(This article was originally published in the Crimean War Society's journal, "The War Correspondent"part one, pp. 46-49, volume XXIII, N.1, April 2005; part two, pp. 11-14, volume XXIII, N.2, July 2005; part three, pp. 11-16, volume XXIII, N.3, October 2005; and part three, pp. 9-10, volume XXIII, N.4, January 2006

The Crimean War: a conflict that harkened to the past or opened vistas to the military-political trends of the future? This question has been debated by historians for nearly a century, with varying conclusions. Telegraphic communications, ironclads, rail and steamship transportation, electrically and chemically fused land and undersea mines, these were certainly features which in their magnitude and character distinguished the Crimean War from earlier conflicts. The materiel and paraphernalia of war had evidently undergone a great change since the last great European war. And yet, a great significance might be attached to a much more intangible, yet no less important elements which had not witnessed substantive modification: the mentalities and attitudes reflected in the tactical, operational, and strategic thought of the belligerents.

THE ALMA: TACTICAL IMPACT OF THE RIFLE That being said, the contributions of the rifle during the campaign are all the more remarkable. The victory at the Alma could not have been won without it. Even though Soviet and Russian authors have often portrayed the battle of the Alma as a one-sided struggle of 70,000 supremely well-armed Allies with overwhelming naval support crushing a poorly led Russian army numbering some 35,000, a considered analysis clearly rejects such a premise. The Allied forces actually taking part in the fighting were a fraction of those available: a fourth of the British contingent, a third of the French, none of the Turkish took part. Moreover, the actual contribution of naval gunfire to the Allied success was extremely minor—as first-hand Russian accounts testify. Finally, Allied generalship was quite as mediocre as the Russian if not, indeed, worse.

Where one-sidedness actually lay, however, is in the enormous punishment meted out by the British and French rifles on the Russians. As contemporary accounts from both sides make clear, every attempted Russian counter-attack in the center or on the seaward flank was bloodily repulsed by fire alone; in some cases long before the Russian infantry even got close enough to use its muskets, let alone its bayonets. The dense Russian battalion columns, even one verst (1.067 km) distant from their aggressors began to lose men from Allied rifle fire. Quite as lethal was the fire of the Allied rifles liquidating Russian officers—all three principal Russian leaders, Kiriakov on the left, Kvezinski in the center, and Menshikov the overall commander were either unhorsed or wounded—along with great numbers of artillerymen and artillery draught-horses.

But the Allies too suffered from poor tactics. The long, slow and clumsy deployed lines Reille and De Lorencez had seen at Chobham in 1853 had certainly contributed to assuring heavy casualties to the British in the center, particularly after fording the Alma, where the delays consequent to reforming and dressing lines exposed the troops to a galling, punishing fire. The French commanders on the right wing too, though faring better and initially profiting from a greater degree of tactical flexibility and swiftness as their light troops unexpectedly appeared on the heights, insisted on preserving an ordre mixte formation of column and line, leaving most of the real fighting to the thick skirmishing lines of the Zouaves.

A French officer of the Zouaves leaves a rare account of what ideal infantry tactics—that is, maneuvers and formations designed to maximize the potential of new rifled arms--in 1854 represented: “I make the different squads advance by successive bounds, making them shelter as far possible in folds of terrain, all the while directing a very lively fire on the batteries and battalions of artillery posted at close range. Luckily for us, these heavy masses don’t think to deploy themselves; they continue to move off at their normal pace, suffering our fire without slowing or accelerating their movement; also, their concentrated fire produce little effect on our thin extended lines, while with our precision carbines the greater part of our bullets strikes these deep columns and wreaks havoc in their ranks.”

The Russians themselves, had little doubt as to what had precipitated their defeat: the rifles. The account of the battle by Menshikov published in the official Russian army journal Ruski Invalid is quite emphatic in alluding to the rifles and cylindro-conical bullets of the Allies as a chief reason for the reverse. Of course, material and technical inferiority were convenient alibis to Menshikov, whose handling of the engagement had been less than exemplary. Yet a comparison of the losses, of the corresponding rates of mortality between the Allies and the Russians leaves little doubt: despite the limitations of fatigue, lack of cavalry, lack of familiarity of terrain, prepared Russian positions, the severe liability naturally resulting from exceptionally poor coordination between Saint-Arnaud and Raglan, and the traditional strength of the defensive, the battle had been won handily. And the decisive factor in this outcome had been the rifle.

The relative magnitude of losses at the Alma evidently reflect the rifle’s superiority—as well as the relative proportions of rifles within the contending armies. With approximately 30,000 men actually engaged in battle, the Russians lost some 5,700 men hors de combat as against approximately 4,300 out of a combined total of something like 27,000 for the Allies, but it is especially in the numbers killed that the deadliness of the English and French fire emerges: 1,867 Russians killed as opposed to 494 Allies, the logical sequel of a confrontation of 1,700 Russian rifles faced by 15,000 Miniés and some 8,000 carabines à tige…

RUSSIA’S RIFLE SHORTAGE Nicholas I lost no time in drawing the conclusions of the defeat. Here again, the nature of the remedies sought leave no doubt as to what the Russians rightly considered to be their Achilles’ heel: rifled arms.

The situation was indeed catastrophic. No longer could an army afford to wage war, as Napoléon’s Grande Armée had, in studious disregard of technological advances. As recently as 1 January 1853, the total rifles of the entire Russian army had only amounted to 6,198, as opposed to 532, 835 smoothbore muskets; an appallingly low figure for a force numbering well in excess of half a million soldiers…

That the French army was to some degree aware of these problems is reflected in contemporary intelligence reports. Already in the wake of the Russian intervention in Hungary, a report signaled that the “…armament of the Russian infantry and cavalry leaves much to be desired. The arms are crudely made and very badly maintained.” A report from the attaché of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Saint –Petersburg, Henri Recquard, dated 11 July 1853, provides further detail. According to Recquard, in reality there exist two Russian armies: a first-line elite force with a nominal strength of 114,000 men, and another, second-rate ‘sedentary’ force numbering some 400 or 500 thousand. Recquard adds that although the newer percussion muskets appear to be of good quality, the infantry fires without aiming; a deficiency that is being addressed by the creation of ‘model regiments’ destined to furnish officers charged with gunnery instruction.

The picture that emerges from a review of the Russian initiatives to redress its infantry’s deficiency in modern small arms is in many ways an enlightening one, challenging the common perception of Nicholas I’s regime as creakingly inefficient. Though there could be no doubt as to the absolutist nature of the Russian empire under the first Nicholas, this very fact could at times lend its government a measure of dynamism unknown in France or Great Britain (whose more democratic governments were often hamstrung by maladministration), especially in view of the intimate personal knowledge and implication of the Tsar in the technical details of military armaments. Indeed, as the many memoranda and marginal notes made by the emperor himself testify, Nicholas I possessed a grasp of the technical issues that quite surpassed the superficial dilettantism of a Napoleon III who, after the publication of a multi-volume history of artillery, fancied himself something of an expert in the field.

The Russian measures were multi-facetted, incorporating short and long term solutions. One immediate step—which incidentally serves as an index to the Army’s desperation in the wake of the crushing defeat at the Alma--was to attempt to recruit hunters into the army. Significantly, the notice published in Russki Invalid stated that the hunters—primarily from the Gubernii of Novgorod, Archangel, and Vologodosk--would initially be armed with their own rifles. As a signal mark of the Empire’s eagerness in bolstering the numbers of riflemen, these new recruits would even be allowed to retain their beards.

In the longer term, however, the challenges confronting Nicholas I’s efforts to redress his infantry’s inferior firepower vis à vis the Allies were daunting. And while the most obvious problem was the lack of the rifles themselves, as the French had learned in Algeria, no less serious was the question of how to train men and commanders in using them effectively.

More rifles were needed, but these rifles also required relatively sophisticated sights, ammunition, and bullet molds. Given the Allied embargo of Russia’s ports, Austria’s armed neutrality and Prussia’s ambiguous position—and notwithstanding great efforts to circumvent the blockade as far afield as the United States of America--there was little likelihood of the Tsar’s enormous appetite for modern rifles being satisfied from abroad.

So the bulk of Russia’s rifles would have to come from its own manufactories, of which there were three: Sestroresk, Izhevsk, and the largest, Tula. But Russia’s arms manufactories were ill prepared to respond to the urgent need for rifles. Although very heavily staffed by French or British standards--Tula had a labor force numbering over 3,500—the Russian small arms factories were notably inefficient. Indeed, the productivity of one Russian arms worker at Tula in this time may have been as low as 5.49 weapons produced per annum—a paltry level when compared to the 44.28 that workers at the government manufactories in the U.S. were achieving, let alone the 100 to 120 that workers at Colt’s private factory were producing, or even the 17 to 25 per annum average of workers in the various French state manufactures…

What were the reasons behind Russia’s arms manufacture incapacity? To begin with, much of the difficulty undoubtedly lay with the labor force: many Russian arms factory workers were serfs—albeit of an especially ‘privileged’ caste. Aside from this, Russian arms manufactories during the Crimean War still relied overwhelmingly on water wheels for power generation—some of these installations dating from the 1750s. Although rebuilt and re-equipped following disastrous fires in the 1820s and 1840s, the Russians were slow to adopt steam engines, which left their hydraulic generators vulnerable to disruption during the winter months…Precision machine tools were also lacking to a large extent.

Another weakness affecting Russian arms production was a shortage of good steel; this lack of steel was particularly damning where rifles were concerned, as the soft Russian iron caused from 90% to 60% of the barrels to fail proofing. /p>

In the case of bullet molds too, metallurgical difficulties were severe: the soft metal Russian molds lost their caliber and consistency under the heavy use they were subjected to. As a result, the bullets produced by the molds were no longer of the correct size, so that they became either unusable or dangerous.

Beyond all of this existed pervasive problems of what, in modern terms, would be termed ‘quality control.’ Delivered weapons, sights, and ammunition consistently betrayed very high rates of defectiveness. Sometimes, as in the case of weapons delivered from Warsaw, the cause may well have been sabotage, but more often it appears simply to have been the result of carelessness and poor tooling, along with that of the wartime pressure to dramatically boost production.

In spite of these many obstacles, Russia made a notable effort, especially in the scale and ingeniousness of its measures. An intermediate disposition to palliate Russia’s deficiency in rifles and to offer, if nothing else, at least a slight moral palliative, was to introduce the Nessler bullet for use in the Russian infantry’s smoothbore muskets.

While it had long been believed that Russian knowledge of the Nessler had only come after the capture of a French soldier at Sevastopol, documentation found in the ?????? archives of the Artillery Museum at Saint-Petersburg proves otherwise. A Russian agent operating in Belgium had obtained two specimens of the secret French bullet, which he stated “…is for the use of smoothbore muskets. This invention augments the ordinary range of these weapons, whose inferiority is today generally recognized.”

By early December 1854, in the wake of battles where the Russians had again and again been bloodily confronted with the reality of the rifle’s superiority, the Nessler bullet began to be produced and issued to Russian troops around Sevastopol.

Indeed, toward the end of that same month, Prince Menshikov was already reporting that “The fire of our weapons lately is very effective, thanks to the use of the elongated hollow long range bullet. This success has brought our skirmishers much satisfaction. We are trying by all means to produce these bullets in as large quantities as possible.”

The following month, Baron Osten-Sacken, the new commandant of the Sevastopol garrison, reiterated the favorable opinion of the new Nessler bullet (of which some 20 thousand were being cast daily in the regiments): “The new tige bullet tested by the garrison forces reveals itself as remarkably effective, causing no damage to the guns. The soldiers are enthusiastic about its long range and with unusual will are undertaking gunnery practice. Prisoners taken from the enemy report that they have already noted a change in our armament and that our fire has become much more effective.”

While there may have been a trace of hyperbole and optimism in these reports, there is no doubt that the Nessler bullet could achieve ballistic performances notably superior to that of the common spherical bullet heretofore employed in the smoothbore musket. The hollow cylindrical projectile achieved initial velocities of 370 metres per second and, thanks to its superior aerodynamics retained much of this speed downrange. In Russian trials, the Nessler bullet was able to score hit percentages of 44% on company-sized targets at 350 meters, and 20% at 500 meters. Penetration was equally impressive, often piercing 50 millimeters at the first distance, and 25 millimeters or more at the second—more than sufficient disabling power. Admittedly the targets were large—but nevertheless, the performances were outstanding for smoothbore muskets, considering that these weapons, when firing the spherical bullet, normally only scored 3 to 4% hits at more than 300 meters, and possessed no useful accuracy or power beyond 400 meters.

It remained, however, that with the pronounced curvature of the Nessler bullet, the musket, like the rifle-musket, required sights for effective fire beyond its point-blank range of circa 200 meters. But the Russian authorities in this respect proved themselves markedly more active than the French, instituting a crash programme to provide sights to be fitted to the army’s M1845 percussion smoothbores.

While a quite sophisticated movable sight based on a Hessian design had been adopted as early as 1847 for the Russian army’s two-groove rifles, and in 1852 for the multi-grooved rifles, a simplified design was chosen for the smoothbore so as to reduce the cost and speed the rhythm of conversion. Many of the conversions were carried out at the arsenal of Simferopol, the facilities closest to the Crimean theater. Unfortunately, given the haste of the operation and the lack of qualified personnel, neither the pace nor the quality of production appear to have been satisfactory.

The production of the Nessler ammunition proved to be another difficulty for the Russian army. Not only was the production of the bullet molds difficult and slow—primarily due to the complex hollow pattern of the Nessler bullet--, but the molds themselves seem to have been defective in many cases, due to the relative softness of the metal from which they were made. Under heavy use, the molds tended to enlarge and distort, and the resulting castings deviated in shape and weight from the standard. Consequently, many finished bullets proved too large, sometimes proving too large to even be loaded, or quickly leading to potentially explosive plugging.

The final evaluation of the Nessler in Russian use therefore is a mixed one; while the new bullet could bring a substantial improvement in the smoothbore musket’s firepower, in practice these advantages were mitigated by supply and quality problems. In the meantime, Russian efforts to address the penury in rifles had encountered a similarly ambiguous result. By the summer of 1855, the Russian Crimean Army’s situation with respect to rifled arms was still abysmal: inventory returns from the arsenals of Simferopol and Kherson tally quite closely in suggesting that between 92 and 93 percent of Russian infantrymen were still armed with the smoothbore musket, while of the remainder 6 to 7 percent were armed with captured Allied rifles and only 1 percent were armed with Russian rifles.

It was paradoxically only as the war was ending and operations were at a virtual standstill, that the proportion of rifled arms in the Russian Crimean army showed modest improvement, with the overall proportion of rifles reaching some 14 percent, of which only some 10 percent, however, were of the more modern types. Still, despite this significant progress, 9 percent—including regulars from the 8th, 9th, and 10th infantry divisions--were still armed with flintlocks.

RIFLES IN THE TRENCHES As it did in the war as whole, the rifle at Sevastopol played a major role, shaping the fighting and pointing to the nature of future conflict. Initially, as at the Alma and at Inkerman, the preponderance and quality of the Allied rifles told heavily against the Russians. But, as time wore on, the Russians, by dint of ingenuity and perseverance, were also able to put to use the rifle’s power in a defensive role, and the struggle became more even and—more deadly.

Perhaps the most important Russian reaction to the revelation of the rifle’s devastating power was the use on an ever-growing basis of the ‘Rifle Pits’, or what the French in a more picturesque phrase termed the ‘Trous de Loups.’ Let down by the musket, the Russians now applied the spade—and to good effect. Limiting the vulnerability of their soldiers to Allied rifles and artillery alike, it also allowed them to make the best use of what few rifles they themselves possessed.

Already in November 1854, two Russian lieutenants of the light infantry at Sevastopol, Astapov and Perekomski, had taken the initiative to move forward from the city’s enceinte and excavate a few small shelters. Holding up to three soldiers and supplemented by obstacles and small parapets extemporized from heaps of rock or heaped-up earth, these first field works were of a quite modest character, but nonetheless, their appearance precipitated other developments. Reacting to the heightened activity of the Allied light troops these first lodgments had brought, the Russians multiplied their number, enabling them to support each other. But, this last expedient proving only partially effective, the Russians began connecting individual rifle pits into what they called ‘deep trenches’, larger continuous shelters holding from twenty to forty soldiers featuring better protection. The appearance of these improvised fortifications was, in of itself nothing new—except for the addition of a single element.

The difference here was that the rifle—by virtue of its powerful, long-range aimed fire—was an ‘intelligent’ weapon which, in combination with the protection afforded by the rifle pit or trench created a potent combination. The rifle’s accuracy meant it was no longer necessary to concentrate masses of men in order to amass an appreciable amount of firepower. Delivering this firepower with exactitude, and power at long ranges—hitting sappers, gunners, and, especially, commanders—a handful of marksmen could—and did--singularly complicate siege warfare.

This development should not have come as a surprise to the participants, as some authorities had already predicted that the advent of effective military rifles would impact siege operations. As early as 1851, colonel Boucheron of the French army clearly envisaged the possible impact of the new rifles only then beginning to enter service: “In the defence of fortresses, the task of forcing the attacker to substitute in his final approaches the full sap to the flying sap is poorly fulfilled by the infantry musket whose range is sufficient for the 250 meters of the fortification lines. But to strike the officers and the gunners, it is necessary to possess a weapon superior in precision. The Delvigne wall piece of 1842 [ fusil de rempart à chambre mod. 1842] had already taken a great step towards this question, when the trials made of the tige rifles and conical bullets resolved it. It has been possible to produce weapons as handy as the infantry musket whose average dispersion at 600 metres is of 60 centimetres and which consequently combine the required qualities of precision and range.” As Boucheron succinctly puts it, “The usage of the rifle is thus eminently defensive.” At the same time it must be remembered that the rifle-musket of the Crimean War, its power and long reach notwithstanding, was an arm that demanded considerable skill in its use.

“Nothing is more difficult than the estimation of distances; nothing is so deceiving as the eye, and neither practice nor instruments can succeed in rendering it infallible. At Sevastopol, during two months, a distance of 1000 to 1200 metres was impossible to determine with the carbine, given the impossibility of determining hits. For three months, it was impossible to determine through hits scored, even though one had followed all the graduations on the sight, the distance of this battery which, at a distance of 500 metres dominated and was separated by a ravine. After three months, one day two hits were scored with a graduation of 500 metres. This distance had been estimated by all, at more than 1000 metres and, in reality, was only 500 metres; the city taken, in changing the point of observation, the range became obvious.”

There is no gainsaying DuPicq’s demonstration that accurate fire with the large caliber rifle-muskets required a great skill and nicety in use; the adjustable sights were a necessity given the weapon’s parabolic trajectories, and the weapon’s kick with the full military powder load was a nasty one, but with patience and practice, the men could and did make effective use of them:

“I watched the range of my men’s fire and I was seeing the Russians clear out at the double. Presently, they had nothing to fear, as the bullets failed to carry. Immediately, I made them adjust the sight and then the bullets carried beautifully.”

The next logical station in the development of infantry weapons, the reduction of caliber, was to permit the use of a higher ratio of powder to projectile, thus permitting a higher velocity and a flatter trajectory. The Enfield, with a reduction to a nominal caliber of 14.6 millimeters from the Minié’s 17.8, was one first timid step in this direction that resulted in an arm that was lighter, more accurate, and also kicked less. The Enfield was thus a potentially more effective weapon than its larger caliber predecessors; but the most important factor still resided in the skill of the marksman. In friendly comparative trials between the British and French in the Crimea, the venerable carabine à tige was able to hold its own against the newer Enfield.

In spite of the severe limitations of the guns involved, the siege of Sevastopol witnesses likely the first emergence of the modern sniper. French, British, and Russian soldiers alike vie in ruses. Some Frenchmen go so far as using mannequins animated by concealed ropes to lure their adversaries into the open, while the Russians have small groups of ‘counter-snipers’ assisted by spotters. The moment Allied snipers betray their location with the tell-tale puff of white smoke from their rifles, the Russian ‘counter-snipers’ spring up from their concealed location and let off a volley.

In simplest terms, the low velocity of the rifle-musket meant that to fire at greater distances than point-blank range (which hardly exceeded 150 meters for this type of weapon), one had to progressively elevate the gun higher and higher, lobbing the projectiles in order for them to go far. And while, as Dupicq had noted, this type of ‘howitzer’ fire with rifles was difficult, it could at times present advantages. ‘Plunging fire’ as developed by Allied marksmen in the Crimea was an instance of this sort of adaptation.

But interestingly enough, this trick of the trade had quickly been forgotten by French commanders. On a mission to the Prussian army in 1863, general Bourbaki was astonished to see German soldiers practicing fire on targets hidden behind parapets: “The Prussians were led to introduce it in their training as a consequence of the assurance given them by the Russians that that which we had executed from our trenches at Sevastopol had caused their troops a great deal of harm.”

The Russians, as one might expect, were not slow to try and make use of plunging fire themselves, as a the war diary of the French corps of siege records Russian marksmen “…placed in the ditch on the right face of the Mast bastion, from whence they fire at a rather steep inclination, so as to make their bullets penetrate our trenches, but they have no success.” Evidently at this stage Russian deficiencies in material (especially moveable, graduated sights) and practice precluded their effectively employing plunging fire.

Still, as the months went on, the habitually reticent French were progressively forced to concede that the Russians, manfully and artfully, were severely impeding the progress of the besiegers—and doing so primarily through the rifle.

Illustrative of how significant this new Russian rifle-based counter-siege tactic was, is the story of ‘43’, one of the many siege batteries thrown up by the French around Sevastopol. As the Artillery Department’s war diary records: “The Russians maintaining a continual fire from Malakov to the Small Redan, and 43 finding itself more or less in the centre and at 400 metres of their line, two-thirds of the men hit during the construction of 43 were hit by bullets.” During battery 43’s construction thirty sappers were killed or wounded; and the indicated range of 400 metres indicates without any doubt that the small-arms that inflicted the casualties could only have been rifles, muskets possessing neither the precision nor the power (the report mentions one soldier having both legs pierced by the same bullet) necessary.

The sequel to this spiraling contest of guns, bullets, and wiles is not long in appearing: on one side as on the other: grievous and continuous loss. The French Surgeon-General Scrive, basing his figures on the tallies of the trench ambulances, calculated that 29.4% of wounds inflicted were to the head, with 8% to the chest, and 2% to the neck . According to Scrive: “The enormous predominance of head wounds…is also reflected in the totals of men killed in the trenches; the average always reached one killed by head wound, for every two killed by other wounds.” The Surgeon-General added with a foresight of sixty years: “This regrettable situation demonstrates to what extent it would be prudent and advantageous to equip the heads of troops engaged in a siege with a helmet impervious to bullets and shell splinters.”

Though it may seem ghoulish, there is a valid point to make in stressing the new power of the Crimean era rifles. The sheer mass of the elongated projectiles—nearly twice that of the old spherical bullet—allied to a significantly higher residual velocity—the small caliber Enfield P53’s initial velocity was on the order of 340 metres a second—resulted in fearsome power. Accounts of several men in tightly-packed ranks being pierced by the same rifle round are no exaggeration; the medical histories mention the cases of men lying prone whose bodies were traversed in full length by the conical projectiles, and large bones, which heretofore would have resisted the impact of the spherical bullet, were utterly smashed by the conical.

The surgeon Guillou of the French trench ambulance confirms and amplifies Scrive’s testimony. He furnishes the significant detail that the proportion of wounds inflicted by Russian spherical bullets is clearly lower than the proportion due to cylindrical and conical rifle bullets. This is a quite meaningful statement when one keeps in mind that rifles never armed more than a very small fraction of Russian troops.

In the meantime, practice, the arrival of the Nessler bullet along with more rifles, progressively made Russian fire more dangerous to the besiegers. The Russian marksmen or ‘Strelki’, by March 1854 even showed themselves to be effective practitioners of plunging fire, as the French Historique of the Artillery Service tells us: “…the Russians trouble our trenches and batteries with a very curved fire of musketry…the oblong bullets, arriving at steep angles plunged into our trenches and wounded men even between the traverses.” Finally, the war diary goes on to note that “This type of fire, well-directed, has importance and one can obtain from it very powerful effects in siege warfare.” The heavy and continuous use of the rifles under the deplorable conditions of trench warfare inevitably had a wearing effect on the weapons themselves. Already in February 1855 a report of the Service de l’Artillerie warned that

“a great number of the weapons of the sharpshooter companies have since the creation of the companies fired a considerable number of shots. The commanding general has grounds to believe that, in view of the observations which have been presented to him, that several, if not all, are worn and no longer comport the qualities of precision which they must possess, especially in the role they have been called upon to fulfill at this time.”

In fact, there seem to have existed two tactics and two types of armament at Sevastopol. On one side we have the light troops, whether it be the Russian ‘Plastouns’, the French ‘Enfants Perdus’, or the British Riflemen, all armed with rifles and practicing a flexible and adapted tactic. But the mass of infantry, French, Russian, or British, still employed the old methods of mass and shock. Paul Goedorp, a graduate of Saint-Cyr and lieutenant of Zouaves remarked this dichotomy, noting acerbically after one of the many failed French assaults during the bloody Spring of 1855: “They wanted to attack in close column, with shouldered arms: they were cut down”

In the blasted moonscape of Sevastopol, with trenches reinforced by abattis, steel cable, or even pressure-sensitive mines, unwieldy masses of men were terribly vulnerable, and what shock tactic proponents idealized as an ‘avalanche of bayonets’ too often degenerated into what Dupicq appropriately termed ‘a herd of sheep.’ A French night attack on the Sevastopol cemetery of 2 May 1855 illustrates the shock approach. A column made up of Lieutenant Jules-Alexandre Sancéry of the 18th line regiment and his comrades is caught in no-man’s-land and is raked by rolling two-rank Russian battalion fire. The column, surprised, its élan broken and still under fire, is forced to form line. Only after seven see-sawing attacks and withdrawals does it gain its objective: of 320 men there remain only 130.

Lieutenant Sancéry could count himself lucky; other French mass assaults were often even less fortunate. An assault later in the summer of 1855 on Russian lines littered with obstacles “…juxtaposed and very deep, dug by the Russians so as to better defend the approaches of the Courtine. General Bourbaki’s battalions, arrested in their career, took a certain time to cross… and during this time, a very lively fusillade, coming from the top of the Courtine’s parapet, made great gaps in their ranks. This gunfire annihilated two battalions almost completely…”

While the mass shock attack would remain a favored French tactic in the campaigns of 1859 and 1870, there do appear to have been instances at Sevastopol where we see the glimmering of a new method, one more effective and less prodigal in the lives of the soldiers: “The company of Lescop, first out of the parallel, dissolves into skirmishers and throws itself on the Russian rifle pits; it is greeted by point-blank gunfire, but passes. Behind it, the 1st battalion, with commander Lachapelle, advances at a run, without taking the time to form itself into column; the men under a rain of bullets, leap; they don’t even bother to deal with the forward posts that attempt to slow their progress; they have only one objective: the position.” Three important notes emerge from this account: the use of two waves, the lack of preoccupation with the preservation of a particular order, whether column or line, in the troops, and, the by-passing of the enemy’s forward defences.

Ultimately, the Allies were unable to discover an easy remedy for the deeply echeloned Russian defences at Sevastopol. A massive increase in artillery firepower in the siege batteries had been witnessed and, although in the final bombardment a veritable deluge of shells, bombs, cannon balls and musketry would rain down on the fortress, the assault of the 8th of September was without doubt marked the single bloodiest day of the entire war.

The reasons behind such bloody futility were several. To begin with, due credit must be given to the Russians for their intelligence their valor and, above all, the sisyphian labor they lavished on building and rebuilding trenches. And, there remained the technological limits of the times themselves. And lastly, but not unimportantly, the there were the limitations of tactical and operational practices themselves.

While the engineer Todleben rightfully received much praise for his handling of the counter-siege operations and his implementation of the Russian siege warfare theorist A. Z. Teliakovski’s concepts, the contribution of other commanders, most notably Khrulev, has often gone unrecognized. Indeed, it could be said that whereas Todleben was the ‘brain’ of Sevastopol’s defense, and Nakhimov its heart, the omnipresent Khrulev had been its strong arm. General Khrulev again and again demonstrated great skill in his counter-attacks. Keeping strong Russian infantry reserves back whilst holding the front lines with a minimum force during bombardments so as to reduce casualties, Khrulev timed his counterstrokes to coincide with the actual onset of the Allied assaults, often with formidable results.

Materially, it must be recognized that before the advent of H.E., in this, the age of gunpowder, the explosive potential of shells and bombs remained limited, especially in view of the sheer massivity of the Russian earthworks, which were able to absorb tremendous punishment and were easily repairable. To the material shortcomings of the explosive itself must also be added that of fusing: while all the participants made some use of percussion fusing for their shells and bombs, the majority of these projectiles still relied on very imperfect time delay ignition, which yet further reduced their effectiveness.

It is in the context of shell fusing that emerges an important yet often overlooked development of the combat in the Crimea: the advent of practical percussion fusing. The time-delayed fuses commonly used in shells and bombs at this time relied on a measured burn time that could be adjusted by adjusting the length of the fuse. This system, while simple, brought with it three basic limitations: firstly, the fuse might quite simply burn out, secondly, it might burn either too fast or too slowly and, thirdly and more commonly, the adjustment of the fuse required a nicety of calculation that was impractical. If the fuse were adjusted for too short a delay, the projectile would detonate before reaching its target; if the fuse were adjusted for too long a delay, the projectile would reach its target without exploding, allowing the enemy to extinguish it—a hazardous adventure that nevertheless repeated itself again and again in the Crimea,

The percussion fuse—at least in theory—obviated most of the time fuse’s drawbacks. It would detonate on impact through the ignition of a pressure-sensitive chemical preparation, irrespective of the range of fire or time of flight. With this surety of action, percussion fused projectiles endowed artillery with new efficacy. The history of the French artillery in the Crimea written by General Auger plainly admits that : “The fire of Russian projectiles with fuses of the English system [percussion fuses] almost always produced great damage and they were greatly feared.” The entries in the daily journal maintained by the French corps de siège also attest to this fact, and it is also noted that these percussion-fused shells and bombs were used in counter-battery fire as well as against the trenches, greatly complicating the progress of the French besiegers.

Individual accounts confirm the effectiveness of Russian percussion-fused shells and bombs. The battalion of lieutenant Sancéry lost 85 men killed or wounded during May 1855 alone, most of them due to the explosion of devices of this type—including two of the French officer’s friends, who were literally pulverized before his eyes.

Tactical practice had also marked the slow progress of the siege. As we have seen, the emergence of the rifle-trench duality had stymied the Allies from the very beginning. Massive bombardments could and did punish the defenders, but once the fire of the artillery abated—as it must—to allow the attacking infantry to advance, enough Russians always remained to delay the assault long enough for the reserves to appear. The resort to archaic subterranean warfare by Niel to decisively shatter the defensive lines at one stroke had had less than positive results, as had the massive use of compact assault columns to submerge them. With the one-shot musket or rifle-musket still the common weapon, the firepower of advancing infantry still remained feeble. The revolver, which might have made up this lack of power, was not issued in numbers sufficient to make its widespread use possible Some attempt to redress this weakness, either by bringing along small mortars of the Coehoorn type, or by following the assault columns with horse artillery, had been made, but without clear success. And, in an interesting prefiguration of what was to come sixty years later, the suggestion of chemical warfare by Dundonald, or the tank by Cowan, came forth as solutions to breaking the deadlock.