On the Mortality arising from Military Operations (Concluded from p. 217)

Extract

The facts relating to the siege of Sebastopol would seem to show that the enormously increased powers with which instruments of destruction have been endowed by the improvements of modern science tend much more to the advantage of the besiegers than of the besieged, as might indeed have been expected. We have no means of ascertaining the losses of the Russians during the siege, but from their own statements these must have been immense. The official returns of their casualties in the two assaults of the 18th June and the 8th September have been published, and are given below. The additional losses, from the 17th August to the 8th September, are estimated from Prince Gortschakoff's report of the capture; the proportion of the missing, already mentioned, being added to the killed and wounded.