The Siege of Sevastopol, 1854 - 1855. Crimean War. First Use of Electrically Detonated Land Mines, Russia's Crimean Dreams Destroyed.

The loss of the port city shattered Russia’s campaign in the Crimean War. With Sevastopol gone, the Tsar’s ambitions in the region collapsed. His fleet was crippled, his armies bled white, and his empire humiliated on the world stage. No reinforcements could change the outcome now—Russia had been broken, not just militarily, but politically. The war dragged on for months, but the defeat at Sevastopol had already sealed its fate.

Sevastopol.  October, 1854 - September, 1855.
French Forces: 120,000 Men.
British Forces: 15,000 Men.
Turkish Forces: 7,000 Men.
Sardinian Forces: 9,000 Men.

Russian Forces: 38,000 Garrison Troops.
Russian Relief Forces: 60,000 Men.

Additional Reading and Episode Research:

• Edgerton, Robert. Death or Glory: The Legacy of the Crimean War.
• Warner, Philip. The Crimean War: A Reappraisal.
• Barker, A.J. The War Against Russia.

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Transcript

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of History's Greatest Battles. Season 2, where we explore History's Greatest Sieges. If you know anybody that enjoys this genre of history, please share the podcast with them.

By the mid-19th century, Europe’s great powers had avoided war with one another for nearly four decades. The balance of power, carefully upheld since Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, was always fragile, and beneath the surface, the ambitions of empires never faded. Britain ruled the seas, France rebuilt its military under a new emperor, Austria kept its uneasy grip on Central Europe, and Russia, vast, restless, and insatiable, sought to expand its dominion wherever weakness allowed. The Ottoman Empire, once feared, now stood vulnerable, its lands coveted by rivals eager to carve away its remains. It was only a matter of time before peace broke.

When war came, it was brutal, primitive, and waged in conditions of misery that few modern armies had ever endured. The weapons were more advanced, the artillery more deadly, but the tactics were still caught in the past. Men charged fortified positions as they had for centuries, throwing their bodies into the meat grinder of entrenched defenses. Disease killed more soldiers than bullets. Commanders issued orders from afar, blind to the suffering in the trenches. Armies fought not just against each other, but against hunger, exposure, and a total failure of logistical planning. And when the final, grinding siege took shape, it became a war of endurance, one that broke the men who fought it and shattered the illusions of those who sent them to die.

The results of this war reshaped Europe. It ended the long peace, proving that the great powers could and would fight again. It humiliated one empire, weakened another, and strengthened a third. It led to military reforms that changed how wars would be fought, but not quickly enough to save the next generation from the same mistakes. The battlefield innovations, trench warfare, modern artillery coordination, and the first primitive use of explosive mines, were the harbingers of wars to come. The suffering exposed failures in medical care and supply chains that would take decades to correct. And the political fallout set events in motion that would eventually lead to greater wars, alliances, and betrayals.

This war was not just a struggle for territory; it was a turning point in military history. Its lessons were written in blood, its consequences felt for generations. The men who fought and died here could not have known it, but they were not just fighting for a city, they were shaping the world that would follow.

Since the guns fell silent at Waterloo in 1815, the great powers of Europe had held themselves back from open war, bound together in an uneasy peace enforced by the Concert of Europe. Diplomats maneuvered, armies drilled, and empires watched each other with suspicion, but for nearly forty years, the continent remained unscarred by another great conflict.

But peace, as always, was temporary. After nearly forty years, the old enmity between Russia and the Ottoman Empire erupted once more, a rivalry older than many of the men who now prepared to fight it. And this time, the flames of war would spread far beyond the Black Sea.

Russia, ever hungry for dominance over the Dardanelles, a dream whispered in the halls of the Kremlin for generations, moved to strike. Cloaking her ambitions in the banner of faith, she proclaimed herself the guardian of eastern European Christians against Ottoman rule, turning a war of conquest into a crusade of righteousness.

But the Tsar’s claim to be protector of the Holy Land did not go unchallenged. France, heir to centuries of Christian influence in the region, had her own stake in Palestine. What began as a distant quarrel over religious authority now threatened to drag the continent’s most powerful empires into battle.

The moment of no return came on November 30, 1853. At Sinope, the Russian fleet descended upon the Ottoman navy with merciless efficiency, annihilating it in a storm of iron and fire. The West watched in horror. For Britain and France, this was no longer a distant power struggle, it was a provocation demanding war.

With war now inevitable, Queen Victoria’s Britain and Louis Napoleon’s France sent their fleets surging into the Black Sea. Their mission was clear: support the Ottomans and check Russian ambitions before they threatened the balance of power in Europe itself.

Russian columns pushed along the western shores of the Black Sea, pressing into Ottoman lands with cold determination. But the moment Austria raised her voice in warning, the Tsar’s forces pulled back, Russia had no desire to awaken yet another great power against her.

The Russian retreat gave Britain and France the opening they needed. Their warships swept into the Black Sea unchallenged, their eyes set on a singular target: Sevastopol, the heart of Russian power in Crimea. There, they would strike with full force.

The allies came ashore at Calamita Bay, meeting no resistance as they planted their boots on Crimean soil. They pushed south, their advance checked only briefly by Russian defenders at the Alma River, where the first true battle of the campaign was about to be fought.

General Alexander Menshikov, commanding the Russian forces, stood firm at Alma on September 20, 1854, but the allies hit him hard, breaking through his defenses and forcing him to retreat. Instead of reinforcing Sevastopol, he pulled his men into the interior, leaving the city’s fate in the hands of its garrison and its defenses.

The allies wasted no time on Menshikov. Sevastopol was their prize, and they would take it.

Their first attempt to storm the southern defenses ended in blood and failure. The walls held, the defenders stood firm, and the allies had no choice but to settle in for a long and grueling siege.

Neither side had prepared for the brutal war of attrition that now unfolded. Disease, starvation, and the merciless Crimean winter struck both armies harder than any bullet, and the wounded were left to suffer with little medicine to ease their agony.

The winter of 1854-1855 was a season of death. Thousands perished from cold, disease, and hunger. The British, their ranks withering away, were left with barely 15,000 men still fit to fight.

In London, a shaken government vowed to send reinforcements and supplies, but promises did not put rations in bellies or rifles in hands. The suffering on the front continued.

Across the Channel, Louis Napoleon sensed his moment. The war was dragging, but with the right push, it could be his triumph. He poured men into the fight, swelling his Armée d’Orient to a staggering 120,000 troops.

The burden of command weighed heavily on General François Canrobert. Orders flooded in from Paris, too many, too often. He knew his limits. Rather than preside over chaos, he stepped down to a divisional role, handing the reins to another.

By mid-May, his request was granted. The new man in charge: General Aimable Jean Jacques Pélissier, a leader of colder temperament and far greater ruthlessness.

Paris wanted strategy. Pélissier wanted blood. His orders were to cut off Sevastopol’s supply lines, but he had no patience for that. He would smash the city outright.

But Sevastopol was no easy prey. Its defenses were crafted by one of the finest military engineers of the age, Lieutenant Colonel Franz E. I. Todleben, a man who knew how to turn dirt and stone into an unbreakable fortress.

The Russian admirals knew what was coming. They scuttled their own ships, blocking the harbor against any naval attack. Their sailors, now without a fleet, became artillerymen, ready to fight to the last.

Sevastopol itself was divided. To the east, across a narrow stretch of harbor, lay Karabelnaya, a smaller town that would prove just as crucial to the fight as the city itself.

The fortifications stretched from one shore to the other, unbroken walls and seven mighty bastions locking Sevastopol and Karabelnaya in an iron grip.

Every bastion bristled with cannon, each ready to rain destruction upon the enemy. Todleben, ever the master, layered the defenses even further. In front of the Great Redan, he constructed the Quarry Battery. On the far left flank, the Battery of the Point stood behind another deadly obstacle, the White Works.

But the true heart of Sevastopol’s defenses lay in the southeast. There, atop a commanding hill, rose a two-story tower, a bastion of stone and gunpowder. The men called it the Malakhov Battery.

Guarding the Malakhov, 1,500 yards ahead, stood another hill, Mamelon Vert. Todleben was not one to leave high ground undefended, and so he turned it into yet another fortress.

The siege began with the old ways, trenches creeping forward, miners clawing beneath the enemy’s walls. But the Russians fought back with science as much as steel. They counter-mined, they laid their own charges, and for the first time in warfare, they introduced something new: explosives, triggered by electric current.

Then, on June 6, Pélissier abandoned patience. He unleashed 548 guns upon the White Works and Mamelon Vert, pounding the Russian positions into dust and ruin.

The shelling thundered on for hours. Then, as dusk crept over the battlefield, Pélissier struck. At 18:30, his men stormed forward, using the dying light as their shield.

The Russians reeled from the bombardment, and before they could recover, the allies were upon them. In ninety furious minutes, the French tore through Mamelon Vert, while the British overran the Quarry Battery.

But discipline faltered. French officers, hungry for glory, disobeyed their orders. Instead of consolidating their gains, they charged straight for the Malakhov.

The Russians were waiting. Their guns spat fire and lead, cutting the French down by the hundreds.

Sensing weakness, the Russians counterattacked. They stormed back into Mamelon Vert, turning the hill into a blood-soaked battlefield where men fought hand-to-hand in the dark.

But the French were not done. Fresh troops surged forward, driving the Russians back once more. By dawn on June 7, Mamelon Vert was theirs.

Victory fueled Pélissier’s ambition. Ten days later, he prepared to strike again, determined to hammer Sevastopol into submission.

On June 17, the allies unleashed another storm of steel. French guns roared from the land, British warships thundered from the sea. Sevastopol trembled under the bombardment.

For a full day and night, the guns did not stop. Then, at the break of dawn on June 18, the order came: attack.

But the Russians had learned. Though bloodied, they stood ready. As the allies advanced, they were met with fire and fury.

The Malakhov was the prize, but it was a prize paid for in blood. The French charged, and the Russian guns cut them down in waves.

The British, too, struck at the Great Redan, launching their assault from the Quarry Battery. But the Russian defenses held firm. The attack collapsed.

In the Russian interior, Menshikov’s army lingered, doing little as Sevastopol burned. Their one attempt to intervene had come months earlier, in November, at Inkerman. It had ended in disaster.

By June 1855, the Tsar had seen enough. Menshikov was dismissed. His replacement: Prince Mikhail Gorchakov, a man stepping into an already lost cause.

The new orders were desperate: strike the allies while they reeled from their failed assault. Turn their setback into a Russian victory.

But Gorchakov and Todleben knew the truth. The city was doomed. The only hope was distraction, strike the allies at their southwestern flank, draw their forces away from the real fight.

On August 15, the Russians struck under cover of darkness. But the allies had an edge, modern rifles against Russian muskets. The attack broke apart against superior firepower and swift reinforcements.

Pélissier was patient. For months, he drove his trenches forward, foot by foot, inch by inch. By September, the allies were within 100 yards of the Russian walls. Sevastopol was suffocating.

The artillery never stopped. The French guns slaughtered up to 1,000 Russians each day. Inside the city, the garrison dwindled, only 23,000 men remained in Sevastopol, another 17,000 in Karabelnaya. They could not hold out much longer.

The relentless bombardment had shattered the Malakhov Battery, turned the Little Redan into rubble. Soon, there would be nothing left to defend.

Pélissier had seen enough. On September 8, after two days of merciless shelling, he would send his men in for the kill.

No bugles, no warning, just steel and fury. The French came at noon, silent and swift, and by the time the Russians realized what was happening, their walls were already swarming with attackers.

Fifty-seven thousand men hurled themselves into the fight. The Russian defenses crumbled under the sudden, savage charge.

The streets ran red with close combat. French North African troops, swift and relentless, cut through the Russian defenders like a whirlwind of bayonets and blades.

From his command post, Pélissier saw the tricolor flying over the Malakhov. It was time. He signaled the British, the Redan was next.

The British stormed ahead, but as they moved, the Russians counterattacked, slamming into the French and forcing them to yield ground.

The British ran headfirst into disaster. The Russians at the Redan were ready, and the charge shattered against their defenses.

The battlefield seesawed, positions won and lost in a storm of violence. But one thing was certain, the Malakhov belonged to the French, and from its heights, they now ruled the battlefield.

The Russians understood the truth, without the Malakhov, Sevastopol was lost. They hurled themselves at it in desperate waves, but the French held firm, breaking them again and again.

By 1500, the outcome was undeniable. The tricolor waved from the Malakhov. Sevastopol’s heart had been ripped out. Gorchakov saw the writing on the wall, he ordered the garrison to abandon the city.

Under fire, with shells still screaming through the air, the Russian soldiers fled across a makeshift bridge to Karabelnaya, leaving behind their dead, their cannons, their city.

On September 10, after 322 days of fire, blood, and suffering, the allies marched into Sevastopol. The city was theirs. The siege was over.

The fall of Sevastopol did not end the war overnight, but its fate had been sealed.Six months later, in 1856, the Treaty of Paris brought the bloodshed to an end.

Russia reclaimed Sevastopol in peacetime, but the Black Sea was no longer hers to command. The treaty stripped her of her fleet, leaving the great naval port open only to merchants.

For years, Russian warships were absent from the Black Sea. But in 1870, France fell to Prussia, and Czar Alexander saw his chance. The treaty was dead. The fleet would rise again.

In the cold calculus of war, Sevastopol had not been worth the price. A blockade would have done the job without the staggering loss of life. In the end, the city’s capture was more psychological than strategic, a scar burned into Russia’s pride.

The Crimean War shattered Europe’s illusion of stability. The age of diplomacy gave way once again to an era of brute force and shifting alliances.

Britain, battered and bloodied, took some lessons home. Medical care improved, reforms were made. But in the march of history, lessons are often forgotten. When the trenches of the Great War were dug, the suffering was just as brutal, the mistakes just as grave.

The Crimean War was not a war of conquest. It was a contest of endurance, fought in the mud and misery of siege warfare. It was a war where bravery and folly walked hand in hand, where thousands died for inches of ground. The guns of Sevastopol fell silent, but the echoes of that war would carry forward. New tactics, new horrors, new lessons, lessons that would be ignored when Europe marched, once again, toward an even greater war.

Decades later, the same betrayal unfolded. In the wastelands of Mesopotamia, British soldiers, sons, fathers, brothers, were left to rot, starved of food, starved of ammunition, starved of hope. Their cries for relief went unanswered. Their suffering was not strategy; it was neglect. Kut-al-Amara did not merely fall, it was sacrificed. And in London, the men who sent them there watched their empire shake, their government collapse, and yet, even as history screamed its warning, they still did not listen. The price of their failure was not measured in lost battles, but in the broken bodies of the men they swore to lead.