YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE CRIMEAN WAR ORIGINS OF THE CRIMEAN WAR
Mention the Crimean War to most people, and many will immediately think of the Light Brigade charging into a blizzard of Russian bullets and Florence Nightingale tending stricken British troops. Yet the incident that made this brutal 19th-century conflict all but inevitable involved monks not Redcoats, crucifixes not sabres – and there wasn't a nurse in sight.
Just a few years before the Crimean War broke out, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, believed by many to sit on the very spot wherea vicious brawl between two sets of opposing holy men. On one side stood Jerusalem's Orthodox monks; on the other its Catholics clerics. The issue over which these two rival branches of Christianity butted heads was the question of who wielded ultimate control over the most sacred sites in Palestine.
