Battle of Malakoff The Battle of Malakoff was a major battle during the Crimean War , fought between French - British forces against Russia on 7 September 1855 as a part of the Siege of Sevastopol . The French army under General MacMahon successfully stormed the Malakoff redoubt , whereas a simultaneous British attack on the Redan to the south of the Malakoff was repulsed . In one of the war ' s defining moments , the French " zouave " Eugène Libaut raised the French flag on the top of the Russian redoubt . The Battle of Malakoff resulted in the fall of Sevastopol on 9 September , bringing the 11 - month siege to an end . Background . Until 1784 most of the fortifications around Sevastopol were dedicated to the protection of the harbour entrance , the city itself and its naval base and were positioned close to these features . The construction of fortifications in the surrounding hills had been planned as early as 1837 , but at the time of the battle only basic facilities and roadways had been completed on the north side of the long bay . To the south the central anchor of the defence system was the Malakoff - Kurgan ridge . Situated about southeast of the city , it consisted of a two - story stone tower of limestone on which the Russians had placed five heavy 18 - pounder cannons at the beginning of the siege . There is some mystery surrounding this tower . Although it is known that the tower was built some time before the start of the war , the historical records do not show exactly when this occurred , and no mention of this is made in the contemporary descriptions of the siege itself . Additionally , there are different spellings and translations into or from Russian , including Малахова башня . What is known is that the tower was originally built or expanded by Sevastopol merchants and then later taken over by the Russian Navy . The tower had a diameter of about and a height of . In its centre the battery known as " Lunette Kamchatka " was placed . This was a smaller fortification that was designed to protect several artillery pieces . At this time the Russian cartographers marked all landmarks in and around this ridge as " Fort Malakoff " . This included several large grave mounds and the same ridge lying in front known as Mamelon ( " vert Mamelon " ) . The name " Fortmortal Malakoff " ( or French " Fort Malakoff " ) was retained after the war in Western literature covering the Crimean War . The harbour of Sevastopol , formed by the estuary of the Chernaya , was protected against attack by sea not only by the Russian war - vessels , afloat and sunken , but also by heavy granite forts on the south side and by the defensive works . For the town itself and the Karabelnaya suburb the plans for the works had been laid down for years . The Malakoff Tower covered the suburb , flanked on either side by the Redan and the Little Redan . The town was covered by a line of works marked by a flagstaff and central bastions , and separated from the Redan by the inner harbour . Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Totleben , the Russian chief engineer , had began work on these sites early in the war . Through daily efforts to rebuild , re - arm and improve the fortifications , he was able to finally connect them with a continuous defence system enceinte . Yet early in October 1854 , Sevastopol was not the towering fortress it later became , and Totleben himself maintained that had the allies assaulted it immediately , they would have succeeded in taking the city . There were , however , many reasons against them doing so at the time , and it was not until 17 October that the first attack took place . Battle . Throughout 17 October , a tremendous artillery duel raged . The Russian artillery was initially successful , the French corps fell under siege and suffered heavy losses . The advancing fleet engaging the harbour batteries also suffered a loss of 500 men and several ships were heavily damaged . Still , British siege batteries managed to silence the Malakoff and its annexes , after having succeeded in hitting a munitions depot and , if failure had not occurred at the other points of attack , an assault might have succeeded . As it was , by daybreak , Totleben ' s engineers had repaired and improved the damaged works . For months the siege of Sevastopol continued . During July the Russians lost on an average of 250 men a day , and finally the Russians decided to break the stalemate and gradual attrition of their army . Gorchakov and the field army were to make another attack at the Chernaya , the first since the Inkerman . On 16 August , both Pavel Liprandi and Read ' s corps furiously attacked the 37 , 000 French and Sardinian troops on the heights above Traktir Bridge . The assailants came on with the greatest determination , but they were ultimately unsuccessful . At the end of the day , the Russians drew off leaving 260 officers and 8 , 000 men dead or dying on the field ; the French and British only lost 1 , 700 . With this defeat the last chance of saving Sevastopol vanished . The same day , a determined bombardment once more reduced the Malakoff and its dependencies to impotence , and it was with absolute confidence in the result that Marshal Pélissier planned the final assault . At noon on 8 September 1855 , the whole of Bosquet ' s corps suddenly swarmed up to the Malakoff . The fighting was of the most desperate kind : every casemate and every traverse was taken and retaken time after time as each side attacked and counterattacked , but ultimately the French maintained the prize , and though the British attack on the Redan failed , with the fall of the Malakoff , the Russian positions around the city came into range of the French siege guns . Even on the far left , at the opposite flagstaff and central bastions , there was severe hand - to - hand fighting . Throughout the day the bombardment mowed down the massed Russian soldiers along the whole line . The fall of the Malakoff was the end of the siege of the city . That night the Russians filed over the bridges to the north side , and on 9 September the victors took possession of the empty and burning city . The losses in the last assault had been very heavy : for the Allies over 10 , 000 men , for the Russians 13 , 000 . At least nineteen generals had fallen on the final day and with the capture of Sevastopol the war was decided . No serious operations were undertaken against Gorchakov who , with the field army and the remnants of the garrison , held the heights at Mackenzie ' s Farm . But Kinburn was attacked by sea and , from the naval point of view , became the first instance of the employment of Ironclad warship s . An armistice was agreed upon on 26 February and the Treaty of Paris was signed on 30 March 1856 . Aftermath . At first sight Russia would seem to be almost invulnerable to a sea power , and no first success , however crushing , could have humbled Nicholas I . Indeed the mere capture of Sevastopol would not have been strategically decisive . However , as the Tsar had decided to defend it at all costs and with unlimited resources , it became an unpleasant defeat , especially as the Allies had reached victory with limited resources . During the nearly one - year siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War , the fortifications on the Malakhov were hotly contested as they overlooked the whole city and the inner harbour . After the success of the French troops under the command of Marshal Pelissier , later the Duke of Malakoff ( French : Duc de Malakoff ) , and General Patrice de Mac - Mahon , the Russian defenders evacuated the entire city on 8 September 1855 , bringing a climax to the war . As the fortress enabled the control of the Black Sea port of Sevastopol , the Russian forces destroyed all of their equipment and withdrew , leaving Russia with no more military fortifications on the Black Sea . The long - awaited Russian domination of the inland sea to obtain free passage through the Bosporus to the Mediterranean ( and beyond ) was now not possible . In terms of logistics , the British and French had a significant advantage over the Russians as they were able to receive supplies from the sea , while the Russians had to bring supplies over the underdeveloped and dangerous desert tracks of southern Russia . The Russians lost many men and horses in bringing supplies to Sevastopol . The hasty nature , too , of the fortifications , which were damaged every day during the siege by the fire of a thousand guns , and had to be rebuilt every night , required large , unprotected working parties and the losses amongst these were correspondingly heavy . These losses exhausted Russia ' s resources and when they were forced to employ large bodies of militia in the battle of Traktir Bridge , it was obvious that the end was at hand . The short stories of Leo Tolstoy , who was present at the siege , give a graphic picture of the war from the Russian point of view , portraying the miseries of the desert march , the still greater miseries of life in the casemates , and the almost daily ordeal of manning the lines , under shell - fire , against an assault which might or might not come . Among the seven surviving defenders of a stone tower on the Malakov Kurgan , which were found by French troops among the dead , was the seriously wounded Vasily Kolchak , the father of Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak . Kolchak would later become the head of all the counter - revolutionary anti - communist White forces during the Russian Civil War . As a result of press coverage of the siege of the tower , Malakhov Kurgan became a household name in Europe and many large and expensive towers in Western Europe were named after it . Among these were a number of stone mining towers in the Ruhrgebiet , the so - called caponier Fort Malakoff in Mainz , and the yellow sandstone Malakoff Tower in the city of Luxembourg . In addition , the Malakoff cake was named after Duke of Malakoff , as was a cheese dish in parts of Switzerland . In France , the battle was officially commemorated in a rare way : apart from the Battle of Magenta ( in the Italian Campaign ) , it was the only one of Emperor Napoleon III Bonaparte ' s exploits to result in the awarding of a victory title ( both of ducal rank ) ; this distinction was bestowed upon Marshal Pélissier . A suburb of Paris was also named after this battle , as well as the Avenue de Malakoff . Malakhov Kurgan , where it was fought , now contains the Eternal Fire , commemorating the Siege of Sevastopol ( 1942 ) . A branch of Franz Roubaud ' s great panorama representing the battle of 1855 is also located there .