Friedrich Engels 
Napoleon's last dodge 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 4358, 7. April 1855 

Napoleon's last dodge. 

"If Croesus does pass the Halys, he will destroy a great empire." This 
answer, given to the Lydian King by the oracle of Delphi, might, with 
equal aptness, now be sent to Louis Bonaparte on his Crimean excursion. 

It is not the Russian Empire which this journey is calculated to destroy, 5 
but his own. 

An extraordinary, anomalous position creates anomalous necessities. 
Every other man, in his place, would be considered a fool if he undertook 
this trip, whose unfavorable chances are to the favorable as ten to one. 
Louis Bonaparte must be quite aware of that fact, and nevertheless he 10 
must go. He is the originator of the whole expedition; he has got the 
allied armies into their present unenviable position, and is bound, before 
all Europe, to get them out of it again. It is his first military feat, and 
upon its issue will depend, for some time at least, his reputation as a 
general. He answers for its success with no less a pledge than his crown. 15 

There are, besides, minor reasons, which equally contribute to make 
this hazardous journey a matter of State necessity. The soldiers in the 
East have shown, on more than one occasion, that their expectations of 
the military glories of the new Empire have been sadly disappointed. At 
Varna and Bazardshik, the paladins of the mock Charlemagne were sa- 20 
luted by their own troops with the title of "apes." "A bas les singes! Vive 
Lamoriciére!" was the cry of the Zouaves when St. Arnaud and Espinasse 
had sent them into the Bulgarian desert, to die of cholera and fever. Now 
it is no longer the banished generals alone whose fame and popularity are 
opposed to the commanders of doubtful reputation, now leading the 25 
French army. The singular conduct of Napoleon Jerome junior, while in 
the East, has recalled to the mind of the old Algerian soldiers the far 
different behavior of the Orleans Princes in Africa, who, whatever else e 

Napoleon's last dodge 

may be said against them, were always at the head of the troops and did 
their duty as soldiers. The contrast between young Aumale and young 
Napoleon was certainly strong enough to make the soldiers say: If the 
Orleans were still in power, the Princes would be with us in the trenches, 
5 sharing our dangers and fatigues; and yet, their name was not Napoleon! 
Thus the soldiers do speak, and what is to be done to stop them? The 
man who "is permitted to wear the uniform of a General of Division," 
has managed to throw a stain upon the military traditions of the name of 
Napoleon; the remainder of the family are all very quiet civilians, natu- 
10 ralists, priests, or else unmitigated adventurers; old Jerome cannot go on 
account of his age, and because his warlike feats of old throw no great 
halo of glory around his head; so Louis Napoleon cannot but go himself. 
Then the rumor of the Crimean journey has been made known in the 
remotest hamlets of France, and has been hailed with enthusiasm by the 
15 peasantry; and the peasantry it was that made Louis Napoleon Emperor. 
The peasantry are convinced that an Emperor of their own make, and 
who bears the name of Napoleon, must actually be a Napoleon redivivus; 
his place is, in their eyes, at the head of the troops, who, led by him, will 
rival the legions of the great Army. If Sevastopol is not taken, it is only 
20 because the Emperor has not yet gone there; let him but once be on the 
spot, and the ramparts of the Russian fortress will crumble into dust like 
the walls of Jericho. Thus, if ever he wished to retract his promise to go, 
he cannot now do so, since the report has once gone forth. 
Accordingly, everything is being prepared. The ten divisions now in the 
25 Crimea are to be followed by four new ones, two of which are to form, in 
the beginning of the campaign, an army of reserve at Constantinople. 
One of these divisions is to consist of the Imperial Guard, another of the 
combined élite companies, or the Grenadiers and Voltigeurs of the army 
of Paris; the two other divisions, (llth and 12th) are already getting 
30 embarked or concentrated at Toulon and Algiers. This fresh reénforce- 
ment would bring the French troops in the Crimea to some 100,000 or 
110,000 men, while, by the end of April, the 15,000 Piedmontese troops 
and numerous British reénforcements will be arriving. But yet, it can 
hardly be expected that the Allies can well be in a position to open the 
35 campaign in May, with an army of 150,000 men. The state of the Her- 
acleatic Chersonese, which has been turned into one great and wretched- 
ly managed burial-ground, is such that with the return of hot and damp 
weather, the whole must form one hotbed of pestilence of all kinds; and 
whatever portion of the troops will have to stop in it, will be exposed to 
40 losses by sickness and death far more terrific than at any previous time. 
There is no chance for the Allies to break forth with an active army from 

Friedrich Engels 

their present position, before all their reénforcements are up; and that 
will be somewhere about the middle of May, when the sickness must have 
already broken out. 

In the best event the Allies must leave 40,000 men before the south side 
of Sevastopol, and will have from 90,000 to 100,000 men at liberty for an 5 
expedition against the Russian army in the field. Unless they maneuver 
very well and the Russian commit great blunders, this army, on de- 
bouching from the Chersonese, will have first to defeat the Russians, and 
drive them back from Sympheropol, before it can effect its junction with 
the Turks at Eupatoria. We will, however, suppose the junction to be 10 
effected without difficulty; the utmost reénforcement which the Turks 
will bring to this motley body of French, English and Piedmontese, will 
be 20,000 men not very well adapted for a battle in the open field. Al- 
together this would make an army of some 120,000 men. How such an 
army is expected to live in a country exhausted by the Russians themsel-1 
ves, poor in corn, and whose main resource, the cattle, the Russians will 
take very good care to drive off toward Perekop, it is not very easy to see. 
The least advance would necessitate extensive foraging and numerous 
detachments to secure the flanks and the communications with the sea. 
The Russian irregular cavalry, which has hitherto had no chance to act, 2 
will then commence its harassing operations. In the meantime, the Rus- 
sians will also have received reénforcements; the publicity with which the 
French armaments have been carried on for the last six weeks, has en- 
abled them to take their measures in time. There can be no doubt that at 
this present moment two or three Russian divisions, either from the army 2" 
of Volhynia and Bessarabia, or from the new-formed reserves, will be on 
the march so as to maintain the balance of power there. 

The greatest detachment to be made from the allied army, must, how- 
ever, be the force which has to inclose Sevastopol on the north side. For 
this purpose, 20,000 men will have to be set aside, and whether the re^ 3 
mainder of their forces will then be sufficient, fettered as they must be by 
difficulties of sustenance, embarrassed with trains of carriages for stores 
and provisions, to drive the Russian field army out of the Crimea, is very 
doubtful. 

So much is certain, that the laurels by which Louis Bonaparte intends 3T 
to earn the name of a Napoleon in the Crimea are hung up rather high, 
and will not be so very easily plucked. All the difficulties, however, 
which have been hitherto mentioned, are ofa merely local character. Zhe -i 
great objection to this mode of campaigning in the Crimea is, after all, * 
that it transfer one-fourth of the disposable forces of France to a mmor 40. ti 
theater of war, where even the greatest success decides nothing. It is this 

Napoleon's last dodge 

absurd obstinacy about Sevastopol degenerating into a sort of supersti- 
tion, and giving to successes, but also to reverses, fictitious values, which 
forms the great fundamental mistake of the whole plan. And it is this 
fictitious value given to events in the Crimea which rebounds with re- 
doubled force upon the unfortunate originator of the scheme. For Alex- 
ander, Sevastopol is not Russia, far from it; but for Louis Bonaparte, the 
impossibility of taking Sevastopol is the loss of France. 

Friedrich Engels t3 
A battle at Sevastopol N 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 4358, 7. April 1855 

A battle at Sevastopol. J 

Our columns, this morning, contain the official French, English, and 
Russian reports of a contest between the antagonists at Sevastopol. It 
was sufficiently important to require, in addition to the official docu- 

ments, some words of explanation and comment from us. 5 
About a month ago, from the generally-successful sorties ofthe Rus- 34 

sians, we came to the conclusion that the trenches had been pushed for- ¿l 

ward to a point at which the force ofthe besieged was equal to that of the Jp. 

besiegers; in other words, that the proximity of the trenches was such as 
to enable the Russians to bring, in a sally, to any portion of the trenches, 10 
a force at least equal to what the Allies could bring up during the first 
hour or two hours. As an hour or two are quite sufficient to destroy the «f 
rivetings, and to spike the guns of a battery, the natural consequence 

was, that beyond this point the Allies could not push their approaches. 

Since then the siege came to a stand, until the arrival of three French 16 
brigades (one of the Eighth and two ofthe Ninth Division) allowed them 

to relieve part of the English infantry, and to establish stronger trench- 
guards. At the same time, the arrival of Generals Niel and Jones, of the 
Engineers, gave fresh activity to the siege operations, and remedied mis- $J 
takes caused, principally, by the obstinacy of the French General Bizot, 20 
and by the numeric weakness of the British infantry. New approaches 

were now pushed forward, especially on the English side, where a parallel 

was opened at about 300 yards from the Russian works on the hill of 
Malakoff. Some of the batteries now erected were so far toward the 
Inkermann side that they would have taken part of the Russian batteries 25 - 

in the rear, or enfiladed them, as soon as their fire could be opened. 
Against these new lines the Russians have just taken a step which has 

been carried out with uncommon skill and boldness. 

A battle at Sevastopol 

The Russian lines, as every plan shows, extend in a semicircular arch 
round the town, from the head of the Quarantine Bay to that of the inner 
war harbor, and thence to the head of the Careening Bay. This latter bay is 
a small creek, formed by the extremity ofa deep ravine, extending from the 

5 great harbor or Bay of Sevastopol far up the plateau on which the Allies 
are encamped. On the western side of this ravine extends a range of hights 
forming the Russian lines; the most considerable of these elevations is the 
hill of Malakoff, forming, by its commanding position, the key of the 
whole Russian right. On the eastern side of the ravine and the Careening 

10 Bay, another elevation is situated, which, being completely under the fire 
both of the Russian batteries and of their men-of-war, remained out of the 
reach of the Allies as long as they could not completely interrupt the 
communication of Sevastopol with Inkermann, which was protected by 
the fire of the forts and batteries on the north side ofthe harbor. But since 

15 the Allies had found positions to the east and south-east of Malakoff, for 
batteries to take in the Russian lines, flank and rear, this neutral hill had 
become important. Accordingly, on the night of February 21, the Russi- 
ans sent a party of workmen to erect on it a redoubt, planned beforehand 
by their engineers. In the morning the long trench and a beginning of 

20 parapets behind it, were visible to the Allies. They appear to have been 
entirely unable to understand the meaning of this; accordingly, they were 
content to let well alone. Next morning, however, the redoubt was all but 
complete, at least in its outline, for the sequel showed that the profile, that 
is, the depth of the ditch and strength of the parapet, was still very weak. 

25 By this time the Allies began to find out that this work was admirably 
situated to enfilade their own enfilading batteries, and thus to make them 
all but useless. The engineers protested that this work must be taken at any 
cost. Accordingly, Canrobert organized with the greatest secrecy, a stor- 
ming column, consisting of about 1,600 Zouaves and 3,000 Marines. The 

. 30 orders having to be given at a late hour, and all on a sudden, some delay 
occurred in collecting the troops at the rendezvous, and it was 2 o'clock on 
the morning of the 24th before they could start for the assault, the Zouaves 
leading. A short march brought them up to twenty yards from the ditch. 
As usual in assaults, not a shot was to be fired; the soldiers were made to 

35 take off the percussion-caps from their guns to prevent their being entan- 
gled in useless and dilatory firing. All at once, a few Russian words of 
command were heard; a strong body of Russians in the interior of the 
redoubt, rose from the ground, leveled their guns over the top of the 
parapet, and poured a volley into the advancing column. From the dark- 

40 ness, and the well known inveterate habit of soldiers in intrenchments to 
fire always straight across the parapet this volley can have had but little 

Friedrich Engels 

effect upon the narrow head of the column. The Zouaves, hardly detained 
by the sloping sides of the incomplete ditch and rampart, in a moment 
were in the redoubt, and rushed at their opponents with the bayonet. A 
terrible hand-to-hand struggle took place. After some time the Zouaves 
possessed themselves of one-half of the redoubt, and, at a later period, the 5 
Russians entirely abandoned it to them. In the mean time, the marines, 
following the Zouaves at a short distance, either lost their way, or from 
some other reason, stopped on the brink of the hill. Here they were assail- 
ed in each flank by a Russian column, which, after a desperate resistance, 
drove them down the hill. During or shortly after this struggle, daylight 10 
must have dawned, for the Russians speedily retired from the hill—leaving 
the redoubt in the possession of the Zouaves—upon whom now opened all 
the Russian artillery which could be brought to bear on the spot. The 
Zouaves lay down for a moment, while some rifle volunteers, who had 
accompanied them, crept up the Malakoff works, trying to fire at the 15 
Russian gunners through the embrasures. But the fire was too heavy; and, 
before long, the Zouaves had to retreat on the side toward Inkermann, 
which sheltered them against most of the batteries. They profess to have 
carried all their wounded with them. 

This little affair was carried out with great bravery by the Zouaves and 20 
a Gen. Monet, and with great skill combined with their usual tenacity by 
the Russians. They consisted of the two regiments of Selenghinsk and 
Volhynia, the strength of which, after several campaigns, cannot have 
exceeded 500 men per battalion, or 4,000 men in all. Gen. Kroushoff 
commanded them. Their arrangements were so admirable that the 25 
French declare that the whole plan of attack must have been known to 
them. The attack upon the marines was completely and almost instan- 
taneously successful, while their retreat out of the incomplete redoubt 
had the effect of exposing the unfortunate und unsupported Zouaves to 
an overwhelming fire, which must have remained silent as long as the 30 
struggle within the redoubt was going on. 

Gen. Canrobert found that this defeat had a very great effect on his 
troops. Their impatience which had made itself remarkable on various 
occasions, now broke out with full force. The assault upon the town was 
demanded by the soldiers. The word of treason, that everlasting excuse 35 
for a defeat suffered by the French, was loudly pronounced, and Gen. "- 
Forey, without any apparent reason, was even nominally pointed out as 
the party who betrayed to the enemy the secret resolutions of the French 
Council of War. So confused was Canrobert, that in one breath he wrote 
an order of the day representing the whole affair as a brilliant though 40 
relative success, and a note to Lord Raglan proposing an immediate 
assault, a proposal which Lord Raglan, of course, declined. 

A battle at Sevastopol 

The Russians, on their part, maintained their new redoubt, and have 
since been busy completing it. This position is of great importance. It 
secures the communication with Inkermann and the arrival of supplies 
from that direction. It menaces the whole right of the allied siege-works, 

5 by taking them in flank, and necessitating fresh approaches to paralyze 
it. Above all, it shows the capability, in the Russians, not only to hold 
their ground, but even to advance beyond it. In the latter part of Feb- 
ruary they pushed trenches of counter-approach toward the allied 
works from their new redoubt. The reports do not, however, state the 

10 exact direction of these works. At all events, the presence of the two 
regiments of the line in Sevastopol proves that the garrison, hitherto 
consisting of marines and sailors only, has been considerably reénforced, 
and is strong enough for any eventuality. 

It is now reported that by the 10th or 11th of March, the Allies would 

15 be in a position to open their batteries upon the Russian defenses, but, 
with the resources of the Russians and the difficulties of the Allies, how is 
it to be expected that the first condition will be fulfilled, namely: That the 
besiegers' fire will be superior to that of the besieged, and so far superior, 
too, as to silence the Russian batteries before the English and French 

20 have exhausted their stores of ammunition? But let us suppose even this 
result is obtained. Suppose even that at this decisive moment the Rus- 
sians in the field should neglect attacking the positions of Inkermann and 
Balaklava. Suppose the assaults attempted upon the first Russian line, 
and suppose that line even carried: What then? Fresh defenses, fresh 

25 batteries, strong buildings converted into small citadels requiring a new 
set of batteries to bring them down, are before the storming columns; a 
hail of grape and musketry drives them back, and it is as much as they 
can do if they hold the first Russian line. 

Then follows the siege of the second, then that of the third line—not to 

30 mention the numerous minor obstacles which the Russian engineers, as 
we now have learned to know them, cannot have failed to accumulate in 
the interior of the space intrusted to their care. And during this time, wet 
and heat, and heat and wet alternately, on a ground impregnated with 
the animal decay of thousands of men and horses, will create diseases 

35 unknown and unheard of. The pestilence, it is true, will reign within the 
town as well as without; but which party will have to give in to it first? 

Spring will carry along with it terrible things on this little peninsula of 
five miles by ten, where three of the greatest nations of Europe are fight- 
ing an obstinate struggle; and Louis Bonaparte will have plenty of rea- 

40 son to congratulate himself when his great expedition comes to develop 
its full fruit.