Siege of Sevastopol (1854-1855): The Crimean War's Long Siege

The Siege of Sevastopol (1854-1855) was the central campaign of the Crimean War. British, French, Ottoman and later Piedmontese forces besieged Russia’s main Black Sea naval base for about eleven months, from October 1854 to September 1855. It became a grinding contest of trenches, artillery and disease that foreshadowed the sieges of later wars, and it ended when the French stormed the Malakoff and the Russians withdrew.

Background

Sevastopol, on the south-western tip of the Crimean Peninsula, had been founded in 1783 as the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. By 1854 its sea defences were strong, but its landward side to the south was protected by only incomplete fortifications.

Allied armies landed north of the city in September 1854 and won the Battle of the Alma on 20 September. Instead of attacking the northern defences, they marched around to the south and set up supply bases at Balaclava (British) and Kamiesch (French). This gave the Russians precious time.

To block the harbour mouth, the Russians scuttled several of their own warships in late September. Their crews and naval guns were moved onto the land defences. Under the energetic direction of Vice-Admiral Vladimir Kornilov and the military engineer Lieutenant-Colonel Eduard Totleben, soldiers, sailors and townspeople dug a ring of earthwork bastions, trenches and batteries in a matter of weeks.

The first bombardment and the winter

The allies opened their first great bombardment on 17 October 1854. Russian guns answered effectively, a French magazine exploded, and the allied fleets that joined the bombardment suffered damage. The hoped-for assault did not follow. Kornilov was mortally wounded that day on the Malakoff hill.

The Russian field army tried to break the siege from outside, at Balaclava on 25 October and at the Battle of Inkerman on 5 November. Both attacks failed, but they convinced the allies that they could not storm the city before winter.

The winter of 1854-1855 was brutal for besiegers and besieged alike. British soldiers in the trenches suffered terribly from cold, hunger and disease, while the French, better organised and supplied, fared somewhat better. Inside the city, defenders lived under constant bombardment. Soldiers on the most exposed bastions were rotated frequently, because few could endure the shelling for long. Women of the city, including the nurse Dasha Sevastopolskaya, carried water, food and bandages to the lines, and the Sisters of Mercy worked with the surgeon Nikolai Pirogov in overcrowded dressing stations.

Russian reinforcements and supplies could still reach the city from the north, because the allies never fully surrounded it. This was a siege in name, but in practice it was a struggle between two entrenched armies, each fed from outside. Its outcome depended as much on supply lines and stamina as on any single assault.

Trench warfare

In 1855 the siege turned into a methodical engineering contest. The allies pushed zigzag trenches, called saps, ever closer to the Russian works. The Russians replied with counter-batteries, night raids and advanced rifle pits. Both sides dug mines and countermines.

The key positions were the Russian bastions. The French faced the western defences, including the Flagstaff Bastion (the Fourth Bastion), and later took over the sector facing the Malakoff on the eastern side. The British faced the Great Redan (the Third Bastion) in the centre. A railway built from Balaclava from February 1855 helped bring guns and ammunition to the siege lines. A telegraph line, and later an undersea cable across the Black Sea, linked the allied headquarters with London and Paris, allowing politicians to send instructions, and complaints, to their generals within hours.

On 7 June 1855 the French captured the Mamelon, an advanced Russian work in front of the Malakoff. But on 18 June, the anniversary of Waterloo, simultaneous French and British assaults on the Malakoff and the Redan were driven back with heavy losses. The British commander, Lord Raglan, died of illness ten days later.

Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, the hero of the defence, was mortally wounded by a sniper’s bullet on the Malakoff in July 1855. On 16 August a Russian attempt to relieve the city was defeated at the Chernaya River, where Piedmontese troops fought alongside the French.

The fall of the city

In early September the allies began a final, massive bombardment. At midday on 8 September 1855, French troops under General Patrice de MacMahon rushed the Malakoff from trenches dug only metres away and captured it. MacMahon is credited with the defiant words “J’y suis, j’y reste” (“Here I am, here I stay”), though the attribution is uncertain.

The British assault on the Redan failed once again. But with the Malakoff lost, the Russian commander, Prince Mikhail Gorchakov, judged the southern side of the city indefensible. That night his troops crossed the harbour to the northern side by a pontoon bridge, blowing up magazines, forts and their remaining ships behind them.

Allied troops entered the ruined city on 9 September. Over the following months engineers blew up its docks. The northern side remained in Russian hands until the end of the war.

Key people

Eduard Totleben (1818-1884), a Baltic German engineer, became famous across Europe for his improvised but highly effective earthworks. Pavel Nakhimov (1802-1855), victor of the Battle of Sinope in 1853, was revered by his sailors and remains one of Russia’s best-known naval heroes. Aimable Pélissier (1794-1864), French commander-in-chief from May 1855, pressed the siege aggressively and was made Duke of Malakoff. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), then a young artillery officer, drew on his service in the city for his Sevastopol Sketches.

Consequences and legacy

The fall of Sevastopol did not end the war at once, but together with an Austrian ultimatum it persuaded Tsar Alexander II to negotiate. The Treaty of Paris in March 1856 banned Russian warships from the Black Sea.

Losses were enormous on both sides, though figures vary between sources. Each side suffered casualties numbering in the tens of thousands from fighting alone, and disease killed many more. The siege’s trenches, constant shelling and use of rifled weapons anticipated warfare in the American Civil War and the First World War.

In Russia, the “first defence” of Sevastopol became a national epic. The city’s Panorama museum displays Franz Roubaud’s huge painting of the battle of 18 June 1855, completed in 1904. Sevastopol was besieged again, by German and Romanian forces, in the Siege of Sevastopol (1941-1942).

Timeline

• 1854, 20 September: The allies win the Battle of the Alma north of Sevastopol.
• 1854, late September: The Russians scuttle ships to block the harbour entrance.
• 1854, 17 October: The first allied bombardment; Kornilov is mortally wounded.
• 1854, 5 November: A Russian attack is repulsed at Inkerman.
• 1855, 7 June: The French capture the Mamelon.
• 1855, 18 June: Allied assaults on the Malakoff and the Redan fail.
• 1855, July: Admiral Nakhimov is mortally wounded.
• 1855, 8 September: The French storm the Malakoff; the British attack on the Redan fails.
• 1855, 9 September: Allied troops enter southern Sevastopol after the Russian withdrawal.

Why it matters

The Siege of Sevastopol decided the Crimean War and showed the growing power of earthworks, artillery and industrial supply in modern warfare. It also became a defining memory for Russians, Britons and French alike, shaping national myths and literature for generations.