Note 238 — Chapter VII · THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.

The late Sir E. Hamley holds that General Todleben was wrong, and writes: “But he [Todleben] says the enemies' [allied] ships, approaching the shore, could batter the fort almost with impunity, [i.e. the Star-Fort, or the principal work on the north side of Sevastopol, which the Allies would have had to attack]. The impossibility of this is best shown by the fact that, in the subsequent engagement between the fleets and forts, one of the batteries on the cliffs (100 feet high) of the north side disabled several of our ships without receiving a shot in return, although they made it the object of their fire, and that the Star-Fort is distant inland from this battery 1000 yards. Thus, according to Todleben, the ships, while themselves under the fire of the coast batteries, which they could not injure in return, were to bombard a fort 1000 yards beyond these batteries, and which would be invisible from the sea” (Hamley, War in the Crimea, p. 71).

The bombardment spoken of, in which the English ships were injured, was only directed against the forts situated at the entrance of the harbour. From that point, no doubt, the Star-Fort could not be seen; but still Todleben made no puerile suggestion with respect to the geography of a place every inch of which he had good reason to know intimately. The Russian entrenchments on the north plateau could be reached by the guns of our fleet, from another spot off the coast, just round the promontory on which the coast batteries were built, and where our ships would be to a great extent (if not entirely) sheltered from the fire of the latter.