Sevastopol is not yet taken, and the avowal of the English papers, that the place is stronger than it has been anticipated, shows clearly that it will not be easy to take it. The large extent of fortifications does not allow a regular siege; the place is not invested, and the armies and resources of the Crimea cannot be cut off from the fortress, which is threatened only on the south side, while communications are opened to the besieged by the north side.
The garrison is fully sufficient not only for the defense of the outworks, but even for a regular street-fight, when the Anglo-French cannons will have battered down the walls. It is likewise of no use to hide the facts, that Russian reinforcements are arriving day by day in the Crimea, while the Constantinople correspondent of The London Times writes on the 12th, that the effective force of the allied army, before Sevastopol, does not amount to more than about 45,000 men, and that the probable loss in the English part of the invading force from cholera, fever and the sword of the enemy, is about 5,000 men, since the expedition sailed from Varna.
It seems, indeed, that everything is mismanaged in the English army. The tents and baggage of the soldiers had not yet been landed on the 8th; 200 horses were lost on two ships, by bad accommodations and overcrowding; the medicines had been left in the storehouses at Varna, and were wanting in the Crimea and at Scutari; the medical department was far from being numerous enough; and even the provisions of the army encamped on the heights around Sevastopol, are so scanty that salt has become a luxury, and fresh meat is scarcely to be obtained. All these details are to be gathered from the correspondence of the London papers, and confirmed by so weighty testimony that they cannot be suspected of exaggeration. They are all the more striking, because the commissariat and medical department of the French are far superior, and entirely adequate to the emergency.
The bombardment of Sevastopol began on the 17th. It was principally directed against the ships in the harbor, and the Russians themselves report a loss of 500 men, and the death of Admiral Kornilieff.
At Vienna the Emperor is beginning to become uneasy about the concentration of the Russian troops in Poland. The garrison of Vienna has received orders to be ready for marching to Galicia, and all the army has been put upon a war footing.
The Russian Imperial Guard has marched to Poland, and the Czar and Grand Duke Alexander are soon to follow them; and a winter campaign is not altogether impossible.
Austria cannot escape her fate. She has, much against her will, committed herself to the western powers, and will soon be dragged into the whirlpool of war.