Thus that movement of expansion to which Russia had been impelled during four centuries, and which by conquest after conquest, due either to diplomacy or the sword, had made Russian power the bugbear of Europe, finds itself suddenly arrested. “Republican or Cossack,” was the famous prognostic of Napoleon.[c]
The immense superiority of the marines belonging to the allies made it possible to attack Russia on every sea. They bombarded the military port of Odessa on the Black Sea (April 22nd, 1854), but respected the city and the commercial port; the Russian establishments in the Caucasus had been burned by the Russians themselves. They blockaded Kronstadt on the Baltic, landed on the islands of Åland, and took the fortress of Bomarsund (August 16th, 1854).[f]
THE TAKING OF BOMARSUND
This fight had lasted from four in the morning until four in the evening, when the allies saw a white flag over the tower battlements. The commander asked an armistice of two hours, which was granted. He recommenced firing before the interval was over. The French batteries overthrew the armaments, whilst the Vincennes chasseurs acting as free-shooters attacked the cannoneers. Resistance ceased towards evening and the tower yielded at three o’clock in the morning. One officer and thirty men were made prisoners. On Monday no notice was taken of provocation from the fortress, but preparations were made for the morrow.
On the morning of August 15th the English attacked the north tower. In six hours three of their large cannon had been able to pierce the granite and make a breach of twenty feet. The north tower was not long in surrendering; four English and two French vessels directed their fire on the large fortress. A white flag was hoisted on the rampart nearest the sea. Two officers of the fleet were sent to the governor, who said, “I yield to the marine.” This officer had only a few dead and seventy wounded, but smoke poured in through the badly constructed windows, bombs burst in the middle of the fortress, without mentioning the carbine fire of the free-shooters. A longer resistance was useless.[g]
In 1855 the Russians bombarded Sveaborg. The allies attacked the fortified monastery of Solovetski, in the White Sea, and in the sea of Okhotsk they blockaded the Siberian ports, destroyed the arsenals of Petropavlovsk, and disturbed the tranquillity of the Russians on the river Amur.
Menaced by the Austrian concentration in Transylvania, and by the landing of English and French troops at Gallipoli and Varna, the Russians made a last and vain attempt to gain possession of Silistria, which they had held in a state of siege from April to July at the cost of a great number of men. In the Dobrudja an expedition directed by the French was without result from a military point of view, the soldiers being thinned out by cholera and paludal fevers. The Russians decided to evacuate the principalities, which were at once occupied by the Austrians in accord with Europe and the sultan. The war on the Danube was at an end.
THE SEAT OF WAR TRANSFERRED TO THE CRIMEA (1854 A.D.)
The war in the Crimea was just about to commence.[f] Siege-trains were ordered from England and France, transports were prepared, and other preparations were gradually made. But the cholera attacked both the armies and the fleets, which for two months lay prostrate under this dreadful scourge.
In the Black Sea, meantime, the preparations for the Crimean expedition were pressed forward with greater energy in proportion as the cholera abated. But many successive delays occurred. Originally the invading force was to have sailed on the 15th of August; then the 20th was the day; then the 22nd; then the 26th; then the 1st of September (by which time the French siege-train would have arrived at Varna); then the 2nd of September. At length all was ready; and 58,000, out of 75,000 men, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, were embarked at Baltjik on the 7th. The French numbered 25,000, the English the same; and there was a picked corps of about 8,000 Turks. In a flotilla of between two and three hundred vessels, this first and much larger part of the united army were transported up the coast to Fidonisi, or the Island of Serpents; from which point to Cape Tarkhan, in the Crimea, they would make both the shortest and the most sheltered passage. Being reviewed and found all ready at Fidonisi, the armada took its second departure on the 11th, and reached without accident the destined shore on the 14th. On that day the troops were landed prosperously at “Old Fort,” some twenty miles beyond Eupatoria, or Koslov, within four or five easy days’ march from Sebastopol. Upon this great fortress the columns were at once directed; while the transports returned in haste to fetch the reserves, amounting to about 15,000 men.