Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [120]
After he disembarked on the dock, Nemo looked up at the prisonlike edifice, knowing the Tsar’s soldiers must be starving inside. However, when he saw the deplorable condition of the European troops besieging the walled city, he doubted they were faring much better.
Cholera had raged through the allied camps as the French, British, and Sardinian soldiers outside Sevastopol coped with the changing weather. They’d already been through a damp spring and a hot summer and had no extra uniforms or supplies. As autumn chilled the air, the men could only dread the worse weather ahead. Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops had been defeated by a Russian winter in 1812. Nemo hoped Crimea would not prove to be a similar debacle for France.
Nemo strode toward the tent headquarters, surveying the dry, hilly land. Using his written orders and a letter of introduction from Emperor Napoleon III, he met with the French troop commanders. Veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, they were doddering old men who spent more time bragging about the events of their youth than they did running the occupation forces on the Black Sea.
On his own initiative, Nemo studied the army encampments, sitting up late at night in his small white tent. He looked over terrain maps by the light of an oil lamp, determining how best to exploit the resources at hand, using only the few tools the army had given him.
Disregarding the war, the Crimean locals continued to take fishing boats out onto the Black Sea each morning and returned to port with full nets. The army purchased most of the fish (or commandeered it -- Nemo didn’t know which). Old women and their daughters worked on the rocky beaches, filling bottles and tubs with Black Sea water, which they left out in the sun to evaporate; later, they would use the sea salt for preserving fish.
Rolling hills covered with brown grasses and low trees encircled Sevastopol. The scenery reminded Nemo of parts of Africa he had seen from the balloon. Farther along the southeastern coast, the rugged Crimean Mountains rose high, a bastion against any forces of the Tsar that might come to rescue the Russians.
In peaceful times, the land was used for growing wine grapes, herbs, and a variety of plants harvested for their essential oils. The countryside looked like a gentle place to live. Unfortunately, the Crimea’s strategic importance had made it a battleground, again and again, for centuries.
Nemo’s job was to embroider the hills with lines of trenches for the allied forces, so that the soldiers could take shelter while keeping the Russians bottled within the city. He oversaw the digging of ditches and the building of barricades using rocks scavenged from destroyed villages outside the fortress.
British cannons were hauled up and installed in place, surrounded by cushioning dirt berms, woven grass mats, and wicker supports. Wooden stools sat beside each gunnery emplacement so the cannoneers could tend their weapons for the daily bombardment of Sevastopol.
Month after month the siege had continued, and still the Russians did not yield. Though the Tsar’s invaders retained an enormous fighting force and many weapons, they were still trapped. Turkish and British armies blocked access from the north so that no Russian reinforcements could arrive. The siege went on.
Nemo devoted himself to designing sanitary facilities, draining standing pools, and improving latrines to check the spread of cholera -- though the bureaucratic confusion and the lack of cooperation between allied military groups was maddening. He often had a difficult time obtaining supplies and men for his engineering projects, though everyone could see the efforts would benefit all soldiers.
The British and French forces were woefully underequipped, their uniforms not designed for the Crimean climate. Their boots did not fit, their weapons often did not fire, and medical