THE FALL OF SEBASTOPOL.
It is nearly a year since we were first startled by the announcement that Sebastopol had fallen. But that news proved false, and ever since the public ear has been opened to catch the announcement of the news of the great feat which two of the mightiest nations of the Old World had combined their utmost power to accomplish. It has come at last; superior power and skill have carried the day, as we have never doubted they would, and Sebastopol has fallen.
The contest on which the eyes of Europe have been turned so long is nearly decided—the event on which the hopes of so many mighty empires depended is all but determined. And one more great act of carnage has been added to the tremendous, but glorious tragedy, of which the whole world, from the most civilized nations down to the most barbarous hordes of the East, has been the anxious and excited audience.
At dawn on the morning of the 5th of September, 1855, the expected bombardment commenced on a scale of unprecedented magnitude. The last and decisive cannonade was begun on Wednesday by the French, who exploded three fougasses to blow in the counterscarp, and to serve as a signal to their men. Instantly from the sea to the Dockyard creek there was seen to run a stream of fire, and fleecy, curling, rich white smoke, as though the earth had suddenly been rent in the throes of an earthquake, and was vomiting forth the material of her volcanoes. The lines of the French trenches were at once covered as though the very clouds of heaven had settled down upon them and were whirled about in spiral jets, in festoons, in clustering bunches, in columns and in sheets, all commingled, involved together by the vehement flames beneath.
After two hours and a half of furious fire, the artillery-men suddenly ceased, in order to let their guns cool and to rest themselves. The Russians crept out to repair the damages to their works, and shook sandbags full of earth from the parquette over the outside of their parapets.
At 10 o’clock, however, the French reöpened a fire, if possible, more rapid and tremendous than their first, and continued to keep it up with the utmost vigor till 12 o’clock at noon, by which time the Russians had only a few guns in the Flagstaff road and Garden Batteries in a position to reply. From 12 to 5 o’clock P. M., the firing was slack; the French then resumed their cannonade with the same astounding vigor as at dawn and at 10 o’clock, and never ceased their volleys of shot and shell against the place till 7 1/2, when darkness set in, and all the mortars and heavy guns, English as well as French, opened with shell against the whole line of defences.
A description of this scene is impossible. There was not one instant in which the shells did not whistle through the air—not a moment in which the sky was not seamed by their fiery curves or illuminated by their explosion.