October 17, 1854 · Crimea Theater
October 17, 1854
The siege of Sevastopol — Russia's principal naval base on the Black Sea — lasted 349 days and became the defining episode of the Crimean War. Russian engineer Colonel Franz Eduard Todleben constructed an extraordinary network of earthworks and bastions that repeatedly repulsed Allied assaults. Both sides suffered catastrophic losses primarily from disease in the cramped, unsanitary conditions. The city finally fell on September 11, 1855, after the French captured the key Malakhov bastion.
Commanders