Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/173

 THE FOURTH BOMBARDMENT. 143 extensively their now greatly strengthened siege- chap. batteries, brought under a vast arc of fire the !__ whole south front of Sebastopol from the Quar- antine Fort on the west to that ' Battery of the ' Point' which, as always lief ore, still marked its eastermost limit. Apart from the fire of the ships, it was with nearly 600 siege-guns that the Allies were able to execute this great bombard- ment, and the number of the pieces of ordnance with which the enemy answered them was about 550.* On the Karabelnaya defences (where alone the attack would be real) the Allies poured a fire of 280 siege-guns, 114 being French, and 166 of them English.! To this fire on the Karabelnaya, the enemy answered with guns that numbered 207. + Maintaining the cannonade until night- fall the allied gunners grievously mutilated the enemy's defences, and inflicted moreover upon him heavy losses of men. Before sunset, the Flagstaff Bastion and the works further west had suffered great havoc; and in the Faubourg (where the bombardment was meant to open paths for the infantry) the results were more strongly marked. The Barrack Battery, the Great Sedan, the Gervais Battery, the Malakoff, with its auxiliary works, the Little Eedan and the Battery of the Point, were reduced to a nearly helpless state. Indeed the Malakoff could no longer maintain any fire at all, and it was the same with the Nikonoff Battery and the Little t Rousset, vol. ii. p. 255. X Todleben, vol. ii. p. 350.
 * The number according to Todleben (vol. ii. p. 350) being 519.