Friedrich Engels 
Progress of the war 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 4366, 17. April 1855 

Progress of the war. 

While the diplomats assembled at Vienna are discussing the fate of Se- 
vastopol, and the Allies are trying to make peace on the best terms they 
can, the Russians in the Crimea, profiting by the blunders of their op- 
ponents, as well as by their own central position in the country, are again 5 
taking the offensive on every point. It is a curious state of things, con- 
sidering the boasts with which the Allies began their invasion, and looks 
like a vast satire on human presumption and folly. But though it thus has 
its comic side, the drama is deeply tragic, after all; and we once more 
invite our readers to a serious examination of the facts, as they are dis- 10 
closed by our latest advices received here on Sunday morning by the 
America's mails. 

At Eupatoria, Omer Pasha is now actually hemmed in on the land side. 
Their superiority in cavalry permits the Russians to place their picquets 
and videttes close to the town, to scour the country by patrols, intercep- 15 
ting supplies, and in case of a serious sally, to fall back upon their in- 
fantry. Thus they are doing what we predicted they would do—holding 
the superior force of Turks in check by a body perhaps not more than 
one-fourth or one-third their number. Accordingly Omer Pasha is wait- 
ing for additional cavalry to come up, and in the meantime has been to 20 
the Anglo-French camp to inform his allies that for the present he can do 
nothing, and that a reénforcement of some 10,000 French troops would 
be very desirable. No doubt it would; but no less desirable to Canrobert 
himself, who, by this time, must have found out that he has both too 
many troops, and too few—too many for the mere carrying on of the 25 
siege, such as it is, and for the defense of the Chernaya; but not enough 
to debouch from the Chernaya, drive the Russians into the interior, and 
invest the North Fort. To send 10,000 men to Eupatoria, would not 

Progress of the war 

enable the Turks to take the field with success; while their absence would 
cripple the French army at the time when, with the reénforcements ar- 
riving in spring, it is expected to take the field. 

The siege is now becoming a very sorry affair, indeed. The night attack 
of the Zouaves on Feb. 24, was even more disastrous in its results than 
we stated a week ago. It appears from Canrobert's own dispatch that he 
did not know what he was about when he ordered this attack. He says: 
"The purpose of the attack being now attained, our troops retired, as 
nobody ever could think of our establishing ourselves on a point so 
10 completely commanded by the fire of the enemy." But what was the 

purpose thus attained? What was there to do if the point could not be 

held? Nothing whatever. The destruction of the redoubt was not accom- 
plished, and could not have been accomplished under the enemy's fire, 
even if the Zouaves, as the first report pretended, had for a moment 
15 exclusive possession of the work. But that they never had; the Russian 
report denies it most positively, and Canrobert does not pretend to any- 
thing of the kind. What, then, was meant by this attack? Why, plainly 

this: that Canrobert, seeing the Russians establishing themselves in a 

position very embarrassing and equally humiliating to the besiegers, 
20 without any reflection, without giving himself the trouble of examining 

the probable issue of the affair, sent his troops to the charge. It was a 

downright, useless butchery, and will leave a serious stain upon Can- 

robert's military reputation. If any excuse can be found, it is only in the 
supposition that the French troops having become impatient for the as- 
25 sault, the General intended giving them a slight foretaste of what the 
assault would be. But this excuse is quite as discreditable to Canrobert as 
the charge itself. 
By the affair of Malakoff the Russians ascertained their superiority on 
the ground immediately in front of their defenses. The work situated on 
30 the crest of the hill, and vainly attacked by the Zouaves, is called by them 
the Selenghinsk redoubt, from the regiment which defended it. They at 
once proceeded to follow up their advantage and act upon the certitude 
thus obtained. Selenghinsk was enlarged and strengthened, guns were 
brought up to it, though they must have passed under the heaviest fire of 
35 the besiegers, and counter-approaches were made from it, probably with 

a view to erect one or two minor works in its front. On another spot, too, 

in front of the Kornileff bastion, a series of new redoubts was also 

thrown up 300 yards in advance ofthe old Russian works. From former 

British reports, the possibility of such a step seems astonishing, for we 
40 were always told the Allies had thrown up their own trenches at less than 

that distance from the Russian lines. But as we were enabled to state, 

nN 

Friedrich Engels 

upon first-rate professional authority about a month since, the French 
lines were still some 400 yards from the Russian outworks, and the Bri- 
tish even twice that distance. Now, at last, The Times’ correspondent's 
letter of March 16 confesses that even up to that date the British trenches 
were still 600 to 800 yards off, and that, in fact, the batteries about to 5 
open upon the enemy were but the same which opened their fire on the 17 th 
of October last! This, then, is that great progress in the sieges—that push- 
ing forward the trenches, which cost two-thirds of the British army their 
lives! 

Under such circumstances, there was plenty of room for erecting these 10 
new Russian works in the intermediate space between the two lines of 
batteries; but it nevertheless remains a most unparalleled act, the boldest 
and most skillful thing that was ever undertaken by a besieged garrison. 

It amounts to nothing less than opening a fresh parallel against the Al- 
lies, at from 300 to 400 yards from their works; to a counter-approach on 15 
the grandest scale against the besiegers, who thereby are at once thrown 
back into a defensive state, while the very first essential condition of a 
siege is that the besiegers shall hold the besieged in the defensive. Thus 
the tables are completely turned, and the Russians are strongly in the 
ascendant. 20 

Whatever blunders and fantastical experiments the Russian engineers 
may have made under Schilder, at Silistria, the Allies have, here at Se- 
vastopol, evidently a different set of men to deal with. The justness and 
rapidity of glance—the promptness, boldness, and faultlessness of exe- 
cution, which the Russian engineers have shown in throwing up their 25 
lines around Sevastopol—the indefatigable attention with which every 
weak point was protected as soon as discovered by the enemy—the ex- 
cellent arrangement of the line of fire, so as to concentrate a force, su- 
perior to that of the besiegers, upon any given point of the ground in 
front—the preparation of a second, third and fourth line of fortifications 30 
in rear of the first—in short, the whole conduct of this defense has been 
classic. The late offensive advances on Malakoff hill and to the front of 
the Kornileff bastion are unparalleled in the history of sieges, and stamp 
their originators as first-rate men in their line. It is but just to add that 
the Chief Engineer at Sevastopol is Col. Todtleben, a comparatively ob- 35 
scure man in the Russian service. But we must not take the defense of 
Sevastopol as a fair specimen of Russian engineering. The average bet- 
ween Silistria and Sevastopol is nearer the reality. 

People in the Crimea, as well as in England and France, now begin to : 
discover, though very gradually, that there is no chance of Sevastopol 40 
being taken by assault. In this perplexity The London Times has applied 

Progress of the war 

1 

to "high professional authority," and has been informed that the proper 
thing to do is to act on the offensive, either by passing the Chernaya, and 
effecting a junction with Omer Pasha's Turks, before or after a battle 
against the Russian Army of Observation, or by a diversion against Kaf- 
fa, which would force the Russians to divide themselves. As the allied 
army is now supposed to number from 110,000 to 120,000 men, such 
movements should be in their power. Now, nobody knows better than 
Canrobert and Raglan that an advance beyond the Chernaya and a 
union with Omer Pasha's army would be most desirable; but, unfortu- 
nately, as we have proved over and over again, the 110,000 to 120,000 
Allies on the hights before Sevastopol do not exist, and have never ex- 
isted. On the Ist of March they did not number above 90,000 men fit for 
duty. As to an expedition to Kaffa, the Russians could wish for nothing 
better than so see the allied troops dispersed over three different points, 
from 60 to 150 miles distant from the center one, while at neither of the 
two points which they now hold have they sufficient strength to perform 
the task before them! Sureley, the "high professional authority" must 
have been hoaxing The Times in seriously advising it to advocate a re- 
petition of the Eupatoria expedition!