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Title: The War, September 1, 1855 (1855)
Description: Leading article of the New-York Daily Tribune on the battle of the Chernaya, the slow progress of the siege works before Sevastopol and the allied bombardment of Sweaborg in August 1855.
Author: Friedrich Engels
Date: 1855-09-01
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1855%20The%20War%2C%20September%201%2C%201855
---


*Published unsigned as a leading article, under the headline “The War”, in the* New-York Daily Tribune*, No. 4483, September 1, 1855, p. 4; attributed to Friedrich Engels by MEGA² (I/14). The date of the issue is added to the title to distinguish it from other articles with the same headline. Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1855%20La%20guerra%2C%201%20de%20septiembre%20de%201855).*

Our files of English, French and German journals, received yesterday morning by the mail of the Canada, shed no additional light on the battle of August 16, on the Chernaya, where Liprandi was repulsed by the Allied forces and a number of Russian prisoners taken. With regard to this affair, we must wait for the next steamer before we can receive any satisfactory details. It is rather suspicious, however, that so little was known about it at Paris and London previous to the sailing of the Canada. Had it been really as decisive as the English journals represent, something more than the very incomplete statements now in our possession would naturally have been made public.

It appears that the assault on the Malakoff, which was expected to have taken place on the 15th, had to be postponed, and that the preliminary bombardment did not commence till the 17th. Indeed, there is reason to suspect that the siege works are not in so forward a state as the journals of Paris and London have reported. Though the Allies had worked hard at them through the month of July, and though we were constantly told that they were at last quite close to the Russians, we have the best of authority for the statement that on the 4th of August the head of the sap was still 115 metres, or 460 yards, from the Russian main ditch! It is certainly satisfactory to see Hotspur Pelissier brought down to the acknowledgement that his system of assault has failed, and that regular siege works must pave the way for his columns; but for all that, to leave 200,000 men quiet in their tents to wait for the completion of these trenches, and to die, in the mean time, of cholera and fever, is singular management. It must be confessed that from first to last, this has been a war of incapacities on both sides. Todtleben is the only man in either camp who has shown a spark of genius.

With regard to the attack on Sweaborg, we are also still without full official reports or newspaper correspondence. The facts, however, appear on a careful examination of all the information at hand to be as follows:

The Allied fleets, six liners, four or five large frigates, and about thirty mortar-vessels and gunboats, crossed over from the Revel to Sweaborg August 7. On the 8th they took up their positions. The vessels of light draft passed through the shoals and rocks west of the fortress, where no large ship can pass, and drew up at long range from the islands on which Sweaborg is situated. The large vessels remained outside, and as far as we can judge out of range of the forts. Then the gunboats and mortar-vessels opened fire. No direct firing appears to have been attempted. It was all shelling from mortars or shell guns at the highest elevation practicable. The bombardment lasted forty-five hours. As to the amount of damage inflicted it is not possible to estimate without detailed accounts from both parties. The arsenal and various magazines of powder (apparently small ones) were destroyed. The town of Sweaborg, so far as we know only a few houses inhabited by people connected with the fleet or the works,) was burnt. As to the fortifications themselves, the damage done to them cannot but be insignificant, for the fleets, as both Admirals state, had *not a man killed*, only a few wounded, and no loss whatever in *materiel*. No better proof could be given that they kept out of harm’s way. In that case they might bombard, but could not act by direct fire, by which alone fortifications can be destroyed. Dundas, who is far more honest and collected in his report than the French Admiral, (at least as his dispatch runs in the official publication.) avers that the damage inflicted was confined to the three islands (out of the seven constituting Sweaborg) which are situated west of the main entrance to the bay of Helsingfors. That entrance does not even appear to have been attempted. The large vessels can scarcely have acted at all, and the decisive act in such an attack—the landing of troops to possess themselves of the works and destroy them—was entirely out of the question. Thus the damage inflicted falls upon stores and storehouses exclusively—that is, upon matters easily replaced; and if the Russians avail themselves of their time and means, Sweaborg may in three weeks be in as good a condition as ever. Militarily speaking, it has not suffered at all; the material results of the whole affair are hardly worth its cost; and it seems to have been undertaken merely because the Baltic fleet must do something before it comes home for the season.