Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855)

The year-long struggle for Sevastopol, the Crimean port that housed Russia's Black Sea Fleet, was the central campaign of the Crimean War. From October 1854 to September 1855 armies of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire and later Piedmont-Sardinia besieged the city, while its defenders rebuilt their earthworks night after night under bombardment. Its fall in September 1855 sealed Russia's defeat, and the trench fighting it involved has often been seen as a foretaste of the First World War.

Allied troops came ashore at Yevpatoria, on the west coast of Crimea, on 14 September 1854, with the aim of marching quickly on Sevastopol. On 20 September an Anglo-French army under Marshal Saint-Arnaud and Lord Raglan defeated Prince Alexander Menshikov's Russians at the River Alma. Instead of storming the city at once, the allies moved round to the south, set up bases at Balaklava and elsewhere, and began digging siege lines on the uplands south of the town.

With Menshikov's field army withdrawn inland, the defence of the city fell to Vice-Admirals Vladimir Kornilov and Pavel Nakhimov and the engineer Eduard Totleben. They had a little over 35,000 men, many of them sailors, militia and workmen. The Russians sank ships across the harbour entrance to keep out the allied fleets, then took the guns ashore and turned the crews into infantry and gunners.

The first great bombardment opened on 17 October 1854. An explosion at the Malakoff redoubt killed Kornilov and opened a gap in the defences, but the allies held back their infantry, and the chance passed. An allied naval bombardment the same day did little harm to the shore forts and cost the fleets some 340 casualties. Each night the defenders repaired what had been destroyed by day, a pattern that continued for months.

Outside the lines, the Russians attacked at Balaclava on 25 October and at Inkerman on 5 November. Balaclava encouraged them, but after Inkerman they gave up hope of lifting the siege in the field and instead fed troops into the city. In late November a winter storm wrecked the allied camps and supply lines, and men and horses suffered terribly from cold, hunger and disease. Totleben strengthened the works around the Redan and the Malakoff, and both sides dug ever-closer trenches and rifle pits.

In spring 1855 a military railway from Balaclava, built by the contractors Thomas Brassey and Samuel Morton Peto, brought up hundreds of guns and plentiful ammunition. Bombardments resumed in April and continued through the summer; Nakhimov was killed by a sniper in July, and allied assaults on the Malakoff and the Great Redan in June were beaten back. In August a further battle was fought outside the lines on the Chernaya river.

The final bombardment began in early September, with the Russians reportedly losing 2,000 to 3,000 men a day. On 8 September some 60,000 allied troops went into the assault. The British attack on the Great Redan failed, but French troops under General MacMahon took the Malakoff and the Little Redan, making the city indefensible. The next morning the Russians abandoned the southern side of Sevastopol.

Figures vary between sources. The totals given in one compilation put allied deaths from all causes at over 128,000, with disease killing far more men than combat; French losses alone included perhaps 50,000 deaths from disease. Russian losses are commonly given as around 102,000 killed, wounded and dead of disease. Most of the Russian dead were buried in mass graves in the city's Brotherhood Cemetery, and the admirals Kornilov, Nakhimov and Istomin were laid to rest in St Vladimir's Cathedral.

Our 1815 and 1878 maps show Sevastopol and Crimea within the Russian Empire, with the Ottoman Empire across the Black Sea.