Crimean texts
The scientific New Zealander who may have completed his sketches of St Paul’s, and have wandered over the ruins of that modern Babylon which sent out General Cameron to conquer his Maori forefathers, will probably be driven by his thirst for knowledge to extend his explorations, and to visit scenes made famous by the people who civilized his race. The Romans were almost as much interested about the size of Troy and the history of the great siege as were the German and English professors of the last century. In his rambles the Maori savant may be shot out of a pneumatic tube, or descend by his private parachute, on a little angle of the world whereupon just ten tears ago was turned in breathless expectancy the gaze of the great English people. What he will see we cannot pretend even to conjecture. The traveller would now behold widespread ruin, and the solitude and calm which succeed the tempest of battle. Great ruins never die. The Tartar araba and the official’s drosky roll over the plateau where the fresh springing vines rise up amid a rude necropolis. Stately forts still frown over the deep calm fiord in which lie the bones of a navy as if waiting for its resurrection, and crumbling quays, shattered towers, and broken shells of houses mark the margin of waters on which once floated the armaments of a giant aggressive Power. A few grey-coated soldiers clamber over the heaps of broken masonry, and creep in and out of the dilapidated barracks and shot-riven dwellings. Listless flat-capped and booted citizens saunter slowly through the city of the past. A group of boats in the centre of the harbour is engaged in endeavours to raise to the surface the hull of some rotted ship. All semblance of power is departed. Encircling this scene of desolation and violent decay, rounded knoll and deep ravine, and undulating plain all seamed and dented with grass-grown earthworks, spread from the sea to the great cleft in the plateau through which rolls the stream of the Tchernaya. Within that narrow front once white with the tents of the Western Powers, where the thunder of cannon never ceased day after day, and the lightning of battle flashed from cloud to cloud and leapt from hill to hill for long, long months, the herdsman now peacefully tends the flocks which browse fatly in the enriched ravines, and all that strikes the ear is the plover’s whistle mingled with the lowing of the kine.
It is but ten years since the nation suddenly found itself adrift in the raging sea of a great European war. It will soon be ten years from the time when the news came that the old mettle had not failed us, and when the hearts of the peopled swelled with pride at the words “Alma,” “Balaclava,” “Inkerman.” Then came the terrible winter, and ere the paeans of triumph had died away a grievous solicitude and an anxiety beyond expression fell upon us concerning the fate of those in whose glorious deeds we had just been exulting. The spot where so many were suffering seemed so near and yet so distant. Letters but 14 days old appeared as though they had travelled from some inferno to tell us of misery beyond all human aid. With all her boundless devotion, her vast wealth, her unequalled resources, her noble heart, England could not save her perishing children. At last the plague was stayed. Reinforcements arrived, supplies poured in, — the army revelled in abundance. All went well till the time came for the assault, and then we heard with unaccustomed ears that British soldiers had recoiled from the face of an enemy. The joy diffused by the fall of Sebastopol soon afterwards was mingled with feelings of mortification and shame caused by our second repulse from the Redan, and the news of peace was received without gratification by a nation anxious to wipe off the dust which obscured the lustre of its arms. Great controversies and important changes sprang out of the incidents of the struggle. The discussion of questions which arose at the moment when the intelligence of events was spread among the people, by what Mr Kinglake characterizes as means before unknown, was continued long after the war was over. Angry debates, the fall of Ministries, commissions of inquiry, argumentative pamphlets, and even, at a very recent period, suits at law, cropped out of the disasters and confusion at Balaclava like the wild flowers which now bloom over the mud that had nigh swallowed up the remnants of our army. A Staff was organized; the Commissariat was amended; the transport train was organized; and serious alterations were made in the administration of the War Department. The Muse of History at length took up her pen. M le Baron de Bazancourt wrote an account of the war, in which the English army was made to appear very much as the single Highlander is represented in the picture of the Battle of the Alma, among the friendly and victorious Zouaves. The English were always late, and always needing help from the magnificent allies. Then Mr Kinglake presented the world with his notable description of the English commander at the Alma, where the French troops, “who had perpetrated an extensive massacre of their unarmed fellow-countrymen” in the streets of Paris, made painful and laborious efforts to climb the steep, and failed because “the Russians were armed,” and because it was not France which fought, but the French Empire. That laborious author takes time to burnish his glittering sentences, and we do not yet know what view he takes of the famous flank march, but the work which is the subject of this notice will probably cause us to wait a little longer for his third volume. The Frenchman was first in the field after the letters of the correspondents of the English press. The Englishman came next, but his story is not yet told, for he halts on the banks of the Alma. The Russian comes last, and takes us in his first volume, the only one yet translated into French, down to the spring of 1855. We had, to be sure, many other publications in French, and English, and German, relating to the war, and the Russians had their controversies in high places as well as ourselves, but we mention these histories because they have an official character. M de Bazancourt was a literary gentleman specially commissioned by the Emperor to record what he saw before Sebastopol, and to write an authoritative account of the expedition to the Crimea. Mr Kinglake was a literary gentleman who went out as an amateur, and, remaining till the preparations were nearly completed for the first bombardment, returned to England with so great an admiration for Lord Raglan that he was intrusted with his Lordship’s papers, and may be considered as the historical executor of the English commander-in-chief. Lieutenant-General E de Todleben is — but what need is there to tell the world who he is? His name will live as long as that of Sebastopol itself. The man who laboured so successfully in that immortal siege, whose genius sheltered the beaten army and covered the cowering fleet of Russia, now comes forward to give his version of the tale.
Can we wonder if General Todleben has written a thoroughly Russian account of the Crimean War? At the very outset, in rendering every justice to the immense amount of information contained in his book, we must protest against many of his statements, and declare that his narrative is, in many parts relating to the British army and its operations, careless, inexact, and untrue. In all that relates to the Russian army, to its labours, to the work of the siege, and matters of the kind, we presume General Todleben to be an unimpeachable authority. His account of the gradual increase of the trenches and the arming of the batteries may be classed with the arid journal of our own Engineers. In the description of battles he seems to have consulted few authorities on the French and English side, and to have been easily misled; but his statements with respect to the Russian troops, founded on the best information, are incontrovertible — at least we are acquainted with no authority to oppose to his. General Todleben, soon after the evacuation of the south side, having collected, in his capacity of chief engineer, all the necessary documents, instructed Lieutenant-Colonel Khlebinkow to edit the journal of the defence, which was finished in the autumn of 1856. His wound — as he modestly says, “ma santé affaiblie” — compelled him to go abroad for two years, and he carried on the description of the defence, with the aid of several officers, till the intervention of the Grand Duke Nicholas enabled him to execute the project he had formed of enlarging the original scope of the work, and, instead of a mere engineer’s report, making it a history of the war in the Crimea. The special works published in France and England related mainly to the attack, and the statements which they contained concerning the defence were for the most part erroneous. He found the French and English plans not only opposed to each other, but full of discrepancies in themselves, and he therefore caused a new survey to be made of the ground by horizontal sections, which he verified in order to correct the errors in those plans and in the drawings of the Russian engineers. At last, in 1861, he began in earnest. “To raise a literary monument to be worthy of the immortal defence I could not give to my work,” he says in his dedication to the Emperor, “more solid foundation than truth and impartiality.” A modern Pilate might ask, indeed, “What is truth?” after reading Mr Kinglake’s first volume and General Todleben’s opening chapter. The Russian declares that England made the question of the Holy Places, in which she had no earthly or heavenly interest, a pretext for the war she had so much desired in consequence of the increasing influence of Russia in the East. Up to the time of Peter the Great the policy and ambition of Russia had been Oriental, but from that period she became at once of the East and of the West. Peter gave her the dominion of the Baltic, and Catherine II secured her supremacy in the Black Sea. Never losing sight of the suffering Christians in the East, who seemed specially confided to her guardianship, she pushed her way till the partition of Poland established her influence in Europe, which culminated when her glorious efforts against Napoleon placed her at the head of the Holy Alliance at the Congress of Vienna.
The Russian view of the causes which led to the war is very unlike those of the English or French historians. Indeed, if agreed, there would have been no war. But M de Todleben unconsciously affords good grounds for agreeing with those who have never ceased to regard Russia with mistrust, and have denounced her as a persistent, unscrupulous aggressor. In a few pages he draws a picture of the means by which she has achieved such greatness as she possesses which justifies her worst enemies. What do we see on his canvas? The march of an incessant army, first towards the east and south of Asia, then towards the north, then towards eastern Europe, till the Czars of Moscow, at the end of the sixteenth century, had established themselves in Central Asia, in Northern Asia, on the shores of the Caspian, and at the foot of the Caucasus. From the east the Czars crept on, sword in hand, slow, but sure, and by degrees Livonia and Poland felt their power, and Sweden in vain endeavoured to stem their massive hordes. They had all the force of a barbarian invasion with a fixed principle and a base of operations behind it. The successors of Peter — the rock of the empire — made war and religion work harmoniously together. "Each victory over the Turks, each advantage obtained by her, became an additional motive for Russia," says M de Todleben, "to insert in the treaties of peace some clause intended either to improve the condition of the Christians in Turkey, or to stipulate for the creation of new rights in their favour." By such means Russia became the natural protectress of the Christians under the rule of the Sublime Porte. It will be seen at once that no such claim could be admitted without at once putting an end to the integrity of Turkey, but the Russian of today is as ready to make it as was the Russian of 1853. Destroying every trace of national life in her path, the Power which declared herself the natural protectress of the Christians of the East now appeared before Europe as the declared protectress of conservative principles. M de Todleben is free to confess that the attitude not only irritated Europe, but impeded her influence, as she was obliged to repress every attempt at change, no matter how strong might be the public opinion in its favour. Despite the dislike of Europe, events favoured the progress of the Muscovite. The liberation of Greece, the peace of Akermann, which augmented his influence in Servia and the Principalities, the peace of Tourkmentschal, which extended the frontiers of Russia to Mount Ararat; the treaty of Adrianople, which secured her rights to the mouth of the Danube, the western shore of the Black Sea, and annihilated the dominion of the Turk in the Transcaucasus; and the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, which closed the Black Sea to foreign ships of war, were all so many rungs in the ladder by which the Czars kept climbing upwards to the point from which they could survey the States of Europe prostrate at their feet. But it was, according to M de Todleben, the despatch of a Russian army to put down the Hungarian insurrection which definitely aroused these States to a sense of their danger, and excited the public opinion of Europe against the guardians of conservative principles. It will do no harm to M de Todleben to recognize the liberal spirit in which he alludes to some of these events, though it is not manifested in words. For some reason or other the General is out of favour — at least he has not received the high rewards in places of emolument and trust which he had reason to expect, and which he would no doubt have received had he been popular at Court. He certainly does not disguise the fact that Russia did excite the public irritation and arouse the public opinion of Europe by her conduct. The first manifestation of that feeling was, he says, the refusal of the Porte, under the influence of England, to deliver to Austria and Russia the Hungarian and Polish refugees. England therefore stood forth to give effect to the public opinion of Europe, from which Austria appears excluded. The diplomacy of the Western Powers from that moment began to meddle with the question of the protectorate of the rayahs, “hitherto exclusively reserved to Russia.” The question of the Holy Places arose and began to dominate every other. “But,” piously remarks M de Todleben, “it is not in the tomb of our Lord, who taught only peace, that we ought to seek the motives of war.” Those who watch what happened will remark with what subtlety and art Russia was driven to demonstrations against Turkey which rendered war inevitable. The acts of Russia rendered the war inevitable, but she was driven to commit them by the craft of the diplomatists, foremost among whom stands the Great Eltchi. When the Porte confirmed the rights of the Latin Christians to that celebrated key, much to the prejudice of the Greek Christians, Russia was forced to take active measures to vindicate her position. The Porte, under the influence of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, trifled and delayed with the firman demanded by the Emperor Nicholas, and finally introduced modifications in it, to the prejudice of the Eastern Church, which decided him, relying on the co-operation of Austria, to send Prince Menschikoff to Constantinople to conclude a separate treaty, founded on a firman defining the rights of the two Churches, or to obtain a peremptory declaration guaranteeing the inviolability of the Eastern Church. Turkey, instigated mainly by the Ambassador of England, would not hear of it — would not give Prince Menschikoff even the simple note he asked for. The world knows how the Prince shook off the dust and left the city of Constantine. The diplomatists were delighted. They saw their way to force Russia to acts which would compromise her in the eyes of Europe, and she very soon gave them the pretext which they wanted to direct definitively against her the public opinion of Europe. The occupation of the Principalities followed the refusal of the Porte to accept the Czar’s ultimatum; but the allied fleets arrived at Tenedos three weeks before the passage of the Pruth, and encouraged Turkey to reject the proposal. Although England and France might have declared war as soon as Prince Gortschakoff, at the head of 70,000 men, took hold of his ‘gage matériel’, they sought to gain time by diplomacy, and under the plausible pretext of a desire for peace they opened the conference at Vienna, the result of which was the Austrian note of the 1st of August, approved by the Western Powers and admitted by Russia, with the proviso that the Porte should accept the note without modifications. But not only did Turkey refuse the note as it stood, but demanded modifications which Russia could never entertain. Then it was that the secret desire of the Western Powers for a European war was made visible to all. Austria and Prussia might indeed still have preserved peace by energetic measures, but, drawn along fatally in the current of public opinion, they kept aloof, and Austria at last passed the bounds of neutrality and had recourse to menaces. War was declared by Turkey on the 3d of October, but the Western Powers declared they would not commence hostilities unless the Russians crossed the Danube, which in effect was to let the Turks cross and attack the Russians at their convenience. At the same time they permitted the Turkish fleet to navigate the Black Sea and transport their troops whenever they pleased, and menace the coasts of Russia under cover of their powerful combined navies. But with all their advantages and immense superiority the Turks were beaten in Asia at Akhaltsikh and Baschkadiklar. Fort St Nicholas indeed yielded to numbers, and a detachment of Russians was repulsed at Oltenitza, but the efforts of the Turks at Torino and Tscetate were unavailing, and the action at the latter place, which the allies described as a victory, was in effect a total defeat of a corps of 18,000 Turks and 12 guns by a Russian force of 2,500 men and six guns. On the 30th of November occurred the battle of Sinope, and on the 3d of January the allied fleets entered the Black Sea and notified the Russian admiral that he was not to leave Sebastopol. As the Turks were left free to act, it was evident such an extraordinary proceeding in regard to one of two belligerent Powers indicated warlike intentions, although the Western Powers still assured Russia of their desire to preserve friendly relations. The Russian envoys were recalled from Paris and London, and the cabinet of St Petersburg took measures in the winter of 1853 and spring of 1854 to prepare the coast against the first blows of the enemy. War was formally declared on the 27th of April, but the allied fleets bombarded Odessa on the 22d of the same month, in consequence of an ordinary occurrence in war time being regarded as an insult to their flag. Russia was attacked at once in the White Sea, in Kamtschatka, in the Baltic and in the Black Sea, in the Caucasus, and on the Danube. At Solowitsk and at Petropaulovski the allies were signally defeated, but they were more fortunate in their assault on the unfinished fort at Bomarsund. All the swarms of Asia Minor, Arabia, and Syria flocked to the holy war against the infidel, and in 1854 the Turks opened the campaign in Asiatic Turkey, with about 100,000 men in line, while the Russians had little more than one half. Nevertheless, the Russians gained repeated and invariable successes, and eventually drove the Turks under the walls of their fortified places. Determined to strike a vigorous blow at the Turks before the allies could help them, Prince Gortschakoff passed the Danube on the 23d of March, 1854. Trenches were opened against Silistria, May 20, and the glacis of Arab Tabia was crowned on the 6th of June. The fall of the place was inevitable, but the Russian Generals were obliged to modify their dispositions in consequence of diplomatic negotiations with Austria, which became so unpromising that the Prince of Warsaw raised the siege on the 20th of June, and recrossed the Danube. As to the defence of Silistria, of which we have heard so much, General de Todleben inserts a long note to show the exaggeration and errors of the newspaper accounts of the operations. Twice only did the besieged attempt to attack the Russian trenches. On the night of the 28th of May they made a sortie, in which they were repulsed, and in the ardour of the pursuit two battalions which followed them into the Arab tabia, being left without supports, were driven out with a loss of 700 men. On the 3d of June a second sortie was repulsed with slaughter. On the night of the 20th of June, when the Russian troops were drawn up for the assault on the bare and ruined parapets, a courier suddenly arrived with the order to raise the siege and retire across the Danube. Their loss during the siege was only 2,500, of whom 700 fell in the sortie; so that the boasted defence only cost the Russians 50 men a day. The concentration of troops by Austria might have rendered the position of the Russian army untenable in case of hostilities; but it is impossible to believe that, in anticipation of such a result to the pending negotiations, they would have withdrawn so precipitately from Silistria if they had been quite sure of inflicting on their hated enemies an additional disgrace, and of adding to their reputation by the capture of a place defended by the generalissimo and flower of the Turkish army, even though they had abandoned their prize next day. But Russia went further than the other side of the Danube. Actuated by a desire for peace and for a limited circle of military operations, as well as to save central Europe the horrors of war, no matter what its horrors might be in Turkey or Asia, the Czar, yielding to Austria and Prussia, ordered his troops to recross the Pruth on the 15th of September, and Prussia ceased to take any part in the Conference at Vienna. The moment Austria occupied the Principalities the allies were left free to undertake an expedition against the Crimea, which would have been otherwise impossible. In fact, Russia was forced into war by trickery, and prevented from carrying it on properly by false friends and doubtful allies. So far from entertaining the ambitious designs attributed to her, no preparations had been made on her frontiers for attack or defence, when suddenly she was exposed to the force of the greater part of Europe. “Public opinion” — the phrase is used again and again by M de Todleben, who seems much more enlightened with respect to the influence thus exercised and the mode of expressing it than his rival, Mr Kinglake — ran so strongly that she could no longer count on her old alliances, and there was ground to fear that every Government in Europe would be forced into the Anglo-French league. Every point of the frontier was open to her ubiquitous enemies. If Sweden joined the enemy Finland might become the theatre of war. St Petersburg itself, if not open to a decisive operation, was at least liable to some sort of hostile demonstration. All the ports of the Baltic were more or less exposed, and a descent might be effected along the coast of Esthonia. Riga itself was not safe. It was necessary to concentrate troops for the defence of the principal points along these shores, and, at the same time, to cover the frontier, which extends for 1,200 miles between the Baltic and the Black Sea. The fortified line of the Vistula was, indeed, favourable to defence, but the conduct of Austria made it necessary to collect a large army in Poland, and on the south there was only the fortress of Kiew capable of resisting an aggression from Galicia or the Principalities, as Khilia and Kotine were not then of the least importance. Sebastopol, indeed, was well defended toward the sea, but was almost entirely open on the land side, and Otchakow and Kinburn were quite inadequate to protect the Liman of the Dneiper or Nicolow. The entrance to the Sea of Azov was quite open; in fact, from Finland to the Caucasus there was not a spot safe from the enemy. To add to these disadvantages there was “le manque très prejudiciable” of good roads towards the frontier as in the interior. One incontestable superiority Russia did possess, — she could recruit and maintain an army such as no other State could equal. The influence of despotic power and the cheapness of subsistence enabled Russia to enter upon the war with 678,000 men and 178 batteries, with a reserve of 182 battalions, 86 squadrons of cavalry, and 60 batteries, or 212,000 men and 480 guns. To these, by no means the weakest of her defensive forces, must be added 242,000 irregular troops, and to that total there still remains the corps de la garde of the interior, or something like our militia, of 144,000 — making a gross muster roll of a power of 1,200,000 men. Russia, however, was as little entitled to count on all these men as Great Britain would be justified in carrying to the credit of her resources in a European war the immense establishments of her old Indian army. Three conscriptions or recruitments were necessary to get 700,000 men in line for the war. So scared and ignorant were the authorities with regard to the intentions of neutrals, friends, and foes, that in August, 1854, they had only 39,000 men in the Crimea, while 200,000 were concentrated in the Baltic, 140,000 in Poland, 180,000 on the mid frontier to the West, 54,000 on the Asiatic frontier. But there were 32,000 men on the northern shores of the Black Sea, and 46,000 about the Sea of Azov and the Don, who could be sent to the Crimea under ordinary circumstances. The Russian fleet consisted of the Baltic squadron, 295 ships, 4,105 guns; the Black Sea squadron, 145 ships, 2,855 guns; the Archangel squadron, 34 ships, 60 guns; the Caspian squadron, 30 ships, 49 guns; the squadron of Kamschatka, 8 vessels, 30 guns; but of these only 82 were steamers, of which 18 were frigates and 6 were corvettes. General de Todleben disputes with success the estimates formed by European writers of the Turkish army, and fixes it at 230,000 men and 608 guns, regular and irregular, at the time of the invasion of the Crimea.
Great Britain, defended by its powerful navy and insular position from aggression, has far less need than any European State of a large army, and in war time England is always obliged to raise foreign mercenaries. In 1813 her army counted 210,000 men, but its strength before the war was only 145,000, independent of her militia and levy en masse, which de Todleben says we can resort to en cas écheant. England, however, he says, could not well send more than 30,000 to 35,000 men as her contingent to the war in 1854. France in 1853 had only 280,000 infantry and 60,000 cavalry; but in all which concerns the material organization of an army France had arrived at the highest point of perfection. In a few months her army was augmented to 680,000 men. Of these only 63,000 were designated at first for service in Turkey. The total force of the Allies in the East on commencing the war was therefore only 328,000 men, but the balance, nevertheless, was in favour of the assailants. In the first place, we had an enormous preponderance in naval resources. It was not surprising that England should exhibit her fleets at once in the Black Sea, White Sea, the Baltic, and the Pacific, as soon as war was declared; but what astonished the world was, the sudden appearance of the French navy rivalling that of Great Britain in every sea. The administration of the Prince de Joinville and the firm will of Napoleon III, according to M de Todleben, caused such a development of her maritime power that in 1854 France yielded very little indeed to England. United, the Western Powers presented a force which put the resistance of Russia in the open sea out of the limits of possibility.
The two chapters of which we have thus given an abstract, having conducted us to the threshold of the war, are followed by one in which there is a minute geographical and statistical description of the Crimea, and the theatre on which the principal scenes of the great drama were to be played out is described in two separate chapters in the minutest detail. In 1783 a Colonel of Engineers began the defences which were extended after the Turkish war in 1794, but it was in 1822, under Admiral Greig, that a committee of defence recommended the system enlarged by the Engineers in 1834 for the fortification of the harbour and coast, which was successfully completed just a year before the commencement of hostilities, and which gave to Sebastopol the stately lines and yawning casemates of Fort Constantine, Fort Michael, Fort Alexander, and Fort Paul. Nor was the south side neglected all that time. The plan of 1834 was modified by Nicholas himself when he visited the Crimea in 1837, and eight bastions were ordered by him to be constructed from the Careening Bay round to the sea. These works, however, had scarcely been commenced when the war broke out. That Russia, notwithstanding all her pacific protestations, was persuaded that war was imminent, and calculated on the possibility of an attack on Sebastopol, may be well inferred from the cautious statement of General Todleben that the Emperor sent the chief of the artillery staff and another officer to arm the batteries so early in the quarrel, that in the autumn of 1853 the coast batteries were mounted with 533 guns, red-hot shot furnaces were constructed, men were trained by constant firing, and experiments were made to determine the best ranges and most destructive charges and projectiles, under the direction of Prince Menschikoff. In the beginning of 1854 the exertions of the authorities were redoubled. Fifty-nine guns were mounted on new works. The Black Sea fleet now concentrated in Sebastopol harbour was disposed in March, 1854, so as to combine its fire with that of the batteries. Although Menschikoff was convinced, particularly as the year wore on, that no descent would be made on the Crimea, he provided as far as possible to meet such a danger. Fire-ships were prepared, telegraphs and coast patrols were established, and as early as May the Wasp Battery and the Telegraph Battery and a mortar battery were constructed and armed with 18 pieces. During the winter and spring, indeed, he caused additions to be made to the land defences, but he was persuaded that it was only necessary to throw up such works as would stop a small corps landed for a coup de main from marching into the city, and he did not think, nor did those around him, that the Allies would be imprudent enough to land an army in a country so destitute of resources that even water fit for drinking was very scanty. In the middle of April Colonel Todleben was sent to Sebastopol. There is a whole history in the little sentence which mentions the fact. The imperious character of Menschikoff, and the jealousy between him and Prince Gortschakoff, which finally gave to the world the unusual spectacle of two Russian Generals quarrelling in print, are clearly revealed. “Attached to Prince Menschikoff,” to whom he was sent by Prince Gortschakoff, “Colonel Todleben up to the landing of the Allies in the Crimea had no settled sphere of action in the work of fortifying Sebastopol.” He was in, but not of, the work. How little the ambitious young man as he walked about in the suite of the old sailor General, could have dreamt that out of the very stone and earth around him would rise an immortal monument to his genius and his glory? We have no space to give a detailed account of the defences of the south and north side inland, which, indeed, would scarcely be intelligible without diagrams and plans. It is enough to say that 145 guns were mounted on a line exceeding four miles, leaving many open spaces, and others on which only three or four pieces could be brought to bear, and that 60 guns were mounted on the north side. Prince Menschikoff had available for the defence of Sebastopol 39,000 men and 88 guns of the land forces and 18,000 sailors, but there were also about 12,000 men stationed under General Khomontoff in other parts of the Crimea. Not only in men but in material was Sebastopol deficient. In fact M de Todleben tells us that there were only 172 guns, all under 24-pounders, in the ports, although 1,944 old pieces had been deposited from time to time by men-of-war in the arsenal, of which 931 might be in case of need rendered available for arming the works. Adding the guns of the fleet the whole number of serviceable pieces was only 2,822, and, deducting the ammunition for the sea-side, there were only 300,000 shot and shell for the guns of position, and only 590,000 rounds for the guns of the fleet, while there were only 325,000 charges of powder for the guns in store. Such a miserable state as they were in! They had only tools for 200 men. They had to send the boarding axes of the sailors on shore. They had no building materials. The depôts were without supplies. The Commissariat were without money. They were in debt to the troops. After all, however, there was four months breadstuffs for the troops and seven months for the navy. It requires a close examination to detect the fallacy of this general statement of inadequate supplies, and to find lurking underneath it the special fact that Sebastopol was intended to strike a blow, not to receive one; that for all aggression its resources were ample, though for resistance wanting in many respects. The material and ammunition distributed among new works, do not appear formidable, but, the fleet and the forts were armed to the teeth, the one to cover the other, and the fleet to do as it listed in the Black Sea. The arm which was raised to despatch “the sick man” was suddenly obliged to defend the very heart which gave it strength. It is plain that the Russians never expected that the whole allied army would be thrown on the Crimea, any more than the allies ever contemplated the possibility of failure in taking Sebastopol by a coup de main or the siege and the winter which followed. The Prince had placed the harbour, arsenal, and city beyond the reach of a raid, and he was waiting on Providence very placidly, when on the morning of the 12th of September, about 10 o’clock, he was summoned from his breakfast, to hear that two men of war were visible on the horizon in advance of a dense cloud of black smoke which rose over the sea. Then came the news that 20 vessels of war had doubled Cape Loukone. The telegraph threw up its arms in despair when later in the day it announced that the enemy’s flotilla swarmed by hundreds, and at last a panting cossack arrived with the news that the number was so great it was impossible to count them. The Prince was suddenly called on to oppose the descent in which he did not believe. It is said that Menschikoff, although dissembling his apprehensions to those around him, repeatedly expressed his fears to his Imperial master, who at last rebuked him somewhat sternly on account of his entreaties for reinforcements for the Crimea. The Czar was persuaded the allies meant to attack Odessa and march on Nickolaiew, and would diminish the force concentrated in Bessarabia. It was related to us by an eye-witness that the Emperor was at table when a despatch was handed to him. He gave a slight start when he read the contents, his brow flushed, he crumpled up the paper in his hand, and rising suddenly stalked out of the room to the Empress’s boudoir, in which there was at the time one of the ladies in waiting standing by a window. “My God!” he exclaimed in great emotion; “it is true — the French and English have landed in the Crimea.” Then the Empress by a gesture dismissed the lady, and was left alone with His Majesty of all the Russias. How much more puzzled was his lieutenant! For the first time the potency of steam was made manifest to an unfortunate chief who had the long shores of a kingdom to defend without railroads or even decent highways. Neither infantry nor cavalry could keep up with a steam fleet. The enemy, indeed, were off Eupatoria, but if the Prince hastened there with his army the fleet might at once sail for some point near Sebastopol, disembark, and carry the unfinished land defences, which must necessarily be left with a very feeble garrison if there was a chance of the army encountering the full force of the Allies. The enemy, covered by their ships, could easily land close to the city, the fate of which would be decided long before the Russians could march back from Eupatoria. But, supposing the Prince knew the exact spot they were going to land at, it would not have followed that he could oppose the descent, covered by the batteries of the fleet, and if he failed the city would have been lost just as if he had lost a battle. It is remarkable that Todleben, in speaking of the places where the Allies might have landed, indicates two which were unaccountably overlooked by the Allies, although one of them was afterwards the base of supplies of the greater part of the army, and the other would certainly have answered for the purpose of an immediate attack — to wit, Kamiesch and Streleska, or Artillery Bay. These bays were well indicated in the maps in the hands of the engineers and Generals. Menschikoff decided on taking up a defensive position on the Alma, because it was near enough to cover the city and to move his forces to meet any alterations in the plans of the Allies against the place, and at once took measures to concentrate his troops upon the right bank, where he hoped to offer such a resistance as would give time to the Russians to reinforce him from Perekop, Kertch, and Theodosia. While the Allies were landing, he was enabled on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of September, and on the 18th and 19th, to occupy the position only held by one brigade on the first of these days, and to crown the heights with the bulk of the troops which fought the battle. The delay which occurred after the first day’s operations in landing enabled the Russians to double their army, and, as a proof of the exertions they made, Todleben tells us that the Moscow regiment arrived only the day before the battle, after a march of 166 miles in five days. Those who remember Mr Kinglake’s amusing stories — and who does not? — must recollect the capital anecdote he tells about the Governor or head man of Eupatoria, who ordered the Allies to go into quarantine. The Governor and his people left early, but the doctor of the quarantine was left behind, and he it was, no doubt, who appeared as Governor of Eupatoria and insisted on his official duties. Mr Kinglake says the place was occupied by a small body of English troops; Todleben says the Allies occupied it with upwards of 3,000 men and eight field guns. It is worthwhile to note that Todleben assigns to Canrobert and Martimprey the expedition to reconnoitre finally the place of disembarcation and to lay down the buoys and different coloured flags for the divisions of the shipping, which is to take from Lord Raglan the credit assigned to him by Mr Kinglake of not only forcing these troublesome Frenchmen to consent to a landing, but of choosing the very spot for them to do it on. But it would be a large book which could contain all.
*Défense de Sébastopol. Ouvrage rédigé sous la direction de Lieutenant-Général E de Todleben, Aide-de-Camp Général de S M L’Empereur. Tome I. Première Partie, Deuxième Partie. St Pétersbourg: Imprimerie N Thiebelin et Cie, 1863.