed the two redoubts Selenginsk and Volynsk across the Kielhol Bay and the Mamelon redoubt (called Kamchatka by the Russians), while the British stormed the quarry. Thus on this side everything is now in roughly the same state as before 22 February. Of the redoubts stormed by the Allies, the Mamelon is the most important. It was constructed on 12 March and the following days. This hastily thrown-up fieldwork impeded the progress of the besiegers on one half of the lines for 88 days, a period twice as long as is required in ordinary sieges to take a well-situated fortress. Why this extraordinary phenomenon, which has only two parallels in the history of sieges: one in the defence of Colberg by the Prussians (1807) and the other in the defence of Danzig by the French (1813-1814)?

With the growth of armies in the open field, the generally small fortifications dating from the time of Vauban lost their importance. They were left unscathed in the rear by victorious armies and hardly watched by flying corps until the army’s reserve came up and found time to take them. But if these large armies encountered great fortresses on their march, they were invariably held up. This was the case with Napoleon at Mantua in 1797 and at Danzig in 1807. The reason is clear. Such a large fortress with a garrison of 15-25,000 men formed the nodal point of the defence for a whole province; it could detach a strong corps of troops in every direction and to a considerable distance, a corps which, in the event of a superior attack, was assured of a safe retreat. To observe such a fortress was almost as difficult as to take it. Now the old fortresses, in the style of Vauban and Cormontaigne, concentrated all their means of defence around the main rampart and in the main ditch. All their tenailles, lunettes, contre-gardes, etc., are so accumulated that they form only a single defence line. Hence, once a breach had been made anywhere in them, the whole line was broken through in a few days, and the place fell. Such a system was obviously unsuited to large fortresses which alone could hold up great invasion armies on their advance. Recourse had to be taken to another system, that of advanced works. The French General Montalembert, Carnot’s teacher, was the first, in defiance of the loud prejudices of his profession, to declare in favour of detached forts; but the method of connecting large fortresses with detached forts so that together they form a complete defence system was perfected to its present excellence in Germany, in particular by the Prussian General Aster. With the system of detached forts, the mode of defence of fortresses changed. The garrisons of large fortresses swelled into small armies; the fortress and the space around it, as far as it was dominated by detached forts, were transformed into an entrenched camp or a base for the field operations of the garrison; the defence, previously more passive, became active and assumed an offensive character. A siege, since Vauban a short operation whose end could be calculated almost with certainty beforehand, provided the operation suffered no external disturbance, was now subjected to all the chances of a field war. The artillery on the ramparts was only of secondary interest, and field artillery took precedence over it even in the defence of a place. The engineer’s skill was no longer solely confined to repairing the damage caused during the siege; he now had, as in the field, to select and fortify positions in front of the forts, to take the enemy works in flank by means of counter-works, to change the front of the defence suddenly and thus compel the enemy to change the front of attack. Infantry became the cornerstone in siege wars, as in the field, and cavalry became an indispensable ingredient of almost every garrison. It was therefore no longer possible to determine the duration of a siege in advance, and Vauban’s rules for attacking a place, although they remained important on the whole for the details of the artillery attack, became completely inapplicable to the ensemble of a siege.

The Russians at Sevastopol had no time, after the notorious flank march of the Allies, to throw up detached works. They were at first compelled to proceed according to the old method of fortification. They erected a main rampart as the first defence, and this was indeed the most urgent measure. Behind this wall they erected a second and a third defence line and continued meanwhile to strengthen the first. Then they advanced beyond the wall, constructed the Selenginsk and Volynsk redoubts and finally the work on the Mamelon and a long line of rifle pits, while on the western front, where the main body of the French was posted, they were able to throw up only a few lunettes close to the main ditch and some rifle pits which were likewise not pushed much farther forward. To approach the dominant and decisive position of the Malakoff bastion on the right attack, the besiegers first had to take the Mamelon; but the Mamelon, while defending the Malakoff, was itself defended by all the works in its own rear. The nature of this defence was seen in the 2nd bombardment, when Canrobert did not dare to attack it in earnest.

The resumption of fire by the Allies and the energy with which General Pélissier, heedless of human sacrifice, pursues every favourable chance against the defence, are accompanied by complete stagnation of operations on the Chernaya. This mode of proceeding shows us Pélissier’s character entirely in accordance with his earlier reputation: stubborn, headstrong, and ruthless. Two courses were open to him: either to take the field, to invest Sevastopol on the north side, and then to resume the siege with redoubled energy and fourfold chance of success. This was to be expected all the more, now that not only the reinforcements but also Omer Pasha with 25,000 Turks had arrived at Balaklava. Or he had to drag himself along on the old false track of the last 8 months, cling doggedly to the south side, destroy every stone of it and drive the Russians out of a place which Pélissier, even if it falls, cannot hold with his own troops because of the batteries on the north side. With the same losses to which Pélissier now continually exposes his army in storming attacks, he could in the field achieve incomparably greater and more decisive results. To take the south side without even having invested the north side, by which it is dominated, is an incomprehensible proceeding. Pélissier may still lack means of transport for operations in the open field. Or the Russian counter-approaches may have made it necessary to drive them back into their original lines and make them feel the superiority of the besiegers before undertaking field operations. But in any case, with the capture of Malakoff, the last reason ceases to exist. Should Pélissier be obstinate enough to continue serious attacks on the main body of the place, instead of breaking the strength of the Russian army in the field with all available forces, the ruin of the army commanded by him is by no means improbable, all the more so as the place in which such great masses of men are cooped up is one vast cemetery, whose deadly miasmas the first summer heat will awaken.