In the meantime the siege continued, Sardina took a hand in the game and sent twenty thousand men to the East. Austria had engaged in December, 1854, to defend the principalities of the Danube against Russia, and Prussia had agreed to protect Austria. Napoleon III and Queen Victoria made visits to each other at their respective capitals. All together things did not look pleasant for Alexander II.
On the night of May 22 the Russians made two sorties from Sebastopol, which were repulsed, and the Allies retorted by an expedition, destroying several military establishments and occupying the Sea of Azof, thus leaving the Russians but one base of supplies and greatly crippling their enemies. In the meantime also the Turks induced the Circassians to revolt. Finally, June 7, after all the weary months which had elapsed from the previous autumn, the French took by assault three redoubts, and on the 18th the French assailed the Malakof, while the English charged the Redan. They failed to carry these works, being repulsed with a loss of over three thousand men.
The Russians displayed a tenacious bravery and reckless intrepidity which set at naught the most strenuous efforts of the Allies to rout them from their position. They thus maintained themselves against English, French and Italians until the 10th of September, when Sebastopol fell after a siege of three hundred and thirty-six days. The last twenty-eight days of the siege the Russians lost eighteen thousand men. A million and a half bullets, bombs, shells and grenades had been thrown into the town. The French had dug fifty miles of trenches and over four thousand feet of mines before one bastion alone. They had pushed their lines to one hundred feet of the Malakof.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
