Friedrich Engels 
The assault on Sevastopol 


New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 4305, 5. Februar 1855 


The assault on Sevastopol. 


The scandalous mismanagement and the fatal want of rational system 
which characterize the British War Office, and have ruined the British 
army in the Crimea, are familiar to our readers, but probably few of 
them ever peruse the great London Journals with sufficient attention to 5 
know that they exhibit a similar want of knowledge and judgment and an 
equally defective organization. Even the Jupiter Tonans of them all, The 
Times, is so ill-provided in its military department, that it often becomes 
the organ of gross blunders and delusions, which would necessarily be 
prevented by the presence in its numerous and well-paid editorial staff, of 10 
a competent writer on that class of subjects. A recent instance of the kind 

is so interesting and so strikingly illustrative of the general system of that 
journal, that we notice it in some detail. 

Sir Howard Douglas, in his recently published essay on the Crimean 
campaign, with all his partiality for the commander-in-chief, and the care 15 
in expressing his opinions required by his official position, is yet com- 
pelled to come to the conclusion that the Expedition must turn out a 
complete failure. This was published at London about the middle of last 
month, and of course was written some two weeks earlier. Now before it 
was written, The Times had been making a vigorous and prolonged on- 20 
slaught upon the administration of the army, the War Office and Lord 
Raglan, and stood before the public as the conqueror in a great public 
contest. Hereupon, it seems that the Government, to silence this sudden 
and untoward opposition, were actually cowardly enough to buy it off 
with a piece of news; Sevastopol was to be stormed after forty hours' 25 
cannonade! When this startling announcement reached America, we 
could not but regard it as a groundless canard, and the veteran Douglas 
evidently had the same opinion, for he added no qualifying postcript to 


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The assault on Sevastopol 


his criticism, as he must have done had he believed such an assault pos- 
sible. But the "Thunderer" of London, the "leading journal of the uni- 
verse," took the bait greedily and without hesitation. The Times had it 
from a certain source that Sevastopol was to be stormed. The Times 
knew, in fact, all about it; only in order to keep its information from the 
Russians, it was not going to tell all it knew; still the great event was to 
take place about the time it published this information. The Times had 
no doubt that Sevastopol had fallen. Let whoever is curious refer to a file 
of that journal from the 26th to the 31st of December. 

Now at that very time both the dispatches of the allied generals in the 
Crimea and the correspondence of the press, were amply sufficient to 
show that such an assault would have been a piece of madness. Raglan 
and Canrobert, seeing their armies melting away, despairing of timely 
reénforcement beyond a certain amount, may, at one time, have resolved 


15 that, under certain circumstances, the weather improving, and admitting 


of sufficient guns and ammunition being brought up, and other things 
being favorable, they might prefer the risk of an assault to the certainty 
of losing their men slowly but surely by disease. Such eventualities may 
have been considered; it has been done in former campaigns, although in 


20 most cases the intention was not carried out, from lack of the conditions 


ofits execution. But to convert a mere intention, depending upon certain 
eventualities, into an actual plan of campaign, a thing resolved 
upon,—this was something that could only occur to the French Govern- 
ment, just then in want of money, and to the British Government, in 


25 want of support in any shape for its tottering structure. Both Govern- 


ments simultaneously published the news of the imminent assault upon 
Sevastopol. It was to come off before the end of December. And The 
London Times was imprudent and ignorant enough to believe it, and to 
make its readers—or at least the mass of them—believe it too. It may be 


30 a principle with that journal to credit any news that it gets a day before 


its competitors, but in such a case as this it would have been quite as well 
to scrutinize the statement before making so much parade with it. 


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