3-021-457 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Crimea Revisited: monument at the Salient of the Redan, 1869. Engraving from a sketch '...by our Special Artist [of] the obelisk of white stone which was put in front of the salient angle of the Redan, a few yards from the ditch, to commemorate the death of many British soldiers and officers who were killed upon the two occasions when an assault was made on that formidable part of the Russian fortifications...A glance at this monument, with the surrounding wall, might lead one to suppose that the men who fell at the assault on the Redan are buried beneath it. But this is not the case; their burial-ground was the fosse at the salient of the Russian work. The monument stands at some distance in front of that. The inscription which it bears is, "To the memory of those who fell in the trenches and assaults upon the Redan, 1855"...This structure has already become a ruin. The inscription, in Russian, is almost destroyed by the action of the weather upon it; and the English translation was so completely effaced that it had to be repeated in paint, which has been done in a most wretched and contemptible manner...The efforts of idle and mischievous hands to cut deep into the stone indicate that they have taken a good deal of trouble' From "Illustrated London News", 1869.