The Express.
London, England, 1855-09-26 00:00:00

(Stamped ld. Additional.) [TWOPENC E.

against the faint and brief resistance of a body of
pueullded wedthlel -eseu, at a
andint t fih
ere o f
musketry
Asoorao pidex
trench guard., who had evidently been taken
re-
servesun-
who were hurried up by the ere my
had equally little chance against the swarwieg
columns of our silica, whom good generalship kept
pouring in to the support of the first atormers, as Last
as hurean legs cnuld scramble up the broad parapet
and jump inside the redoubt. Such a contest was
merely a question of numbers; and, having made
excellent arrangements to secure their own supe-
riority in this respect, the French commanders had
no cause to doubt the result. Widely ditlerenr, how-
ever, was the case on our side. Differently 110[lb:rimed
—as I shall presently describe—and stretching eve r
a long hoe, in hardly any point exposed to so cruse
and direct a fire as that which bore upon the Mslak-
hoff, the Redan had replied to our batteries
with considerable vigour throughout the in-
tire bombardment ; mid at noon of the Sla
still continued to show fight with a elezen
or so of uninjured guns. Instead, too, of fully
yards of .pea apace, the nearest point from our
most advanced parallel to the ditch of the tertian
measured 220, and this, also, everywhere expoeed to
the fire of twelve or fourteen 68-pounders. I have
several times crossed this fatal spot since the capture
of the place,and each time with increased wonder how
a single man of our whole stormere could have
escaped the tornado of grape and canister which seek
an armament could, and cid, send forth. .Scarcely a
foot of surface is there which a gun did not sweep ;
and when I add that the enemy had time to fire three
rounds from every piece, from the first issue of our
men from the shelt-r of our own parapet
till their arrival at the broad ditch where
so many have since found a grave, I am
disposed to think that most of your readers will
share in my surprise. Inevitably repulsed, then, as
they were, our shattered companies were compelled
to fall back on the trench which they had lett ; and
to regain this, they had to pass through the same
terrible storm of fire as before. Had they, indeed,
been properiy supported, this second ordeal would
have been spared them ; and, in spite of all its grape
and canister, the Itedan would, without doubt, have
been our own. To every attempt at repeating the
attack the same formidable front was shown, and cut
up as they had been in their first essay, it was not
to be wondered at that our young troops, many of
whom were under direct fire for the first rim., shrank
from a second exposure to the desolating storm.
Such, then, is a brief statement of the relative
difficulties of the two attacks on the Reeler) and
Malakhoff; and, bearing its mind these tae a, f ase
I am inclined to believe, will consider that the Freuch
have much ground for basting, as compared with
ourselves. That they fought and conquered bravely,
I would be the last to deny; but that they would
have succeed.d, with the same numerical streuath
as our own, against the Redan, no impartial and
intell gent man could believe. In proof of this, and
rather more, I may add mention of their failure
before the Little Itedan, atter the occupation of the
Malakhoff. The six or eight guns of this work had
continued effective throughout the bombardment ; and
when our allies,after theirdaseing captureof the larger
redoubt, passed on to attempt the seizure of the minor
batteries on its proper left, they were received with
close and well-directed discharges of grape, which
speedily checked their impetuous and midi& nt ad-
vance. Three several times did they repeat the
attempt; but they were as often driven back with
heavy loss, and finally abandoned the effort. During
the night, when the Itedan itself was blown up, the
works in Careening Buy shared a similar fate, and
were entered, without a blow, in the moruitig. When
I last wrote, my impression was that the French had
stormed this line of minor works with the same suc-
cessful bravery as had been previously diaplased in
their seizure of the Malakhoff; but a few hours later
I learned my error, and therefore add this sentence
in correction of what I then stated.
As a sufficiently detailed and accurate description
of the Russian works, as seen from our own trenches,
has already appeared in these columns, I need say
nothing as to the appearance of the Redun e ie. er-
nally. Let even those of your readers, who may not
have seen the topographical sketea to which I ,eter,
fancy a huge grey bank of earth running angularly
over the summit of a broken slope, and fronted by
a vast ditch some eighteen feet wide by mere then
half that number deep. Let them pierce this with
gabioned embrasures at intervals of some three yards,
and mentally picture these bristling with the meek
muzzles of 68-pounders, and their idea of the out-ide
front of this celebrated work will be sufficiently com-
plete. My first entry into the interior, on
the morning after its abandonment, was
made by a bridge of broken fascines and gabions,
laid hastily over the dead bodies that had just been
gathered into the ditch for burial, which has since
been done by levelling over them a portion of the
Seer. 15. parapet above. The ghastly piles nearly filled the
My last letter, though written on the third day vast trench to a level with the outer surface, and the
after the enemy's abandonment of their stronghold, thin covering of earth which now conceals them hem
barely falls below the summit of the low bank
was necessarily confined to a narrative of the inci- view
in
front. What first struck one in passing up the
dents of our own and the French attack. With a cut made by our Sapp-rs through the broad parapet,
view of giving you the latest news, I had deferred was the initialed solidity and strength of this laid—
writing it till the last hour allowed me by the post averaging thirty or thirty-five feet along its entire
and was consequently unable to do more than refer front. On such a solid mass of gabions, famines,
to the fact that the town was already being rifled, sandbags, and earth, I need hardly say that artillery
of even the heaviest calibre could have no sensible
Rertch-like, by our allies, whilst our own men were effect : sixty-eight or ninety-tight pound shot mi..ht
virtually deprived of the very smallest benefits in the enter, but they could not penetrate. Compared with
I shape of plunder. The same necessity compelled me this massive structure of mud and wickerwork,
to postpone till now any detailed description of the the tot
sthics of our own or the French woiks is
state of the town itself, and of the works by means of as paper
which it has been eo long and so bravely defended.
egorreraottosouteuroiorialoont
itteeiremmharnostolerteas—rostreohn!irerroprit;no
In the present letter I shall attempt to give your gunners fromg the besiegers' riflemen. You admire
readers some rough idea of both. the cover provided for their artillerymen when not
--&-fors entering on anything in the shape of a actually working the guns, in little retreats proof
description, either of the defending redoubts, or of against
i any but the very heaviest splinters of &lira
Sebastopol itself, however, I wish to add to my for- theutsthot I:nl'dg:re itapreroonrrhi nothing
bwerhoenfocrompaered
the held: of
met brief account of the operations of the Bth, a fur- larger bodies of troops, which abound tbreughout the
they remark or two in defence of the part enacted by work. I dived into several of these half subterranean
our own men, and in correction of an error which I waiting-rooms, and found many of them fi'ted up
there committed, in stating that the French had with fire-places, ceokiog conveniences, benches, and
; whilst in
other suitable furniture ()theta of smaller
stormed the Little Redan and its adjoining works in
to
dimensions, and which had evidently been occupied
Careening Bay. 1 should be most sorry pea a
by the officers, there were in addition bedsteads,
line which would bear the interpretation of
jealousy chairs, tables, and in some even handsomely glazed
or ill-will towards our gallant allies, whom bravery cupboards, containing empty wine bottlee, and other
and indomitable energy I have so often had occasion traces of their occupants' regard for creature comforts.
to admire; but, whilst extending a full meed Oa a shelf in one of them I lighted on a cheap Far-
of reprint of "Paul Clifford," and an old
of praise for all they have both endured
engravings of
, . •
y of the Lluitrated A etcs—the latter won sundry
and accomplished, I would permit no squeamish engravings of scenes from the siege. Even more in-
generosity towards them to dull my recollection, or teresting than all these, however, were the inner
quality my eulogy, of what our own troops have in abutting defences of the re doubt, of which we had
like manner suffered and achieved. That io the two previously heard and imagined so much. From the
combined attacks, however, which have terminated irregular order in which these occur, it is difficult to
describe them in any way that will convey an semi-
the siege of Sebastopol, our allies succeeded in that
rate idea of their exact appearance and relation to
undertaken by them, whilst we failed in the other the main work ; but they ratty .be generally men-
allotted to us, may at first sight seem humiliating to timed as independent supports similarly armed and
our military pride t. but when the relative diffictiltits of nearly equal strength in construction to the front
of the two operations are considered, I venture to fine of the redoubt, which stands to them, in
oofactt,hio.n
think that we shall suffer little either in our own the relation of
aundth screen.
I' oTehinrtegrTours, of the Redan
estimation or ia that of Europe generally.
thatu any assailing force which might have succeeded
Mainly owing to the fire of oar English in forcing the outer battery would have been ex-
batteries during the three previous days of posed to an inr,er fire as galling as and more concen-
the bombardment—for the Mamelon bad re- Crated than t'Ae first. The whole structure and ar-
tnaiaed all but silent throughout that period—the raogemro, ot these inner defence
has, indeed, are such as
French on the forenoon of the Bth found every gun to cuse.ry the belief that, d the redoubt been
but one in the alalakhoff silenced. Their advanced strenr,ously defended, no body of attacking troops
sap, too, had brought them to within some forty th'.4 could have been brought against it would have
1
yards of their point of attack, and during their rapid saad a chance of BUMS'. And the smile System of
dash in column, over this narrow space, they were, rear defences extended down along nme:ty the whole
exposed only to the grain-shot of this one gun. Oace curtain leading towards the Mal".:khoff. The open
on the face of the 'parapet, they were safe Nom a behind the &den, as I have already mentioned,
woad discharges and had then only to contend presents a broken outface, literally ploughed up into

Frenchmen poking into every nook and crannie,
overhauling everything and appropriating whatever
appeared worth carrying away. A few of our own
men had managed to dodge the sentries, awl were
similarly employed; but, besides being numerically
only as one to a hundred of the Gauls, they went
' about the business with a clumsiness and evident I
inexperience which contrasted strikingly with the '
practised tact and professional ability of the
red-breeched enfants around. In descending ,
the slope which leads down to the head
of the Creek, I came its sight of piles of
new cannon and shot, ranged as one may see
them along the river front of Woolwich Arsenal—on
both sides of the Creek. Certainly this was a con-
tradiction of the generally-believed reports of the
enemy's shortness of guns and ammunition : and
similar evidence met my eyo at every battery I
passed—shot, shell, grape, canister, powder, and
musket cartridges seemed everywhere abundant. On
gaining the summit .of the opposite slope, on and be-
yond which the main body of the town is situated,
French, nothing but French, were to be met with,
the majority of them drunk, and all laden with every
conceivable kind of plunder. Chairs, tables, looking-
glasses, church ornaments, poultry, kegs of brandy,
mattresses, bed clothes, cooking utensils,—every do-
mestic moveable, in fact, that ever figured in a cata-
logue at the city auction mart, was being carried or
dragged along by our light-fingered allies, whilst
only at long intervals was au Englishman to be seen
with a single article, and in three instances I found
Frenchmen disputing their right even to these.
More than one lament on our failure before the
Bedsit was also uttered, and in one case in which
reproach was thrown into the teeth of a brawny
Irish Grenadier by a diminutive Chasseur wall more
impudence than discretion, I take to myself the
credit of having saved a subject of the Emperor from
summary annihilation. Pat hid laid hands on a
bundle of crockery ware, and was proceeding comfort-
ably along under the influence of a double allowance
of rum, when the Frenchman, still worse off for
liquor, came reeling by with a looking-glass under
one arm and a couple of ducks under the other
"Ha! Avian no, Melakhoff yes; Ingelese no bOOO
spirted out the sou of France, tapping the Irishman
with impudent familiarity on the elbow. The
" whirroor that followed was worthy of Donnybrook,
and in an instant, dashing his crockery to the
ground, Paddy grasped the Frenchman by the most
capacious portion of his pantaloons, sent the looking-
glass to shivers, and would have made work for the
doctor out of its owner it I had not at that moment
come up to the rescue. Seeing Frenchmen hurrying
to the scene of this tragi-comedy from all points, I
deemed it best, for my countryman's own sake, to
prevent his administering a chastisement which,
however amply deserved, might have endangered
the safety of its bestower, and so liberated the
frightened impudent, and endeavoured to calm down
the wrath of the infuriated Kerryman. This, how-
ever, was no easy task; but by endorsing his
declaration of being able to best ten Frenchmen any
, day I finally reduced the storm, and sent him on his
way to the outskirts of the town.
I cannot refrain front adding one sentence
on a subject to which I shall again recur—
the prohibition which has been issued against our own
troops sharing in the spoil, whilst carte blanche has
been allowed to the French. Our camp is swarming
with these last, offering for sale every conceivable de-
scription of plunder, and getting high prices for their
goods too whilst our own men, who
have equally shared in alt the danger and
toil of the siege, are prevented from fingering as
much as au empty bottle. The discontent which has
risen amongst them in consequence is not deeper
than it is just, and reflects credit neither on the
judgment nor the regard for fair play of those from
whom the prevention proceeds. But with us it is
always so: at Kertch, where there was a colouring
for the prohibition, the French plundered all before
them—to their own indelible disgrace; but why a
similar bar should be here again placed on the exercise
of what is a right of every soldier who has taken part
in the siege puzzles many more than myself to un-
derstand.