The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-10-02 00:00:00

INTERIOR OF THE CAPTURED TOWN.

In his letter, dated the 12th ult., the writer last quoted
gives a graphic account of the desolate and heartrending
spectacle presented by the evacuated and war-riven town.
After detailing at great length the unexpected effect produced
in the English and French camps by the flight of the
Russians, and narrating the several incidents which arrested
the attention of the different bodies of the Allied force, he
proceeds to give his own experiences as to what he beheld on
his entrance into the town :
There were ghastly sights on the way, too ; Russians who
had died, or were dying as they lay, brought so far towards
the hospitals from the fatal Malakhoff. Passing through a
maze of trenches, of gabionades, and of zig-zags and parallels,
by which the French had worked their sure and deadly way
close to the heart of the Russian defence, and treading gently
among the heaps of dead, where the ground bears full tokens
of the bloody fray, we come at last to the head of the French
sap. It is barely ten yards from that to the base of the huge
sloping mound of earth which rises full twenty feet in height
above the level, and shows in every direction the grinning
muzzles of its guns. The tricolour waves placidly from its
highest point, and already the French are busy constructing
a semaphore on the top. Step briskly out of the sap—avoid
those poor mangled braves who are lying all around,and come
on. There is a deep ditch at your feet, some 20 or 22 feet
deep, and 10 feet broad. Mount the parapet and descend—of
what amazing thickness are those embrasures ! From
the level of the ground inside to the top of the para-
pet cannot be less than 18 feet. There are eight rows of
gabions piled one above the other, and as each row recedes
towards the top it leaves in the ledge below an excellent ban-
quette for the defenders. Inside the sight is too horrible to
dwell upon. The French are carrying away their own and
the Russian wounded, and there are five distinct piles of dead
formed to clear the way. The ground is marked by pools of
blood, and the smell is already noisome ; swarms of flies settle
on dead and dying ; broken muskets, torn clothes, caps, shakos,
swords, bayonets, bags of bread, canteens, and haversacks are
lying in indescribable wreck all over the place, mingled with
heaps of shot, of grape, bits of shell, cartridges, case and
canister, loose powder, official papers, and cooking tins. The
traverses are so high and deep that it is impossible almost to
get a view of the whole of the Malakhoff from any one spot,
and there is a high mound of earth in the middle of the work,
either intended as a kind of shell proof, or the remains of the
old White Tower. The guns, which to the number of 60
were found in the work, are all ships' guns, and mounted on
ships' carriages, and worked in the same way as ships' guns.
There are a few old-fashioned, oddly-shaped mortars. Look
around the work, and you will see that the strength of the
Russian was his weakness—he fell into his own bomb-proofs.
In the parapet of the work may be observed several entrances—
very narrow outside, but descending and enlarging down-
wards, and opening into rooms some four or five feet high and
eight or ten square. These are only lighted from the outside
by day, and must have been pitch dark at night, unless
the men were allowed lanterns. Here the garrison retired
when exposed to a heavy bombardment. The odour of
these narrow chambers is villanous, and the air reeks with
blood and abominations unutterable. There are several of
these places, and they might set defiance to the heaviest mor-
tars in the world; over the roof is a layer of ships' masts, cut
in junks and deposited carefully ; then there is over them a
solid layer of earth, and above that a layer of gabions, and
above that a pile of earth again. In one of these dungeons,
which is excavated in the solid rock, and was probably under-
neath the old White Tower, the officer commanding seems to
have lived. It must have been a dreary residence. With the
Malakhoff the enemy lost Sebastopol. The ditch outside to-
wards the north was yet full of French and Russians piled
over each other in horrid confusion. On the right, towards
the Little Redan, the ground was literally strewn with bodies
as thick as they could lie, and in the ditch they were piled over
each other. Here the French, victorious in the Malakhoff, met
with a heavy loss and a series of severe repulses. The Russians
lay inside the work in heaps, like carcases in a butcher's cart,
and the wounds, the blood—the sight exceeded all I had
hitherto witnessed. Descending from the Malakhoff we come
upon a suburb of ruined houses open to the sea. It is filled
with dead. The Russians have crept away into holes and
corners of every house, to die like poisoned rats ; artillery
horses, with their entrails torn open by shot, are stretched all
over the space at the back of the Malakhoff, marking the place
where the Russians moved up their last column to retake it,
under the cover of a heavy field battery. Every house, the
church, some public buildings, sentry boxes, all alike are
broken and riddled by cannon and mortar. Even the most be-
nevolent retreat from the hospital, which is in one of these
buildings, where they are tending the miserable wounded. I
visited it next day.