Friedrich Engels 
Sevastopol—siege to be raised 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 4386, 10. Mai 1855 

Sevastopol—siege to be raised. 

On the morning of the 9th of April the second bombardment of Seva- 
stopol began. It was continued, according to the latest news, up to the 
22d, for thirteen successive days, with the energy and vivacity of what the 
Russians themselves call an "infernal fire." And what was the result? 
"That," so says the telegraph, "the superiority of the fire of the Allies was 
established beyond a doubt." Thirteen day's violent, almost incessant 
cannonade, and no better result than this paltry satisfaction—how is this 
possible? 

A bombardement or cannonade of this sort always forms part of an 1( 
irregular attack, that is an attack where the enemy's fortifications are not 
approached by the slow but steady and sure method discovered first by 
Vauban and brought to perfection by his successors. The regular attack 
proceeds from parallel to parallel by the well-known zig-zag trenches; 

erecting fresh batteries at every new point gained in advance, protected © 
by the fire of the more rearward batteries; extending the third or fourth 
parallel at the foot of the glacis; creeping up the glacis by the double sap; 
forming a sort of last parallel at the very edge of the ditch, called the 
crowning of the glacis; constructing in it the breaching and counter-bat- 
teries; opening the breach; forming a subterraneous descent into the 20 
ditch; and finally risking the assault under the most favorable circum- 
stances possible. In this method every step is gained by using all the 
positions secured beforehand as a base of operations to every fresh ad- 
vance. Every act is regular and well supported, and though it may be 
contested for a moment, must ultimately attain its end if no mistakes are 25 
made. 

There are cases where this systematic way of proceeding would be out 
of place. Wherever a fortified town is of but little intrinsic strength, ¢ 

Sevastopol—siege to be raised 

where the fortifications are dilapidated, the garrison weak, the arsenals 
ill-provided, the ground before the works broken so as to allow the be- 
siegers to proceed unseen by the garrison to close proximity with the 
town; where the fortress is a town containing some thousands or tens of 
5 thousands of inhabitants whose terror once excited may be brought to 
bear upon the moral firmness of the garrison and commander; there the 
forcible or irregular attack, undertaken by a force of sufficient superi- 
ority, will be less tedious, less expensive, and yet secure the same result. Or 
where the fortified position to be carried is of the nature of an entrenched 
10 camp, defended by works the ditches of which have no masonry scarps, 
are of little breadth and depth, and consequently do not require breaking 
to make an assault possible, then a regular attack would be equally mis- 
placed. 
All the cases where the forcible attack may be successfully carried out 
15 may be reduced to one of the above two. Either the object of attack is a 
weak fortress with numerous inhabitants and little resorces, or it is an 
intrenched camp. 
In the first case the production of a great moral impression is the 
decisive thing. A forcible attack upon even the smallest fortress, without 
20 a decisive battle gained beforehand, a complete investment established, a 
vast superiority of force displayed, every hope of relief entirely destroyed, 
never did nor will lead to success. The campaign of 1815 in France, 
therefore, furnishes us with the model examples of successful irregular 
attacks. The French army was annihilated, the north of France was in- 
25 undated by the invading troops that marched from town to town without 
any resistance. Large masses of troops surrounded the smaller fortresses 
on the north frontier, and one after another they fell after a few days 
resistance. The mode of attack in such case is very simple. The natural 
despondency of the garrison must be worked upon. For this purpose the 
30 besiegers open their trenches close to the fortress, say at from 300 to 400 
yards, which they are enabled to do by the superior number of troops 
they can bring to protect the works. In this parallel they construct a 
number of mortar and howitzer batteries to bombard the town, while a 
few enfilading or dismounting batteries directly engage the guns of the 
35 enemy. The bombardment must do the main work. The destruction of 
part of the town and the burning effects of shells thrown at all hours of 
the night, will soon bring the inhabitants down upon the garrison, itself 
harrassed by night-alarms and want of rest. Ifa few guns on the ramparts 
are dismounted, if a powder-magazine or two are blown up, the inutility 
40 of further resistance will soon, though wrongly, be acquiesced in by the 
commander, and a few hours' more bombardment will bring about a 

Friedrich Engels 

capitulation. Thus, in this case the principal thing required is an impos- 
ing force and ammunition enough to tire out the garrison. 

In the second case, that of an intrenched camp, the theory of regular 
trenches is out of the question, as it would give the enemy time to strength- 
en his works in the same proportion. Even single detached batteries are 5 
erected in such cases only where the ground favors natural approaches; 
they always must be made in a single night and therefore are generally 
merely cut into the solid earth to the depth of three feet or so. The 
principal cover for the artillery, which can seldom or never be got in 
heavier calibre than 12-pounders, must be found in the natural undula- 10 
tions of the ground. As no siege artillery—unless in very exceptional 
cases, and then in very inconsiderable strength only—can be brought 
forward, the fire of the attack is mainly directed to dismounting the guns 
and killing the defenders of the enemy's works. As soon as the enfilading 
fire has succeeded in silencing the artillery of the defense and making 15 
some impression upon the garrisons of the lunettes or redoubts, the 
whole of the attacking artillery advance to effective grape range and 
prepare by an unremitting hail of case-shot for the actual assault upon 
the works. This sort of cannonade, being almost exclusively the work of 
field-artillery, would not be mentioned here in the account of a siege, had 20 
not the allies, by a very singular mistake, mixed up the application of 
siege-artillery and field-artillery in this siege. 

Now Sevastopol is neither a small fortress liable to a forcible attack in 
the manner described, nor an intrenched camp or hastily-defended open 
town. When the Allies first arrived the place might have been considered 25 
an open town covered by hasty intrenchments but secured by strong 
redoubts, and by its extent taking the dimensions of an intrenched camp. 
If such was the case the mode of attack fit for intrenched camps might 
have been employed with a good chance of success. The whole of the 
field-artillery and whatever could be moved of the lighter ship and siege- 30 
guns should have been brought up to the front—the latter forming the 
supports, the former the movable batteries—to advance as soon as the 
Russian fire became subdued; and after a four or six hours’ cannonade 
the assault should have been made. Possibly this might have been done, 
but the difficulty experienced in bringing up the siege-train and the am- 35 
munition proves that it was a doubtful matter; yet it would have b< en 
better than anything that has been done. The idea was abandoned and a 
sort of regular-irregular siege resolved upon, an operation which was at 
any given moment to leave the besiegers the choice of finishing up by a 
methodical advance or of attempting the forcible attack and bombard- 40 
ment. But the defenses of Sevastopol grew up twice as quick as the allied 

Sevastopol—siege to be raised 

trenches; and by the time the batteries of the attack were ready to open 
the place was a fortress surrounded by an enceinte, thrown up, it is true, 
in haste and not properly riveted, but if the want of rivetments laid it 
open to an assault, the unparalleled profusion of guns with which the 

5 rampart was bristling utterly precluded such an idea before the enemy's 
fire was completely silenced. 

The first bombardment—17th October to 5th November—was under- 
taken because the regular attack proceeded so slowly; and the regular 
attack proceeded slowly and even imperceptibly because it was carried on 

10 in the contempt of all rules, embracing the whole of the southern lines 
instead of one or two fronts, and scattering the working forces and the 
effects of the fire instead of concentrating them. Sevastopol was no lon- 
ger a place fit for any sort of irregular attack. A concentrated regular 
attack only could have succeeded. It had no timid inhabitants to be 

15 worked upon. It was not even properly invested. Its extent was such as to 
scatter the effects of the bombardment over a surface where they appear- 
ed but trifling. The houses, built of solid free-stone, were bad material for 
large fires. Accordingly, the first bombardment had no lasting effect 
whatever except to squander the precious ammunition of the Allies, to 

20 deteriorate their guns, and to disable their offensive forces for five 
months. 

The second bombardment necessitated immense preparations. The old 
guns, with bores ruined by firing and of too weak a caliber, had to be 
replaced by heavier ones. Shot and powder had to be brought up in 

25 enormous quantities. The besiegers suffered tremendously by sickness, 
and the return of spring alone enabled them to work with some degree of 
activity. If it is considered that with the present heavy guns every shot 
consumes in iron and powder about fifty pounds on an average, and that 
thus there are only forty rounds to a tun weight, the delays of the Allies 

30 will be readily explained. Now there must be at least 350—some say 500 
guns in the batteries before Sevastopol. Take only ten rounds per hour 
per gun, and fourteen hours of fire per day, and you have, for the thir- 
teen days bombardment, from the 9th to the 22d April, the enormous 
mass of 637,000 projectiles, weighing, with their charges, above 14,500 

35 tuns. Reduce this number even to 400,000 projectiles weighing 1,000 
tuns—still there remains a mass of iron thrown into the place unparal- 
leled in history and yet necessitated by the foolish resolution to take a 
place of such extent and defended by so numerous guns by an irregular 
attack, for this reason only, that the regular attack had been carried on 

40 upon a wrong principle. 

Friedrich Engels 

The leading motive in the selection of the mode of attack was a certain 
confusion of the two cases where a forcible attack is justified; that of a 
weakly garrisoned town, and that of an intrenched camp. Because in the 
beginning Sevastopol presented all the features of an intrenched camp it 
was to be attacked as such, even after it had changed its character entire- 5 
ly. The only difference admitted was this, that siege artillery was to 
take the place of field artillery. But here this plan of attack became mixed 
up with notions of siege, with trenches, regular batteries and bombard- 
ment. Sevastopol was to be bombarded like a fortress and cannonaded 
like an intrenched camp, and when all the ammunition was nearly con-10 
sumed, though no white flag appeared on the ramparts, the army was to 
march to the assault, as the Russians did at Warsaw in 1831. 

The results of such an ill-planned, badly-defined system of attack were 
easily to be foreseen. The effects of the bombardment on the town must 
be almost null; those of the cannonade against the defenses very trifling. 15 
There remained the chance of silencing the enemy's fire. With the number 
of guns and the skill of using them nearly equal on both sides that chance 
was pretty small, for every night's repairs might make up for every day's 
destruction. But supposing the fire of the Russians to be actually silenc- 
ed, what then? Could the assault be ordered? The storming columns 20 
would have to pass for a distance of 600 yards under the rifles and then 
the musketry of the Russians, supposing even that the Russians had not a 
number of masked guns in reserve to be unmasked and used with canister 
against the storming columns at a moment when the presence of these 
very columns prevented the besiegers from using their own artillery. 25 
Moreover, almost up to the very day when the bombardment was ope- 
ned, the Russians had proved their superiority in means of offense, had 
advanced in front of the lines, thrown up fresh works on disputed points, 
held them and armed them with guns. Such a garrison, which remains 
master of the ground in front of its own lines, may very quietly wait for 30 
an assault. It has nothing to fear. 

On the 10th, the second day, the Allies professed to have attained a 
superiority of fire; but every succeeding morning they found the Russian 
works repaired and as strong as before. On the 14th the French tried to 
carry one of the Russian outworks; they had to dislodge the Russians 35 
twice, and held it when the dispatch left. Later dispatches from the allied 
camp, however, mention no permanently maintained positions; and thus 
it is probable that the work had to be abandoned again. On the 15th 
Gorchakoff declares that, owing to diligent repairs, the defenses are in 
nearly as good a state as they were before the bombardment. Finally, on 40 
the 17th, the very best news the Allies could send to Vienna is that they 
are now sure of the superiority of their fire over that of the Russians. 

Sevastopol—siege to be raised 

The thirteen days' firing of which we have reports must have com- 
pletely exhausted the ammunition of the besiegers. Indeed, the dispatches 
of Prince Gorchakoff state that from the 19th to the 22d their fire had 
greatly slackened, and the fact that though the British Government had 

5 received news up to the 27th by the new submarine telegraph they with- 
held it from the public, proves that the Allies had gained no substantial 
advantage. After having shot away their vast stores of powder and ball, 
there would remain nothing for them but an assault which could be 
directed against the outworks only. Suppose the outworks taken, the 

io power of offense of the Allies would again be exhausted, for they would 
have plenty to do to hold their outworks. Their guns would be ruined 
and mostly unfit for further use, their ammunition exhausted; their 
troops weakened by the assault and demoralized by the disproportion of 
the losses suffered and the means employed to the results secured. A new 

15 stand-still like that of the winter is not possible while the heat of the 
spring sun develops a poisonous miasma under their very feet, therefore 
we shall be justified in saying that the bombardment of Sevastopol is but 
the first step to raising the siege ofthat place. For even in the best event, 
if 40,000 or 50,000 more soldiers are thrown into the Crimea, and a 

20 campaign is attempted against the Russians in the field, the siege will 
have to be raised, and trenches, batteries and all abandoned to the Rus- 
sians, until in the very uncertain future there is a chance of renewing the 
attempt to take the place, under better auspices. We shall soon hear that 
the siege has been raised.