to the Crimea before the Russian reënforcements, which, at the advanced season, would have to arrive by almost impassable roads. Such a state of things necessarily provoked the Russian army to attempt some decisive action, and the moment seemed by so much the better chosen for an enterprise of this kind, that in the second half of the month of October the effective of our troops in the Crimea had been considerably augmented by the recent arrival of the Fourth corps of infantry." After the arrival of these troops, the effective army under the orders of Menschikow at Sebastopol, and in the immediate neighborhood, is computed at one hundred thousand,, exclusive of the crews of the fleet; the effective force of the allied armies-French, English, and Turk, at rather less than eighty thousand. Although the English position on the heights was naturally strong, the number of troops occupying it was relatively small, and this consequently was fixed upon as the most vulnerable point. General Soimonow, with eighteen thousand nine hundred and twentynine men and thirty-eight guns, was to start at six in the morning for the ravine of Carenage, and to be joined by General Pavlow, with fifteen thousand eight hundred and six men and ninetysix guns, passing over the bridge of Inkermann. On their junction they were to be under the command of General de Dannenberg. Prince Gortschakow, with twenty-two thousand four hundred and forty-four men and eighty-eight guns, was to support the attack, and endeavor to effect a diversion. The garrison was to be on the alert, and ready to act according to circumstances. The declared object of the enterprise was to drive back the right wing of the besiegers, and take firm possession of the ground occupied by them between the town and the shore. ering force at any point. Nor was the surprise so complete as might have been anticipated, for by the time they had emerged from the ravine in force, the English were on the alert and ready for them. The broad impression left by this history is, that all the troops fought with the most desperate gallantry, but that they were hurried into action as they came up, and that there was small display of generalship on either side. Evans's division, under Pennefather,* was the first which encountered Soimonow: * "The troops of the right column, under teries, briskly attacked Evans's division, and General Soimonow, supported by their batdrove in the English skirmishers. This attack had to surmount the greatest difficulties, as much from the nature of the ground as on account of the losses which the excellent arms of the English inflicted on our troops. But neither the difficulties of the ground, nor the fire of the enemy, could arrest the Tenth Kolivansk regiments, supported by the sec division. The battalions of the Tomsk and ond and fourth battalions of the regiment of Ekaterinebourg, having reached the English position, attacked Pennefather's brigade. Two battalions of the regiment of Tomsk, and two of the regiment of Kolivansk, overthrew the English, got possession of the small intrenchment No. 2, before the camp of the Second carriages. At the same time the regiments division, spiked two guns in it, and broke the of Taroutino and Borodino, which formed part of General Pavlow's left column, also exchanged fire with the enemy. "The two other battalions of the regiment of Taroutino were received by a sustained and well- aimed fire from Adams's skirmishers. the ascent, these battalions, clinging to the Regardless of this fire and of the stiffness of rocks and bushes, scaled in a quarter of an hour the right cliff of the ravine of Carrieres, although it was very slippery and broken by the rain. Arrived at the top of the plateau, these battalions formed in columns of companies, and, supported by the fire of the artillery of Soimonow's column, attacked the other battalions of the same regiment, and right wing of Adams's brigade, while the two the regiment of Borodino, hastened to come and rejoin the two first battalions of Taroutino. The violent shock given to Adams's brigade by the chasseurs of the Seventeenth division made this brigade give ground. Immediately afterwards the two battalions of Taroutino attacked the Battery No. 1. The Before the troops started, Dannenberg took upon himself to give fresh orders, varying those of Menschikow; and Soimonow, after vainly endeavoring to reconcile them, proceeded on a plan of his own, which carried him to a different side of the ravine from that originally intended, and prevented the meditated junction with Pavlow. Partly for this reason, and partly from the confined na*Sir de Lacy-Evans was absent from illness ture of the ground, the Russians never at the commencement of the action, but imme succeeded in concentrating an overpow-diately hurried to the field. English allowed our chasseurs to approach within a short distance, and received them by a salvo of artillery. But the terrible losses inflicted on our chasseurs by this deadly fire did not succeed in driving them back. Closing their ranks, they rushed on this battery and got possession of it; but Adams immediately advanced and drove back our chasseurs. It was then that the regiments of Borodino and Taroutino, having a little reformed their ranks, threw themselves again on the remains of Adams's brigade, already weakened by the combat, and drove it back, principally on its right wing, which was concentrated near the battery. Our battalions were already prepared to continue the attack, but they were suddenly arrested by the fresh troops of Bentinck's brigade, which managed to arrive upon the field of battle with six guns. Whilst this was doing, the destiny of battles had also decided the fate of the battalions of the Tenth division, which gave the brigades of Butler and Pennefather the possibility of uniting with the brigade of Adams, to crush the regiment of Borodino." By eight o'clock the Russian advance had been checked; a part of the attacking force had been compelled to retire into the valley of Inkermann, and the hand-to-hand infantry conflict had given place to a sharp cannonade; thirty-eight Russian guns replying to thirty English. The English artillery plied the Russians with Shrapnell shells; but the greatest loss sustained by them was from the rifle balls. "Many foreign works," says Todleben, "attribute to us a great numerical superiority; but this was far from being what it was supposed." The English engaged in what he calls the first phase of the battle are computed by him at 11,585; the Russians at 15,141; a superiority which he conceives to have been more than compensated by the naturally strong position, the fieldworks, and the rifles of the English. The second phase began soon after eight by the advance of Pavlow's colunin, headed by the regiment D'Okhotsk, which, after a desperate struggle, succeeded in capturing a half-finished redoubt defended by the Coldstream. "Nine guns were the prize of this brilliant exploit; three were immediately conveyed into the ravine, and the others spiked. Of the 600 Coldstream Guards who defended the battery, 200 had been put hors de combat." Reënforced by the rest of the Guards, the Coldstream advanced to retake the redoubt: NEW SERIES-VOL. I., No. 1. "Their attack was so impetuous that the soldiers of Okhotsk, who occupied the battery, could not maintain themselves in it. But at the same moment our reënforcements also took part in the struggle. General Dannenberg moved up the regiment of Jakoutsk The first of these supand Selenghinsk. ported the soldiers of Okhotsk, who had been obliged to retire, and rushed resolutely on the enemy. A part of these troops entered the battery, and definitively drove the English Guards, already disorganized, out of it; the other part of the same regiment, encountering the brigade of Goldie, overthrew it by a bayonet charge. It is thus that the regiment of Jakoutsk, after having pursued and consolidated the success of the attack of the regiment of Okhotsk, was able to take firm ground also on the right flank of the English position, having in front the brigade of Buller and that of Goldie, of which it had given a good account in a single charge." The brigade of Torrens, led by Cathcart, was placed in a very critical situation, from which it extricated itself by a desperate charge; and although two siege guns, 18-pounders, opportunely ordered up by Lord Raglan, played with marked effect, the English, who had no more reserves to bring up, must have given way from sheer exhaustion, if their commander had not consented to accept the proffered assistance of the French-the Deus ex machina who (according to this history) is invariably at hand at the turning-point. The first reenforcements sent by them were received by so violent a fire that they broke and fell back precipitately. They were rallied, and returned to the charge. But the ardor of the Russians was now at its height. They were carrying all before them. A few efforts more, and the victory was theirs. But their fatigue as well as their ardor was at its acme: "It was a decisive moment for both armies. After having surmounted enormous difficulties, and triumphed over the tenacity of the enemy, the Russians, receiving no reënforcements, exhausted their energy in a last effort; and the English, extenuated with fatigue, and deprived of the greater part of their generals and officers, felt that it was impossible for them to hold out any longer. The French themselves, arrived the latest on the field, anxiously expected the reënforcements which had been announced to them, and without which they could not continue to hold their ground. A little after ten these reenforcements, so impatiently expected by the French, joined them. On the steps of General Bos 2 The retreat, covered by the fire of the ships in the harbor, and by some skirmishers opportunely brought up and posted by Todleben, was deliberately and safely effected; but out of the 34,835 Russians who had taken part in the battle on the plateau, six generals, 256 officers, and 10,467 rank and file were put hors de combat-more than double the loss of the Allies. tion to oppose to the fire of the Allies; on the 14th November they had two hundred and forty, although during the same interval of time eighty of their guns were dismounted and one hundred and fifty gun-carriages destroyed. The most important works for strengthening the defences, especially those round the Malakhow tower, were not commenced until the middle of November, when the Allies had been seven weeks before the place. They consisted principally of works closed at the mouth or entrance (fermés à la gorge), on each of the ele vated points of the enceinte commanding broke the place; so that, if the enemy through a weak place in the connecting portion of the line, they would be prevented from entering either of these insulated strongholds or fortresses from the rear: "The closing of the Bastion No. 2 was begun on the 15th November,* and on the 19th of the same month we set to work to transform the fortifications of the Malakhow mound into a great closed polygon, which, by its vast dimensions, as well as by its commanding situation, should serve as a point of support to all the Karabelnaia. Its plan was defined in accordance with the existing works. The The loss of the battle is attributed by semi-circular glacis before the tower, and two Todleben to the want of simultaneity in batteries at its extremities, formed the direct the advance of the Russians, the superi- front; the two batteries (28 and 44) formed ority of the French and English small- part of the right front, which had received a arms, and the omission of the Russian broken formation, having been made to conartillery to follow and support their in- form in this respect to the configurations of the borders of the mound. The left front, fantry a service, he says, which was disposed on the opposite slope, was augmentexcellently executed by the corresponded by two jutting posts, arranged so as to ining arm in the English army. He thinks close two large powder-magazines. A breastthat, although the Russians were re pulsed, the battle of Inkermann was favorable to them in its results. "It produced a deep impression on the Allies. In the first moment they had even the idea of raising the siege. But although this idea was abandoned by them, this important result followed, that the assault meditated against the Bastion No. 4, which for many reasons seemed about to be crowned with success, was adjourned, and that henceforth the operations of the Allies assumed gradually a defensive character." work which had been raised behind on the *Bastion No. 2 is the Little Redan. It would seem that this work was not completed. After describing the manner in which the Russians, taken by surprise, were driven out of the Malakhow and the Little Redan, Bazancourt states that, rallying and supported by their reserves, they tried in vain to retake the Malakhow, but succeeded in retaking the Little Redan. "In vain the captain of engineers, Renoux, exerted himself with his sappers to close the opening of the Little Redan, in which he is already beginning to intrench himself. Unhappily the obsta cle he has created is still insufficient, and cannot cover our troops, who, forced to abandon the ground which they had so vigorously seized, The The besieged were constantly adding threw themselves into the ditches," etc. to the strength of their works and their closing of the Malakhow, therefore, was apparbatteries, as well as to the numbers of ently the cause of an irreparable disaster to the besieged. General Niel states that the closing their army. On the 17th October, when of the gorge was very useful to the French, in the bombardment began, they had only enabling them to withstand all the efforts of the one hundred and eighteen guns in posi-Russians.—Journal, etc., p. 37, note. 1865.] A MISSION TO DAHOMEY. borders of the mound, and which was intend- "The execution of these immense works was accompanied by very great difficulty, by reason of the excessive hardness of the rocky soil, which reached almost to the very surface of the ground, especially on the side of the right front, where the work could only be done during the night, without being exposed to the fire of the English riflemen." From Todleben's summary of the second period of the siege, including December, 1854, and January, 1855, we learn that although the Allies also had added to their batteries, their fire had slackened considerably, and that they had even suspended their approaches whilst they were employed in strengthening the positions on the side of the Tschernaia as well as on the side of Sebastopol. Their trenches had been advanced sufficiently close greatly to dis quiet the besieged, who in most other respects had reason to entertain better hopes of the result than when the Allies first appeared before the place. The second volume of the first part concludes with a chapter in which the respective conditions of the besiegers and besieged, as regards the supply of provisions, hospital accommodation, and the health of the troops, are stated and compared. We learn from it, that although the Russians were never actually in want of provisions, they were frequently straitened in their supplies, and that at one time, with twenty-five thousand sick and wounded in the town, they were unable to find room, attendance, and medicines for more than half. Through the blunders of their commissariat, much of their winter clothing did not arrive till it was no longer wanted; but the wonder is how they managed, with only a single line of road open, to transport men, food, ammunition, clothes, and necessaries sufficient to keep pace with the constantly increasing armies and resources of the Allies. The sacrifice of men and animals was doubt less enormous, but it was endured with out a murmur; and at the point of time where the history breaks off, towards the end of February, 1855, the czar had just decreed a new levy throughout the It will be collected from our remarks and extracts, literal and abridged, that the work before us is of unequal merit and authority, and that we are seldom permitted to forget that it is edited, not written, by the distinguished and eminently scientific soldier whose name adorns the title page. The plans of defence, the construction of the new works, and the siege operations, strictly so called, which were directed by him, or fell under his own personal observation, are always clearly described; but the accounts of engagements and manœuvres beyond the walls are too frequently open to the same criticism as his narrative of the battle of the Alma: they want the unity, succinctness, and perspicuity which betoken the hand of a single wellinformed and impartial historian. We refrain from further comment till the completion of the work; and by that time most probably Mr. Kinglake's anxiously expected continuation will be before the world. Saturday Review. A MISSION TO DAHOMEY.* CAPTAIN BURTON's peculiarities as a narrator are now tolerably well known, and everybody who takes up his book is sufficiently aware beforehand how many literary eccentricities will be found to offend or amuse him. These peculiarities A haughty are certainly not less conspicuous than usual in the present work. and undisguised contempt for other trav ellers, an equally undisguised confidence in himself, and a detestation of most things which the rest of the world generally - all this gives a tone to Captain Burton's writing which is at least striking and uncommon. time in paying compliments, he leaves nothing out because it may rather hurt common notions of decorum, and he laud ably refuses to conciliate the British public by any eulogy on the operations of "missioners." The plainness of speech approves He wastes no *A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome. By 2 vols. London: Tinsley RICHARD F. BURTON, Brothers. 1864 with which he talks of various matters | book, and as bright and gay as its chrowhich are for the most part passed over by travellers either in discreet silence or else treated with mincing periphrases, is sometimes a little startling; but in this and in some of his other oddities, Captian Burton is, in a way, manly and straightforward. The only virtue of a writer of travels is to tell the truth accurately and fully, and the author's very offences against good taste are such as to inspire the fullest confidence in the trustworthiness of his statements. He evidently tells what he thinks to be the truth, if he does not exactly shame the devil; and it is so much the fashion among travellers to doctor their books, as the wine-merchant doctors sherry, with an eye to the English market, that we may readily overlook occasional coarseness and very frequent unamiability and intolerance. mo-lithographs. It was reserved for Captain Burton's blunt style, and careful minute observation, to put clearly before us the pitiful meanness, the puerility, and the squalid misery of the Dahoman savages. In the poet's raptures about the freedom of the eagle's eyrie we forget that it is, as a matter of fact, a foul depository of bleached bones or mangled carcases; and in the same way, Commander Forbes' good language, and frequent use of such general terms as ferocity, atrocities, deplorable barbarism, conveyed a very faint notion of the stench, filth, shabbiness, din, and loathsome discomfort which are revealed by the more recent traveller. The force with which all this is brought out in Captain Burton's book is cheaply purchased at the cost of some slight iteration, which, though now and then rather wearisome, is perhaps the only way of enabling us to realize the naked truth. Though in one respect. Captain Burton, by showing that the popular estimate of the number of human beings annually put to death is an enormous exaggeration of the truth, has effect The interest which has always been taken in everything connected with Dahomey has, according to Captain Burton, been much greater than Dahomey really deserves. Principally, no doubt, this interest was excited by the rumors which reached Europe from time to time of ap-ed a sort of rehabilitation of Dahomey, palling massacres and ghastly sacrifices. in another he has diminished its EuroPeople could not but feel the keenest curi- pean repute by pointing out its present unosity about a country whose monarch was importance and approaching decay. The reported to divert himself by paddling a older travellers represented the Kingcanoe in the blood of two thousand of his dom of Dahomey as of enormous extent; subjects, or stamping frantically about and Commander Forbes, though admitamong their putrescent carcases. The ting the difficulty or impossibility of arhorrible mysteries of slave-hunting, the riving at any accurate measure, asserts strange stories of female warriors, the that the actual extent may "with safety abominations of their warfare, and the be taken at about one hundred and eighty alleged vastness of the Dahoman empire, miles from east to west, and nearly two combined to make Dahomey more famil hundred from the sea-coast at Whydah iarly talked about than any other part at to its most northward boundary," thus least of Western Africa. The two vol-giving a total area of thirty-six thousand umes published in 1851 by Commander Forbes, containing an account of his mission to the Dahoman court two years previously, were rather calculated to heighten this interest than to diminish it, though correcting some of the delusive notions formerly entertained about the terrific amount of annual bloodshed. Some neatly colored though poor illustrations, an easily-flowing style, a few proper ejaculations, and a general literary trimness, made his book sufficiently pleasant reading, but also served to give one the idea that things in Dahomey were as compact and well-ordered as the square miles. This may perhaps have been a reasonable approximation to the truth thirteen years ago, but at the present time, as Captain Burton very positively asserts, we must reduce the area to four thousand square miles, or to just one-ninth of Commander Forbes' estimate. In population, in the same way, the author is convinced that similar exaggeration has been perpetrated. A French traveller fixed the number of the subjects of the Dahoman king at nine hundred thousand, Commander Forbes at two hundred thousand. Commodore Wilmot, whose visit to the father of the |