The Crimean War: 1854–1856

By John Sweetman

This bitter war between Russia and Turkey, aided by Britain and France, was the setting for the stuff of legends. This book details the gallant yet suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade, now immortalised in film: in the words of Tennyson, 'Into the Valley of Death rode the Six Hundred'. It relates the reports made by the first real war correspondant, William Russell of the London Times - reports which served only to highlight the army's problems - and memorialises the heroic deeds of Florence Nightingale, who struggled to save young men from the most formidable enemy in the Crimean War: not the Russians, but cholera.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jun 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781472809919

Book preview

Chronology

Background to war

Panorama of the conflict

In 1783 Catherine the Great annexed the Crimea, prefacing a series of military ventures around the shores of the Black Sea to further Russia’s territorial ambitions. Seventy years on, another violent episode was about to begin. On 27 March 1854, the British Parliament was informed that ‘Her Majesty feels bound to afford active assistance to her ally the Sultan against unprovoked aggression.’ Next day, The London Gazette contained the declaration of a war that would not formally end until 27 April 1856. During the intervening 25 months, Britain combined with Turkey, France and Sardinia against Russia as both sides courted Austria and Prussia, which were hovering on the sidelines.

Scope of fighting

Many streets, rows of terraced dwellings, official buildings, even children (girls christened Alma) would be triumphantly named after the victories of British soldiers, their first commander and acclaimed heroes during the Crimean War. The signs of many public houses to this day proudly display ‘Battle of Inkerman’, ‘Sevastopol Arms’, ‘The Lord Raglan’, ‘Cardigan of Balaclava’. The Charge of the Light Brigade remains a stirring example of selfless devotion to duty and military discipline, the subject of three feature films and innumerable articles, books and television programmes.

This lingering impression of unalloyed celebration masks the realities of a costly, debilitating conflict, whose shortcomings were highlighted at the time and have been eagerly gnawed by ravenous critics ever since. With the Russian fleet bottled up in its principal Black Sea port, a combined British, French and Turkish force landed in the Crimea just south of Eupatoria, 30 miles (48km) north of its target, Sevastopol. The plan for a swift coup de main went badly wrong, and the invaders were condemned to besieging their quarry from exposed upland to the south during biting winter conditions, as the ranks of men and horses were decimated by disease and starvation. A long campaign under such privation not having been anticipated, the supply, transport and medical arrangements woefully broke down. Before peace settled over the hills, valleys and shattered remains of Sevastopol, approximately 22,000 British, a minimum 80,000 French, possibly 10,000 Turks, 2,000 Sardinians and more than 100,000 Russians had perished.

However, this was a war with Russia, not merely one of her small, southern peninsulas. Contemporaries referred to the ‘Russian War’; soon after its conclusion E. H. Nolan and W. Tyrell respectively published two- and three-volume histories of ‘The War with Russia’. It was not quite a worldwide struggle, but the vast territories of the enemy dictated far-flung operations. So, Petropavlovsk in the Pacific, the Kola peninsula and shores of the White Sea in the Arctic were attacked. British support went to the Turks on the Danube and the unsuccessful defence of Kars in Asia Minor.

Major Anglo-French expeditions were sent into the Baltic in 1854 and 1855 (a third was planned for 1856) to discourage Russian warships at Kronstadt from venturing into the North Sea and perhaps to entice Sweden into the allied camp. Both were dispatched with great pomp. On 11 March 1854, Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Napier’s fleet, led by the 131-gun Duke of Wellington, was cheered away from Spithead by waving thousands on shore and the Queen in the royal yacht Fairy. Alfred Lord Tennyson reputedly penned part of his poem Maud after seeing this grand example of maritime power: ‘It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill.’ Napier’s 18 ships with 1,160 guns would later be joined by 23 French warships with 1,250 guns and troops under Vice-Admiral P. Deschenes to capture shore installations in a formidable allied armada.

Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Dundas sailed on 4 April 1855 with a second expedition, comprising lines of battleships and frigates supported