European School

The offered lot catches a key moment from the Crimean War of 1854-56.  The assault on the Malakov Redoubt at Sebastopol took place in 1855, and is famously captured in Vernet's The Taking of Malakoff.  While the war lasted into the following year, the city's fall prompted the peace negotiations at the Congress of Paris.  In the foreground, French Zouave soldiers and colonial troops storm a section of the Redoubt, pouring in through the gabion wall against outnumbered Russian soldiers and artillerymen.  The scene is repeated indistinctly behind them through the smoke of battle, where more Zouaves with ladders attack another section of Sebastopol's defences.