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

and the steamer; it was necessary to evacuate after its
occupation ; but the division of General La Motterouge
made its ground good on one part of 'the curtain, an,i
that of General M‘Mahon ga'ned ground in the'Mula-
khoff, where General Bosquet sent continually_ the re-
serves which I sent forward to him. The (Wier attacks
were suborditiAted to th .t 'of the Ma!akhoff, that being
the capital point of the defences of the whole place.
Standing in the Brancion Redoubt (on the Mainelon)
I considered that the Malakhoff was safely in our power,
and I gave the signal which had been agreed upon with
Gener.rl Simpson.
The English immediately 'advanced bravely against
the salient of the Great Redan. •• They were able to
effect a lodgment in it, and struggled a considerable
time to maintain their position, but, crushed by the Rus-

sian reserves, which advanced incessantly, and by a vio-
lent fire of artillery, they were forced to return into their
parallel.
At the same moment General de Sailes had directed
an attack against the Central Bastion. The I evaillant
Division had begun to establi-h itself in it, RS well as in
the Right Lunette ; a tremendous tire of grape was suc-
ceeded by the arrival of Russian reinforcements, en con-
siderable in number that our troops already decimated
by the fire of the enemy, and'whose chiefs bad been dis-
abled, were compelled to fall back on the place whence
they had sallied.

Convinced that the taking of the Malakhoff would be
decisive of success, I prevented the renewal of any at-
tacks on other points, which, by compelling the hostile
army to remain on all paints, had already attained their
main object. I then directed my solo attention to the
retaining posses.,ion of the Malakhoff, which General
Mthlahon had been previously enabled completely to
obtain. Besides, a great and critical moment was im-
pending.
General Bosquet had just been struck by the bursting
of a shell, and his command I gave to General Dulac.
A powder magazine near the Malakboff exploded at this
moment, from which contingency I anticipated the most
serious results.

The Russians, hoping to profit by this accident, ink
.mediately advanced in dense masses, and, disposed in
three columns, simultaneously attacked the centre, the
left, and the right of the Malakhoff. But measures of
defence had already been taken in the interior of the
fortress; for which purpose General M'Mahon opposed
to the enemy bodies of undaunted troops, whom nothing
could intimidate ; and after the most desperate efforts
the Russians were oompelled to make a precipitate re-
treat. From that moment the discomfited enemy ap-
pears to have renounced all idea of further attack. The
Malakhoff was ours, and no effort of the enemy could
wrest it from us. It was half-past four o'clock.
Measures were immediately taken fer 'enabling us
to repulse the enemy, in case he should attempt against
us a nocturnal attack. But we were soon released from
our uncertainty. As soon as it became night, fires burst
forth on every side, mines exploded, magazines of gun-
powder exploded in the air. The sight ofc Sebastopol in
flames, which the whole army contemplated, was one of
the most awe-inspiring and sinister pictures that the his-
tory of wars can have presented. The enemy was makinr
a complete evacuati m ; it was effected during the night
by means of a bridge constructed between the two shores
of the roadstead, and under cover of the successive ex-
plosions that prevented me from approaching and
harassing him. Oa the morning of the 9th the whole
southern side of the town was freed, and in our power.
I have no need of enhancing in the eyes of your Ex-
cellency the importance of so great a success. Neither
will it be necessary for me to speak of this brave army,
whose warlike virtues and devotion are so thoroughly
appreciated by our Emperor ; aed I shall have, great
as the number is, to name to you those who have dis-
tinguished themselves aiiong s ) many valiant soldiers.
I cannot yet do so, but I shall fulfil this duty in one of
my next de-patches.
Deign to accept, Monsieur le Mar4chal, the expression
of my respectful devotion.—The General-in-Chief,

Pzusion.

GENERAL NIEL'S DESPATCH.

SEBASTOPOL, SEPT. 11.

Monsieur le Mmeichal,—The place of Sebastopol was
stormed on the Bth of September. That assault has
rendered us masters of the Malakhoff work, the occupa-
tion of which renders the defence of the suburb almost
impossible, and enables us to cut off the communications
of the town with the north part of the roadstead. After
rallying several times, and resuming the offensive with
a courage to which we are bound to do homage,
seeing that his uttermost efforts remained fruitless,
he began in the evening to evacute the town ;
during the night he set it on fire, and he employed
his powder in destroying with his own hands the defen-
sive works and the great establishments which Russia
had been accumulating for so many years in this for-
tress. He has sunk all his ships, frigates, and other
sailing vessels, preserving only the steamers ; lastly, he -
broke up and pulled after him the bridge of boats by
which he communicated with the forts of the north side,
abandoning to us in this way the town, suburb, and
everything else on the south side of the roadstead.
The defence was energetic ; on several points our at-
tacks were repulsed ; but the chief attack, that which
insured our succe.s, was not doubtful for an instant.
The let division of the Ist corps, commanded at present
by General M'Arahon' carried at the first onset the Ma-
lakhoff work, and there maintained itself heroically,
understanding that it held in its hands the keys of the
place.
I am going to give you an account of the dispositions
that bad been taken for diminishing as nduch as possible
the numerous difficulties attending this terrible assault,
made, not on a place invested, on a limited garrison,
but on a va.t fortress, defended by an army equally
numerous, perhaps, as that which attacked it.
In the attacks directed against the town our ap-
proaches had been carried to within 40 metres of the
Central Bastion and 30 metres of the Flagstaff Bastion.
At the attacks of the Karabelnaia suburb the English,
impeded by the difficulties of the ground and by the fire
of the enemy's artillery, had only been able to advance
their approaches to about 200 metres from the salient
of the Great Redan.
Before t le front of the Malakhoff we had arrived to
within 25 metres of the enceinte which surrounds the
tower, and had carried our approaches to the same dis-
tance of the Little Redan of the Careenage. This im-
portant result was due to the incontestable superiority
of our artillery over that of the enemy.
The generals-in-,chief of the allied armies hal made
the following arrangements •
The general attack of the place was fixed for the Bth
September at noon. On the morning of the sth the ar-
tillery of the attacks against the town and that of the
English attacks, Who until then had husbanded their
fire, were to resume it with great enerev.
Such a cannonade wasnever heard.' We had mounted
in our two attacks more than 500 cannons. The English
had about 200, and the Russians more than we. The fire
of the enemy damaged our trenches, but did us little
harm. (luta, notwithstanding the great extent of the
place, converged on it, and must have caused immense
loss to the Russian army. During the last days which
preceded the assault our infantry fatigue parties were
principally employed in enlarging the most advanced
plaee d'ctrmes and the defiles, and in carrying to the spot
the means of crossing thteditchee,
c o nTsht er
uacitme do bf
(called the Korniloff Redoubt by the Russians), which is
eaklli
node rtheeffomrtzawkaksoffaiSTcoawyteufr, e
fitihse
wwoorrkk
an immense redoubt, a kind of citadel of earth, occupies
a mamelon which commands all the interior of the Ka-
rabelnaia suburb, takes the &dart attacked by the Eng-
lish de revers, and is only 1,200 metres from the south
port, on which the Russians bad constructed a bridge of
rafts, now their only communication between the suburb
and the town, The Malakhoff Fort is 350 metres by
150 metres its dimensions. The parapets have more than
6 metres of relief above the soil, and in front of them is
a ditA which before our attacks was 6 metres in depth
and 7in width. It was armed with 82 guns of various
calibres. In the front part, enclosed by the parapet, is
the Malakboff Tower, of which the Russians have only
preserved the rez de chausee, which is crenellated. In
the interior of the work the Russians lad
raised a vast number of traverses under which
were excellent blindages where the garrison
found shelter, and beds arranged on each side in
two rows, one above the other. A Russian officer of
engineers, who was made prisoner, states that the gar-
rison of this part of the Malakhoff, which I have just
described in order that you may judge of the difficulties
which our soldiers had to surmount, consisted of not less
than 2,500 men.

The Malakhoff front, which is a thousand metres in
length, is bounded on our left by Fort Malakhoff, and
on our right by the Little .Redan. This last work,
which, at the commencement of the siege, was only a
simple tedan, was transformed little by little into a re-
doubt, closed fit the gorge and heavily armed. The ex-
tei jar fronts of the two redoubts of Malakhoff and till
Caret. age were connected by a curtain aimed with 16
Cautions; and behind the enceinte the Russians bad
raised a second, which connected the fronts of the gorges
~f the two redoubts. This second enceinte, armed in
part, had not, however, a ditch presenting a serious
obstat'ilt".
The rocky nature of the soil had hindered the enemy
from excavating everywhere wally the ditch of the
first curtain and 11(344t1e Redan, and on several
't without very much
points the troops were able to pas.,; - - 2 - nonsi.
difficulty, For passing the ditches, which hau
d,rable depth, we had contrived a system of br;dges
which could be thrown in less than a minute by an in-
genious manceukre, to which our sappers and soldiers
d'el ite had been trained.
The French artilleio so superior to that of the
Russlans that it had extinguished the fire of nearly
all the guns pointed directly at our attacks. The
filled up embrasures relieved its from the fear that
our columns might be asssiled by grape as they issued
from the trenches. The parapets were destroyed and
a part of the earth had rolled into the ditch. Fi-
nally the Malakoff fort had been assailed by so large
a number of shells, thrown from out' battetiog
those of the English, that the guns which did not
look directly upon our attacks had their embra-
sures also filled up, and everywhere tho terrassentente
had lost their original form, nut, behind the de'-
, fences situated in the first line the Russians
bad preserved a large number of pieces, which we
could not contre-battre completely, and the columns
which proceeded to attack the Malakhoff were exposed
to the fire of numerous batteries which the Russians had
raised to the north of the roadstead, and which, though
fired from a great distance, were nevertheless dangerous.
You are aware that ever since my arrival before Se-
bastopol I was decidedly of opinion that the true point
of attack was the tower or manielon of Malakhoff, and
that this opinion having been adopted by General
Ca,,robert, those attacks of the right were undertaken,
which were executed by the 9,1