Frederick Engels

Sevastopol

Written about June 12, 1855.
From the English.

["New-York Daily Tribune" No. 4429 of June 29, 1855, leading article]

By the “Baltic” mail we have come into possession of the official documents on the latest events at Sevastopol. Yesterday we published the despatches of General Pélissier and Lord Raglan, and we now proceed to publish the facts as they have been established by these and other evidence:

On June 6 the allied batteries of the right attack reopened fire on the town. This time, however, it was not a general bombardment. It was merely a cannonade on certain points, with the object of taking them immediately. The outworks constructed by the Russians on this sector of defence on February 23 and March 12—the Selenginsk, Volhynsk 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 or the covered way (if there is one) of the defences, and thus the progress made on this side had left the much slower advance of the right attack far behind. Since the allied plan of siege regards the two great sections of the lines—the town west of the inner harbour <South Bay> 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. In order to accomplish this, the above-mentioned redoubts and some minor entrenchments in a quarry flanking the Mamelon (Kamchatka) redoubt on the right were to be carried. Consequently, after a 36-hour cannonade, on the evening of June 7, the French stormed the two redoubts Selenginsk and Volhynsk across the Kilen ravine and the Mamelon redoubt, while the British stormed the quarry. After an hour’s fierce fighting, the allies were in possession of the works. A number of guns were captured, and 400 prisoners taken, among them 13 officers. The loss was very heavy on both sides.

Thus, on this side, everything is now roughly in the same state as before February 22. Of the redoubts stormed by the allies, the Mamelon redoubt (called the Kamchatka redoubt by the Russians <i.e., the Kamchatka lunette>) is the most important. It was constructed on March 12 and the following days. Already at that time we pointed out the great importance of this work and the considerable part it would play in the struggle. The event has fully justified our views. This hastily thrown-up fieldwork checked the progress of the besiegers on one half of the entire line of attack for 88 days, a period twice as long as is required in ordinary sieges for the capture of a well-situated fortress. Whence this extraordinary phenomenon, which has but two parallels in the history of sieges: the one in the defence of Kolberg by the Prussians (1807) and the other in the defence of Danzig by the French (1813/1814).

With the increase of armies in the open field, the old and generally small fortifications of Vauban’s time lost their significance. They were left with impunity in the rear by victorious armies and scarcely observed by flying corps until the army reserve came up and found time to take them. But if these large armies on their march encountered great fortresses, they were invariably checked. This was the case with Napoleon at Mantua in 1797 and at Danzig in 1807. The reason is clear. When an army of 150,000 men advanced into an enemy country, the small fortresses in its rear offered no danger: all their garrisons combined were not strong enough to meet the reinforcements and reserves dispatched from the depots to replenish the active army. Such small garrisons could, moreover, detach no corps of troops of any considerable strength to sweep the field and interrupt the enemy army’s lines of communication. But when an army encountered a fortress of considerable strength with a garrison of 15,000–25,000 men, the matter stood differently. Such a fortress formed the nodal point of defence for a whole province; it could detach in every direction and to a considerable distance a strong corps of troops, capable of field operations and always assured, in the event of a superior attack, of a safe retreat to the fortress. To observe such a fortress was almost as difficult as to take it. It was therefore preferable 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 <(counterguards, i.e.,) outer, counter-ramparts>, tower redoubts are so accumulated that they form only one line of defence, which, once it had been penetrated, was breached in a few days, and once the line of defence was breached, the fortress fell too. Such a system was obviously unsuitable for large fortresses which alone could check great invasion armies in their advance; to retain this system would have amounted to the sacrifice of the garrison, for a successful breach would have left the fortress works defenceless. Recourse had to be taken to another system—that of advanced works. The French general Montalembert, Carnot’s teacher, was the first to declare himself, in defiance of the loud prejudices of his profession, in favour of detached forts; but the method of constructing great fortresses with detached forts in such a way that they together form a complete system of defence has been developed to its present perfection in Germany, especially by the Prussian general Aster. The splendid defensive works of Cologne, Coblenz, Posen, Königsberg and, in part, Mainz are his work, and they mark a new era in the history of fortification. The French finally recognised the necessity of adopting this system and constructed the defensive works of Paris with detached forts, which were planned and executed in a first-class style.

With the system of detached forts, the method of defending fortresses changed. The garrisons of great fortresses had to be enlarged to such an extent that there was no necessity to maintain a merely passive defence until the enemy, advancing to the glacis, came within the range that permitted sorties. A garrison of 20,000 or 25,000 men was strong enough to attack the enemy on his own ground. The fortress and the space around it, as far as it was protected by detached forts, turned into an entrenched camp or a base for the field operations of the garrison, which itself was transformed into a small army. The previously more passive defence became active and assumed an offensive character. The necessity of such a defence system became so obvious that, when the French besieged Danzig in 1807, the Prussian garrison, numbering 20,000 men, at once erected such detached forts, which did not exist there, but which were immediately deemed necessary in order to employ the resources of this large garrison for a real defence of the place. When the French defended Danzig against the Allies in 1813/1814, they applied the same principle with even greater success.

A siege, since Vauban a short-duration operation whose end could almost certainly be achieved within a predetermined period provided the procedure suffered no external disturbance, now became an operation subject to all the chances of field warfare. The artillery on the ramparts was now of only secondary interest, and field artillery took precedence over it, even in the defence of a place. The engineer’s skill was no longer solely directed to making good the damage caused during the siege; he now had, as in the field, to choose and fortify positions situated in front of the forts, to draw trenches towards the enemy’s trenches, to take the enemy’s works in flank by counter-works, suddenly to change the front of defence and thus to compel the enemy to change the front of attack. Infantry became the cornerstone in siege warfare as in the field, and cavalry became an indispensable ingredient of almost every garrison. It was therefore no longer possible to determine in advance the duration of a siege, and Vauban’s rules for the attack of a place, although they remained correct 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 to throw up detached works. They were initially forced to proceed according to the old method of fortifying a place. They erected a main rampart as the first line of defence, and this was indeed the most urgent. Behind this rampart they erected a second and a third line of defence and meanwhile continued to strengthen the first. Then, when they gradually felt their superiority even at a certain distance from the main rampart, they advanced and built the Selenginsk and Volhynsk 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 also not pushed much further forward. Thus, from the moment the Mamelon was fortified by the Russians, the eastern front was comparatively secure, while on the western front, where no such protective outworks existed, the besiegers gradually advanced right up to the edge of the main ditch. In order to approach, on the right attack, the commanding and decisive position of the Malakhov Bastion, the besiegers therefore had first to take the Mamelon; but the Mamelon, while it defended the Malakhov, was itself again defended by all the works in its own rear. What sort of defence this was was seen in the second bombardment, when Canrobert did not dare to attack it seriously. Even now there can be no doubt that the French loss in storming this work must have been very heavy.

The reopening of fire by the allies and the energy with which General Pélissier, regardless of the lives of his soldiers, pursues every favourable chance against the defence, are accompanied by complete stagnation of the operations on the Chernaya. This mode of proceeding shows us Pélissier’s character entirely in keeping with his earlier renown—stubborn, wilful and reckless. Two courses were open to him: either to take the field, to invest Sevastopol also on the north side, and then to resume the siege with redoubled energy and fourfold chances of success. Or he had to drag himself along on the old wrong path of the last 8 months, cling stubbornly to the south side, destroy every stone of it, and drive the Russians out of a place which, even if it is abandoned, Pélissier cannot hold with his own troops on account of the batteries on the north side.

There is no sensible soldier in the world who, upon the news of Pélissier’s appointment as commander and the great reinforcement of the Allies, did not expect that he would immediately take the first course. Particularly after Omer Pasha arrived in Balaklava with 25,000 Turks, there was no doubt that the Allies were strong enough to continue the siege, to send 15,000 men to Kerch, and besides to take the field with more troops than the Russians could oppose to them. Why have they not done so? Do they still lack means of transport? Have they no confidence in their

ability to conduct a campaign in the Crimea? We do not know. But one thing is certain: unless Pélissier has
very compelling
reasons for refraining from field operations, he is pursuing an extremely false course out of mere obstinacy and wilfulness. With the same losses to which Pélissier now continually subjects his army in storming assaults, he could achieve incomparably greater and more decisive results in the field. To take the south side, without even blockading the north side, by which it is commanded,

means defying all the rules of warfare, and if Pélissier is intent on this, he may yet ruin the great army he commands.

We are willing, however, to interpret every doubtful action in favour of the new commander. It may be that the fighting on the left attack was unavoidable and provoked by the Russians’ counter-approaches. It may be that it was necessary to drive the Russians back into their original lines—to make them feel the superiority of the besiegers by a few hard, irresistible blows—before a division of the army into a siege corps and a field corps could be ventured. But even if we concede all this, we must now say that things cannot go on in this way, and that any further serious attempt to take the place would be a direct mistake, unless the forces of the Russian field army are first worn down in combat with all the forces available for this purpose.