For thousands of civilians sheltering in the bombed-out ruins of their homes in Sevastopol, these were the most terrifying moments of their lives. ‘I never saw or heard of anything like it before,’ wrote one resident. ‘For twelve hours the wild howling of the bombs was unbroken, it was impossible to distinguish between them, and the ground shook beneath our feet … . A thick smoke filled the sky and blotted out the sun; it became as dark as night; even the rooms were filled with smoke.’15
As soon as the bombardment had begun, Kornilov had set off with his flag-lieutenant, Prince V. I. Bariatinsky, to make a tour of the defences. They went first to the Fourth Bastion, the most dangerous place in Sevastopol, which was being shelled by both the British and the French. ‘Inside the No. 4 Bastion,’ recalled Bariatinsky, ‘the scene was frightful and the destruction enormous, whole gun teams having been struck down by shellfire; the wounded and dead were being removed by stretcher-bearers, but they were still lying round in heaps.’ Kornilov went to every gun, encouraging the crews, and then moved on to the Fifth Bastion, under no less pressure from the enemy’s artillery, where he met Nakhimov, dressed as he always was in a frock coat with epaulettes. Nakhimov had been wounded in the face, though he did not seem to notice it, Bariatinsky thought, as blood ran down his neck, staining the white ribbon of his St George Cross, as he talked with Kornilov. While they were conversing there, Bariatinsky recognized an officer approaching, though ‘he had no eyes or face, for his features had completely disappeared underneath a mass of bloody flesh’, the remains of a sailor who had been blown up, which the officer proceeded to wipe from his face, while he asked Bariatinsky for a cigarette. Ignoring the advice of his staff, who said it was too dangerous to go on, Kornilov continued his tour at the Third Bastion, the Redan, which was then being pounded by the heavy British guns with a deadly concentration of power. When Kornilov arrived, the bastion was under the command of Captain Popandul, but he was soon killed, as were the five other commanders who succeeded him that day. Kornilov passed through the trench system, within close range of the British guns, crossed the ravine, and climbed up to the Malakhov Bastion, where he talked to the wounded troops. He was just starting down the hill to complete his tour in the Ushakov Ravine when he was hit by a shell that blew away the lower part of his body. Taken to the military hospital, he died shortly afterwards.16
Towards midday the allied fleet joined in the bombardment, directing their heavy guns towards Sevastopol from an arc around the entrance to the sea harbour some 800 to 1,500 metres from the coast (the blockade of the harbour by the sunken Russian ships stopped them getting any closer to their target). For six hours the city was shelled by an allied broadside of 1,240 guns; its coastal batteries had just 150 guns. ‘The sight was one of the most awful in the way of guns,’ Henry James, a merchant seamen, wrote in his diary after watching the bombardment from further out to sea. ‘Several of the liners kept up a heavy cannonade and it could be compared to the rolling of a huge drum … We could see showers of shot striking the water at the foot of the forts and flying up in heaps at the walls.’ The firing of the fleets created so much smoke that the Russian gunners could not even see the ships. Some of the gunners lost their nerve, but others showed extraordinary bravery, firing at the gun flashes of the invisible ships while shells crashed around their heads. One artillery officer on the Tenth Bastion, the main focus of the French attack, recalled seeing men who had been rewarded for their courage in previous engagements running off in panic when the firing began. ‘I was caught myself between two feelings,’ he recalled. ‘One half of me wanted to run home to save my family, but my sense of duty told me I should stay. My feelings as a man got the better of the soldier within me and I ran away to find my family.’17
In fact, for all their guns, the French and British ships received better than they gave. The wooden sailing vessels of the allied fleet were unable to get close enough to the stone forts of the coastal bastions to cause them much damage (the blockade had done its job in this respect) but they could be set alight by the Russian guns, which were not so numerous but (because they were based on the land) much more accurate than the allies’ long-range cannonade. After firing an estimated 50,000 rounds to little real effect on the coastal batteries, the allied fleet weighed anchor and sailed away to count its losses: five ships badly damaged, thirty sailors killed and more than 500 men wounded. Without steam-powered iron ships, the allied fleet was destined to play only a subsidiary role to the army during the siege of Sevastopol.
