general Eduard todleben 1818 1884 Baltic German military engineer Ottoman Empire
Eduard Totleben (or Todleben) (May 20, 1818 – July 1, 1884) was a Baltic German military engineer and general. He was in charge of fortification and sapper works of a number of important Russian military campaigns. On the outbreak of war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in 1853, he served in the siege of Silistria, and after the siege was raised was transferred to the Crimea. Sevastopol, while strongly fortified toward the sea, was almost unprotected on the land side. Totleben, though still a junior field officer, became the animating genius of the defense. By his advice the fleet was sunk, in order to blockade the mouth of the harbour, and the deficiency of fortifications on the land side was made good before the allies could take advantage of it. The construction of earthworks and redoubts was carried on with extreme rapidity, and to these was transferred, in great part, the artillery that had belonged to the fleet. It was in the ceaseless improvisation of defensive works and offensive counterworks to meet every changing phase of the enemy's attack that Totleben's peculiar power and originality showed itself. He never commanded a large army in the open field, nor was he the creator of a great permanent system of defence like Vauban. But he may justly be called the originator of the idea that a fortress is to be considered, not as a walled town but as an entrenched position, intimately connected with the offensive and defensive capacities of an army and as susceptible of alteration as the formation of troops in battle or manoeuvre. Until June 20, 1855, Totleben conducted the operations of defense at Sevastopol in person; he was then wounded in the foot, and at the operations which immediately preceded the fall of the fortress he was not present. In the course of the siege he had risen from the rank of lieutenant-colonel to that of lieutenant-general, and had also been made aide-de-camp to the tsar. When he recovered he was employed in strengthening the fort
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