The Crimean War: A Hisory

by Orlando Figes

Tolstoy arrived at Silistria on the day of this battle. He had been transferred there as an ordnance officer with the staff of General Serzhputovsky, which set up its headquarters in the gardens of Musa Pasha’s hilltop residence. Tolstoy enjoyed the spectacle of battle from this safe vantage point. He described it in a letter to his aunt: Not to mention the Danube, its islands and its banks, some occupied by us, others by the Turks, you could see the town, the fortress and the little forts of Silistria as though on the palm of your hand. You could hear the cannon-fire and rifle shots which continued day and night, and with a field-glass you could make out the Turkish soldiers. It’s true it’s a funny sort of pleasure to see people killing each other, and yet every morning and evening I would get up on to my cart and spend hours at a time watching, and I wasn’t the only one. The spectacle was truly beautiful, especially at night … At night our soldiers usually set about trench work and the Turks threw themselves upon them to stop them; then you should have seen and heard the rifle-fire. The first night … . I amused myself, watch in hand, counting the cannon shots that I heard, and I counted 100 explosions in the space of a minute. And yet, from near by, all this wasn’t at all as frightening as might be supposed. At night, when you could see nothing, it was a question of who would burn the most powder, and at the very most 30 men were killed on both sides by these thousands o...