Friedrich Engels 
From Sevastopol. May 7, 1855 




From Sevastopol. 


The mails of the America, received here on Saturday evening, once more 
enable us to lay before our readers some clear account of the state of the 
war in the Crimea, though still the contradictory and indefinite nature of 
the official reports as well as of the newspaper letters renders our task no 
easy one. It is manifest that the failure of Vienna was attended by greater 
alertness and activity in the allied camp at Sevastopol, and that though 
the bombardment may be said to have been given up on April 24, yet the 
fortnight succeeding was not wholly unimproved. Still it is very difficult 
to say what advantages have been gained; indeed one writer pretends that 
the Russian advanced works, Selenghinsk, Volynsk and Kamtschatka, as 
well as the rifle trenches in front of the whole line, have been abandoned 
by the defense. As this is certainly the very utmost advantage obtained by 
the Allies we will for the present assume it to be true. Some correspon- 
dents report that the Flagstaff bastion itself had been stormed by the 
French and a lodgment effected therein, but this deserves no credit. It is a 
mere ignorant exaggeration of the affair of April 21, when the French, by 
blowing up mines, formed an advanced trench in front of that bastion. 
We will then assume it to be correct that the Russians are thrown back 
upon their original line of defense, although it is very remarkable that no 
reports of the occupation of Mount Sapun and the Mamelon by the 
Allies have yet been received. But even if the redoubts of these hills are 
no longer in the hands of the Russians, nobody can dispute the great 
advantages they have drawn from them. They have held Sapun from 
Feb. 23, and the Mamelon Kamtschatka redoubt from March 12 to the 
end of April, during which time the allied trenches were either enfiladed 
or taken under close front fire by them, while the key of the whole 
position—Malakoff—was completely sheltered by them during the fif- 




teen days' cannonade. After having turned them of such good use, the 
Russians could afford to lose them. 

The various night attacks by which the Allies made themselves masters 
of the Russian rifle-trenches and counter-approaches, need not be de- 
scribed here, no more than the sally undertaken by the Russians to re-
cover them. Such operations possess no tactical interest except for such 
as know the ground from personal inspection, being mainly decided by
the intelligence, the dash and tenacity of the subaltern officers and sol- 
diers. In these qualities the Anglo-French are superior to the Russians, 
and consequently they have made good their footing in some places close
of the Russian works. The distance between the combatants has been 
reduced, here and there, to the range of hand-grenades, that is to some 
twenty or thirty yards from the Russian covered way, or from forty to 
sixty yards from the main rampart. The Russians say the besiegers are at
thirty sagenes or sixty yards from it. This is the case especially in front of
the Flagstaff bastion, the Middle bastion and the Redan, where the
ground forms dead angles, with hollows so situated that the Russian 
guns cannot be sufficiently depressed to plunge their shot into them. As
the Russian artillery is anything but silenced, the communications with 
these hollows and the turning them into a complete system of trenches is
a matter of great difficulty, and the flanking fire of the Russians will be 
very sorely felt by the Allies. Indeed, so long as the allied batteries are 
about four or five hundred yards to the rear of the advanced trenches, it 
is not to be explained how they expect to hold such exposed positions 
against sallies undertaken on a sudden and with a sufficient force; and
after the acknowledged failure of the bombardment it will be some time 
before new and more advanced batteries can be brought into play. 

This sudden advance of the Allies to the very foot of the Russian
ramparts, different as it looks from their previous sloth and indecision, is
yet quite of a piece with it. There never was either system or steady
consistency in the conduct of this siege; and as a siege is essentially a 
systematic operation in which every step gained must be at once turned 
to some fresh advantage, under penalty of proving fruitless, it is plain 
that the Allies have conducted this upon the worst possible plan. Not- 
withstanding the disappointment in the minds of the allied generals when
they first beheld the place, notwithstanding the errors committed last 
Autumn, during what we may call the first siege, they might yet have
made greater progress. We leave the north side of the town entirely out of
the question, as the allied generals did so themselves. They had once for 
all made up their minds to attack the south side separately and to run the
risk of getting into a place commanded by a fortress to them inaccessible, 








But here an alternative arises: either the allied generals felt themselves 
strong enough to take the south side, and then they must now admit that 
they were unpardonably mistaken; or they felt themselves too weak, and 
then why did they not procure reénforcements? The fact is now beyond 
denial that blunder has succeeded blunder in this "memorable and un- 
paralleled" siege. The hardships of the Winter-quarters appear to have 
imparted a spirit of unconquerable drowsiness, apathy and languor to 
both army and generals. When the Russians, in February, boldly came 
out of their lines and formed fresh ones in advance, it should have been a 
sufficient incentive to them to muster up their energies; yet Canrobert 
could use this very serious admonition to no other purpose than to cool 
the zeal of the Zouaves by an attack which he knew beforehand could 
lead to no good. The work in the trenches was resumed, but more in 
order to form covered roads for storming columns than to push the 
batteries nearer to the enemy. Even after six months spent before the 
place, every act shows that no definite plan had been settled, no point of 
chief attack singled out, nay, that the old fixed idea of taking Sevastopol 
by a coup de main still reigned supreme in the heads of the Allies, crossing 
every sensible proposal, frustrating every attempt at systematic progress. 
And what little was done was executed with three times the slowness of 
regular siege operations, while the inconsistency and want of plan char- 
acterizing the whole, did not even impart to it the certainty of success 
inherent in such regular operations. 
But everything was expected from the late opening of the fire. That 
was the great excuse for all delays and do-nothingisms. Though it is 
difficult to say what was expected from this grand event—from batteries 
at from 600 to 1,000 yards from their object, at last the fire did open. 
About 150 rounds per gun the first two or three days, then 120 rounds, 
then 80, then 50, finally 30 were fired; after which the cannonade was 
suspended. The effect was hardly visible, except in the used-up guns and 
emptied magazines of the Allies. Five days cannonading with full force 
would have done more harm to the Russians and opened more chances 
of advantage to the Allies than fifteen days ofa fire beginning with great 
fury and slackening down as fast as it was begun. But with their am- 
munition spent and their guns rendered unserviceable, would the Allies 
have been in a position to seize these favorable chances? Quite as much 
as now, while the Russians, from witnessing the slackening ofthe fire and 
from being spared the infliction of a hail of 50,000 projectiles per day 
during five successive days, are in a far better position than they would 
have been. This prolongation ofthe cannonade, by reducing its intensity 
is so great and unaccountable a deviation from all military rules, that 






political reasons must be at the bottom of it. When the first and second 
days' fire had disappointed the expectations of the Allies, the necessity of 
keeping up a semblance of a cannonade during the Vienna Conferences 
must have led to this useless waste of ammunition. 

The cannonade ends, the Vienna Conferences are suspended, the tel- 
egraph is completed. At once the scene changes. Orders arrive from Paris 
to act promptly and decisively. The old system of attack is given up; 
partial assaults, lodgments by mining explosions, a struggle of rifles and 
bayonets, succeed the resultless roar of artillery. Advanced points are 
gained and even maintained against a first sally of the besieged. But 
unless it is found practicable to construct batteries within short distances 
from the Russian lines, and to make these lines too hot for the besieged, 
nothing is gained. The advanced points cannot be held without great and 
daily repeated losses, and without regularly recurring combats of doubt- 
ful and wavering issue. And supposing even that these batteries of the 
second and third parallel are to be constructed, and that it was necessary 
for their opening first to dislodge the Russians from their rifle- 
trenches—how long will it be before these fresh batteries will have guns 
enough to reply successfully to that Russian fire which, in two canno- 
nades has proved equal to that of the Allies? The nearer the batteries are 
placed to the enemy's works, the more destructive a crossfire can be 
concentrated upon them, and the more confined becomes the space for 
placing guns; in other words, the more equal becomes the fire of the 
attack to that of the defense, unless the latter has been previously sub- 
dued by the more distant batteries, which here is not the case.

How, then, has it been possible for the Russians so successfully to 
withstand the attacks of the Allies? First, by the mistakes and vacillations 
of the Allies themselves; secondly, by the bravery of the garrison and the 
skill of the directing engineer, Col. Todtleben; thirdly, by the natural 
strength of the position. For it must be admitted that the position is a 
strong one. The bad maps which up to a very recent period have alone 
been accessible reprensented Sevastopol as situated at the lower end ofa 
slope and commanded by the hights in the rear; but the latest and best 
maps prove that the town stands on several rounded, isolated hills, sep- 
arated by ravines from the slope of the plateau, and actually comman- 
ding quite as much of it as has any command over the town. This dis- 
position of the ground seems fully to justify the hesitation to assault the 
place in September last; though it has appeared much too imposing to 
the allied generals, who did not even attempt to make the enemy show 
what strength he could muster for the defense. The Russian engineer has


turned these natural advantages to the greatest possible use. Wherever






Sevastopol presents a slope toward the plateau, two and even three rows 
of batteries have been constructed on its sides, one above the other, 
doubling and trebling the strength of the defense. Such batteries have 
been constructed in other fortifications (for instance on the slope of 
Mont Valerien at Paris), but they are not generally approved of by en- 
gineers, who call them shell-traps. It is true that they offer a larger object 
of aim to the besieger, whose shot may hit the battery above or below, if 
they miss the one they are fired at, and they will always cause greater 
losses to the defense in this account; but where a fortress is not even 
invested, like Sevastopol, such a drawback counts for nothing against the 
enormous strength they impart to the defending fire. After this siege of 
Sevastopol, we fancy we shall have very few complaints about these shell- 
traps. For fortresses of the first order, containing plenty of material and 
difficult to invest, they can be most advantageously used where the 
ground favors them. Beside these shell-traps, the Russians have deviated 
in another point from the usual engineering routine. According to the old 
fashioned systems of bastioned fortifications, fifteen or seventeen bas- 
tions would have been insufficient to encircle the place and would have 
defended it very badly. Instead of this, there are only six bastions on 
projecting hights, while the curtains connecting them are broken in such 
angular lines as to give a flanking fire independent of that of the bas- 
tions, and heavy guns from these salient points sweep the ground in 
front. These curtains are armed with guns for nearly their whole extent, 
which again is an innovation, as the curtains in regular bastioned for- 
tresses are generally armed with one or two guns only for special purpo- 
ses, and the whole of the defense by fire is intrusted to the bastions and 
demi-lunes. Without entering into further technical details, it will be seen 
from the above that the Russians have made the most of their means, 
and that if ever the Allies should come into possession of the Flagstaff or 
Malakoff bastions, they may be sure to find a second and a third line of 
defense before them which they will have to put all their wits together to 
reduce.