3-028-717 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Crimea Revisited: interior of the Round Tower of the Malakoff, 1869. 'This position was observed, early in the siege of Sebastopol [during the Crimean War], to be the true key of its whole system of defensive fortifications; and it was the capture of the Malakoff by the French, on Sept. 8, 1855, which compelled Prince Gortchakoff and General Todtleben to give up the city and all the south side of the Great Harbour...The shape of this tower, instead of being 'round,' was only the half of a circle, the rear having a row of loopholes; and when the French took the Malakoff there were a few Russian soldiers surprised in it, who kept up a fire through these loopholes for some time, till they saw that any further show of resistance was useless, and then surrendered. The rear of the tower is on the left,...while the round portion is on the right. There were loopholes all round it, but these were covered up by the earth of the battery, which is now cleared away outside, so that daylight is seen through them. The stair leads up to what was once the tower, but now it is only the top of a ruined platform of disjointed stones. It is said that the Russian Government intends to raise some kind of monument on the Malakoff to mark the locality'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.