Friedrich Engels 
Crimean prospects. September 14, 1855 




Crimean prospects. 


Beyond an imperfect list of the British officers killed and wounded, the 
journals brought by the steamer America—and we have examined them 
with care—add scarcely anything to our previous knowledge of the cir- 

cumstances attending the capture of the southern side of Sevastopol. It is 
true that there is a plenty of speculation as to both the causes and the 
consequences of Gorchakoff s sudden abandonment of a place so long 
and so desperately defended; and among such speculations those of our 
correspondents at London and Paris are eminently worthy of attention. 
But there are some points of view and some considerations which neither 
of these writers, opposite as are their views, seems to have dwelt upon 
with the necessary care, or to have given the due amount of importance. 
Precisely what turn matters now will take in the Crimea depends to a 
great extent on the causes which induced the Russians to give up the 
south side. That purely tactical and strategical motives were completely 
foreign to this sudden resolution, is evident. Had Gorchakoff considered 
the south side, and even the Karabelnaya, untenable as soon as the Mala- 
koff should have fallen, he would not have thrown up so many internal 
defenses in that suburb. Though the ultimate success of the siege might 
be considered assured by the taking of that commanding point, yet from 
four to six weeks breathing time might have been gained by a stubborn 
defense, first of the inner works of the suburb, and then of the town 
proper. To judge from the best maps, plans and models, there was no 
necessity whatever in a mere tactical or strategical light to abandon so 
hastily what had been fended with such tenacity. Military science alone 
cannot account for a step which can yet scarcely be attributed to the 
confusion and fright caused by an unexpected and decisive defeat. Ne- 
cessities of a different nature must have been active to force Gorchakoff 






to a step which compromises his military position and career so seriously 
as this. 

There are two possibilities only. Either the morale of the Russian sol- 
diers was so completely broken up that it would have been impossible to 
rally them in anything like order behind the inner line of defense, so as to 
continue the struggle, or else they had begun to run short of provisions, 
not only within Sevastopol but in the camp without. The all but unin- 
terrupted series of defeats to which the Russian army had been exposed, 
from Oltenitza and Tshetate to the Chernaya, and the assault of Sept. 8, 
must certainly have completely destroyed the spirit of the defenders of 
Sevastopol; and all the more, as they consisted principally of the same 
troops who were beaten on the Danube and later at Inkermann. The 
Russians have rather dull moral feelings, and can stand defeats longer 
than most troops; but no army in the world can hold together forever 
when it is beaten by every enemy it meets, and when to a long list of 
defeats it can oppose nothing except the negative satisfaction of its te- 
nacious and lengthened resistance, and a solitary example of successful, 
active defense, like that of the 18th June. But such a resistance in a 
besieged place is of itself demoralizing in the long run. It implies hard- 
ships, want of rest, sickness, and the presence, not of that acute danger 
which braces, but of that chronic danger which must ultimately relax the 
mind. The rapidly succeeding defeats on the Chernaya and the Malakoff 
must have completed the demoralization, and it is more than likely that 
Gorchakoff s troops in the town were no longer fit to be led against the 
enemy. And as the Malakoff commanded the bridge to the other side, 
and the French guns might any day have destroyed it, relief became 
impossible, while retreat might at least save the troops. It is not aston- 
ishing that this demoralization should at last seize the garrison; it is 
astonishing that it had not done so long before. 

There are also some very strong symptoms that want of provisions for 
the army generally had a great deal to do with Prince Gorchakoff s sud- 
den retreat. The interruption of Russian navigation in the Sea of Azoff, 
though it had not that immediate effect which the British and French 
Press, then so much in want of some success, expected it to have, must 
nevertheless in the long run prove troublesome to the Russians, as it 
confined them to one single line of operations, and thereby limited their 
supplies. The immense difficulty of transporting victualing stores, am- 
munition and forage from Kherson through a thinly-populated steppe 
country must have been greatly increased when this road became the only 
one by which the army could be provided. The means of transport, 
brought together by requisition from the Ukraine and Don Provinces, 






must finally have been used up; horses and draft-oxen must have been 
sacrificed in great numbers, both by overwork and scantiness of proven- 
der; and the nearest provinces once being exhausted, it became more and 
more difficult to replace the necessary stock. This shortness of supplies 

would show itself at first, not so much in Sevastopol, where reserve stores 
must have been kept up for the event of the place being invested on the 
north side too, as in the camp above Inkermann, at Bakshiserai, and on 
the line of march of the reénforcements. The reports of the allied com- 
manders had more than once adverted to this being the case; but other 

circumstances too indicate that such must have been the fact. By this 
impossibility of feeding even the troops now in the Crimea, we can alone 
explain why the two divisions of grenadiers so long on the march, and 
now said to be about Perekop, were not allowed to advance and to 
partake in the battle on the Chernaya, and why, notwithstanding the 

better half of the troops advancing to relieve Sevastopol was thus kept 
back, that battle was yet ventured, though with a force ridiculously small 
in proportion to the task expected from it. 

Thus all indications point to this, that both demoralization of the greater 
portion of the Russian troops, and want of supplies for the army in 

the field, induced Gortchakoff not to stake too much on delaying, for a 
few days, the fall of a fortress which had become untenable. He profited 
by the last chance of saving the garrison, and he would seem to have 
done right; for according to all appearances he would have had to leave it 
to its fate, to collect his field-army, and to retire into the interior of the 

Crimea, if not to Perekop. In this case, the garrison of the south side 
would soon have been compelled either to cross stealthily to the north 
side or to capitulate; and the north side, too, once cut off from all chance 
of ever being relieved, and garrisoned by demoralized troops, would have 
been starved into submission. 

So long as the Russians had a chance not only ofkeeping their army in 
the Crimea up to something like a force equaling that of the Allies but 
were even expecting reénforcements which would make it far outnumber 
its opponents, the north side of Sevastopol was a position of immense 
importance. To hold the north side by a garrison while the field army 

stood where it did up to the latest news we have received, was to bring 
the allied army on the plateau of the Heracleatic Chersonese. It was to 
exclude their ships from Sevastopol Bay, and to deprive them of a proper 
naval base of operations nearer than the Bosphorus, for neither Kamiesh 
nor Balaklava can pass for such a thing. So long as the Russians were 

able to keep the field in the Crimea the north side was as much the key to 
the whole of the Crimea and to what gives the whole country any mili- 






tary and naval importance as the Malakoff was to the South side. But 
from the moment the Russians are unable to hold the field, the north side 
has no longer any great importance. It is a fortified position of a certain 
strength, but which if regularly besieged by sufficient forces is doomed to 
fall, for relief there can then be none. 
This may seem astonishing after the great importance ascribed, and 
rightly too, to the north side. And yet it is quite correct. The whole of this 
war has been, in appearance, a war of fortifications and sieges, and has in 
the eyes of superficial observers completely annihilated the progress 
made by Napoleon's rapid maneuver, thus carrying back the art of war- 
fare to the days of the seven years' war. But in reality nothing is more 
contrary to fact. Fortresses and groups of fortresses have no other im- 
portance now-a-days than as the fixed points on which an army in the 
field supports itself in its movements. Thus the camp at Kalafat was a 
bridge-head allowing Omer Pasha to menace the Russians in flank; thus 
Silistria, Rustchuk, Varna, Shumla, were the four salient angles, so to 
say, of a large fortified camp into which he could always retreat, and 
where he could not be followed unless two at least of those salient angles 
were taken or neutralized. Thus Sevastopol formed the pivot of the Rus- 
sian army in the Crimea, and whenever that army was outnumbered or 
otherwise checked, Sevastopol allowed it breathing time until fresh re- 
énforcements had come up. To the Allies Sevastopol was a Russian naval 
center to be destroyed, a naval base of operations to be gained; to the 
Russians it was the possession of the Crimea, because it was the only 
position to be held against far superior numbers until relieved. Thus the 
ultimate decision always rested with the armies in the field, and the im- 
portance of fortresses depended, not on their natural or artificial strength 
or intrinsic value, but on the protection and support (appui) they could 
give to the field army. Their value has become relative. They are no 
longer independent factors in the game of war, but merely valuable po- 
sitions which it may or may not be expedient to defend by every means 
and to the last extremity. This the Sevastopol affair proves more than 
any previous occurrence. Sevastopol, like all really modern fortresses, 
takes the place of a permanently-fortified camp. As long as the dispos- 
able force is sufficient to defend that camp, as long as supplies are plen- 
tiful, the communications with the main base of operations secure, espe- 
cially as long as that camp held by a strong army prevents the enemy 
from going past it without exposing his own safety—so long that camp is 
of first-rate importance and may baffle the enemy for a whole campaign. 
But if such is no longer the case; if the defending force suffers check after 
check, runs short of provisions, risks having its communications cut off 






and being reduced to the fate of the Austrians at Ulm in 1805—then it is 
high time to prefer the safety of the army to the abstract value of the 
position and to retreat at once to another place offering greater advan- 
tages. 

This seems to be now the situation of the Russians. The greater part of 
their original active army—fourteen divisions out of twenty-four—is en- 
gaged, and has been partly destroyed in the Crimea, and what they have 
of reserves and militia, or other new formations, can stand no compari- 
son with the troops they have lost. They will certainly do well not to send 

any more men to that dangerous peninsula, and indeed to abandon it as 
soon as they can. The Allies are far superior to them in numbers and 
especially in spirit. With Gorchakoff s present army to risk a battle in the 
field would be to solicit defeat. He may be turned either by the south 
coast and the valley of the Salghir, or by Eupatoria. Either operation 

would force him to give up his communications with the north side, never 
to regain it, for the numerical superiority of the Allies is increasing every 
day. It would seem that the best he can do is to make as bold a front as 
possible, while he prepares everything for blowing up the northern forts, 
and to steal a march or two on his opponents. The sooner he gets to 

Perekop the better. This is especially the case if the report we have from 
Paris be true that the Allies began sending an army to Eupatoria im- 
mediately after getting possession of Sevastopol. If they act with vigor, 
either in that direction or along the south coast and the passes of the 
Chatyr Dagh, the campaign must speedily close, leaving them in posses- 

sion of the Crimea. So far as we can see, the only mistakes now in their 
power are a serious front attack on the Russian position above Inker- 
mann, or a week's inaction. The next steamer, due here to-morrow night, 
can hardly fail to settle the question as to what they mean to do.