The Express.
London, England, 1855-05-03 00:00:00

OUR ARMY IN THE CRIMEA.

Went heaves maims* wbke are sever dreamt of
lattbe philesegby el the We/kiwi& Academy.
The Image bee bees eea-wa'4tae the early half
el ApeiL A geed deal et wind, seeistimes blustering
late a pis, bequest sad heavy Nib el relit. a •Ibt
bear sow and then, and Sunday a bright day and a
mederate coldness in the place of thu early beats
whisk Italtuteniebed, half-delighted ss in March.
The sights are shady and starlessmornings
.frocir. On Sunday meeting early, as I
up to the best. I saw a sunrise
out of all the sunrieinp I have seen most in
keeping with a siege. A white mist, cold and heavy
as a winding-sheer, lay close over the Orin. The
mountains from Kansan church to Balava Bluff
were black as jet, and the sky above them was as
one blaze of fire. It was as the flames in a furnace.
And booming from Sebastopol came the dull, deep
reports of ordnance, with here and there the rush
of a shell. The camps were all astir. The Turks,
half shrouded by the mist, insulttd the young moon
with their direful music; the Highland bagpipe was
blended with the French horn from the hills on the
left and the trumpet calls from the valley, which
caused the cavalry horses to wort and stamp in anti-
cipation of their breakfasts. Trucks loaded with
ammunition, glided almost noiselessly up the ascent
from Kadikoi. Tee Baleklava road was covered
with besets of burden, is quest of loads from
that general depot. At that hour, near four
o'clock by the London tirse—l almost fancy I
heard the church clock strike from St. Bride's
—London sleeps—if ever it as be said to sleep at ai.y
time. The policeman walks his beat in lonely
Bleet•street, with, of course, the dear, dirty
London rain pattering down upon his cape,
and the pavement glistens with the wet arid
the glare of gas-lamps. The houses are all shut up
and quiet, and of those that sleep in the curtained
beds, which stand on carpeted floors, how many there
may be whose dreams adventure into these distant
regions, and hang over the camps which encompass
those that are near and dear to them! Belgrave and
Mayfair blush with pride at the picture of the Crimea,
and Carlton House-terrace groans • while Battle.
bridge, and Nine-elms, and White Chapel, all glory
in the thought that sons, end brothers, and lovers, in
that distant and almost fabulous country, fight their
country's battles for their coantcy's good. Lot'!
those dreamers be assured that it is at periods
like this, when the struggle is deadliest and
fiercest, that the army most remember home, most
think of home, most love home. We were all home-
sick in Bulgaria • many sickened last winter. But
few are bore-sick now; while all think more fro•
queotly, kindly, fondly, and, it may be, sadly, of those
they lett behind them.
The Russians at Kamera and the hills have an in-
teresting and amusing, and, I should say, an
irritating, sight of our camp. Their generals
can see i ear movements through their glasses.

lELDIKOI, Aram 16.
If a committee were sitting on the siege, that
committee would report progress. As yet there
is no result. .The cannonade against the town
has been kept up—though not incessantly since it
commenced on Monday last. Oar fire has been
brisk each day from snarl's to sunset, but owing
to a strange fatality, it has always slackened during
the night. The last siege showed the inefficacy of a
fitful fire, and though the vice in our practice has
this time been improved upon, it is not entirely on-
noted. If the fact is not forgotten, at least it is not.
vividly enough remembered, that it is not a common
fortress we are besieging but a place fall of =flinty
stores and work-yards, and that the nation against
whom we are fighting, are patient, industrious, heed-
working, indefatigable, and of unequalled excellence
in the art of patching and repairing. Who that ever
posted it in Russia, but arrived at his journey's sad
with the profound conviction that every ploughboy
pressed for the nonce into the service as a
postillion, is a great mechanical genies, whom
mind makes up for the lack of material—
a genius fertile of resources and inexhaustible
in expedients? Who but a Russian can drive a
ricketty kibitka, and drive, too, as fast as horses an
go over stones and through pools of water and across
ruts deep as trenches; and who bat a Russian, when
the kibitka breaks down, as of course it mast, can
repair it without assistance, without instruments but
a stone from the roadside, with no material except a
piece of knotted cord or an old nail? Shift is the
groupies of the common people, and it is exactly shift
which is required in the defence of a town. To have
an eye for odds and ends, and the skilful hand to put
them to use, not deliberately and cogitatively but ra-
pidly, instinctively, with as it were a sort of inspira-
tion, that is exactly the talent which constructs gun-
carriages oat of mouldy boards, and raises an earth
work when others would flounder in the loose sand or
sit down despairing on immovable rocks. There can
hardly be a want of skilled artificers in an army,
every Russian of which can do almost anything with
his axe, from making a cart-wheel to the carving of a
neat figure of St. Nicholas. And as we have to
deal with a Russian garrison, and not with Germans
or Spaniards, that Russian garrison always manages
to do as much at night as we undid in the day. It
is whispered in our ranks that the Russian gunners
are chained to their guns. Perhaps they are. It
revives a fortitude, almost more then human, to
dna lathes* Russian batteries, into which our enor-
mous projectile* are pitched with unerring aim.
Perhaps the working par in, that work night and day
is what we would call the engineers' yards of Sebas-
topol, are also chained to their jobs, or they are bribed
by money and drink, or inspired by a fanatic zeal for
tbe supremacy of Russia and the triumph of the or-
thodox church. To us it matters very little what
secret springs are at work to produce the results which
each day call us to fresh exertions and demand fresh
victims. Whether the thousands that creep out every
night and work like insects in an ant hill are chained
in gangs or driven forward at the point of the
bayonet, or by the fear of field pieces loaded to the
muzzle with grape shot posted in their rear, or whe-
ther they ply their spades and picks, and raise their
gabions, under the inspiration of drink, or pa-
triotism, or religion, the result to us is al-
ways the same. The gone which we silence by day
raise their voices again next morning ; the platform.'
we have broken are replaced by fresh ones ; the earth
and the gabions which flew into the air u if hurled
up by a volcano,
_ as our shells, diving deep into the
ground, burst beneath them—that earth and those
gabions are re-arranged, refilled, replaced when our
batteries awake from their nightly torpor. It is true
our fire has been kept up at night. We have not in
this siege, as in the last, made it a role to shut up at
a certain hour in the evening; and permission has
oeeu granted to the various batteries to tire a certain
number of rounds each night. But the disproportion
between our night and day fire is enormous, and the
consequence is exactly what I have several times
stated—that we silent* a good many guns during the
day, but that the apparent advantage vanishes into
the morning mist when the work of the next dal
r sommenoes. I lay great stress upon this fact, for I
law that our friends at home expect immediate re-
, silts, which, under the circumstances, cannot be
I obtained. I fear, also, lest the disappointment
of rash hopes should create despondency and
the cry go forth that Sebastopol is impregnable. I
do not know whether or not that fortress is impreg-
nable, but this I know, that up to the present hone,
the question has never been fairly tried. Our imper-
fect experience teaches us that we can silence the
batteries against which we play. The means which,
can silence them can keep them silent. Sebastopol
has yet been exposed to an incessant, unvary
in/ battering fire of six hours' duration.t
is true that our batteries toot do not escape
soot free ; that here and there a gun is silenced ; and
that gun carriages and platforms are demolished
and embrasures damaged. It is true that these an
cidents most be repaired. It appears that the pro-
: blew we have to solve is, how to repair these aced-
; dents, sod yet work our guns in such a manner as
' ellestnally to prevent the Russians from rebuilding
their batteries. If we cannot do this, it amounts to
a practical confession that our batteries, too, have
' been silenced by the fire of the day—that we took as
bad as we gave. As yet, no one in camp has Ten-
Utica to assert so =oestrous a fact ; and from minute
1 inquiries, I can assure ea that the nightly slacken-
' hag of our fire is enforced by orders—not by act-
' The fire of the Russian. has certainly been destruc-
tive, and see men and officers have behaved—as &p-
-link sees sad English officers are wont to behave. A
small hue gma battery, in front of Obspmea's battery,
mufti by twenty gunners, hubs* deuced. Three
of the were broke., sixties id Ila mss killed ae
and the remaining fear ehembild the ghee
Ise the time being. It appears that little klasty MOD
a mistake—its four guns were exposed to the les of
! at bail tweedy Russian guns. In the course of
grßas flight it was repaired and enlarged by our
garden, and early. on Sunday morning
rhllirtridZl•gmas were placed in position. The new
enfi la
I work
ded it Mem is prearated
left. agetnst the Bosnian battery which
doe
From all I ma hear sad me very little ingemaies
has been made as the large works which oppose le.
The French have done a good deal of damage to the
Telegraph Battery, and four hundred shells have been
' sent into the Reda°. But on its face the Reda
is little injured, though the destruction inside,
caused by the explosion of our
mast have been enormous. In the first tryliirif sit;
first bombardment our shot and shell killed and dis-
abled many thousands of the enemy. This time our
fire is more terrible, and, from the nature of the wea-
pons employed, more destructive, and we expect
amounts of death and carnage which, in oar patellar
position, must be very satisfactory even to the mildest
and meekest among U. But if any one were rash
enough to believe that our killing so many thousand
Remises would induce the garrison to capitulate or
surrender, that person would be most signally disap-
pointed. In a town regularly invested and out off
from all communications, such dreadful carnage might
sot unreasonably be supposed to dishearten the gar-
rison and soften even the heart of the most deter-
mined commander by the reflection that he must soon
want hands to man his works. Or the Barr•
deemed to slaughter, would murmur, officer;
would remonstrate, a mused of war would be held,
and matters would take their course as they usually
do with fortresses. In very modern history, that was
the ease with Komori:. But it is not likely to be the
cue with Sebastopol, for thousands are waiting
outside to take the place of the thousands we slay ;
the disaffected, the disheartened, and the dubious can I
be removed and fresh and ignorant troops, fall of
faith in the same of Russia, may at any moment be I
introdused into the town. Sebastopol cannot be !
measured according to the standard of ordinary
sieges. and we have seen that in the ass of this ex-
treenthery fortress the experience even of Sir John 4
!userr been at fault. Andjet whet real!

fhe roof is taken off our hotise, and our de-
mestio movements are open to the gaze of these
that stand on the high places. They see oar
rows of tents and villages of huts. They see
the church of Kadtkoi, which, deserted by its pis&
and congregation, has been turned into a hospital.
They see oar horses grazing in the plain; horsemen
leaping the ditches; Turks drawn out in front of
their encampment going through theirlalim or drill,
all wearily and clumsily. They see the long files of
our cavalry debouching into the plain to give their
horses an airing; the railway trucks gliding up or
loosened from the incline, rattling down at a killing
speed. They see far up to the hills that border the
cavalry camp, and on the left they see the French
nill with its depot of artillery, the sailor's battery,
and the other batteries between here and Balaklava.
And all this while our cannon is battering against
Sebestopol. If our easy and unconcerned movements
—our being so perfectly at home—provokes them to
come down and give us a "rise, it is perhaps
the sight of those batteries which causes them
to stop before they rashly venture within reach
of an influence from which they might find
it difficult to withdraw. What would have been the
result of the battle of Balaklava if those guns had,
been where they are now ? Something like what the
result of the second battle will be, it the Russians
have the ambition of taking any more batteries in
Balaklava plains. Up to the present they have made
no movement, though a movement against us has
been expected each night. And, considering all the
circumstances we have a right to be attacked. For
what is the Russian army in frost of us good for, it
they do not harrass the Balaklava front while we
hearses Sebastopol P The fait is, the troops on this
front have made up their minds to be attacked : they
would feel it a hardship if they were to be disap-
pointed.
On Friday night the Russians took us by surprise,
a. d puzzled us sorely. They illuminated a battery
they ears facing Kadikoi. It was a very pretty,
sight, and the surprise was an agreeable one. As
they have very little to do, we all wish they world
frequently give us so harmless and delightful an
evening's diversion. But what was it done for? Why
burn piles of brambles and dry wood from one
end of the battery to another ? 'fliers we are beat.
Nous donnona nos lauguea aux " ohiene—that is to
say, to our enemies. The Russians are a most
generous nation. The Greeks say so, and the
Greeks ought to know; but we can hardly expose,
that the high-souled Muscovites should send oat
fatigue parties, gather wood, and burn fires for the
diversion of our camp. That would, indeed, be heap.
log fiery coals on our heads. Was the fire me& le
show to our Quartermaster-General the exact pods
lion of the battery, or to enable our engineers to
trace its limits ? If so, they should have done a band.
some thing in a handsome manner, and fired all the
one, to give us an idea of their number and metal.
That simple expedient would have saved us the
trouble of a reconnaissance. Or was this Rumba
• battery lighted up in honour of the event of our bar-
. gun battery being silenced fora night ? Or were the
troops sworn to obey the new Cur Alexander and
. his son P Every one has pat these questions, but no
. one has received an answer. That illuminated bat-
. tery is on. of the mysteries of the campaign. The
Russians rejoice when they are worsted, and sing TS
Dooms over a defeat; bat oar progress against
Sebastopol has not been at • kind to justify any
extraordinary demonstrations of pleasure on the&
part.
On Saturday morning—it mast have been abaft
2 o'clock—oar unaccountable onsenies perpetrated!
another freak, which roused the camp, and showed
us how admirably prepared we are for a fight at the
dawn of day, or earlier. A musket shot rang from
the plain; another followed, then another and
another, and then came a rolling fire of about twenty
or thirty muskets. I stepped into my boots, seized
my cap, and opened the door of my hut, expecting to
hear some more musketry, and after then the open-
ing fire from our batteries. All was ailept, and re-
mained so. According to custom, unless &seines of
the firing was at ones satisfactorily explained in all
tbecamps, the trumpet and bogie Auld haneseadell,
and the drum should have beaten to arm. This
strange apathy wee what I could not understand. In
the morning, when I made inquiries in the various
encampments, I understood and admired it. Not a
man in the amp but had been round by
Not amu in the camp but was Tatou tbemeMll
and as much prepared as I was. BfiliNe' slimes
commanding could order the alarm to be sounded, the
men, French and English, on the Balaklava hoot,
were all out and under arms. There was no need of
the bugle or the drum. It is positively mewed that
the firing came from or was in or very near the Rus-
sian lines.,,,So say the sentries; but they are not quite
sure of the exact locality; as who can be in Jo ark a
night P In oar camp it is said that one of the Fitimsb
pickets advanced too far, and that the Rumbas Mad
upon them. This the French deny. Here again all
is doubt sad coifed= of amertioas. But it is agsep
tifyiog fact to /mow that a single voile from age
oar pickets would abut* y turn out the
whok camp, and that no roll of the drum, no bugle
call, no shoat, need reveal to the enemy that the camp
is astir, and prepared foe a road reception.
The &sieves who_ umpad the mountains on the
extreme right door &lakes front have been with-
' drawn, sod a detachment of Omer Pasha's troops has
taken up the position on the hills. I have sot re
been able to ascertain the regiment. If they an
sEtganyriaas, they will keep as sharp a look out and
their ground as well as the Zlllllllll.
or Highlanders, or any ether musk corps. TIM
balk of Omer Pasha's =rpm hes pitched its Mei

TAR EXPRESS, THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 3, 1855.

position. But I believe some Prenoh troops besides
in
the Zonate. have been withdrawn to assist the ope-
rations against BebestepoL Our numerical strength,
however, is greater than it was, and hopeful sews
are of action, it is whispered that this reinforcement
of our lines shows that the commandos expect an
attack, or that they intend making a general re-
oonnaiesenoe. I myself believe that weaken be at-
tacked the moment our siege operations commence to
tell severely upon the town and garrison of Sebes-
topol. It is the object of the army in our front to
makes diversion in favour of Sebastopol They will
make that diversion, but not without urgent neces-
sity. lam positive that the order for the attack 02
Balaklava will Was from the fortress.
Omer Paoha's troops have made a very favourable
impression in the camp ; they are so unlike the Turks
whom our men had been in the habit of seeing. They
look like soldiers, move with alacrity, and seem to he
fully aware of what they are about, while the regi-
ments fromStainboal,whom tootle misfortune we had
attached to us, roll like hedgehogs, are filthy like the
unclean animal whose flesh they have learnt to eat
while campaigning with the Giaours, and pass their
time, as i: appears, in a continual dream of onions,
garlic, filth, and vermin. Oiler Paoha's men make
the impression that, if well led, they would be no
discredit to their French and English companions in
arms. His artillerymen—trained by Colonel
Van der Beek--are, I know, expert, intelli-
gent, indefatigable, and capital marksman. Their
gnus sod gun-earriages, cast and built at Stamboul,
under the slovenly superintendeaoe of General
Butshkoweki, are not good; for they are awkward,
clumsy, and the materiel is bad. But from what I
saw of Turkish artillery drill and practice is the camp
of Beograd, lam convinced that had the.. men arms
worthy of them, the corps would do much execution
among the Rue:Jana. However this may be, we are
all eager to see Omer Pseha's troops at their work.
The 10th Hassan, who were landed yesterday and
early this morning, joined the cavalry camp in the
course of the day. They are one of the finest regi-
ments I have ever seen. Men and horses have the
appearance of being used to sun and wind, and fully
able to bear up against the treacherous climate of the
Crimea. The horses are in admirable oondition, and
it appears to me, heavier than the generality of our
Light Cavalry hOrses, which are not up to the weight
of their riders. Very few horses, I understand, died
on the passage. The 10th Hussars are a mast valu-
able acquisition to our cavalry force, and if we sally
out from our position, they will at one have to show
what they can do.
For the last days the weather has been clearing up:
the wind is lulling. The season of gales is evidently
drawing to a close, and from all I can understand, we
shall have a tropical sun by the time you receive this
letter.

By the same mail we have received the following
delayed letter from oar special correspondent:

KADIKOI, APRIL 13.
The second get of the siege of Sebastopol com-
menced on the morning of Monday, the 9th instant.
The event was not unannounced, bat yet unexpected.
For months past the opening of our batteries was
predicted to take place each Monday and Saturday
of each week. No one believed those statements,
though of course there was no denying it that the
batteries roust open some day. And when, early on
Monday morning, loud reports came in quick succes-
sion from the Sebastopol front—when the more ma-
jestic boom of the mortars made the reports, of 68s
sound quirk and sharp in comparison—end when,
even at the distance of five and seven miles, the
progress of the bombs was distinctly audible
even in the camps round Kadikoi and the rocky
gorge of &Warier, then the fact of our having again
opened fire against Sebastopol became a matter of rib•
solute certainty, and a source of placid and rather
phlegmatic satisfaction. None of the witnesses of, or
performers io, this second act of the terrible drama
felt that stinging impatience, thatracy excitement,
that triumph of hope, which made our hearts beat
quick, flushed our cheeks, and drove us restlessly to
and fro on the morning of the fleet opening in
October last. Time, and the chastening powers
of experience and adversity, have made us more cool,
wary, and sceptical. We expect less than we used
to from isolated events, and we have become more
chary of strong sensations. In October the heads of
the army and its scientific departments believed that
the destructive effects of oor opening must be su-
preme, and that a cannonade of a few hours would
either compel the garrison to capitulate, or cause
them to abandon the town. The regiments who knew
less of artillery had more limited notions of its de-
structive powers if they reckoned on a siege, not of
hours, but of days, and looked forward to that morn-
log f grief and glory, when our artillery, having
silenced the Russian batteries, and cloned the ap-
proaches, the nerve and the steel of the British sol-
dier would be called into requisition—when the light
regiments and the Guard; of Alma should march into
Sebastopol. The town did not surrender. There was
no reason why it should have dons so. The Reassigns
replied to the fire of oar batteries with batteries as nu
merons, mounted with heavier metal, and that in
greater numbers than we could boast of. Our fire was
mild and regular, like the routine of a London office.
We commenced the work of the day at 8 in the morn-
ing: at Bin the evening we left oft There were
extra hours now and then, but they were rare. In the
hones of night we repaired the damage done to oor
batteries in the day. So did the Russians. In the
morning they and we were equally ready to begin
at our game of "long bowls." Then, instead of the
engulf, elms Balaklava ; and, after Balaklava, came
Inkermano. Instead of attacking, we were attacked.
Instead of taking positions, we had to defend them.
Hard upon the heels of Inkermann came the winter,
with all its concomitant evils. Pardon this outline
sketch of the first part of the siege. When the cur•
Lain rises for the second act, it is but natural tension
the leading features of the first.
This is the fifth day of the new • tis the
179th day since our batteries' first in October
last. Our second battering 'fire is vastly different
from the first. Our engineers and art' have had
the advantage of half a yearesohooling. • ace
is better than Woolwich, and Menke was, and
Osten-Sicken is, a better instructor than Sir John
Burgoyne. Our works are within a few handset'
yards of the Raid= advanced works, and therefore
within effective distance from the town, which is now
really exposed to the fall powers of oar projectiles.We
have a sufficient number of guns in position to eosin
an effective cannonade. We have vast responses of
ammunition in the camp, and ample means of bring-
ing up men. We have mortars of enormous calibre,
and with them the means of dot/vier the mud
forts, whicl. proved so serious an obstacle to our pro-
oeedings in October and November. Tie allied
commanders have a greater number of troops at their
disposal, and our own asmy is not now misspelled to
work exactly one ballot the attack ; an arrangement
which however suitable to the dignity of oar country,
was moat unsuitable to our small numbers, and most
destructive to them. We are in a condition to keep
up the batteriop .fire for an indefinite period ; to
repel any sorties in fore, that may be attempted from
the town, and to repel the advance of 80,000 men—
if the Russians can muster so many—against the
positions of Inkerrason and Rabidity,. In October
boldness, energy, decision, and above all, rapid move-
ments, might have compensated for the smallness of
our numbers and the deficiencies of our material for
the siege. We are now in a position to lay a regular
siege, even against a town that resists and a garrison
that bolds oat under oar battering fire for days and
weeks.

Thu time no one among us, irom high to low, ex-
pected miraculous results, or an immediate offer of
capitulation. I trust that no such sanguine
hopes have beat entertained in England. If
any such hopes there have been they will
be disappointed. In these last five days our fin has
been very effective, and very dsetrueuve. Both the
French and the English artillery practice, especially
the mortar practice, Ibsen all that could be de-
sired. The shells o allies, more particularly,
have been thrown with admirable precision; they
exploded at will. Here is our great advantage, for r
the Russian shells ase SU weak point d -their artil-
lery. Manret them =plods at the cannon's month,
many high epp in the air, and a great many do not
explode at nil. The action of a Read= shell belong
entirely to the chapter of aseidents. The shells of
the allies, pitched into the Ruskin works, did in
the first two den ensues the Ream] Treew, Rita tha

ayend l'ilesda the Ragtime returned oar fine wYL
th precision of round shot, and *lb
mall vaginae of shells ; their batteries meows",
relahuiy served, and several times, while vaulting
the proseedings, I remarked the flashes of her se
five guns at the same moment issuing from
the same battery—attempta to fire a salvo
*midst the rushing down and the explosion
of oar shells. On Tuesday evening the Ras-
a* fire slackened, and on Wednesday they had
shared several of their advanced batteries, and with-
drawn their guns into positions nearer home. So far
our artillery has certainly the advantage, but still
our officers are not unduly elated, and it were perhaps
not unwise if the public at home were to share their
modest appreciation of oar present partial success.
For that very success urges still more forcibly the
puzzling and painful question : What next? I know
that the men of confidence in the army expect that
our artillery will utterly annihilate Sebastopol—that
it will smash not only the batteries but the buildings
alsoi that shells thrown into houses will act as mines
sad overthrow the homes, end that we shall redoce
the town to a mass of wreck, splinters, and ruins, in
which It is Impossible even for Russian soldiers to
exist. Those who are less sanguine admit that by
dint of cannonading we may convert the town into a
class of rules, but they do not see why the Russians
elesald voluntarily retreat from the wreck, especially
as lisbastopol, like every other place of strength,
mist have its underground or casemated barrack
esessmodation. The advanced batteries which the
]*elan have left must be taken possession of
ander the fire of the batteries in their rear,
and if this is not done, their evacuation
by the enemy is an advantage, but not a material
anus it does not in any material degree &adage ear
MTagainst the place.
,as I can judge the question of a general
gestalt is in so far decided, that all ideas of such a
mnasare are abandoned for the present. Headquarters
ben such intelligence from the interior of the town as
to make the attempt appear hazardous, if not altoge-
tberimpracticable. Sebastopol in April 1855 is very
unlike the Sebastopol of 1854. Every bush of ground
between the advanced works and the town has, it is
said, been covered with defensive works, which,
while they reflect the highest credit on the ingenuity
and activity of the Russian engintereowould malty
the advance of the allied troops a matter of difficulty,
if not altogether an impossibility. Every obstacle,every
contrivance has been put into requisition to obstruct
the progress of storming columns. Under the pro-
tection of such defences it is not likely that the gar-
rison should yield to a panic ; and we have nothing
to expect from their bodily and mental prostratioc.
Among the leading results of a battering fire, such as
we are now pouring upon the town, is to bewilder, to
weary out, and to discourage the defenders—to work
them off their legs and to send forward storming
columns at the very time when those within the walls
are least capable of making an energetic defence.
Any fortress, no matter how large and brave its gar-
rison, would fall an easy prey to a decided assault,
if invested and plied with artillery since October last.
But the double fortress of Sebastopol has never been
invested; the road was at all times open for the in-
troduction of fresh troops, fresh stores and provi-
sions, and the removal of the wounded, the sick, and
the worn-out. The men we have before us are not
ground down by the labour., the watching., priva-
tions, and anxieties of a siege of six months ; they
are, or at least they . may have been, drafted in
within the last six weeks, and they most
assuredly have been, if the moral or physical con-
dition of the garrison made the introduction of fresh
troops necessary. In towns regularly invested, the
skilled engineers and gunners drop off in the course
of the siege, and their places are taken by others less
Aida' and experienced. But there is no reason why
the Russians should not have drawn into Sebastopol
companiesof the best artillerymen they have is the
empire. In short, to all intents and purposes the
fortress we are bound to conquer cannot be considered
as having stood a six months' siege, though we know
to our cost that we have been besieging it that length
of time. Its means of defence are unimpaired, its,
shortness of ammunition—if ever there was anything
like a real want of it—has bees made good by im-
portations from Odessa, that thorn in the side ;of the
allied armies. More skilful engineers than ever
conduct the labours of the defence; fresh troops
support the batteries, and trained gunners work
the guns. The deserters complain of the ravages
of disease, but they say there Is plenty
of food, and there are plenty of men.
Why do I say all this; and why these serious and
almost gloomy reflections at the commencement of
fresh operations? Am I one of the croakers, such as
there are at home, and, I regret to say, some few in
the army, who cry oat that it is impassible to take
Sebastopol—that we had no business to go to war
with a power like Rosalie; and that the best thing
we as do is to settle the matter amicably, no matter
at what price P In other words, that the united
strength of France and Great Britain are not equal
to the reduction of a Russian fortress; and that we
ought to have known that fact from the first, and
from the first quietly and tamely submitted to Rus-
sian dictation, and to a Muacovite revision of the
empire of the world P Most assuredly lam not One
of those men ; and tar different is the lesson I read
from the failure of our attempts to reduce Sebastopol.
But I would warn against indulging in unreasonable
hopes, whose frustration might lead to a bitterness of
disappointment bordering upon despondency. With
all the resources at the command of the allied
generals, we are not now in a condition to take
Sebastopol by a smart cannonade and a sudden rush,
nor is Sebastopol in a condition to be taken in this
manner. I do not speak of what once may ham
been, but of what now is. The opening our batteries
is a great step in advanoe,for it is the commencement
of active operations. But we cannot expect to carry
our point by means of the batteries aloes. Sebastopol
is superior to a mere artillery siege. It is now avast
, battery, open at the gorge, and that gorge for the
mean beyond the pale of our attack, and in constant
communication with the resources of the empire. 1
do not believe, as matters now stand, that an attempt
will be made to reduce the town on this side the
harbour without oorresponoiog operations on the
math side—that is to say, active operations spied
the Russian army which keeps up the ease.
munications between Sebastopol and the empire.
If such an attempt were mad*, perhaps it might
be successful. The French are brave to a proverV
and our own troops can do anything but retreat.
Bat I =abet understand that the commanders who,
in October fast, destined ebtaising possession of the
town at Melia d 000 assnaltiee, should now make
the attempt whin ems the most sanguine hesitate to
limit the pliable lam at 10,000 killed and wounded,
and when nesse% tbough.not altogether improbable,
is at least my deabtfiaL That partial assaults will
take plate is my likely, from the preparations now
going on; tweak works and positions must be occu-
pied by Free& and English troops, to more oont-
pletely batter the town and break the way foe further
operations on the Tammy*. If lam net very mush
mistaken some of them partial advance; will take place
in the next few days. A good deal of ground meet
be gained by feet end inches, and there is no manner
of doubt but that we shall gain it.
That the operations will be carried over to the
north edde,and the town invested, and that theßamiaa
army will, be driven bank upon flimpheropol, and
peerrehaote fax4psra, is apparent
they
from the
ch we read of numbers
are sae.
barking at Marseilles, and which pour into Kangas&
and Balaklava. As I am writing, a fresh regiment
of Chaisson. jest landed, is marching up to the
front. The allied armies have, moreover, the
assistance of Omer Paola and 12,000 Tarts,
detached from the force at Euphoria. Of
the movements of these, and the doings at
Kamiesch, you will be inTorieed 'by your Special
Correspondent attached to the bead-quarters of the
Turkish General.