Siege of Sevastopol, 1854: the first bombardment and an eleven-month siege

The Crimean War was meant to be decided at Sevastopol, the base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet. In June 1854 the British government told its commander, Lord Raglan, that there could be no safe peace until the fortress fell and the fleet was destroyed. On 17 October 1854 the Allies tried to break it with guns alone. They failed, and what followed was eleven months of trenches, winter and costly assaults.²

From the Alma to the walls

British, French and Ottoman troops, about 60,000 men in EBSCO's account, landed in the Crimea on 14 September 1854, about thirty miles north of Sevastopol, and beat Prince Menshikov's army at the Alma on 20 September. Instead of attacking from the north, across the wide harbor, the Allies marched around the city and settled on the plateau to the south, the British on the right and the French on the left.³

The south side was the weak side. The Russians sank a line of warships across the harbor mouth to keep the Allied fleets out, and began building earthworks and batteries day and night. The work was directed by the engineer Eduard Totleben, while Admiral Kornilov led and inspired the defense, using heavy guns taken from the ships. The Allied generals argued over when to attack, and every week of delay made the defenses stronger.⁴

17 October 1854: the first bombardment

The bombardment opened at 6:30 in the morning on 17 October, which was 5 October in the Julian calendar then used in Russia. Harvard's Imperiia project notes that the Allies had more than 100 guns at the start of the siege and were still outgunned by the defenders by about three to one.⁵

At 10:30 a Russian shell struck the magazine of the French battery on Mount Rudolph. The battery blew up, and the remaining French guns soon fell silent. The British did better against the Malakhov, the redoubt that dominated the city's defenses. Their fire blew up its magazine and silenced many of its guns, and Kornilov, who was directing its defense, was killed. BritishBattles.com suggests that an assault that day might well have taken the Malakhov and perhaps the city; but with the French guns out of action the infantry attack was called off. Imperiia makes the same point: the Allies did not exploit the breach, and the Russians repaired it overnight.⁶

The fleets fared no better. British and French wooden ships of the line spent hours firing at the harbor forts, took considerable damage and did little in return. Writing of this naval attack, the naval historian H. W. Wilson counts 44 killed and 266 wounded in the British squadron and 30 killed and 164 wounded in the French, and treats the day as proof of what shore guns could do to wooden ships. EBSCO sums up the bombardment as two days of shelling without success.⁷

A siege, not a battle

A week later the Russians struck at the Allied base at Balaklava, and on 5 November at Inkerman; neither battle broke the siege lines. Then winter came. The great storm of 14 November wrecked 21 ships at Balaklava with the stores the army needed, and the troops suffered through the cold in tents and trenches. Over the winter Totleben kept extending the works around the Redan, the Flagstaff Bastion and the Malakhov.⁸

In 1855 the Allies, joined by Sardinia, came back with more guns and men. In June the French took the Mamelon, but the assault of 18 June was driven off with heavy losses, and Raglan died at the end of the month. The final bombardment began on 5 September. On 8 September the French stormed the Malakhov and held it; the British attack on the Redan failed. With the Malakhov lost, the Russian position was untenable. The garrison crossed the bridges to the north side of the harbor, destroying what it left behind, and the Allies entered a ruined city.⁹ › Battle of Eupatoria, 1855

The cost of Sevastopol

No single, agreed total exists for the losses of the whole siege, and this article does not invent one. BritishBattles.com gives 7,567 French, 2,271 British and 12,913 Russian casualties for the last day alone. Imperiia cites an estimate that as many as 100,000 Russians died in the defense of the city.¹⁰

Among the defenders was a young officer, Leo Tolstoy, whose Sevastopol sketches began his career as a writer. EBSCO sees the siege as a warning that would be repeated in the First World War: waves of infantry thrown against prepared positions paid a terrible price. On the same date a year later, 17 October 1855, French armored floating batteries showed the other lesson of the war at Kinburn.¹¹