During this day Colonel Todleben was occupied in considering how to meet the attack which he says was expected on the north side. As we have seen, he took a view of the prospect which was entirely unreasonable. He considered the case of 60,000 men, protected from the assault of an equal number by fortifications and heavy artillery, as absolutely desperate. In his book he blames the other 60,000 for not sweeping them off the face of the earth. He communicated his forebodings to Admiral Korniloff, who took command on that side on the 24th, and who made preparations to defend the Star Fort and the adjacent ground in a spirit of absolute despair. But on the 25th the march of the Allied Armies along the Mackenzie heights was discerned from the Naval Library, which occupied a very lofty position in the city. Thereupon all doubt was at an end, the garrison was concentrated on the south side, and the preparation for the long struggle began.
The strength of the garrison was thus : six militia
86 Strength of the Garrison of Sebastopol.
battalions, 4500 ; gunners at the coast batteries, 2700 marines, 2600; seamen of the fleet, 18,500; workmen, 5000; the Taroutine battalion of MenschikofFs army left in the town, 750 ; marine battalions landed from the fleet, 1800 — total 35,850 men. The Russian sailors were habitually drilled and organised as soldiers in addition to their proper duties, in consideration that (as now happened) the fleets might easily be shut in by a powerful enemy. These men were therefore excellent for their purpose, and could also supply an immense number of trained gunners for the heavy artillery which armed the works. The workmen also, being in Government employ, had received military training, and a very large proportion of the whole force was particularly valuable, far more so than ordinary troops, for constructing works, for handling. the machines used in moving and mounting heavy guns, in fact, for the business of creating a fortress.
Lieut-Colonel Todleben, henceforth the inspiring genius of the defence, was thirty-six years old, in the fullest vigour of body and mind. Educated at the military college at St Petersburg, he had been trained and commissioned as an engineer. He had just been employed in the siege of Silistria, and when that was abandoned, had been sent to Sebastopol, strongly recommended to Menschikoff. Placed at first on the general staff, he had begun to act as chief engineer when the invasion was imminent. On the 1/j.th September he had added the earthworks already mentioned to the Star Fort, and, a few days later, took
An Assault desperate without Siege G^lns. 89
charge of the defences of the South Side. These had been traced, and partially executed, years before. Loopholed walls of stone and earthen batteries formed a continuous line round the town itself, from the sea to the great ravine, and these he had begun to strengthen. On the other section of the line, extending from the great ravine to the harbour, he had raised extensive batteries on the sites of the Redan, the Little Redan, and the Bastion No. i, close to Careenage Bay. The Malakoff Tower was semi-circular, of stone, five feet thick, fifty feet in diameter, twenty-eight feet high, prepared for musketry, and having five guns on the top ; it was covered at the foot by a slope of earth, but was not yet surrounded with works. These constituted, on the 26th September, very formidable defences against an assault, and were daily growing stronger. The whole line was armed, by that date, with 172 pieces of ordnance, many very heavy, and in great part overwhelmingly superior to field-artillery.
The reader has now before him the means of determining the question whether the Allies were wrong in not at once proceeding to assault the place. It is said that Sir George Cathcart strongly advised it, though it appears that his opinion was formed on too incomplete a view of the enemy's works, and was greatly modified afterwards. What is more surprising is that Todleben is found to maintain, in his official narrative, that Sebastopol could not have been defended against an assault in the last days of September. It must be remembered that part only of the Allied Army could
90 Todleben's View accounted for.