# Decisive Battles Since Waterloo/Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX.
CAPTURE OF THE MALAKOFF AND REDAN, AND FALL OF SEBASTOPOL—1855.
The Crimea was conquered by Russia in the time of Catharine the Great, and immediately after the conquest the Russians began to fortify the harbor of Sebastopol (Sacred City). When they went there they found a miserable Tartar village called Akhtiar; they created one of the finest naval and military posts in the world, and built a city with broad streets and handsome quays and docks. In 1850 it had a population of about fifty thousand, which included many soldiers and marines, together with workmen employed in the government establishments.
In that year there was a dispute between France and Russia relative to the custody of the holy places in Palestine; there had been a contention concerning this matter for several centuries, in which sometimes the Greek Church and sometimes the Latin had the advantage. In 1850, at the suggestion of Turkey, a mixed commission was appointed to consider the dispute upon it.
The Porte, as the Turkish government is officially designated, issued in March, 1852, a decree that the Greek Church should be confirmed in the rights it formerly held, and that the Latins could not claim exclusive possession of any of the holy places. It allowed them to have a key to the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, and to certain other buildings of minor importance.
France accepted the decision, though she did not like it; Russia continued to demand that the Latin monks ​should be deprived of their keys, and finally insisted that the Czar should have a protectorate over the Greek Christians in Turkey. The Porte said such a protectorate would interfere with its own authority, and refused the demand; thereupon the Russian Minister left Constantinople on the 21st of May, 1853.
This may be considered the beginning of the war between Russia and Turkey, though there was no fighting for several months.
France came to the aid of Turkey; England came to the aid of Turkey and France. Representatives of England, France, Austria, and Prussia met at Vienna and agreed upon a note which Russia accepted; Turkey demanded modifications which Russia refused; Turkey declared war against Russia on the 5th of October, and Russia declared war against Turkey on the 1st of November.
A Turkish fleet of twelve ships was lying at Sinope, a port on the southern shore of the Black Sea. On the 30th of November the Russians sent a fleet of eleven ships from Sebastopol which destroyed the Turkish fleet, all except one ship that carried the news to Constantinople. Then the allied fleets of the French and English entered the Black Sea, and the war began in dead earnest. For some months it was confined to the Danubian principalities and to the Baltic Sea. On the 14th of September, 1854, the allied army landed at Eupatoria, in the Crimea, and the extent of their preparations will be understood when it is known that forty thousand men, with a large number of horses and a full equipment of artillery, were put on shore in a single day!
​thousand men, and the Allies about three thousand four hundred. The Allies might have marched into Sebastopol with very little resistance, but their commanders were uncertain as to the number of troops defending the city, and hesitated to make the attempt.
On the 17th of October the siege began. A grand attack was made by the Allies, but was unsuccessful, and eight days later the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava was made. On the 5th of November the Russians attacked the Allies at Inkerman, and were repulsed. The battle of Inkerman was fought in a fog by forty thousand Russians against fifteen thousand French and English. The latter had the advantage of position and weapons. The Allies frankly credited the Russian troops with the greatest bravery in returning repeatedly to the attack as their battalions were mowed down by the steady fire of the defenders.
During the winter the siege was pushed, and the allied army suffered greatly from cholera, cold, and sickness. The siege continued during spring and summer; the Allies made an unsuccessful attack on the Malakoff and Redan forts on the 18th of June, 1855, and all through the long months there were daily conflicts between the opposing armies.
The Russians sunk several ships of their fleet in the harbor of Sebastopol soon after the battle of the Alma, but retained others for possible future use. On the 8th of September the French captured the Malakoff fort, the English at the same time making an unsuccessful attack on the Redan. The fall of these forts was followed by the evacuation of Sebastopol, the objective point of the war, and was therefore the decisive event of the campaign.
An incident of the siege, though forming no part of its military history, has been so admirably told by Bayard Taylor, that it is worthy of repetition in this narrative. It is as follows:
THE SONG OF THE CAMP.
"Give us a song!" the soldiers cried,
The outer trenches guarding,
When the heated guns of the camps allied
Grew weary of bombarding.   The dark Redan, in silent scoff,
Lay, grim and threatening under;
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff
No longer belched its thunder.   There was a pause. The guardsman said:
"We storm the forts to-morrow;
Sing while we may, another day
Will bring enough of sorrow."
They lay along the battery's side,
Below the smoking cannon:
Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde,
And from the banks of Shannon.
They sang of love, and not of fame;
Forgot was Britain's glory:
Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang "Annie Laurie."   Voice after voice caught up the song, Until its tender passion
Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,—
Their battle-eve confession.
Dear girl, her name he dared not speak,
But, as the song grew louder, Something upon the soldier's cheek
Washed off the stains of powder.   Beyond the darkening ocean burned
The bloody sunset's embers,
While the Crimean valleys learned
How English blood remembers.
And once again a fire of hell
Rained on the Russian quarters,
With scream of shot, and burst of shell,
And bellowing of the mortars.
And Irish Nora's eyes are dim
For a singer, dumb and gory;
And English Mary mourns for him
Who sang of "Annie Laurie."   Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest,—
The loving are the daring.
The following account of the sixth and last bombardment of the defences of Sebastopol was written by an eye-witness within the British lines. The bombardment began on the morning of September 5th, three days before the Malakoff and Redan were assaulted.
There were wreaths of clouds and vapors hanging over the valleys, and on the lines of buildings inside the defences that have kept the armies watching so long in front of Sebastopol. The waters of the bay were as smooth as an inland lake and reflected the hills at their borders, and the vessels that lay at anchor. Out on the Black Sea the French and English fleets were lying quite idle between Kasatch and Constantine.
Looking from Cathcart's Hill, the view included the defences of the Quarantine and the Flagstaff batteries, together with the trenches and approaches made by the French, quite up to where their parallels joined on the English left attack in a ravine at the end of the Dockyard Creek. One standing at this point could take in at a single glance the lines of the Flagstaff batteries, the ruined dwellings in the suburbs, or rather the sites of the dwellings, which had formerly been long streets, but had been destroyed by the fire of the French batteries. The great mass of the ruins was enclosed between the sea-wall, and the Flagstaff batteries, and farther beyond could be seen the city itself, rising apparently in terraces along the hill-sides, displaying fine dwellings, public edifices of red or white sandstone, and magnificent churches, the whole liberally sprinkled with gardens, and with rows of trees growing in the promenades. ​These fine buildings were closely surrounded in many instances by little houses covered with whitewash, occupied by the soldiers of the garrison or the poorer class of the civilian residents of the city. The hill presenting this view of the city is at the rear of the Flagstaff battery, and some two hundred feet above it, the face toward the Dockyard Creek, and is quite steep; it then turns toward the roadstead and descends quite rapidly to its level at the rear of the southern range of forts. From our point of view we could not see the houses on this face of the hill, but those along the eastern face, or the slope toward the Dockyard Creek, were fully visible. There was a slobodka, or poor suburb, at the base of the hill, and from this the houses stood in terraces, with winding roads and ranges of steps leading quite up to the brow of the hill. Looking carefully, one could see that the bombardment was having a severe effect on these buildings. The roof of a church, decorated with many small turrets and pinnacles at the angles had been struck by the shells and quite broken in; some of the best of the private residences were completely blown up, while others had their walls so cracked that there was no need of windows to admit the daylight; shot holes were apparent in many others, and in some instances the light showed through them from side to side. Columns, pillars, and doors were broken down or shattered near the Flagstaff works. In the rubbish of the slobodka there were several batteries which were in good condition, and although the Allies had thrown their fire severely upon them, they seemed to be in thoroughly good order. They formed part of the outlying works of the second line of the defences. Not all of them could be seen from Cathcart's hill, but the line of their position could be traced with comparative ease.
All at once, quite near the Flagstaff battery, between bastions 7 and 8, we saw three jets of flame curling up, followed by three pillars of dirt and dust fully one hundred feet into the air, and receiving a ruddy tint from the bright rays of the morning sun. We had been looking for these explosions, but the moment they came they took us by surprise. They were caused by the French, who had fired three mines, partly to ​destroy the counterscarp, and partly to give a signal for the opening of the cannonade. A moment after, all the way from the Dockyard Creek to the shore of the sea there was a burst of fire which seemed to run along as though a fuse had been fired. This stream of fire was fully three miles long; it ran from battery to battery, and was followed instantly by great clouds of white smoke. It resembled more than any thing else the white clouds rising from Vesuvius or Etna just previous to an eruption of those famous mountains. The smoke in the still morning air covered the whole lines of the French trenches as though a great cloud had fallen upon them, while the slight breeze of the morning whirled them in jets and bunches, much as you see a cloud on the summit of a mountain driven about in a thunder-storm. The wind was blowing from our direction, and consequently the sound of the tremendous explosions was much less than we had expected. For the reason that it was so slight in the British camp, it must have been correspondingly terrible in the city. On the Russian lines, toward which the storm of shot and shell was directed, there were jets and clouds of earth and dust arising from the faces of the earthworks, and from the parapets that in some instances seemed to be swept almost away, and also from the mass of ruined houses just behind the Russian batteries. The front distance covered by this shower of iron was nearly four miles in extent. It swept the entire length of the Russian lines, and reached into the very heart of the city. It is probable that few volleys so immensely powerful, and at the same time so suddenly discharged, were ever known before since artillery was invented.
The suddenness of the shock, together with its magnitude, seemed for a time to have paralyzed the defenders of Sebastopol. Their batteries were not sufficiently manned to enable them to reply with any vigor to such a tremendous fire, and the French prevented in great measure any movement to man the batteries by the energy and celerity with which they continued the iron hail which began so suddenly. They had more than two hundred pieces of artillery in position, all of heavy
​great cloud of smoke rolling from these batteries was turned towards Sebastopol and seemed to envelop the entire city. Notwithstanding the veil which was thrown over the place, the cannonade continued with great fury. After a time there was a slight lull, but it broke out again almost immediately. Sometimes all these long lines of artillery seemed to be discharged almost simultaneously, then only a few guns at a time, then a few moments of silence, then another burst, and so on like the cadences of the movements of the waves of the ocean on a sandy beach. Watching with our glasses, we could see walls of stone go down as if they were made of sawdust. Clouds of dust rose every moment from the front of the earthworks. The Russian cannon were dismounted, and we could see everywhere along the lines that the French fire was telling with terrific effect.
The Russians were compelled to keep to their bomb proofs, so that scarcely a man was visible along their entire line. For a little while it seemed as if the French would be able to sweep away the whole place without encountering any resistance, but after a time the Russian gunners began to reply; but they fired very slowly, taking accurate aim, as though ammunition was scarce and they did not intend to waste a single shot. The fire of the Russians seemed to stimulate the French rather than to discourage them, as their volleys were given faster than before the Russian fire commenced. Some of their guns were aimed at the line of Russian defences and others directly at the city. Meantime the English naval brigade and siege train were working away at the face of the Redan and the Malakoff in the same quiet manner in which they had been working for days. They gave material aid to the French by keeping up a steady fire of shells on the batteries between the Redan and the Dockyard Creek. Occasionally the mortars in the rest of the English batteries threw their ten- and thirteen-inch shells behind the Russian lines and accompanied these shells with shot from the heavy siege guns.
The French batteries were far superior in the number of their guns to the English, as the following table taken on the
ENGLISH BATTERIES.
| | GUNS |
| 13-inch mortars | 34 |
| 10-inch " | 27 |
| 8-inch " | 10 |
| Cohorns | 20 |
| 8-inch guns | 37 |
| 10-inch " | 7 |
| 32-pounders | 61 |
| 68-pounders | 6 |
| Total English | 202 |
FRENCH BATTERIES.
| | GUNS |
| Left Attack—Against Flagstaff Bastion | 129 |
| " " " Central " | 134 |
| " " " Quarantine " | 83 |
| | 346 |
| Right Attack—Against Malakoff, etc. | 281 |
| Total French | 627 |
The French continued their fire for nearly three hours without cessation. Then they stopped almost as suddenly as they began, in order to give the guns a chance to cool. The Russians instantly took advantage of the lull in the fire by coming out to repair damages. They emptied bags of sand and earth on the outside of their parapets, rolled out gabions, and did other work usual in the reparation of artillery fire. Their artillerymen also took advantage of the lull by opening fire on the batteries of the naval brigade in the English lines, and delivered their shot with such precision as to cause the English in that locality a good deal of trouble. About 10 o'clock the French renewed their fire quite as rapidly as at first, and they preceded it by exploding some fougasses. With the same object as before, this fire was maintained until midnight, and succeeded in dismounting so many of the Russian guns that they had only a few remaining with which they could reply. They were sending men and carts with great rapidity back and ​forth across the bridge in the harbor, and about 9 o'clock a large force of infantry crossed the bridge, evidently preparing to resist the assault which was expected, and at the same time there was a movement toward Inkerman on the part of the army encamped in that locality.
When the French firing began in the morning, the working parties which crossed daily from the south to the north side were evidently ordered back again, with the expectation that an assault would be made during the course of the forenoon. From noon until five p.m., there was not much firing; then the French broke out again as vigorously as ever and continued the cannonade until half past seven, when darkness made it impossible to take accurate aim. Then there was a brief lull. Later in the evening, along the whole line, French and English, all the siege guns and mortars opened again and continued the fire throughout the night. Of course, accuracy of aim was out of the question during a night bombardment. The object was to prevent the Russians repairing their defences, and we knew that a shot fired in their direction would fall somewhere within the Russian lines, even though it might not hit a particular earthwork or make a hole through any specified building.
Orders were issued for all the batteries to begin an active bombardment as soon as daylight permitted, each gun being limited to fifty rounds. The whole line of the batteries, from Inkerman to the Quarantine, opened the cannonade at 5.30 a.m. This was continued for three hours; then there was a cessation until ten o'clock; then the firing was renewed until noon; then came a cessation until five o'clock, and there was another lull from half past six until seven. It must be understood that some firing was maintained during these lulls; had it been otherwise the silence would have been almost painful.
When the sun went down on Thursday night the bombardment began again and was kept up without cessation until an hour before daylight on Friday morning. Musketry fire was added to that of the artillery, the orders being to keep up a steady fusillade along the Russian front, about two hundred thousand rounds of cartridges being used every night after the ​bombardment began. The cannonade was resumed on Friday as before. The Inkerman batteries replied vigorously, but along the Russian centre there was very little response. The wind blew from the north and great clouds of dust were blown from the town along with the smoke of the batteries so that it was not easy to ascertain the effect of the fire. Occasionally the clouds lifted, and whenever we obtained glimpses of the city or the defences it was evident that the result was severe.
A council of generals was held at the English head-quarters at noon, General Pelissier and General Della Marmora being present. As soon as the council had broken up, the surgeons were ordered to clear the hospitals of patients and get ready for the reception of the wounded. Those in the hospitals who could bear the transportation were sent as fast as possible to Balaklava or to the field hospital in the rear of the camp.
The cannonade was continued on the seventh in about the same manner, and we could see hour by hour that the city was terribly shattered by the bombardment. The greater part of the houses within range of our guns were either in complete ruin or so injured that they were uninhabitable. There was great activity along the bridge crossing the harbor. It was crowded at all hours of the day with men and carts passing in both directions, but generally from south to north. In the evening there was a bright light, owing to the head of the dockyard shears being on fire, whether by accident or design no one could say. A large ship was set on fire and completely burnt, and we could see that a steamer was towing a line-of-battle ship to the dockyard, where it would be out of range of our fire.
There was another council of the generals at noon, and after the council was over it was whispered through the camp that the defences would be assaulted at noon on the eighth, after a vigorous cannonade and bombardment. Noon was selected because it was known that the Russians usually took a rest at that hour. There was an explosion some time in the night behind the Redan. It alarmed the camp for a short time and then was quite forgotten. During the night of the seventh there was a sudden change in the weather. Up to that time it ​had been fine, but on the morning of the eighth it was extremely cold; there was a strong, sharp wind blowing from the north side of Sebastopol; the bright sun was gone, and in its place there rose above us a canopy of a dull leaden gray.
The arrangement was that the French should assault the Malakoff at mid-day, and in case their attack was successful the English were to storm the Redan immediately. A diversion was to be made on the English left by strong columns of French who were to threaten the line of the Flagstaff and Quarantine batteries. The cavalry sentries were posted soon after eight o'clock; the Light Division and also the Second were sent into the trenches and out into the advance parallels as quietly as could be done.
About that time General Simpson and his staff took their position in the second parallel of the Greenhill battery, which had been designated by the engineer officers. Sir Henry Jones was too ill to walk and was carried on a litter into the trenches, where he remained until the attack was ended. General Simpson and Sir Richard Airey, the quartermaster-general, remained with him. The Duke of Newcastle took a position at Cathcart's Hill during the forenoon, and later went to the picket house near the Woronzoff road.
Exactly five minutes before our watches indicated noon the French swarmed out of their trenches where they were nearest the Malakoff, went up the face of the fort and through the embrasures almost in a moment. Their advance trenches were only seven metres from the fort and consequently only a few moments at the pace they ran were required to carry them to their destination. They drifted out, battalion following closely on battalion, and in a minute or so after the head of their column came out of the ditch their flag was flying over the Korniloff bastion of the fort. They took the Russians completely by surprise. Very few of them were in the Malakoff at the time. There was a very slight fire of musketry for a few minutes but the Russians were not long in recovering from their astonishment and very soon fell vigorously on their
​were kept quite actively engaged in repulsing the attempts of the Russians to regain the position. The slaughter of the Russians was very great, and when night came the Russian commander withdrew his forces very skilfully and prepared to evacuate the position.
The French attack on the left was a failure and caused a heavy loss to the assailants. As soon as the French flag was hoisted on the parapet of the Malakoff, rockets were sent up from the English advance trenches as a signal for the English assault on the Redan. The French had made their assault on the Malakoff with four divisions of their Second Corps, two divisions forming as storming columns. The English attacked the Redan with only two divisions, one being held in reserve and practically not engaged. It was only a few minutes after 12 o'clock when the order was given for the advance upon the Redan. The troops were obliged to cross a distance of 230 yards from the advance trenches to the parapet of the Redan. Their loss was heavy, especially in officers. The fire was more deadly during the earlier part of the advance from the trenches than when the assailants were near the fort. The abatis in front of the fort had been torn to pieces by the artillery fire, so that it really formed no obstruction to the advance of the men. The light division directed its movements toward the salient angle of the Redan. There was little opposition to the troops as they crossed the ditch and scrambled up the face of the fort, as the Russians had retired to their traverses and were making ready to receive the English as soon as they reached the top of the work.
The storming columns of the Second Division followed closely after the Light Division, and as they approached the fort made a slight bend to the right flank of the Light Division so as to attack the face of the Redan simultaneously. The first embrasure they reached was on fire; at the next they climbed the parapet without opposition and entered the embrasure which had been left undefended by the Russians. Inside the face of the Redan there was an inner parapet which was intended to protect the artillerymen while at work from the fragments of shell bursting inside the fortification. There ​were several openings through this inner parapet so that the men could easily seek shelter whenever circumstances justified their so doing. As the storming column entered the Redan from the embrasures the Russians retreated behind the breastwork, and from it they poured a deadly fire upon the storming party. Instead of advancing, the stormers halted and returned the fire of the Russians without seeking to dislodge them by the use of the bayonet.
The whole inside of the Redan seemed to swarm with Russians, who kept up a persistent fire upon the English. The Russians came in great force from the barracks behind the Redan, and while the number of the English was rapidly diminishing that of the Russians steadily increased. The English officers sought to encourage the men to advance, but were unable to do so. It had been rumored through the camp that the Redan was everywhere mined, and that if once occupied by the English it would be blown up. A panic seemed to seize some of the men, while others acted bravely and rushed forward to obey the orders of their officers. They were not sufficiently strong in numbers to perform the work, and as fast as they advanced they were swept down by the Russian fire. The supports which came up from the advanced trenches reached the Redan in disorder in consequence of the fire which swept the plain in front of the Redan, and their presence only seemed to add to the confusion and slaughter. For a full hour this terrible work went on.
Now and then the bayonet was used, and fierce combats occurred between little groups of English and Russians. The ground was covered with the bodies of English and Russians, frequently locked in an embrace which death made all the closer. They were found the next day in great numbers scattered through the part of the work which was temporarily occupied by the English. The steady increase of the Russian numbers was too much for the small force of English in the assaulting column. Slowly the assailants were pressed back, and in a little while the Russians were again masters of the Redan. The ditch was crowded with dead and wounded. As the Russians obtained possession of the interior of the fort, ​they came to the front and not only discharged volleys of musketry at the struggling mass below, but pelted them with stones, grapeshot, and other missiles that were near at hand. A supporting column came up from the trenches, and under their fire the Russians were temporarily cleared from the front of the Redan, while the few English that survived from the assault were enabled to make good their retreat to the trenches.
When the English abandoned the assault the fire slackened from the Redan, and the Russians who had been engaged at that fortress were drawn off to the Malakoff to assist in beating back the French; but with all the force they brought to bear they were unable to retake that stronghold. Clouds of smoke surrounded the Malakoff, but now and then when they lifted the French flag could be seen waving defiantly above the inner parapet. The battle was furious all around it, and though the Russians made assault after assault, all their efforts were in vain. The supporting columns poured steadily over from the approaches and joined their fellows who were making a bold front against the Russians, although the latter were receiving fresh reinforcements almost continuously. Hour after hour the fight went on, but the issue was unchanged. When the sun went down the tricolor still floated above the Malakoff, and the fall of Sebastopol was assured.
In the capture of the Malakoff the French lost 1,646 killed, of whom 5 were generals, 24 superior, and 116 inferior officers, 4,500 wounded, and 1,400 missing. In the attack on the Redan the English lost 385 killed, 29 being commissioned and 42 non-commissioned officers, 1,886 wounded and 176 missing.
During the night between the 8th and 9th the Russians abandoned the Redan, which the capture of the Malakoff rendered untenable, and the occupation of the forts by the allies made it impossible for the Russians to remain in Sebastopol. During the night and early morning the Russians crossed over to the north side of the harbor, leaving the city in flames. All through the night there ​were loud explosions, caused by the blowing up of magazines where the Russians had immense stores of ammunition which they were unable to remove. The city was set on fire in many places, and when the Allies took possession on the 9th they found little more than a mass of ruins. Several of the Russian ships had been destroyed during the bombardment, and such as remained were burned or sunk during the night of the evacuation.
The Allies never made any serious attempt to disturb the Russian forces on the north side, and their communications with the interior were not interrupted. The two armies confronted each other for some time, but there was never any fighting of consequence after the fall of Sebastopol. Other warlike operations were conducted along the Russian shores of the Black Sea. Proposals of peace were made by Austria with the consent of the Allies, and finally, on the 30th of March, 1856, the treaty of peace was signed at Paris. The Allies had begun the destruction of the docks at Sebastopol, but so extensive were those works that with all the engineering skill at their command they were not through with it until July 9th, when they evacuated the Crimea.
According to English authorities the British loss during the Crimean war was about 27,000 men. The loss of the French was said to be 63,000, and that of the Russians nearly half a million. The English killed in action or died of wounds were about 3,500, died of cholera 4,244, and of other diseases 16,000. The remainder of the 27,000 were permanently disabled. Exact figures of the Russian losses have never been published.
By the treaty of Paris Russia was required to surrender the city and citadel of Kars to the Sultan, and at the same time the allied powers were to evacuate all the positions they occupied in the Crimea. Turkey was admitted to a place among the powers of Europe; the signatory powers at the conference agreed to respect the ​independence and territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and to guarantee the observance of this condition by each other. Turkey agreed to ameliorate the condition of its Christian subjects, but it was stipulated that this condescension was not to authorize the other powers, either collectively or separately, to meddle with the relations between the Porte and its subjects or in the interior administration of the empire. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles were to be closed to all ships of war of foreign powers as long as the Porte was at peace, and the Black Sea was to be neutralized. Turkey and Russia were limited to a naval force of six steam vessels of not more than eight hundred tons, and four steam vessels of not more than two hundred tons. Both nations were prohibited from establishing any naval arsenal on the shores of the Black Sea. In Europe, Russia was required to surrender certain portions of Bessarabia to the Porte, and in Asia the boundaries were to be established as they existed before the outbreak of the war. France, England, and Austria entered into a separate treaty to guarantee the integrity and independence of Turkey, and agreed that they would consider any infraction of the stipulation of this treaty a casus belli.
Taking advantage of the overthrow of France by Germany in 1871, Russia abrogated the treaty of 1856, and regained nearly all the rights of which she had been deprived by that document. She immediately began the restoration of her naval arsenals on the shores of the Black Sea, and laid the keels of an iron-clad fleet to control those waters. Since 1871 Sebastopol has been slowly rising from her ruins; her dockyards have been partially restored, and an arsenal has been established at Nicolaieff, but it will yet be many years before the traces of that terrible bombardment of September, 1855, will have been removed, and the streets of the "sacred city" present the appearance they did before the Allies began their ​work of destruction. There are still entire blocks of ruins in the heart of Sebastopol, and at almost every step the visitor of to-day is reminded of the memorable siege, and the devastation it created. A railway connects the city with Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the port has assumed a commercial importance that bids fair to surpass that of Odessa. In 1885-86 its population increased more rapidly than at any time since the war, partly in consequence of the activity of the government in restoring its naval supremacy on the Black Sea, and partly owing to large shipments of wheat and other Russian products.