Friedrich Engels 
Sevastopol 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 4429, 29. Juni 1855 

Sevastopol. 

The mails of the Baltic have put us in possession of the official docu- 
ments in regard to the late events at Sevastopol. The dispatches of Gen. 
Pélissier and Lord Raglan we published yesterday; and we now proceed 
to set forth the facts as they are established by this and other testimony: - 
On the 6th of June, the allied batteries on the right attack again ope- 
ned their fire upon the town. This time, however, it was no general bom- . 
bardment; it was a cannonade concentrated upon certain points with a 
view to reduce them at once. The outworks constructed by the Russians 
on the 23d February and 12th March on this front of defense, the Selin-1 
ghinsk, Volhynsk and Kamtschatka redoubts, had hitherto kept the be- 
siegers and their batteries at a distance. On the Western front, the allied 
left attack, there were no such outworks, and the French being by this 
time established almost on the brink of the ditch or of the covered way (if 
there is one) of the defenses, the progress made on that side had by far ir - 
left behind the slower advance of the right attack. As in the siege-plan of 
the Allies the two great divisions of the lines—the town west of the inner 
harbor and the suburb of Karabelnaya, on its eastern side—are consid- 
ered as two separate fortresses which must be attacked at the same time, 
the right attack had to be pushed with greater energy and the outworks 2( 
to be forced so as to bring the Allies on this side up into line with their 
advanced parallels on the left attack. In order to accomplish this, the 
above redoubts and some minor intrenchments in a quarry flanking the 
Mamelon (Kamtschatka) on its right, had to be taken. Accordingly, after 
36 hours' cannonading, on the evening of the 7th of June the French 2i 
advanced upon the two redoubts Selenghinsk and Volhynsk over Ihe 
Careening Bay and upon the Mamelon, while the British assaulted the 
quarry. After an hour's sharp struggle the Allies were in possession of the 

Sevastopol 

works. A number of guns were taken as well as 400 prisoners, among 
them 13 officers. The loss on both sides was very heavy. 

Thus affairs on that side are nearly in the same state now as they were 
before the 22d February. Of the redoubts carried by the Allies, that of the 

5 Mamelon (called by the Russians the Kamtschatka redoubt) was the 
most important. It was constructed on the 12th of March and the fol- 
lowing days. At that time we at once pointed out the great importance of 
this work and the considerable part it would play in the struggle. The 
event has fully justified our views. This hastily constructed fieldwork has 

10 arrested the progress of the besiegers on one-half of the whole line of 
attack for eighty-eight days, or for a period which in ordinary sieges is 
considered more than sufficient to take a good-sized fortress twice over. 
We will now explain this astonishing phenomenon, which has but two 
parallels in the history of sieges: one in the defense of Colberg, 1807, by 

15 the Prussians; the other in the defense of Dantzic by the French in 
1813-14. 

With the increase of armies in the field, the old and generally small 
fortifications of the time of Vauban lost their significance. They were 
safely passed by the hosts of the victor and scarcely observed by his 

20 flying corps, until the reserves of his army came up and found time to 
take them. But when these considerable armies on their march fell in with 
large fortresses they were invariably arrested. This was the case with 
Napoleon at Mantua in 1797, and at Dantzic in 1807. The reason is 
evident. When an army of 150,000 men advanced into a hostile country 

25 the small fry of fortresses offered no danger in the rear: all their garrisons 
put together were not strong enough to meet the reénforcements and 
reserves which were dispatched from the depots to keep up the active 
army to its full strength. Such small garrisons, besides, could not detach 
any strong bodies of troops to scour the field and to interrupt the com- 

30 munications of the hostile army. But when a fortress of considerable 
extent was met with, garrisoned by 15,000 to 25,000 men, the case was 
different. Such a fortress was the nucleus of defense for a whole province; 
it could detach in any direction, and to a considerable distance, a strong 
body of troops capable of acting in the field and always sure, in case of 

35 superior attack, of a safe retreat to the stronghold. To observe such a 
fortress was nearly as troublesome as to take it; therefore, it had to be 
taken at once. 

Now the old fortresses of the Vauban and Cormontaigne sort concen- 
trated all their means of defense around the main rampart and in the 

40 main ditch. All their tenailles, demi-lunes, counter-guards, tower-reduits 
were accumulated so as to form with all but one line of defense, which, 

Friedrich Engels 

when once broken into, was pierced altogether in a few days; and a 
breach once made through these defenses, the place was taken. It is evi- 
dent that such a system was totally unadapted to the large fortresses 
which alone could check the advance of large invading armies; it would 
have amounted to sacrificing the garrison; the breach once effected the 5 
fort became defenseless. Another system had to be resorted to—that of 
advanced works. The French General Montalembert, the teacher of Car- 
not, was the first who boldly stood up, in spite of the prejudices of his 
profession, for detached forts; but the method of constructing large for- 
tresses with detached forts so as to form a complete system of defense iq 
was elaborated to its present perfection in Germany, particularly by the 
Prussian General Aster. The splendid defenses of Cologne, Coblentz, 
Posen, Königsberg, and partly of Mayence are his work, and they mark a 
new era in the history of fortifications. The French at last acknowledged 
the necessity of coming round to this system and constructed the defenses 
of Paris with detached works planned and executed in first-rate style. 

The system of detached forts at once necessitated a new mode of de- 
fense. The garrisons of large fortresses had to be increased to such num- 
bers that there was no necessity of keeping up a merely passive defense, 
until the enemy, advancing to the glacis, came within reach of sallies. A 20 
garrison of 20,000 or 25,000 men was strong enough to attack the enemy 
on his own ground. The fortress and the space around it, so far as it was 
protected by the detached forts, took the nature of an intrenched camp, 
or of a base for the field operations of the garrison, which itself was 
converted into a small army. The hitherto passive defense became active; 25 
it took on an offensive character. So necessary was this when the French 
in 1807 besieged Dantzic, the Prussian garrison, which numbered about 
20,000, constructed those very detached forts which were not in exist- 
ence, but which were immediately found to be required in order to apply 
the resources of this large garrison to a proper defense of the place. When 30 
the French defended Dantzic in 1813-14 against the Allies they carried 
out the same principle with still greater success. 

A siege, which since Vauban had ever been an operation of short du- 
ration, and the end of which could almost with certainty be attained in a 
given number of days, unless the proceedings were interrupted from with- 35 
out—a siege now becomes an operation subject to as many chances as a 
war in the open field. The artillery on the ramparts at once became of 
secondary importance; field artillery almost took precedence over it even 
in the defense of a place. The skill of the engineer was no longer applied 
merely to the repairs of the damage done during the siege; it had, as in 40 
the field, to choose and to fortify positions situated in advance of the 

Sevastopol 

forts themselves; to meet trench by trench; to take in flank the enemy's 
works by counter-works; to change suddenly the front of defense, and 
thus to force the enemy to change his front of attack. Infantry became 
the main stay in the war of sieges as in the field, and cavalry was made a 
very necessary ingredient of almost every garrison. There was no longer 
any means to fix the probable duration of a siege, and the rules of Vau- 
ban for the attack of a place, retaining most of their correctness as far as 
the details of the artillery attack were concerned, became utterly inap- 
plicable to the ensemble of a siege. 

10 The Russians at Sevastopol had no time to construct detached works. 
They were compelled to act the old method of fortifying a place. They 
erected a main rampart as a first defense; it was indeed the thing most 
required for the moment. Behind this they made a second and a third line 
of defense, and all the while went on strengthening the first. Then grad- 

15 ually feeling their superiority, even at a certain distance from the main 
wall, they advanced, constructed the Selinghinsk and Volhynsk redoubts, 
and finally the work on the Mamelon, and a long line of rifle pits, while 
on the western front, where the main body of the French was placed, they 
could merely construct a few lunettes close to the main ditch, and a series 

20 of rifle trenches not much further in advance. Thus from the moment the 
Mamelon was fortified by the Russians, the eastern front was compara- 
tively safe; while on the western front, where such protecting outworks 
did not exist, the besiegers gradually advanced to the very brink of the 
main ditch. To approach on the right attack the commanding and deci- 

25 sive position of Malakoff bastion the besiegers had therefore first to take 
the Mamelon; but the Mamelon while it defended the Malakoff was 
again defended by all the works in its own rear; and how they defended 
it, was shown in the second bombardment, when Canrobert dared not 
seriously assault it. Even now there can be no doubt that the loss of the 

30 French in carrying this work must have been very great. 

The reopening of the fire by the Allies and the energy with which 
General Pélissier, heedless of the lives of his soldiers, follows up every 
favorable chance to gain on the defense, are accompanied by a complete 
stagnation of operations on the Chernaya. This mode of proceeding at 

35 once gives us an insight into the character of Pélissier confirmatory of his 
former reputation for tenacity, obstinacy and recklessness. There were 
two ways open to him; to take the field, inclose Sevastopol on the north 
side also, and then take up the siege again with redoubled energy and a 
quadrupled chance of a speedy success, or else to go on in the faulty way 

40 of the last eight months; to cling doggedly to the south side, destroy every 
stone of it and drive the Russians out of a place which after all, if re- 

nA 

Friedrich Engels 

duced, could not be occupied by his own troops on account of the bat- 
teries on the north side. 

There is not a military man of sense in either hemisphere who, on the 
news of Péllissier's nomination to the command, and of the great reën? 
forcements received by the Allies, did not expect that he would at once 
take the first course. Most particularly when Omer Pasha with 25,000 
Turks came round to Balaklava, there was no doubt that the Allies were 
strong enough to carry on the siege, to send 15,000 men to Kertch and 
still to advance into the field with more men than the Russians could 
spare to oppose them. Why have they not done so? Are they still in want 
of means of transport? Have they no confidence in their ability to carry 
on a campaign in the Crimea? We do not know. But this is certain: unless 
Pélissier has very cogent reasons to abstain from taking the field, he is 
pursuing, out of sheer obstinacy and self-will, an extremely faulty course; 
for with a loss equal to that he is now continually subjecting his army to, 
in assaults, he might obtain results in the field of far greater magnitude, 
and of a far more decisive effect. To take the south side without having 
even invested the north side, which completely commands it, is to pro- 
ceed in utter defiance of all rules of warfare, and if Pélissier is bent upon 
that, he may yet ruin the great army he commands. 

We will, however, give the new commander the benefit of every doubt- 
ful circumstance. It may be that the struggles on the left attack were 
inevitable and provoked by the counter-approaches of the Russians. It 
may be that it was necessary to confine the Russians to the limits of their 
original lines—to convince them, by a few hard, irresistible blows, of the 
superiority of the besiegers—before a separation of the army into a siege- 
corps and a field-corps could be ventured on. But allowing even this, we 
now must say that the utmost limit has been reached, and that any fur- 
ther serious attempt upon the body of the place will be a downright 
blunder, unless the strength of the Russian army in the field has been first 
tried with all the forces that can be made available for the purpose.