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There can be little doubt that this would have been the result if the Russians had entrusted the defence of the place to some venerable General of Engineers, who had passed the prime of his life in the wars of Napoleon I., and had greatly distinguished himself in the construction of redoubts at the Borodino or at Bautsen. In the Russian service, however, a good digestion and consequent length of days is not the only passport to high command and the honours of the service; and they chose for this purpose a very young officer, who had raised himself to distinction entirely by his own merits and the superiority of his genius. Instead of defending the place selon les règles, and surrendering it after the prescribed number of days, he at once set to work to put into practice the lessons learnt at Silistria and Bomarsund, of which he had grasped the significance; and determined to try if a little boldness and originality might not enable the place to make a better defence than at first sight seemed possible.

In the middle ages it was the fashion to arm warriors cap-àpie in suits of plate armour of the most elaborate construction. Nothing could be more ingenious than the device - nothing apparently more invulnerable than the man so defended. In process of time, however, it was discovered that this steel-clad warrior was utterly useless for purposes of offence, though tolerably safe so long as he remained wholly on the defensive, or fought only with others encumbered like himself. And it became evident that even a weaker and inferior soldier, if more lightly equipped, could work round him, and, keeping out of his reach, wear him out, and eventually, as it were, sting him to death. Men, in short, learned that the true secret of defence lay in the power of offence; defensive armour was abandoned, and the soldier taught to rely wholly on the bullet and the bayonet for his means of safety. Fortification alone still retained its clumsy plate armour; and from its unwieldy character it was easily worked round and destroyed from a distance by the lightly armed attack, which relied on its power of offence as its only means of victory. Sebastopol is the first town in modern times which has been fortified so as to rely on its means of offence only, with very slight attention being paid to mere defensive armour. It is by applying to fortification the principles universally adopted for the last 200 years in every other department of every army in Europe, that General Todleben has turned the tables on the attack, and opened a new era in the art of war. The Russians seem now to be fully alive to the importance of the discovery that has been made; but so far as can be judged from the pro

gress of the siege, the Allies do not appear at all aware of its significance.

The battle of the Alma was fought on the 25th of September. On the 28th the Allies took up their position on the heights commanding the south side of the city, and immediately commenced their first parallel. The Russians commenced their defensive works at the same time, and, working on the inner and smaller circle, were ready as soon as the invaders, though their works were necessarily of a more important character than those of the attack.

As before explained, a parallel of attack is a ditch about four

[blocks in formation]

feet deep, with the earth thrown up on the side towards the city. In a parallel of defence, on the contrary, the ditch is placed outside and the earth thrown up inwards. To obtain the same amount

of cover, the ditch in this case should not be less than eight feet deep, and the rampart as high. It should also be provided with flanks, which are never employed in aggressive parallels. If the place is small, these flanks are a great drawback to the power of a fort, as limiting the amount of direct fire; in a place the size of Sebastopol, it is of less consequence, as there then is sufficient space independent of them to mount almost any number of guns which may be required. If there is leisure, and the town is fortified in time of peace, it would of course be better that the ditch should be deeper, and that a loop-holed wall, or some such defensive expedient, should be placed in it, and the flanking expedients hidden there also; but in the present instance this was out of the question. The engineer could not act otherwise than he did.

On the western or French side the vulnerable point was

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just above the Harbour Creek. It was sought to secure this by the Flagstaff Battery, a work of more faulty trace than

VOL. CII. NO. CCVII.

the Redan; but before the works were complete, it was indispensable to secure a flanking defence on this side; and the defects of its form were remedied by the Garden Battery in its rear, possessing a very powerful direct fire over its salient-which has since been further increased by a third line of batteries in its rear. From this front down to the Quarantine Harbour the line is nearly straight, and without much flanking defence; a ravine in front and the houses in its rear rendering this part comparatively secure from assault,

The key of the position of the eastern half of the town was the Malakhoff; and General Todleben's first care was to strengthen this with a great circular earth-work in front of it. All flanking expedients were here abandoned, as a direct fire on the Mamelon was indispensable if we had attempted to seize that point, as we ought to have done, and the tower in the rear was thought to be a sufficient retrenchment to prevent an assault being attempted there. When that was destroyed by our fire, a fort was commenced in its rear which answers the purpose far better; and with a range of rifle-pits in front and another line of defence in its rear, an assault on the town could not be attempted without encountering the obstacles which stopped the armies on the 18th June.

On the other side of the ravine, towards the Dockyard Creek, is the Redan, a work of more questionable design, and more like an inspiration of the bastion school. It is not, however, so bad as at first sight appears, as the prolongations of its faces fall into ravines, where batteries cannot be established; and before the whole system was completed it was desirable to have a flanking fire over the ground in front. Its defects in trace are now amply made up for by the batteries established on either flank. These now mount from fifty to sixty guns in positions which cannot be enfiladed, and where they look directly towards the attack.

There was nothing very original either in the plan or principle of these works-nothing that distinguished them from those of Burgos and other places where they were equally successful. Their design was characterised by singular skill in adapting them to the ground on which they were to be placed, and by most consummate judgment as to the time in which they were erected, and at which they were indispensable to save the place. The originality consisted in the way they were armed, being made to carry a heavier amount of artillery than had ever before been employed for such a purpose.

For this the situation of Sebastopol was eminently favourable. The guns were probably taken out of the ships which were

sunk at the mouth of the harbour. If it were so, this would have supplied 1000 guns. Their shot and powder almost certainly were saved. The arsenal cannot itself have contained less than 2000 or 3000 guns. We never keep less than from 4000 or 5000 at Portsmouth or Devonport, and generally about 24,000 at Woolwich. So that we may safely calculate on Russia having some 3000 or 4000 in her great southern arsenal. Even in the last bombardment we could not put more than 300 or 400 guns into position; so that Russia could have fought us on equal terms and renewed the fight ten times over. Shot is easily manufactured, and powder was constantly brought up from the rear, so that the supply of matériel was practically unlimited.

Our engineers seem to have believed that they understood the defensive properties of such works, though even in this they were probably mistaken; but they were totally unprepared for such an application of them. The consequence was that the French opened their first parallel precisely as they did at Antwerp, in 1833, or would have done against any bastioned fort. The distance was the prescribed 600 metres, the profile that which is found in books. The armament exactly what we are taught it should be, and placed on the prolongations of the Flagstaff Bastion. When all was complete, they opened their fire on the 17th of October; and great was their astonishment at the result. For the first time in modern warfare, the boast of Montalembert was realised, the first parallel was pulverised. Their embrasures were torn to pieces, their guns dismounted, their parapets pierced, and their magazines blown up. To use an expressive, though vulgar phrase, they were snuffed out, and forced to withdraw from the combat.

The English fared better on this eventful day; for having placed their batteries at the safe distance of from 1200 to 1300 yards from the works, the enemy could do them very little damage; but, on the other hand, they did as little to the Russians. As far as can be judged from the result, it does not seem that the English attack was meant to be more than a diversion to prevent the Russians from accumulating all their power on the French. No one could have expected to do much damage to earth-works or even to masonry at such a distance. As it was, the besieged easily replaced at night the earth that had been disturbed during the day, repaired their embrasures, and replaced any guns that had been damaged, so as to renew the fight again with undiminished vigour in the morning, and the numbers of killed and wounded on either side were insignificant. Had the French succeeded in their attack, this feint of

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