The firing was so heavy that it was distinctly heard for a distance of sixty-two miles. Under this fusillade the Russian bastions crumbled, bomb-proofs were smashed, and their gunners fell by hundreds while serving their pieces. The garrison was so hard pressed that they had no longer time to repair breaches made by the batteries. As many as seventy thousand projectiles were fired into the town in a single day. Finally, on the 8th of September, the batteries suddenly ceased firing at twelve o'clock, and the French threw themselves on the Malakof, gaining a lodgment and holding their positions in spite of all efforts to drive them out. Sebastopol was no longer tenable and the following day the evacuation began, the Russians burning and blowing up everything in their rear, retreating to the north side of the harbor.
Russia did not yet, however, seem ready to submit, and the Emperor Alexander encouraged bravery in his troops by staying with the army. But it could no longer be disguised that Russia must have peace. The war had cost 250,000 men, the banks paid only in paper money, and the public refused that of the government. Public credit was at the lowest ebb. Finally a Congress was called to meet at Paris on the 25th of February, 1856.
France, England, Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, Turkey and Russia were parties to it. A peace was signed on the 30th of March following, by the terms of which Russia renounced her exclusive right of protection over the Danubian Principalities, and all interference with their internal affairs. The free navigation on the Danube was to be secured by the establishment of a Commission in which all the contracting parties should be represented. Each of them should have the right to station two sloops of war at the mouth of the river. Russia consented to a rectification of frontiers which should leave to Turkey and Romania all the delta of the Danube; the Black Sea was made neutral and her waters opened to merchant ships of all nations, but men of war were forbidden, whether of the Powers on her coasts or of any others. No military or marine arsenals were to be created there. Russia and Turkey was bound to permit free religious privileges to his non-Mussulman subjects, but this clause was not to be construed to give the Powers the right to interfere between the Sultan and his subjects.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
