Of all the pictures of the horrors of war which have ever been presented to the world, the hospital of Sevastopol offered the most heartrending and revolting. Entering one of these doors, I beheld such a sight as few men, thank God, have ever witnessed: … the rotten and festering corpses of the soldiers, who were left to die in their extreme agony, untended, uncared for, packed as close as they could be stowed … saturated with blood which oozed and trickled through upon the floor, mingling with the droppings of corruption. Many lay, yet alive, with maggots crawling about in their wounds. Many, nearly mad by the scene around them, or seeking escape from it in their extremest agony, had rolled away under the beds and glared out on the heart stricken spectators. Many, with legs and arms broken and twisted, the jagged splinters sticking through the raw flesh, implored aid, water, food, or pity, or, deprived of speech by the approach of death or by dreadful injuries in the head or trunk, pointed to the lethal spot. Many seemed bent alone on making their peace with Heaven. The attitudes of some were so hideously fantastic as to root one to the ground by a sort of dreadful fascination. The bodies of numbers of men were swollen and bloated to an incredible degree; and the features, distended to a gigantic size, with eyes protruding from the sockets and the blackened tongue lolling out of the mouth, compressed tightly by the teeth which had set upon it in the death-rattle, made one shudder and reel round.36
The sight of the devastated city inspired awe in all who entered it. ‘Sevastopol presents the most curious spectacle that one can imagine,’ wrote Baron Bondurand, the French military intendant, to Marshal de Castellane on 21 September.
We ourselves had no idea of the effects of our artillery. The town is literally crushed to bits. There is not a single house that our projectiles missed. There are no roofs left at all, and almost all the walls have been destroyed. The garrison must have taken huge casualties in this siege where all our blows counted. It is a testimony to the indisputable spirit and endurance of the Russians, who held on for so long and only surrendered when their position became untenable with our capture of the Malakhov.
There were signs of destruction everywhere. Thomas Buzzard was startled by the beauty of the ruined town:
In one of the handsomest streets there was a fine classical building, said to be a church, built of stone, much in the style of the Parthenon of Athens. Some of its huge columns had been almost knocked to pieces. On entering we found that a shell had come through the roof and exploded on the floor, shattering it to pieces. It was strange to turn from this and look into a green and peaceful garden close to it with the trees in full leaf.37
For the troops, the occupation of Sevastopol was an opportunity for pillage. The French were organized in their looting and it was endorsed by their officers, who joined in plundering Russian property and sending home their stolen trophies, as if this were a completely normal part of war. In a letter to his family on 16 October, Lieutenant Vanson made a long list of the souvenirs he was sending them, including a silver and gold medallion, a porcelain service, and a sabre taken from a Russian officer. A few weeks later he wrote again: ‘We are continuing to pillage Sevastopol. There are no real curiosities remaining to be found, but there was one thing I really wanted, a nice chair, and I am pleased to inform you that I found one yesterday. It is missing a foot and the upholstered seat, but the back is beautifully carved.’ Compared to the French, the British troops were slightly more restrained. On 22 September Thomas Golaphy wrote to his family on the back of a Russian document. He talked of the soldiers
taking everything we could lay hands upon and selling it to anyone who would like to buy it and there was some splendid articles sold very cheap but there was no one here but the Greeks to buy it, we was not allowed to plunder the town the same as the French, they could go into all parts of it but there was only one part that was facing our works that we was allowed to enter.38
