TODLEBEN (or TOTLEBEN), FRANZ EDUARD IVANOVICH, COUNT (1818-1884), Russian engineer general, was born at Mittau in Courland, on May 20, 1818. He entered the school of engineers at St. Petersburg, and passed into the army in 1836. In 1848 and the two following years he was em ployed, as captain of engineers, in the campaigns against Schamyl in the Caucasus. On the outbreak of war between Russia and Turkey in 1853, he served in the siege of Silistria, and after the siege was raised was transferred to the Crimea (see CRIMEAN WAR). Sevastopol, while strongly fortified toward the sea, was almost unprotected on the land side. Todleben, though still a junior field officer, became the animating genius of the defence. 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 Todleben'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 he conducted the operations of defence at Sevastopol in person; he was then incapacitated by a wound.
In 186o Todleben was appointed assistant to the grand-duke Nicholas, and he became subsequently chief of the department of engineers with the full rank of general. He was given no com mand when war with Turkey began in 1877. It was not until after the early reverses before Plevna (q.v.) that the soldier of Sevastopol was called to the front. Todleben saw that it would be necessary to draw works round Osman Pasha, and cut him off from communication with the other Turkish commanders. In due time Plevna fell. Todleben then undertook the siege of the Bulgarian fortresses. After the conclusion of preliminaries of peace, he was placed in command of the whole Russian army. When the war was over he became governor of Odessa and hereditary count. But his health was broken. For some time after 188o he held the post of governor of Vilna. He died at Bad Soden near Frankfort-on-Main, on July 1, 1884.
His great work on the defence of Sevastopol appeared in Russian, French and German (5 vols., 1864-72). Besides this, he wrote a letter to General Brialmont on the operations around Plevna ; this was printed in the Russian engineer journal, and in German in the Archiv fur preussische Artillerie-offiziere (1878).
See Brialmont, Le General comte Todleben (Brussels, 1884) ; Life by Schilder (in Russian, St. Petersburg, 1885-87) ; Krahmer, General Adjutant Graf Todleben (Berlin, 1888).