Published unsigned as a leading article, under the headline “Sevastopol”, in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 4539, November 6, 1855, p. 4; attributed to Friedrich Engels by MEGA² (I/14). The date is added to the title to distinguish it from the article of June 1855 with the same headline. Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). Traducción al español.
Among other documents upon the war, the Baltic brings us the detailed report of Prince Gorchakoff concerning the siege, assault and evacuation of Sevastopol. This report is chiefly interesting from its admission of the tremendous losses sustained by the Russians during the last days of the siege. On the 17th of August the bombardment began. That day they lost one thousand five hundred men; on the four following days, four thousand; then, in fifteen days to the 5th of September, eight thousand; and finally, from the 5th to the 8th, four thousand—making a total of seventeen thousand five hundred killed and wounded during the bombardment. Then came the assault, and during this the Russians lost two thousand six hundred and eighty-four killed, six thousand and fifty-eight wounded, one thousand one hundred and eighty-five contused, and one thousand seven hundred and sixty-three missing—total, nearly twelve thousand men; so that the entire loss during the last twenty-three days of the defense of Sevastopol amounted to thirty thousand men, to which we may add a loss from sickness of about ten thousand more. Such a diminution of the fighting forces on one side—while on the opposite side the losses during the bombardment were about one-fifth, or one-sixth, and during the assault about three-fourths only of these numbers—might well induce Gorchakoff to give up the attempt to make a second Saragossa of Sevastopol, and to defend it, house after house and street after street.
A defense like that of Saragossa might be possible during a siege where the besiegers had scarcely any mortars for vertical fire (the French soldiers before Saragossa knew this well enough, and asked for mortars in a very clamorous manner) and where the massively-built houses—each a fortress in itself—could only be attacked by the slow process of mining. But where the besieging army is plentifully provided with mortars of the heaviest caliber, and has no occasion to spare its ammunition, such a show of heroism would be completely thrown away. During the last days of the siege, the Russians had from thirty thousand to forty thousand men in the place; a great number of these must have been located within the most effective range of the siege-batteries, as an assault might be expected any day, and reserves for such a case had to be at hand. That the effect of a concentric fire upon such a mass of men concentrated on a comparatively small space, must have been sufficient to make the place too hot for them, is quite clear; and even if it be not correct that Gorchakoff did intend abandoning the south side before the assault was attempted, yet he would have been fully justified in coming to that resolution.
Thus the effect of the bombardment is acknowledged by the Russians themselves to have been immense; and the more so, as vertical fire on the interior of the town and horizontal fire upon the outer defenses were carried on simultaneously for a considerable time. Whenever, in former sieges, a bombardment has decided the fall of a place, the terror of the non-military inhabitants and the confusion created thereby have been one of the main agents in procuring a surrender. Here at Sevastopol, for the first time, we learn to appreciate the effect of a vigorous bombardment upon a purely military city. At the same time, however, it must be acknowledged that such a bombardment could never be carried on against a large inland fortress, where the ammunition and siege train would have to be transported overland. Seven hundred guns of the heaviest caliber, and from six to seven thousand tons of ammunition (for so much was consumed during the last bombardment alone) can never be conveyed to a given spot by mere land carriage, even with the present railway system. In this respect, as in many others, the siege of Sevastopol cannot be considered as a specimen of what might or might not be done in ordinary sieges with the means of destruction available at the present time.
On the assault itself Gorchakoff does not give us much new information. We learn, however, from his report, in which eighteen Russian regiments are mentioned by name as having participated in the combat, that at least seventy-two battalions or from thirty-five thousand to forty thousand men defended the place when the Allies assaulted it. As we have shown in a previous article, the allied forces actually engaged in the assault were scarcely superior in numbers, although Prince Gorchakoff actually has the impudence to maintain that the salient angle of the Malakoff alone was attacked by thirty thousand men at once! A glance at any passable plan of Sevastopol will show that the front of attack was about as long as the front of defense, as is generally the case; and how five French divisions (in reality there was but one, with another in reserve) could contrive simultaneously to attack a position for the defense of which Gorchakoff had thought one single Russian regiment (the Praga infantry) to be quite sufficient, we have yet to learn. The manner in which the Malakoff was lost by the Russians is altogether hushed up in this report; but when we compare it with Pelissier’s and Niel’s dispatches, we come to the conclusion that this key of the whole fortress was indeed very much neglected by the Russians, who thought the four weak battalions of the Praga regiment sufficient to hold it, while the regiment of Ladoga, its nearest support, was far too weak to recover that commanding position after the French division of MacMahon had once surprised and taken it. Both on the right and left of the Malakoff enormous masses of Russian troops were brought forward; the five thousand English alone who attacked the Redan and its flanking works had to fight twenty-five battalions of Russians, or from ten thousand to thirteen thousand men; the whole of the reserves were brought forward to the defense of the Great and Little redans (bastions Nos. 2 and 3 of the Russians) but the Malakoff, the decisive position separating them, was shamefully neglected, and once lost no serious attempt was made to retake it. Thus it is proved that the attacks made by the Allies on various points of the Russian lines, though seemingly unsuccessful, yet fulfilled their end by turning away the attention of the Russians from the decisive point.