The Express.
London, England, 1855-07-04 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS. WEDNESDAY I.prENING, JULY 4, 1855.

144'rB8T ',FROM ABROAD.
. psRLIN. TVIIIIDAT.
A ;Asspatoh. from St. Pstsesharg say's, " Pcinc•
liwtshakoff writes that np to inns 29 nothing of im-
portance had marred at Sebastopol. The snosi'a
fire continued to be feeble."

STOCKHOLM. Tvirnus.
News ham arrived that the British have &Amid
Nystadt

COPENHAGEN. IDLY 4.

The French war steamers Pelican and Toxin have
anchored, and the Roglish war steamer Alban,
towing the Jackdaw and Swinger, have passed
southwards.

MARSEILLES, MONDAY.

The Journal de Constantutopis, just to head, re-
ports that the town of Keriob no longer exists, s fire
having completed its destruction on the 14th of
June.

(71011 041 OWN

CONSTANTINOPLE, Jvu 26.
We sue still, unfortunately, without any DOTS of a
decisive character from the Cnmea.

With regard to the failure of the attack on the
Malakboff Tower, General Pehealer expresses himself
thus in a letter to a friend:—" Je anis parfaits-
moot de reels de Lord Raglan—none awns Tecate
pour mien: seater." This I have heard from a person
who has seen the letter, and on whets veracity I
place implicit confidence. The Journal of Conatanti-
sop& also remarks, in its impression of to-day, " The
ardour of our troops has been by no means affected by
this in-sucesse--ihey will be soon in Sebastopol.*
Yesterday, about 9 a.m., the Grand Vizier, Ali
Pacha, arrived here (via Varna), from Vienna, and
repaired directly from the steamer to the Imperial
Palace, where he met with a most grades, reception
and hearty welcome from his young Sovereign.
Later in the day the Prime Minister, 'snorted by the
Sheik-Islam and the Chief Chamberlain of the
Imperial Palace, proceeded to the Porte, where the
ministers and all the great functionaries of state
were in attendance. Famed Paella, Minister of
Foreign Affairs, read aloud in the great council cham-
ber the Imperial Had of investiture, and Ali Pacha
received the warm and heartfelt congratulations of
all the assembly on his elevation to the highest dignity
under the crown. He is, it is generally admitted,
in many respects one of the meet remarkable
men in the Sultan's administration ; and having been

for twenty-five years in constant and active service at
the Pelvic, is necessarily well versed in all relating
to the foreign relations of Turkey with European
states.

Reschid Pacha and Mehemet Ali Paella are still in
retirement; and the latter, if I am rightly informed,
is on the very best terms with the new Prime Mi-
nister. There is, however, an almost insurmountable

obstacle to his return to power at the present mo-
ment, and a promise to that effect has been given to
some one by the Sultan, it is rumoured, although
necessarily disposed to favour him, were it only for
the sake of his wife, the Princess Adila. Colonel
Cannon (Baram Pachs) is still at Constantinople at
this most critical conjuncture.

OUR ARMY IN THE CRIMEA.

(FROM A SPECIAL
ItRIORTS BEFORE SEBASTOPOL, Align 21.
As the shortness of the interval Mamoru the'reoent
attempt at storming and the closing of the mail-bags
only permitted of my giving you, in my teat letter,
each an outline of the facts connected with that un-
fortunate affair as could be learned and put together
ia,ma Ppei w_r two, I may supP)enteat what I then
saidaMeraftd by some further details,- and add a
at what has since taken place. I have
as reason to behave that my former hurried letter
matured any material inaccuracy; but it was im-
so seen after the mishap, to lean Blithe dr;
lial it the real causes to which the signal failure was
It 11111 attributed. The original plan of attack, as I
misetieued in the letter of Monday, contemplated a
joint English and French assault of the Malakhoff,
which, se commanding the Recian and formiog the
grand key to the whole network of redoubts and bat-
teries in front of the place, would, if taken, have
lat once rendered the former untenable, and
placed the whole town and harbour at the mercy of
the captors. For reason*, however, which nobody
can uoderstand, this very sensible and apparently
most practicable design wee abandoned, and the plan
was changed into one of a simultaneous attack of the
two great works—the Malakhoff being undertaken
by the French and the Roden by ourselves. The
first manifest disadvantage of this arrangement wra
the spreading of our forces over a field of difficulties
nearly double in extent, and enabling the enemy to
bring a vast number of guns into play against um,
which, io the former case, could not have injured •
man. To vastly enhance the chinos@ of failure in-
volved in this plan to ourselves, our whole attacking
force, including supports and everybody else, was
limited to Name tour thousand men; whilst the
French, with a much image appreciation of the
difficulty that fell to their share, told off
twenty-five thousand. Of our handful, again,
• large proportion consisted of raw recruits, recently
arrived to fill up the gaps in the regiments selected
for the service—regiments which, with one or two
exceptions, have borne the whole brunt of our trench
fighting, and suffered accordingly. This was does
through no want of old soldiers, of whom the third
and Worth divisions could have furnished abundance—
men who have been kept comparatively idle whilst
their comrades of the Light and Second Ditisions
have been worked like galley-slaves. Sir George
Brown, I believe, is to be thanked for this selection ;
anxious as he was to gain fresh laurels for his own
command, though he well knew the untried materiel
of. which so large a proportion of its strength a com-
posed. I have already mentioned that the 23rd Re-
giment bad been chosen to lead the attack. and that,
through a similar motive of mistaken desire to bring
glory to his own favourite corps, General Airey war,
at the eleventh hour, permitted to assign this place
of honour to the 34th—a regiment which,
whether justly or not, enjoys only a mode-
rate reputation amongst the others now in
camp. Later still in the evening preceding the
tumult, Bir George discovered that the major com-
manding. the 23rd wad still laid op with a wound
received in the attack on the Quarries, and that the se
nior captain—an officer, by the way, of some 18 years
service—would have charge of the corps during the
storming. " Impossible ; this will never do,' said
the friend of apoplectic neck furniture, "another
regiment, with a field-officer in command, must be
substituted." A message to this effect was tele-
graphed to head-quarters, but Lord Raglan, with a
degree of common sense which was quite unmilitary,
overruled his second's objection, and replied that an
officer of Captain —'a length of service, be his
rank what it might, should be quite as fit to lead his
regiment into action as any field officer in the ser-
vice, and, accordingly, that no substitution
should be made. I merely mention these
tries to show the state of uncertainty
and confusion in which our preparations
were till almost within an hour before the
*mashing force marched down towards the scene
of its struggle and defeat. Then another deviation
from the original plan of attack was made, also at
the eleventh hour, by General Pelissier, to which
both military sense and common sense agree in attri-
buting no small share of both the French and our
own failure. Though the bombardment had been
kept up vigorously the whole of Sunday, night neces-
sarily compelled a slackening of the allied fire, and
during this respite there was reason to expect that
the Russians would employ themselves in making
good the injuries done to their batteries during the
day. It was therefore arranged that at daybreak on
Monday a terrific fire of shot and shell should be
poured into the Redan and Malakhoff, to tender as
many of their guns as possible incapable of mischief.
An hour or so, however, before the com-
bined forces marched from the camp the
French Commander-in-Chief rode over to our
own head-quarters and declared that he could
not wait tor this preliminary assault of ar-
tillery, as he would have ao many men in his trenches
before the Malakboff that there would be no cover
for them; and, consequently, they (and we) must
attack at daybreak. at all hazards, and take the
chance of finding the enemy's guns in the most fa-
vourable condition in which our bombardment and
their owners' sub.iequent idleness might have left
them. Of course Lord Raglan complied, though
forty-nine out of fifty of the subalterns in his camp
would have foretold the consequences to be expected;
and accordingly, soon after the first streaks of sun-
light broke over the horizon the doomed thousands
raged to defeat and death,
130 little is ever known of the details of French
erations here, that I can give you few particulars
at their attack on the Malakhoff ; but their plan
of assault appears to have consisted in assailing
the work on both flanks and the front at-
maltaneously, and with overwhelming num-
bers— twenty-five thousand are said to have
been actually engaged. In just retribution
for the disregard of their general to the good to be
expected from a short morning's bombardment, they
foiled the redoubt swarming with defenders, and
guns bristling from every embrasure. On them, as
on our own men, showers of grape and canister were
poured out, literally mowing down whole battalions
at • time; whilet from along the whole semicircular
line of parapet the crowding riflemen sent volley
after volley into their disordered ranks, that passed
through them like a sheet of molten lead. Three
times they gave way, and as often rallied; but were
dually driven back after a straggle of some three
hours and a half, leaving the space between the
Mamelos end Malakhoff literally covered with the
dead soil Ojos.
With our own men, the space to be passed over
from our most advanced trenches to the Roden was
somewhere about seven hundred yards, and from the
first moment of their rushing over the parapet
towards the point of attack, they were met
by the same awful and annihilating storm
of canister and grape. Many fell within
the first dozen yards, and thence on to some
broken ground about midway, in which the remainder
sought cover, the fleid was strewed with the slain and
wounded. An officer present in the affair, and who
was one of the few who escaped uninjured, described
the fire to me as being pert. ctly awful—mach more
severe, be assured met than that which greeted our
men at Alms, where he also fought, and received a
wound. Few of them ever reached the abatis in
front of the work—none, I believe, ever even saw
the deep ditch which protects its approaches. I have
already mentioned the confusion which oharacterised
the first commencement of our movement ; and
coupling this with the murderous preparations made
by the enemy, you will be at no loss to understand
that moons was most improbable.
Next morning there was hardly a gun fired on
either side ; and about 12 o'clock we hoisted a flag to
request the necessary truce for the burial of our dead.
A delay of some minutes having occurred before an
answer was given—but during which messengers
were seen hurrying from the redoubt towards where
we supposed the general of the Russian trenches to
be—the wiseacre of an officer in command on our
aide, a guardsmen of more height that apparent in-
telligence, ordered the flag to be palled down.
Five minutes after, several Remina adhere
mounted the parapet and waved their cups,
as if inviiieg us to renew the request
bat Captain refused, alleging that be meet" welt
for farther orders;" and this, Omagh missy et our
poor wounded /allows were lying within sight,'
writhing is pain and thirst alder a broiling nn