Karl Marx 
Another British revelation 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 4502, 24. September 1855 

Another British revelation. 

With the single exception of the posthumous papers of Sir A. Burnes, 
published by his father in order to clear his memory from the false im- 
putation, cast upon him by Lord Palmerston, of having initiated the 
5 infamous and unfortunate Afghan war, and proving to evidence that the 
so-called dispatches of Sir A. Burnes, as laid before Parliament by Lord 
Palmerston, were not only mutilated to the entire perversion of their 
original sense, but actually falsified and interpolated with passages 
forged for the express purpose of misleading public opinion—with this 
10 single exception, there has, perhaps, never appeared a series of docu- 
ments more damaging to the reputation of the British Government and 
of the caste which enjoys a hereditary tenure of office in that country, 
than the correspondence between Sir James Graham and Sir Charles 
Napier, just published by the old Admiral with a view to vindicate his 
15 own character. 

In this controversy Sir James Graham possesses one great advantage 
over his adversary—no revelation whatever is likely to lower his charac- 
ter in the world's judgment. The man who loudly boasted of having been 
an accomplice in the murder of the Bandieras; who stands convicted of 

20 having regularly opened, and tampered with, private letters at the Lon- 
don Post-Office for the mere benefit of the Holy Alliance; who spaniel- 
like licked the hands of the Emperor Nicholas, when he landed on the 
English shore; who even exaggerated the atrocious cruelty of the new 
English Poor Laws by his peculiar method of administering them; and 

25 who, but a few months ago, vainly attempted in a full House to throw 
upon Mr. Layard the odium of the injuries he had himself inflicted upon 
poor Captain Christie—such a man may be fairly considered character- 
proof. There is something mysterious in his public career. Possessed nei- 
ther of the uncommon talents which allow Lord Palmerston to belong to 

Karl Marx 

no party, nor of the hereditary party influence which enables Lord John 
Russell to dispense with uncommon talents, he has nevertheless succeed- 
ed in acting a prominent part among British statesmen. The clue to this 
riddle is to be found, not in the annals of the history of the world, but in 
the annals of Punch. In that instructive periodical there occurs, year after 5 
year, a picture drawn from the life, and adorned with the laconic in- 
scription: "Sir Robert Peel's Dirty Boy." Sir Robert Peel was an honest 
man, though no great man; but above all, he was a British statesman, a 
party leader, forced by the very exigencies of his position to do much 
dirty work, which he was rather averse to doing. Thus, Sir James proved 10 
a true godsend to him, and thus Sir James happened to become an in- 
evitable man, and a great man too. 

Sir Charles Napier belongs to a family alike distinguished by their gifts 
and their eccentricities. The Napiers, amid the present tame race of men, 
impress one with the notion of some primitive tribe, enabled by their 15 
natural genius to acquire the arts of civilization; but not to bow before its 
conventionalities, to respect its etiquette, or to submit to its discipline. If 
the Napiers have always done good service to the English people, they 
have always quarreled with and revolted against their government. If 
they possess the value of Homeric heroes, they are also somewhat given 20 
to their swaggering mood. There was the late General Sir Charles Na- 
pier—undoubtedly the most ingenious soldier England has possessed 
since the times of Marlborough, but not more noted for his conquest of 
Scinde than for his quarrels with the East India Company, which were 
prolonged beyond the grave on the part of his family. There is General 25 
Sir W. Napier, the first writer in the military literature of England, but 
not less famous for his eternal feuds with the British War-office—whose 
regard for the narrow prejudices of his countrymen is so small that, at 
first, his celebrated history of the Peninsular War was unanimously de- 
nounced by the British reviews as "the best French account ever given of 30 
that War." There is also the antagonist of Sir James Graham, old Ad- 
miral Napier, who made his renown by unmaking the orders of his su- 
periors. As for this last burly scion of the Napiers, Sir James fancied he 
had wrapped him in boa-constrictor folds, but they finally prove to be 
mere conventional cobwebs. 35 

Sir James Graham, as First Lord of the Admiralty, deprived Sir Char- 
les Napier, on his return to England, of his command; in the House of 
Commons he pointed to him as the responsible author of the Baltic 
failure, in proof of which he quoted some passages from his private 
letters; he accused him of having shrunk, from the execution of the bold 40 
orders he had received from the Admiralty Board; he expressed a hope 

Another British revelation 

that no other Lord of the Admiralty would at any future time be incon- 
siderate enough to hoist Sir Charles Napier's flag; and he ridiculed him in 
the papers at his disposal as "Fighting Charley," who, like the mytho- 
logical King of France, "marched up the hill with twenty thousand men, 
5 and then marched down again." Sir Charles, to use his own words, "de- 
manded inquiry on his conduct, which was refused; he appealed to the 
Cabinet, but received no reply, and finally to the House of Commons. 
The papers were refused, under the plea that it would be injurious to her 
Majesty's service." After the bombardment of Sweaborg that plea was of 
10 course at an end. 

Sir James thought his game the more sure, as he had taken the pre- 
caution of marking all his letters "private" which were likely to expose 
himself and to vindicate his intended victim. As to the meaning of that 
sacramental word "private", Sir James himself, when giving his evidence 

15 before the Sevastopol Committee, stated that a British First Lord of the 
Admiralty is wont to mark public instructions "private" whenever he has 
good reason to withhold them not only from the public, but even from 
Parliament. 

With a man like Sir James, who thinks himself entitled to turn private 

20 letters into public ones, it is quite natural to convert public documents 
into private property. But this time he reckoned without his host. Sir 
Charles Napier, by boldly breaking through the shackles of "private in- 
structions," is perhaps exposed to the chance of being struck from the 
British Navy list, and has probably disabled himself from ever again 

25 hoisting his flag; but, at the same time, he has not only barred the en- 
trance of the Admiralty Board to Sir James, but also shown to the English 
people that their navy is as rotten as their army. When the Crimean 
campaign stripped from the British army its time-honored reputation, the 
defenders of the ancient régime pleaded not guilty on the plausible 

30 ground that England had never pretended to be a first-rate military pow- 
er. However, they will not dare to assert that Great Britain has laid no 
claim to be the first naval power of the world. Such is the redeeming 
feature of war; it puts a nation to the test. As exposure to the atmosphere 
reduces all mummies to instant dissolution, so war passes supreme judg- 

35 ment upon social organizations that have outlived their vitality. 

This correspondence between Sir James Graham and Admiral Napier, 
extending from the 24th of February to the 6th of November, 1854, and 
denied a place in full in our columns only from its great length, may be 
summed up very briefly. Up to the end of August, when the Baltic sea- 

40 son, as is generally known, has reached its close, all went very smooth- 
ly—although Sir Charles Napier, on the very outset of the expedition, 

Karl Marx 

had told Sir James his opinion that "the means which the Admiralty had 
provided for fitting out and manning the North Sea fleet were insufficient 
for the occasion and unequal to an encounter with the Russians on fair 
terms." During all this time Sir James in his letters does nothing but smile 
upon his "Dear Sir Charles." On March 12 he "congratulates" him on 5 
the "order" in which the fleet had left the English shores; on April 5 he is 
"satisfied with his movements;" on April 10 he is "entirely satisfied with 
his proceedings;" on June 20 he calls him "a consummate Commander- 
in-Chief;" on July 4 he is "sure that whatever man can do will be done by 
Sir Charles;" on August 22 he "congratulates him sincerely on the success 10 
of his operations before Bomarsund;" and on August 25, seized with a 
sort of poetical rapture, he breaks forth: "I am more than satisfied with 
your proceedings; I am delighted with the prudence and sound judgment 
you have evinced." During the whole time Sir James feels only anxious 
lest Sir Charles, "in the eager desire to achieve a great exploit and to 15 
satisfy the wild wishes of an impatient multitude, should yield to some 
rash impulse, and fail in the discharge of one of the noblest of du- 
ties—which is the moral courage to do what you know to be right, at the 
risk of being accused of having done wrong." As early as May 1,1854, he 
tells Sir Charles: "I believe both Sweaborg and Cronstadt to be all but 20 
impregnable from the sea—Sweaborg more especially—and none but a 
very large army could operate by land efficiently in the presence of such a 
force as Russia could readily concentrate for the immediate approaches 
to her capital." If Sir Charles tells him on June 12 that "the only success- 
ful manner of attacking Sweaborg that he could see after the most ma- 25 
ture consideration, assisted by Admiral Chads, was by fitting out a great 
number of gun-boats"—Sir James answers him on July 11: "With 50,000 
troops and 200 gun-boats you might still do something great and decisive 
before the end of September." But hardly had the Winter set in, the 
French army and navy sailed away, and the heavy equinoctial gales be- 30 
gun to furrow the Baltic waves—hardly had Sir Charles reported "that 
our ships have already been parting their cables; the Dragon was reduced 

to one anchor, and the Impérieuse and Basilisk lost one each the other 
night; and the Magicienne was obliged to anchor in a fog, and when she 
weighed in the night from off Nargen found herself obliged to anchor off 35 
Renskar Lighthouse, having drifted among the rocks; and that the Eu- 
ryalus had been ashore on the rocks, and that it was a mercy she was not 
lost"—when Sir James all at once discovered that "war is not conducted 
without risks and dangers," and Sweaborg, therefore, must be taken 
without a single soldier or a single gun or mortar-boat! Indeed, we can 40 
only repeat with the old Admiral: "Had the Emperor of Russia been 
First Lord of the Admiralty he would have written just such letters." 

Another British revelation 

At the Admiralty Board, as is clearly shown by this correspondence, 
anarchy reigned as supreme as at the War-Office. Sir James approved of 
Napier's movement inside the Belt, while the Board disapproved of it. In 
August, Sir James writes him to prepare for an early retreat from the 

5 Baltic, while the Board sends dispatches in a contrary sense. Sir James 
takes one view of Gen. Niel's report, and the Board an opposite one. But 
the most interesting point presented by the correspondence is, perhaps, 
the new light it throws upon the Anglo-French Alliance. The French 
admiral showed Sir Charles his orders of recall on the 13th of August. 

10 The French army sailed on the 4th of September, and the rest of the 
French fleet left on the 19th; while Sir James Graham informs Sir Charles 
that he only knew of their withdrawal on the 25th September. Sir James, 
therefore, erroneously supposed "the decisions to have been taken on the 
spot, with Napier's consent," but, as he emphatically adds: "without any 

15 reference to the English Government." On the other hand, it seems that 
Niel, the French General of Engineers, and Louis Bonaparte's intimate 
friend, gave the advice to "destroy Sweaborg in two hours, by sail-of-the- 
line." This would seem to show clearly that he intended goading the 
English fleet into a desperate attack, in which they would uselessly knock 

20 their heads on the forts and sunken rocks of the Russian defenses. 

Friedrich Engels/Karl Marx 
The fall of Sevastopol 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 4506, 28. September 1855 

The fall of Sevastopol. 

After a year of varying fortunes and terrible suffering, the Crimean cam- 
paign has at last reached its turning-point. From the Ist inst. to the 8th 
the Russian telegraphic dispatches admit that considerable damage had 
been done to the lines of Sevastopol by the allied fire, and that the 5 
damage had been repaired "as much as possible," and no more. Finally, 
on the 8th about noon the Allies stormed four of the bastions—were 
defeated at one, carried two, but were again compelled to leave them, 
though they finally maintained themselves in the fourth, and what was 
most important, on the Malakoff Hill. The loss of this point forced the 10 
Russians on the 9th to march their troops from the southern to the 
northern side, and thus to abandon the town of Sevastopol, after having 
exploded their magazines, blown up the buildings, ruined the defensive 
works by springing mines under them, and converted, to use Gen. Pélis- 
sier's words, the whole place into an immense blazing furnace; they also 15 
burnt their steamers, sunk their last ships-of-war, and finally broke up 
the bridge near Fort Paul. 

The arrival of considerable reénforcements after the battle of the Cher- 
naya, must have relieved the allied Generals from any apprehension on 
the score of the Russian army at Inkermann; for, though even the re- 20 
mainder of the 4th and 6th Russian divisions, beside the two divisions of 
grenadiers, had joined that army, the Allies were now in a position to 
oppose successfully any number of men the Russians could throw across 
the Chernaya; while enough of allied troops would remain to carry on 
the siege, and even to attempt an assault. It must be confessed that the 25 
French Government has now been exceedingly prompt in sending to the 
Crimea a number of troops fully adequate to the Russian reénforcements 
already there, or on the march from Poland and Volhynia; for the num- 

The fall of Sevastopol 

ber of the French forces dispatched to the East since the beginning of 
July, must amount to at least 50,000. 

Under these circumstances, the English and French advanced mortar 
batteries being in good working condition, the trenches were pushed up 
to the ditch, under the protection of a vigorous fire. How near the ad- 
vanced trenches were established, and whether a complete crowning of 
the glacis, secundum artem, was accomplished, we do not yet know. The 
firing more and more assumed the character of a regular bombardment 
and vertical fire was successfully made use of to render the place ünten- 
lo able for large bodies of troops, till finally the assault was ordered. 

un 

On the Mamelon, the Russians had last Spring constructed a number 
of fireproof and shellproof compartments with the aid of traverses and 
blindages. These contrivances gave capital protection against the enemy's 
fire, but when the assault was made, it was found that no room had been 

15 left for concentrating a sufficient number of troops for the defense of the 
work. Compartment after compartment, defended by a few men only, 
was carried by the French, and at once formed a ready-made lodgement 
for them. The same mistake appears to have been made in the completion 
of the defenses of the Malakoff. The thing was overdone, and when the 

20 French once got hold of the commanding point of the hill, the Russian 
works themselves must have afforded them protection against the Rus- 
sian fire. 

The Redan (Bastion No. 3) and the Redan of the Careening Bay (Bas- 
tion No. 1 ofthe Russians) being situated on more level ground, did not 
25 admit of the terraced batteries and complicated defenses applicable to the 
Malakoff. Here, therefore, a simple coupure appears to have been made 
in the interior of the bastion, cutting off the salient angle and exposing its 
interior to an overwhelming fire. The troops for its defense could thus be 
placed further to the rear, and the interior of the work protected by 
30 sallies from the coupure. In consequence of this arrangement, which was 
of the kind generally adopted in such cases, the English lines and the 
French columns ordered to the assault of these positions could indeed 
penetrate beyond the all but abandoned outer wall; but when there, face 
to face with the coupure, they were crushed by its grape and musketry, 
35 and had to give up the assault. 
As soon as the Malakoff was carried, Gen. de Salles, on the French left 
attack, made an attempt to establish himself in the Central bastion, (No. 
5, between the Flagstaff and Quarantine bastions.) He was repulsed. We 
are not informed whether this assault was undertaken on his own re- 
40 sponsibility or whether it formed part of the original plan. Nor do we 
know how far the proximity of the French trenches to the bastion justi- 
fied such a detached and hazardous attempt. 

Friedrich Engels/Karl Marx 

The fact of the Malakoff hill being taken, at once formed the turning 
point of the struggle. From all the preceding events of this remarkable 
siege, it was to be anticipated that the French, if properly alive to their 
business, were not in the remotest danger of being driven out of their new 
position. The Malakoff completely commands the Karabelnaya and the 5 
eastern slope of the hill on which the town of Sevastopol was built. 
Taking in the rear the sea forts on the southern side of the harbor, it 
made the whole of the inner harbor and the greater part of the outer 
harbor untenable to the Russian ships of war. By the fall of the Malakoff 
the continuity of the defensive lines of Sevastopol became interrupted at 10 
that very point upon which the security of the whole was dependant. The 
possession of the Malakoff, therefore, meant the possession of Karabel- 
naya, the destruction of the town by bombardment, the taking in flank 
and rear of the Flagstaff bastion, and the disappearance of the last 
chance of the town's holding out. Sevastopol had hitherto been a forti- 15 
fled camp for a large army, as indeed are all modern fortresses. By the 
capture of the Malakoff it had sunk to the rank of a mere bridge-head to 
the Russian garrison of the north side, and more than this, of a bridge- 
head without a bridge. It was therefore wise to abandon it. It is true we 
had heard a good deal of new works constructed on the inner slope of the 20 
Malakoff, with a view to maintain the defense of the Karabelnaya, after 
the loss of that fortification; but they do not seem to have been of value 
enough to induce Prince Gorchakoff to continue the defense. However, 
we shall now soon know what was their real nature. 

Some Russian ships had already been burned in the harbor by shells 25 
from the allied batteries. The Malakoff once armed with French guns 
would have made it difficult for the remaining Russian vessels to find a 
safe anchorage, except just at the foot of Forts Nicholas and Alexander, 
and there is not room for a great many; hence the burning and sinking of 
the remainder of the fleet. 30 

The Karabelnaya side being completely in the hands of the Allies, they 
are in a position to undertake operations in the field. Though they will 
not be able to establish many batteries or many troops in that suburb, on 
account of the fire from the northern shore of the harbor, they have 
succeeded in reducing the Russian portion of Sevastopol to less than 35 
one-half its extent before the 8th inst, and to a fortress capable of hol- 
ding but a limited number of defenders. Not only is the offensive power 
of the garrison completely crushed, but its defensive strength is greatly 
reduced. A far smaller number of men will suffice to carry on the siege, 
and the troops thus set free, with the reénforcements now on the road or 40 
at the camp of Maslake, will be available for an expedition to Eupatoria. 

The fall of Sevastopol 

The more we examine the relative position of both Russians and Allies 
on the Chernaya the more evident it becomes that neither party can drive 
the other away hence without great superiority and enormous sacrifices. 
The opinion in the allied camp would seem to be that from 60,000 to 
70,000 men should be sent to Eupatoria, in order to march upon the 
communications of the Russians at Sympheropol. Suppose the Russians 
to have 200,000 men in the Crimea, (which they certainly have not,) 
80,000 men would be required for the defense of the North Forts, 60,000 
for the position on the Chernaya, and 60,000 to meet the allied army of 
10 Eupatoria. In the present spirit of the allied forces, it is certain that with 
equal numbers and in an equally divided field, they will beat the Russi- 
ans; and as by taking up a position on the Russian line of communica- 
tions they can force them to give battle, there does not seem to be any 
risk in such an undertaking. On the contrary, it is probable that the 
15 Russians would be able to oppose this expeditionary army with but 
60,000 men at the very outside. The sooner, however, such a movement is 
undertaken the better for the Allies, and if they act vigorously they may 
expect great results. They now have both moral and numerical superior- 
ity, and we doubt not they will profit by it before another winter on the 
20 plateau has reduced their numbers and damped their spirits. Indeed the 
latest report is that by the 13th 25,000 men had already sailed for Eu- 
patoria, and we shall doubtless hear of a still greater force following. 
Of these important events we have as yet only the meagre information 
conveyed by telegraphic dispatches. When more complete details reach 
25 us we shall return to the subject again. 

Nn