The Crimean War
Sevastopol from the sea
Balaklava harbour
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The Crimean War: an overview
In the years 1854 to 1856, Britain fought its only European war between
the ending of the Napoleonic conflict in 1815 and the opening of the Great
War in 1914. Although eventually victorious,the British and their French
allies pursued the war with little skill and it became a byword for poor
generalship and logistical incompetence.
The war began as a quarrel between Russian Orthodox monks and French Catholics
over who had precedence at the holy Places in Jerusalem and Nazereth. Tempers
frayed, violence resulted and lives were lost. Tsar Nicholas I of Russia
demanded the right to protect the Christian shrines in the Holy Land and
to back up his claims moved troops into Wallachia and Moldavia (present
day Rumania) then part of the Ottoman Turkish empire. His fleet then destroyed
a Turkish flotilla off Sinope in the Black Sea. In an early instance of
propaganda, British newspaper reports of the action said the Russians had
fired at Turkish wounded in the water. Russian domination of Constantinople
and the Straits was a perennial nightmare of the British and with the two
powers already deeply suspicious of each others intentions in Afghanistan
and Central Asia, the British felt unable to accept such Russian moves
against the Turks. Louis Napoleon III, emperor of France, eager to emulate
the military successes of his uncle Napoleon I and wishing to extend his
protection to the French monks in Jerusalem allied himself with Britain.
Both countries despatched expeditionary forces to the Balkans. The British
was commanded by Lord Raglan, who had last seen action at the Battle of
Waterloo; the French by General St. Arnaud and, after his death from cholera, General Canrobert both veterans of France's Algerian
wars.
The war began in March 1854 and by the end of the summer, the Franco-British
forces had driven the Russians out of Wallachia and Moldavia. The fighting
should have ended there, but it was decided that the great Russian naval
base at Sevastopol was a direct threat to the future security of the region
and in September 1854 the French and British landed their armies on the
Crimean peninsula.
From their landing beaches the allies marched southward to invest Sevastopol.
On the way they fought their first major battle. At the River Alma, a Russian
army tried unsuccessfully to prevent the Allies crossing the river and
scaling the heights beyond. The defeated Russians retreated inland
and as the siege of Sevastopol began a regrouped Russian army hovered menacingly
on the flank of the British army who were using the inlet of Balaklava
as its supply harbour. Sevastopol was invulnerable to any kind of seaborne
attack and her landward defences were also formidable. Soon the major strongpoints
in the defences, the Redan, the little Redan and the Malakoff bastion, would
become household words in Britain.
As the British and French prepared their siegeworks the Russian army on
the British right flank struck. They were flung back at this the Battle
of Balaklava but only with great loss and the near annihilation of the
British light cavalry. A further attempt by the Russians resulted in the
Battle of Inkerman, a murderous fistfight fought out in a fog so thick
that sometimes the troops could only see a few yards ahead. again the Russians
were pushed back. The war settled down to one of spade and artillery as
the Allies pushed their trenches nearer the defensive lines of Sevastopol.
The winter of 1854-55 brought great misery to the troops, particularly
the British as their commisary department was grossly incompetent and for
months the men were clothed in rags, cold, hungry and short of everything.
The only bright light in this sorry tale of official negligence and stupidity
was the work of Florence Nightingale who almost singlehandedly drastically
cut mortality rates for the Britsh wounded at the hospital in Scutari.
Finally, in early 1856, Sevastapol fell and the war was brought to a conclusion
by the Peace of Paris.
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