The English loss on this memorable day was 29 officers killed and 129 wounded, and 358 men killed and 1945 wounded, or in all 2461 men killed and wounded out of the 4000 who attacked the Redan. The French loss amounted to 7551 killed and wounded, among whom were 5 generals killed, 4 wounded, and 6 contused; but their loss, though actually so much heavier than our own, was smaller by far in proportion to the number of men engaged. The total loss of the Allied armies reached the appalling number of 10,000 men.
Prince Gortschakoff boasted that the Allies would find nothing in
Sebastopol but " blood-stained ruins," and aU the resources of destruction were exhausted to give effect to this threat.
But there were physical limits to its realisation which even Russian ingenuity could not pass beyond. The stupendous docks, the laborious result of years, could not be annihilated in a day, and, though all the stone forts were mined, so solid was their construction, that the majority of them suffered but little from the explosions.
Thousands of guns and immense stores of shot, shell, and powder stiD
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remained within the town, and, had the occupation of Sebastopol entered into the plan of operations, vast means of defence existed in the objects, which will now serve as trophies to grace the arsenals of England and France.
On the 11th September the remaining steamers in the harbour of Sebastopol were sunk by the Russians — and thus perished the last traces of the Black Sea Fleet.
In less than one year from the landing in the Crimea, every object of the war had been attained with a fulness which the most sanguine would have hesitated to predict: the preponderance of Russia in the East, which only a few months earlier the Allies would have been content only to reduce, was now annihilated; and with the fall of the stronghold of Southern Russia, its arsenals, armaments, and dockyards, and its multiplied resources of aggression, the traditionary policy of Peter and Catherine, so patiently and perseveringly pursued through ages of intrigue and spoliation, was, on the very eve of its fulfilment, scattered to the winds.
The results of this glorious triumph, purchased with such costly sacrifices, and achieved with such indomitable resolution, lie hid in the future, and the most glowing imagination might fail to conceive them in their possible development: but when in years to come the long -oppressed and despot-ridden populations of the East shall have risen into thriving and flourishing communities — when the rich but neglected provinces of the Danube shall teem with fertility, and that magnificent river roll down a stream of wealth into the sea — when the vast fleets of the commerce of all nations shall cross the Euxine from shore to shore, and Russia herself, convinced by her dearly-bought experience that the strength of nations does not lie in their power for aggression, shall lend her aid to the advancement of a civilisation she once fondly hoped to crush — then, and not till then, will full justice be done to the grand and self-denying policy of the Western powers, which, despising the petty interests of national aggrandizement, lavished their blood and treasure to secure so fair a future for the world.
And in this meed of universal gratitude England and France will share and share alike. United with a cordiality and loyalty unknown in former alliances, side by side they met and overcame the same difiiculties and disasters, the same delays and reverses; the same hopes and fears were common to both, and the same triumph, mingled with the same regrets, crowned their efforts at the last.
Short as the war has been, England may well boast of her position at its termination. That termination has found her not weak, and prostrate, and exhausted; not suffering from the reaction of feverish exertions beyond her strength, not with an empty treasury and a decimated people; not unduly anxious for peace, nor, to her credit be it spoken, pursuing war for war's sake; but with a magnificent army, highly trained and disciplined, proud of its past successes, panting for new achievements — and in the highest state of efiiciency in every department; Avith an enormous fleet fully manned and armed, and equally adapted to act iu the shallowest waters, or to confront the proudest armada on the open seas; with resources in men and treasure, of which the elasticity is yet untested, and with a public spirit throughout the length and breadth of the land resolved to brave every extremity, and exhaust every sacrifice, in the defence of the right and the maintenance of the national honour.