The Press. — London, England, 1855-09-29 00:00:00

THE WAR. THE lull which followed the fall of Sebastopol has been of short duration. Signs of renewed activity appear on both sides. Our War office has not sup plied any telegraphic intelligence this week, but from other sources we hear that a considerable force of the allies have been despatched to Eupatoria, and that the Russians on the north side of Sebastopol have been busy in raising fortifications, and have opened fire on the town. The following telegraphic despatch has been published, but wants con firmation : Hamburg, Sept. 27. The follswing despatch has been received here, dated— St. Petersburg, Sept. 26. Under date the 23rd instant, Prince Got tachakoff reports that the allies had landed 20,0(X) men at Eupatoria, and that they had now a force of 30,000 men on his flank. On the `Land they attacked the Russian infantry, who retreated to the heights over Rusts. Of the fact, however, that a large number of troops have been despatched to Eupatoria there is no doubt, and it is affirmed that the Turkish army under Omer Pacha, which was ordered to Asia, will now be sent to Eupatoria to act offensively against the Russians. Shipments of warlike stores of all kinds continue to be made to the Crimea from the ports of England and France, and large supplies of winter clothing have been sent out by our authori ties for the use of the troops. THE FALL OF SEBASTOPOL. The correspondents of the morning journals supply us with full particulars of the assault of the Bth, and we have borrowed freely from the letters published in the Times and Daily News. The able correspondent of the Morning Herald was unfortu nately incapacitated by illness from writing— a circumstance much to be regretted, as his letters have always been trustworthy, and distinguished by knowledge and penetration. The English attack on the Redan was a severe battle, ie which, after frightful loss, our men were compelled to retreat. Various reasons are given for this disastrous con clusion of the sanguinary struggle : the Russian artillery was placed so as to pour destruction into the ranks of the assailants, and was admirably served ; their reserves were in great force ; and after the Malakoff was lost the chief strength of the enemy was directed to that point where the contest was yet doubtful. Then our men had to traverse 200 yards before the Redan was reached, while the French had but to spring forward a few yards from the head of their sap. These and other reasons are alleged as the cause of failure. But the main cause must unquestionably he looked for in the assault not having been made by columns sufficiently heavy to overcome the enemy's resistance, as was done in the case of the French attack on the Ma lakoff. It is clear from the despatch of General Simpson that, through some defect, supports were not sent forward in sufficient numbers and with sufficient promptitude. So far as the English attack was concerned, the Bth of September witnessed even a more decided repulse of our arms than the 18th of June ; but it must at the same time be recollected that the French attacks against the Little Redan and Central Bastion failed also. " Our troops were com pelled to abandon the works they had carried," says Marshal Pelissier, " and retire into their advanced place d'armes." We extract the most material por tions of the Times correspondent's letter:— PREPARATIONS FOB THE ATTACK. Saturday, Sept. 8. A biting wind right from the north side of Sebastopol blew intolerable clouds of harsh dust into our faces. The sun was obscured ; the sky was of a leaden wintry grey. Early in the morning a strong force of cavalry, under the command of Colonel Hodge, was moved up to the front and formed a chain of sentries in front of Cathcart's-hill and all along our lines. No person was allowed to pass this line, unless he was a staff officer or was provided with a pass. At 11.30 the Highland Brigade, under Brigadier Cameron, marched up from Karuara and took up its posi tion in reserve at the right attack, and the Guards, also in reserve, were posted on the same side of the Woronzoff road. The first brigade of the fourth division served the trenches of the left attack the night before, and remained in them. The second brigade of the fourth division was in reserve. The Guards, who served the trenches of the left attack, and only marched out that warning, were turned out again after arriving at their camp. The third divi sion, massed on the hillside before their camp, were also in reserve, in readiness to move dov n by the left attack in case their services were require& General Pelissier during the night collected about thirty thousand men in and about the Idamelon, to form the storming columns for TtlE PRESS. the Malakoff and Little Redan, and to provide the necessary reserves. The French were reinforced by five thousand Sardinians, who marched up from the Tschernaya last night. It was arranged that the Frenchwere to attack the Malakoff at noon. At 10.30 the second division and the light division moved down to the trenches, and were placed in the advanced parallels as quietly and unosten tatioualy as possible. About the same hour General Simp son and staff moved down to the second parallel of the Green-hill Battery. Sir Harry Jones, too ill to move hand or foot, nevertheless insisted (U being carried down to witness the assault, and was borne to the parallel on a litter, in which he remained till all was over. It was, as have said, a bitter cold day, and estranger would have been astonished at the aspect of the British generals as they viewed the assault. The commander•in•chief, General Simpson, sat in the trench, with his nose and eyes just facing the cold and dust, and his cloak drawn up over his head to protect him against both. General Jones wore a red nightcap, and reclined on his litter, and Sir Richard Airey, had a white docket handkerchief tied over his cap and ears, which detracted somewhat from a martial and belligerent aspect. The Duke of Newcastle was stationed at Cathcart's-hill in the early part of the day, and after wards moved off to the right to the Picket-house look-out over the Woronzoff road.—Tintes Cot. THE FRENCH ASSAULT OF THE MALAKOFF. At 10.4.5 General Pelissier and his staff went up to the French Observatory on the right. The French trenches were crowded with men as close as they could pack. A few minutes before twelve o'clock the French, like a swarm of bees, issued forth from their trenches close to the doomed Malakoff, swarmed up its face, and were through the em brasures in the twinkling of an eye. They crossed the seven metres of ground which separated them from the enemy at a few bounds—they drifted as lightly and quickly as autumn leaves before the wind, battalion after battalion, into the embrasures, and in a minute or two after the head of their column issued from the ditch the tricolour was floating over the Korniloff Bastion. The musketry was very feeble at first—indeed, our allies took the Russians quite by surprise, and very few of the latter were in the Malakoff; but they soon recovered themselves, and from twelve o'clock till past seven iu the evening the French had to meet and defeat the repeated attempts of the enemy to regain the work.—Th. The French never, even when under the eye of their great emperor, fought better than when holding the Malakoff against the repeated and desperate as saults of the Russians. This paragraph is from a correspondent of the Daily News : During the evening the Russians made three desperate assaults on the Malakoff, entered it each time, and they and the French fought in a style rarely witnessed in modern warfare. It was regular butchery ; they bayonetted one another, dashed out one another's brains with the butt ends of the muskets, bit, scratched, and rolled over on the ground, like so many bulldogs, hallooed against one another in an arena ; the dead bodies lay heaped and piled in the most extraordinary manner possible—" Turcos " (Algerian infantry in the French service), Zouaves, Russians, in one confused mass. The French at last brought field-artillery into the place, and then Gortschakoff seems to have under stood that it was all over. THE ENGLISH ATTACK OF THE REDAN. As soon as the tricolour was observed waving over the parapet of the Malakoff through the smoke and dust, four rockets were sent up from Chapman's attack one after another as a signal for our assault on the Redan. They were almost borne back by the violence of the wind, and the silvery jets of sparks they threw out on exploding were nearly invisible against the raw, grey sky. It was a few minutes after twelve when our men left the fifth parallel. The musketry commenced at once, and in less than five minutes, during which the troops had to pass over about thirty yards from the nearest approach to the parapet of the Redan, they had lust a large proportion of their officers. The riflemen advanced admirably, but from their position they could not do much to reduce the fire of the guns on the flanks and below the reentering angles. As they came nearer, the etemys fire became less fatal. They crossed the abattis without diffi culty; it was torn to pieces and destroyed by our shot, and the men stepped over and through it with ease. The light division made straight for the salient and projecting angle of the Redan, and came to the ditch, which is here about fifteen feet deep. The men, led by their officers, leaped into the ditch and scrambled up the other side, whence they got up the parapet almost without opposition, fur the few Russians who were in front ran back and got behind their traverses and breastworks as soon as they saw our men on the top, and opened lire upon them. Lamentable as it no doubt is, and incredible almost to those who know how the British soldier generally behaves before the enemy, the men, when they got on the parapet, were seized by some strange infatuation, and began firing instead of fol lowing their officers, who now began to fall fast as they rushed on in front and tried to stimulate their soldiers by their example. The small party of the 9Uth, much dimi nished, went on gallantly towards the breastwork, but they were too weak to force it, and they had to retire and get behind the traverses, where men of different regiments had already congregated, and were keeping up a brisk fire on the Russians, whose heads were just visible above the breastwork. Simultaneously with the head of the storming party of the light division, Colonel Windham had got inside the Redan on their right, below the salient on the proper left face of the Redan, but, in spite of all his exer tions, could 10 little more than the gallant officers of the 00th and 97th, and of the supporting regiments. As the light division rushed out in the front they were swept by the suns of the Barrack Battery, and by several pieces on the proper right of the Redan, loaded heavily with grape, which caused them considerable loss ere they reached the salient or apex of the work at which they were to as• SATURDAY, *suit. The storming columns of the second division issuing out of the fifth parallel rushed up immediately after the light division, but, when they came up close to the apex Brigadier Windham very judiciously bzought them by a alight detour on the right flank of the light division, so as to come a little down on the slope of the proper left face of the Redan. The first embrasure to which they came was in flames, but, moving on to the next, the men leaped into the ditch, and, with the aid of ladders and of each other's hands, scrambled up on the other side, climbed the per. pet, or poured in through the embrasure which was unde fended. Colonel Windham was the first or one of the very first men in on this side, and with him entered Daniel Mahoney, a great grenadier of the 41st, Killeany and Cor. Dellis of the same regiment. As Mahoney entered with a cheer, he was shot though the head by a Russian rifleman, and fell dead across iolonel W►udham, and at the same moment Killeany and Cornellis were both wounded. The latter claims the reward of 01. offered by Colonel klerber i t to the first man of his division who entered the Redan. As the alarm of an assault was spread the enemy came rushing up from the barracks in rear of the Redan, and creased the force and intensity of their fire, while our sot; diers dropped fast and encouraged the Russians by their immobility and the weakness of their fusillade, from which the enemy were well protected. In vain the officers, by voice and act, by example and daring, tried to urge our soldiers on. They had an impression that the Red= was all mined, and that if they advanced they would all be blown up, but many of them acted as became the men of Alma and lnkermann, and, rushing to the front, were swept down by the enemy's fire. The officers fell on all sides, singled out for the enemy's fire by their courage. The men of the different regiments became ruingitd together in inextricable confusion. The 19th men die not care for the orders of the offizers of the 88th, nor did the soldiers of the 23rd heed the commands of an officer who did net belong to their regiment. The officers could not find their men—the men had lost sight of their own offi cers. All the brigadiers, save Colonel Windham, were wounded or rendered unfit to the guidance of the attack. That gallant officer did all that man could do to fin in his men fur the attack, and to lead them against the enemg. Proceeding from traverse to traverse, he coaxed the men to come out, and succeded several times in forming a few of them, but they melted away as fast as he laid hold of them, and either fell in their little ranks or retired to cover to keep up their fusillade. Many of them crowded to lower parts of the inner parapet and kept up a smart tire on the enemy, but nothing would induce thew to come out into the open space and charge the breastwork. This was all going on at the proper left face of the Redan, while newly the same scene was being repeated at the salient. Every moment our men were diminishing in numbers, while the Russians came up in swarms from the town, and rushed down from the Alalakoff, which had now beta occupied by the French. Thrice did Colonel Windham send officers to Sir W. Codrington, who was in the filth parallel, begging of him to send up supports in some order of formation; but all these three officers were wounded as they passed from the ditch of the Redan to the rear, and the colonel's own aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Swire, of the 17th, a gallant young officer, was hit dangerously in the hip as he went on his perilous errand. Supports were, indeed, sent up, but they came up in disorder from the fire to which they were exposed on their way, and arrived in driblets only to increase the confusion and the carnage. Finding that he could not collect any men on the left face ; Colonel Windham passed through one of the cuts of Us inner parapet and walked over to the right face at the dis tance of thirty yards from the Russian breastwork, to which he moved in a parallel line, exposed to a close fire, but, wonderful to say, without being touched. When he got behind the inner parapet at the right face he found the same state of things as that which existed at the left. The men were behind the traverses, firing away at the Russians or blazing at them from the broken parts of the front, and the soldiers who came down from the salient in front only got behind these works for cover while they loaded and fired at the enemy. The colonel got some riflemen and a few men of the 88th together, but no sooner had be brought them out than they were killed, wounded,or dispersed by &concentrated fire. The offi cers, with the noblest devotion, aided Colonel Windham, and became the special marks of the enemy's riflemen. The narrow neck of the salient was too close to allow of any kind of formation, and the more the men crowded into it the more they got out of order, and the more they suffered from the enemy's fire. This miserable work lusted for an hour. The Russians were n o w i n d en se masses behind the breastwork, and Colonel Windham walked back again across the open space to the left to make one more attempt to retrieve the day. The men on the parapet of the salient, who were firing at the Russians, sent their shot about him, and the latter, who were pouring volley after volley on all points of the head of the work, likewise directed their muskets against him, but he passed through this miss fire in safety, and got within the inner parapet on the left, where the men were becoming thinner and thinner. A Russian officer now stepped over the breastwork, and tore down a gabion with his own hands—it was to make room for a field piece. Colonel Windham exclaimed to several sol diers who were firing over the parapet, " Well, as you are so fond of firing, why don't you shoot that Russian ? ' They fired a volley, and missed him, and soon after wards the field piece began to play on the head of the salient with grape. Colonel Windham saw there was no time to be lost. He had sent three officers for reinforce ments, and, above all, for men in formation, and he now resolved to go to General Codrington himself. Seeing Captain Crealock, of the 90th, near him busy in en couraging his men, and exerting himself with great courage and energy to get them into order, he said—" I most go to the general for supports. Now mind, let it be known, in case 1 am killed, why I went away." He crossed the parapet and ditch and succeeded in gaining the fifth parallel through a storm of grape and rifle bulled in safety. Sir William Codrington asked him if he though 920