Struggle in Russia

The storm intensified on the morning of April 9 so that the sound of the first round of coalition shelling was almost drowned out by the howling winds and rushing rain.

Sevastopol was completely shrouded in the smoke of gunfire and the morning rain and fog, and people in the city couldn't tell which direction the shells were coming from. So much so that some residents and officers thought the coalition fleet was firing.

At this time, the confused and frightened crowd came back to their senses, and at a loss, they screamed and ran on the street to find everything they could hide. Many flock to Nikolai Fortress, the only reasonably safe location in Sevastopol.

But it soon became a busy sanctuary, with frightened crowds pouring into the fortress, and it didn't take long for it to be overcrowded.

In the center of Sevastopol, bombed-out houses are everywhere, streets are littered with rubble and broken glass, and cannon **** bounce around like balls.

Tolstoy, who was in the city, noticed: a sick old man was carried across the street by his son and daughter, the shells exploded right next to them, an older woman followed them and looked panic... some young girls Leaning against the railing of the art gallery in beautiful clothes, he flirted with the soldiers stationed there. Next to them three businessmen were talking - every time a shell exploded, they crossed their chests and shouted: "God bless! God bless! This is worse than hell!"

Thousands of wounded were brought in in the General Hospital, the nobility's council chamber in Sevastopol, leaving the nurses overwhelmed. In the operating room, while Pirogov and other surgeons were performing amputations, a wall was knocked down by a shell, but Pirogov ignored them and continued to operate.

At that time, the coalition forces had no intention of avoiding hospitals and residential areas, and some of their artillery targets were military or civilian, so many women and children were injured in the first round of shelling.

The fourth bastion was the key artillery target of the coalition forces, because it was far away from them; the fort was only a few hundred meters away, so when the first round of artillery bombardment began, the defenders had no time to react at all, and the shells fell almost as soon as the artillery sounded. on their heads.

After finally waiting for the first round of shelling to come to an end, Tolstoy hurried to the Fourth Bastion. Previously, his 11th Artillery Brigade had been reassigned to the Fourth Bastion, much to the chagrin of the future writer. Because he originally applied to be transferred to Kornilov's headquarters as a staff officer, in order to free up a lot of time for writing.

But the top directly threw him to the front line, directly in the fiercest battle.

"I am very angry!" he wrote in his diary, "Especially now that I am sick (cold), no one seems to think that anything I can do is better than being a cannon fodder, and being a cannon fodder is the most useless!"

Fortunately, after recovering from the cold, Wenhao immediately cheered up and began to like the fighting life of the Fourth Bastion. Every eight days he was quartermaster at the Fourth Bastion for four days, and the rest of the time he lived in a simple and clean house on the main street of Sevastopol.

While on duty he had to sleep in a small house in the bunker with a camp bed and a table. A bell and a statue of a deity inlaid with lamps.

Wenhao was accompanied by his personal serf Alexei during his service in Sevastopol. In fact, Alexei has been with him since he went to college. The image of this serf will appear under the name of "Alyosha" in many of his works.

When Tolstoy was on duty, Alexei would carry his rations from the city, often at great risk.

The artillery bombardment of the fourth bastion by the coalition forces continued, and at least 2,000 grenades fell on the fourth bastion every day, which frightened Tolstoy at first, but Wenhao quickly overcame his fear. When he was first sent to the Bastion, he complained that he was cannon fodder, but two days later he wrote in his diary:

"The fascination of danger continues, and being able to observe the soldiers and sailors who live with me, and the details of the battle, is so endearing that I don't want to leave here!"

For ten days, the coalition shelling never stopped. After this large-scale shelling ended, the Russian army counted 160,000 shells. Sevastopol was bombed with hundreds of houses and 4,712 soldiers and civilians killed and wounded.

Of course, the shelling was not one-sided. The Russian army also invested 409 artillery pieces and nearly 100 mortars to fight back. A total of 88,751 cannonballs and grenades were fired in ten days.

However, because of the gap in industrial capabilities, the Russian army soon found that there was not enough ammunition and could not continue to maintain high-intensity artillery fire. So the enemy was ordered to fight back once every two shells fired.

Captain Edward Gage of the British Royal Artillery told his family: "The tenacity of the defense is comparable to the ferocity of the attack. If things can be done by intelligence and bravery, then the Russian army is no worse than the others. But I have to say Their firepower is relatively weak. Although they still suffered a lot from our gunners and caused us to suffer more casualties, it is obvious that our firepower is stronger... But even so, I don't think shelling is possible. It went on, and since the shelling began, our fighters have only been on shifts every twelve hours, and it's exhausting everyone..."

The weakening of Russian firepower allowed the coalition to take the initiative~www.NovelMTL.com~ The shelling density became higher and higher, and the mamelon fortress and the fifth bastion were almost completely destroyed. Kornilov predicted that the coalition forces would launch an attack soon, and eagerly added troops to the front line, so that most of the soldiers hid in underground bunkers to ambush the attacking coalition forces.

But what puzzled Kornilov was that the infantry of the coalition had never appeared. It was probably the tenacious resistance of the Russian army that discouraged the top of the coalition, because the Russian army continued to repair and build even under the heavy artillery fire. The new fortification, obviously this is not easy to admit defeat.

As a result, the high-level coalition forces hesitated again. Conrobel publicly expressed his frustration. He supported reducing the artillery attack on Sevastopol and instead captured other parts of Crimea, because he really did not want to use precious troops. wasted in brutal battles.

In addition, General Adolphe Niel, the commander-in-chief of the French engineers, also believed that the shelling should be suspended, but the reason was that he received a secret order from Paris to deliberately delay the siege plan and wait for the arrival of Napoleon III.

At that time, the prodigal emperor was going to replicate his uncle's great achievements, and he was going to command the battle in person... 4255/10740759