CRIME war. Joseph-Honoré PEYRAS (1818-1913) officer. Autograph manuscript signed, Crimea from 1854 to 1856; small notebook in-4 of [1]-280pages, bound in half red basane. Interesting account of the Crimean campaign. The Foreword is signed "Peyras Officier d'administration de 1ère classe en retraite chevalier de la Légion d'honneur et décoré de la croix d'or de St Grégoire le Grand". [He was born in La Livinière (Hérault) and retired in 1893 to Javrezac (Charente), where he died]. The title page features a drawing of a rose. The handwriting, on lined paper, is very legible. Peyras recounts his trip to the Orient, from Marseille to Constantinople and Sebastopol; he describes the places, the siege of Sebastopol, the battles, the events, the local customs, the wounded and the sick, etc. The narrative is a clean sweep of all the details. The account is a clean-up of notes taken during his stay, and "has no other merit than to be scrupulously accurate". The narrative begins on April 4, 1855 and ends on August 13, 1856; it is divided into chapters, which are summarized in a detailed table at the end of the volume. He left Marseille on April 4, 1855 on the Egyptus, which called at Messina and Piraeus (visiting Athens), before entering the Dardanelles and Constantinople. The expeditionary force landed near Eupatoria on September 14. "The siege of Sebastopol will be unique in modern history. Although the army's strength has been doubled, we do not have enough troops to invest the place, which the Russians are constantly supplying"... Account of a battle (November 5): "6,000 men resisted 60,000", the French, led by General Bosquet, came to the aid of the English, "and fell, bayonet in front, on the flank of the terrified Russians. [...] The artillery took up position, and cruel gaps were opened in the enemy masses. [...] At the same time, the siege corps had to repel a sortie by the Sebastopol garrison and drove the Russians back to the city gates, where our regiments might have entered if the disorder of this double battle had allowed them to engage further"... Difficult siege conditions in the cold, with soldiers "either freezing a hand or a foot"... "It was finally recognized that the key to Sevastopol's defense system was the Malakoff Tower, a sort of buried citadel"... Work was being done on the trenches... Description of the various positions, starting with the port of Kamiech; the French camp, the main headquarters... After the failure of a premature attack, the Malakoff Tower was stormed (September 8, 1855); the ambulances were full of wounded, despite evacuations to Constantinople. Typhus and scurvy kill 150 men a day... News of the birth of the Imperial Prince (March 13, 1856), and with it the armistice and peace. Account of the evacuation that begins in April. Peyras visits Constantinople (Sainte-Sophie, the seraglio, the palace, the whirling dervishes in Péra...); observations on the "Mohammedan religion" and on the Greek religion... On August 13, 1856, Peyras leaves his friends in Constantinople and sets sail for France...