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Title: The Siege of Sevastopol, March 17, 1855 (1855)
Description: Leading article of the New-York Daily Tribune on the withdrawal of the British infantry from the trenches before Sevastopol, the mediocrity of the allied engineers and generals, and the dangerous plan of operating from Eupatoria and the Chernaya.
Author: Friedrich Engels
Date: 1855-03-17
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1855%20The%20Siege%20of%20Sevastopol%2C%20March%2017%2C%201855
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*Published unsigned as a leading article in the* New-York Daily Tribune*, No. 4340, March 17, 1855, p. 4, under the heading “The Siege of Sevastopol”; attributed to Friedrich Engels by MEGA² (I/14), which first identified him as its author. The newspaper’s obvious misprints are corrected (“weuld”, “lossee”, “af the interior”, “everthing”). Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1855%20El%20sitio%20de%20Sebastopol%2C%2017%20de%20marzo%20de%201855).*

Still no decisive news from the Crimea. The position of the Allies has “somewhat improved.” The very unpleasant, but unavoidable, step has at last been taken; the British infantry has been withdrawn from the trenches, and sent to Balaklava “for reorganization,” after which it will take its position on the hights round that harbor, for its defense. Of the six divisions sent out, beside supplementary regiments fully amounting to another division, 10,500 bayonets are all that remain under arms, and one half of these, above all things, require a thorough physical reorganization before they can do any good in the field. It must have been a hard day for the British infantry when, after losing four fifths of their strength by sheer mismanagement of the home Government, and by the incapacity and negligence of their own commanders, they had to march down from the trenches, leaving the whole of the siege and the eventual assault to the French; leaving even their own artillery and naval brigade in the batteries, to be virtually commanded by the French general. But there was no other means of saving the remainder of the British army. The French are said now to muster about 75,000 men, but we should say 60,000 would be nearer the mark; for they, too, have had serious losses. Thus, including the British artillery and naval brigade, there may be from 70,000 to 75,000 men concentrated on the Heracleatic Chersonese; but that is the very outside. Of these, 40,000 men are necessary for the conduct of the siege, at the very least: for the great proximity of the trenches to the Russian works now obliges the besiegers to keep a considerable force always concentrated in the parallels in order to repel sorties, and this force must be daily relieved. If not, it would soon share the fate of the British army, which was especially knocked up by constant trench duty and want of rest. There remain from 30,000 to 35,000 men to guard the line of circumvallation from Balaklava to the lower Chernaya, and to make such advances in the field as may be practicable to such a force. It is, however, evident that while the Russians have superior forces at hand, these 35,000 men cannot venture out very far from their intrenched position. That even now they are not able to complete the investment of the south side of Sevastopol, is confessed by Lord Raglan himself, in his last dispatch, by the admission that large convoys of wagons, laden with ammunition and other stores, passed into Sevastopol in the beginning of February. If they cannot be prevented from entering the place, how will it be possible to obstruct the entrance, on a sudden, of reënforcements, enabling the Russians to sally forth in such strength as to drive the French at least out of the first two parallels, while a simultaneous attack on Balaklava and the hights of the Chernaya occupies the covering army?

Hitherto we have been sparing in our criticism upon the scientific conduct of the siege; the lines of trench have, of course, not been put into published maps, and the maps that professed to show these lines and the sites of the batteries, deserved no credit. Under such circumstances, it was impossible to form a judgment upon the engineering portion of the operations, until events should have given some clue which might, to a degree, take the place of a knowledge of detail impossible to obtain. Now, however, we may say, that even taking into account all the difficulties which have or may have obstructed the progress of the engineers, the conduct of the siege appears to have been characterized up to the last by the most thorough mediocrity. Sevastopol is situated on the lowest point of a long and gradual slope, interrupted by ravines and partial elevations of ground; accordingly it is in the worst possible position for a fortress subject to a land-attack, because it is commanded. Militarily speaking, a fortification is commanded when there are points of the surrounding ground, within gun-shot range, whence you can see into its interior, and especially whence you have a view of the inside, or rear of some of its lines. Higher ground outside, within gunshot-range, generally determines command. Now, from the broken nature of the ground, both in and out of Sevastopol, it is evident that there is hardly a point in the interior of the place which is not commanded, and consequently exposed to the direct horizontal fire of the enemy, if he knows how to place his batteries. It reflects the highest credit upon the Russian engineers that, under these extremely disadvantageous circumstances, they have succeeded in raising fortifications capable of such a resistance. The disadvantages of a situation commanded from without can only be avoided by defilading (*défilement*) or raising the ramparts to such a hight that no point of the surrounding ground, within gun-range, is elevated enough to afford a view of the interior. But not only is there a limit to this defilading; the erection of such works, requires so great an amount of labor that the application of the principle on a large scale becomes impossible. Indeed, the reports from the camp show that there are points within range from which a great part of the interior of the place can be surveyed; and reports, maps and views concur in one thing: that there is hardly a siege-point in Sevastopol which is not commanded by, and therefore exposed to, direct horizontal fire from some point outside. This being the case, what shall we say of the Anglo-French Engineers who have not even been able to profit by this uncommonly favorable circumstance? Every sergeant of engineers in every army knows this much, that he would, in a siege, consider a commanding point as an unexpected godsend; yet these Generals ignore it. It will be recollected that a month or two ago reports from the allied camp stated that it was an easy matter to take a regular fortress, because in that case everything to be done was properly prescribed and laid down beforehand, but such an irregular fortification as this Sevastopol was a puzzle to all the engineers! There can be no better proof of the spirit of routine ruling in the Engineer Corps of the besiegers. A place like Sevastopol, commanded on every side, defended by works thrown up according to no general plan, but constructed one after another as emergencies arose, and time was gained—such a place, more difficult to take than a regular fortress, where every possible chance has been foreseen, every single work brought into harmony and close connection with all the remainder! Not to speak of the sleepy British Engineers, the maxim is quite worthy of the Engineers of the French Lower Empire. Give them a regular Vauban front to attack, and they may manage to carry it; but anything out of the way, though offering points of glaring weakness, will not do for them. It is not that the French Engineer Corps does not count many first-rate officers; on the contrary, it is, perhaps, the first in the world. But professional merit has nothing to do with appointment to commands in the age of a Louis Bonaparte, Saint Arnaud, Magnan, Persigny, Fould & Co.

It may be said, the difficulties presented by the rocky ground were so great as to prevent the Allies from erecting batteries on the most commanding points. But the ground inside the town is as rocky as outside, and yet the Russians have managed on a far smaller space, and with a necessity for a deal of defilading and traverse work, to erect batteries which compel the admiration of the besiegers themselves. Besides, have the French already forgotten how the Prussians, in a couple of days, and on ground at least quite as rocky, took Mezière from them by sand-bag batteries? And is not the railway now constructing a flagrant contradiction to all such statements?

But the engineering department is not alone to blame. The general conduct of the operations has been nowise better; and we shall henceforth have to put down Canrobert as well as Raglan as a pure mediocrity in generalship. There is now no denying that those who, on the first appearance of the Allies on the hights above Sevastopol, on the 28th September, pronounced for an immediate assault of the incomplete and badly armed works, have been fully justified by the event. At that time, the Allies could have brought some 35,000 infantry to the assault; they were in the first flush of victory; they found the Russians surprised, shaken, unprepared; hardly more than 15,000 infantry could be opposed by the besieged, and what is more, one single successful rush would have carried the place. Under such circumstances, we, too, are of opinion that the assault should have been attempted, even if the chances of success were, to those of defeat, as forty to sixty only. But the generals allowed this opportunity to slip away, and resolved upon the siege; though if too weak for an immediate assault, they were in a far greater proportion too weak for a siege. It was not, however, to be a regular siege; it was to be an accelerated, summary proceeding; a few days engineering, a few days cannonading, and then the storm. This proceeding failed entirely; the Russian works proceeded far more quickly, far more systematically than those of the Allies; three weeks elapsed before the fire could be opened, and when the day for unmasking the batteries came, the Russians could unmask two guns to the Allies’ one. However, the fire was opened; the French fire was silenced in half a day; the English guns silenced some few Russian batteries, but could not subdue the fire from the town in any way. In a couple of days the Allies had fired away all their ammunition, without any result; they were reduced to a few rounds per day, fired for no purpose unless as a pretext for official statements that the batteries were still active. This useless waste of ammunition which it took months to replace, was another egregious blunder; the aspect of the Russian works, the number of their guns, and the distance of the allied batteries, (from 1,200 to 2,500 yards,) must have shown at once to any sensible officer that there was no chance of such a distant and short-lived fire having any effect upon the ramparts, or being capable of protecting the advance of storming columns. But the allied Generals acted like Tarquin when the Sybilline books were offered to him. They allowed the first set to be burned when they resolved not to storm Sevastopol on the 28th September; they had the second set burned when they destroyed all their stock of ammunition in a cannonade, the uselessness of which must have been evident to every gunner; and, less fortunate than Tarquin, they will not only not get the third set at the original price asked for the whole lot—they will not get it at all.

The fact is, we cannot doubt, that the allied Generals are by this time perfectly convinced of the impracticability of any assault, with their present means both of artillery and infantry. Three, and in some instances, four successive lines of fortifications, cannot be taken at one onset; nothing is clearer than that. They require as many successive sieges, which may become shorter with every successive line carried; but they require time, renewed trenches, renewed cannonades, renewed assaults, and, of course, renewed reënforcements. All this under the supposition that the covering army remains in possession of its ground, and that the forts on the north side of the harbor will not make the place too hot for the Allies within twelve hours after its being ultimately carried. As to the covering army, we shall return to that presently; as to the north forts, their action must begin to tell terribly the moment the south side is in possession of the Allies. But what with the restricted means at their command, with the difficulties of the task, with the enormous sacrifice of men necessarily connected with every assault, with the very small chance of large reënforcements arriving, with the extraordinary wear and tear caused to the besiegers by the climate, there are at least ten chances to one that the south side of Sevastopol will never be taken by the Allies. The Generals must know this; yet, in order to preserve their troops from complete demoralization, the assault must be permanently announced as imminent. This cannot last forever; other movements must, therefore, be made; and they must attempt to get, somehow or other, out of the fatal *cul-de-sac* into which their “celebrated flank-march” has locked them up. For this purpose the desperate idea of sending Omer Pasha to Eupatoria was invented.

We have more than once pointed out the great fault in forming the base of the offensive plan of the Allies—a fault which could, however, not be avoided, as it was the consequence of former errors. To operate from two bases, and upon two distinct lines, with two separate corps, against an enemy superior to both these corps put together, is certainly the hight of contempt for all rules of warfare. Yet it is done: it offers the only chance of gaining a success in the field over the Russians, repelling them into the interior of the peninsula, and investing Sevastopol on the north side too. But what must be the consequence of such proceedings? The Turks, once concentrated at Eupatoria, are from sheer necessity driven to immediate offensive operations, for the place will not hold them. They have to advance, with about 25,000 men, or 30,000 men at the very outside, in a country where no strong positions for defensive operations are at their disposal. They have to act in a completely open field, where maneuvering decides every battle—and in that, even the Russians are by far their superiors —or else they have to drive the Russians from the position of the Alma, or the Katcha; and such feats are not exactly their forte. They will, therefore, very likely, be defeated and annihilated, unless they are allowed by the Russians to die out quietly by climatic effects and maladministration. As to the allied army on the Chernaya, that cannot advance in greater strength than about 25,000 men to any distance beyond a short march from its present position. Detachments for securing the communication, and the flanks, scouts, &c., would, on the second day’s march, reduce it to 20,000; and that in a country where no such Torres-Vedras positions, as on the neck of the Chersonese are to be found. They, too, would have to maneuver; and every soldier knows that in the open field every position can be turned—strategically, by the enemy’s maneuvering, before the battle, so as to menace the communications of the army, or tactically, by his throwing a corps on its flank and rear during the battle. Thus, a superior army can always force a weaker enemy to retire, with or without fighting, as soon as there is elbow-room for maneuvering; and whenever the Allies choose to advance beyond the Chernaya, they will be made to feel this very soon. But the very fact of the Turks advancing from Eupatoria will force them to make a corresponding move, and then the crisis of the Crimean campaign will have arrived. The battle at that place reported in our columns by the Pacific and Africa as a victory over the Russians is plainly a skirmish of no account.

The Russians appear to await their third corps from Perekop, and an improvement in the weather which will allow them to bivouac in the open air, in order to begin then, on their side, offensive operations. Neither the one nor the other circumstance can now be much retarded, so that about the middle or end of March, if an armistice is not concluded in consequence of the death of Nicholas, and if the season is at all favorable, we may expect to see this struggle for the possession of Sevastopol brought to a final decision. What we expect this decision to be we have stated often and plainly enough.